Nos Audietis

The Sounders are finally wrapping up this wild season, heading into the final game of the regular season sitting third in the Western Conference with a decent shot at still grabbing the No. 1 spot if they win and results fall their way. But it’s been a bumpy ride getting here, at least recently.

They’re now 1-2-3 in their last six, which includes a brutal stretch of five games in 18 days. The most recent of those was a 1-1 tie with the LA Galaxy. The Sounders finally rotated their lineup in that one, making five changes from the previous game and looked OK out of the gate. When most of their starters came on in the second half, they looked a ton better but still managed to give up a goal against the run of play before finding a very late equalizer.

This week's music: Perry Como - "Seattle", "RVIVR - "Ocean Song", Woody Guthrie - "Roll On Columbia", "Your Journey Begins" - OurMusicBox (Jay Man) (CC BY 4.0)

Thanks to James Woollard, Sounders Public Address Announcer, for doing our sponsor reads. You can follow him on Twitter at @BritVoxUS - if you’re looking for a British Voice to advertise your business or non-profit, please reach out to him.

Raúl Ruidíaz caught COVID-19 while on international duty with Peru. Jeremiah and Aaron would rather FIFA had canceled the window. 

This week's music: Perry Como - "Seattle", "RVIVR - "Ocean Song", Woody Guthrie - "Roll On Columbia", "Your Journey Begins" - OurMusicBox (Jay Man) (CC BY 4.0)

Thanks to James Woollard, Sounders Public Address Announcer, for doing our sponsor reads. You can follow him on Twitter at @BritVoxUS - if you’re looking for a British Voice to advertise your business or non-profit, please reach out to him.

We usually meet with Sounders majority owner Adrian Hanauer a couple times a year. The last time we talked, the global coronavirus pandemic was just setting in. Now several months later there are still many questions around how this will all affect the Sounders. One effect we do know about is the decision to close the 300s to season-ticket holders. We talked about man of those things in this episode.

This week's music: Perry Como - "Seattle", "RVIVR - "Ocean Song", Woody Guthrie - "Roll On Columbia", "Your Journey Begins" - OurMusicBox (Jay Man) (CC BY 4.0)

Thanks to James Woollard, Sounders Public Address Announcer, for doing our sponsor reads. You can follow him on Twitter at @BritVoxUS - if you’re looking for a British Voice to advertise your business or non-profit, please reach out to him.

There is nothing normal about this season, from the schedule to the congestion to ... the world. So, maybe in that very specific way the fact that the Seattle Sounders suddenly can’t beat the Portland Timbers at home makes ... sense? OK, that’s probably a stretch but neither Jeremiah nor Aaron seem too worried about a deflating loss, assuming it doesn’t snowball into a string of bad results.

This week's music: Perry Como - "Seattle", "RVIVR - "Ocean Song", Woody Guthrie - "Roll On Columbia", "Your Journey Begins" - OurMusicBox (Jay Man) (CC BY 4.0)

Thanks to James Woollard, Sounders Public Address Announcer, for doing our sponsor reads. You can follow him on Twitter at @BritVoxUS - if you’re looking for a British Voice to advertise your business or non-profit, please reach out to him.

It's been nearly a month since the Seattle Sounders last played, but they return on Sunday against the Portland Timbers. It's definitely a weird one, though, as there will be no fans, likely artificial crowd noise and uncertain stakes. 

What we know is that this is probably about as close to "normal" as we're going to get for the foreseeable future. 

Aaron and Jeremiah discuss all of that, sing the Sounders' praises for the announcement of 2021 season-ticket renewals and answer many of your questions.

This week's music: Perry Como - "Seattle", "RVIVR - "Ocean Song", Woody Guthrie - "Roll On Columbia", "Your Journey Begins" - OurMusicBox (Jay Man) (CC BY 4.0)

Thanks to James Woollard, Sounders Public Address Announcer, for doing our sponsor reads. You can follow him on Twitter at @BritVoxUS - if you’re looking for a British Voice to advertise your business or non-profit, please reach out to him.

And just like that, it was over. After going 1-1-1 in the group stage, the Seattle Sounders were bounced from the MLS is Back Tournament in the Round of 16 by LAFC. The 4-1 scoreline may have been a little flattering even as the Sounders were thoroughly outplayed.

Disappointing as that loss was, neither Jeremiah nor Aaron were quite ready to freak out about it or about the state of the roster in general. They were happy that no one seems to have gotten sick while they were there, though.

This week's music: Perry Como - "Seattle", "RVIVR - "Ocean Song", Woody Guthrie - "Roll On Columbia", "Your Journey Begins" - OurMusicBox (Jay Man) (CC BY 4.0)

Thanks to James Woollard, Sounders Public Address Announcer, for doing our sponsor reads. You can follow him on Twitter at @BritVoxUS - if you’re looking for a British Voice to advertise your business or non-profit, please reach out to him.

The Seattle Sounders return from an unplanned four-month break tonight. Unfortunately, it's hardly under the best of circumstances. While there was reason to hope that this might feel a bit more celebratory when the plans were first announced, the reality is that the pandemic that caused the break only seems to be getting worse in the United States.

As nice as it would be to focus on the soccer, Jeremiah and Aaron spend the first segment lamenting the lack of leadership that has gotten us to this point and makes it much harder to simply throw on the blinders and enjoy watching the Sounders again.

They do, however, get around to talking soccer too. The second segment turns the focus to the field while also answering listener questions.  Hope you enjoy.

This week's music: Perry Como - "Seattle", "RVIVR - "Ocean Song", Woody Guthrie - "Roll On Columbia", "Your Journey Begins" - OurMusicBox (Jay Man) (CC BY 4.0)

Thanks to James Woollard, Sounders Public Address Announcer, for doing our sponsor reads. You can follow him on Twitter at @BritVoxUS - if you’re looking for a British Voice to advertise your business or non-profit, please reach out to him.

There were plenty of times when it seemed like the 2020 season was completely lost, but last week MLS announced that their long-rumored summer tournament would happen. On Thursday, they even released the draw. So, yeah, this is really happening.

Aaron and Jeremiah spend most of the first segment discussing the pros and cons of going forward with the tournament. While both still have significant reservations, they also admit that they’ll almost certainly be very interested in watching it. Live soccer, after all, beats no soccer.

As usual, they also take question from readers. Enjoy.

This week's music: Perry Como - "Seattle", "RVIVR - "Ocean Song", Woody Guthrie - "Roll On Columbia", "Your Journey Begins" - OurMusicBox (Jay Man) (CC BY 4.0)

Thanks to James Woollard, Sounders Public Address Announcer, for doing our sponsor reads. You can follow him on Twitter at @BritVoxUS - if you’re looking for a British Voice to advertise your business or non-profit, please reach out to him.

Spencer Richey came up in the Seattle soccer scene just before the Seattle Sounders launched their academy. The goalkeeper played for Crossfire then moved to the United States residency program in Bradenton before coming back to Seattle to play for the University of Washington.

His time there coincided with the Huskies’ hiring of Jamie Clark and their subsequent rise to national prominence.

During his five years with UW — he added a year due to a medical red shirt — he helped the Huskies become one of the top college programs in the United States before getting drafted by the Vancouver Whitecaps.

Richey spent a couple years with the Whitecaps — even getting a MLS start — before going on loan to FC Cincinnati in the USL. He played well enough to make the jump with them to MLS and despite FCC bringing in a foreign goalkeeper to be the presumed starter, Richey would end up making 19 starts last year and opened this year as the starter again.

We caught up with Richey on Thursday in his Cincinnati home and talked about his rise up the American soccer ladder, his continued fondness for Seattle and his outlook for 2020.

This week's music: Perry Como - "Seattle", "RVIVR - "Ocean Song", Woody Guthrie - "Roll On Columbia", "Your Journey Begins" - OurMusicBox (Jay Man) (CC BY 4.0)

Thanks to James Woollard, Sounders Public Address Announcer, for doing our sponsor reads. You can follow him on Twitter at @BritVoxUS - if you’re looking for a British Voice to advertise your business or non-profit, please reach out to him.

Time has lost all meaning so it’s perfectly understandable that you might have missed that this was supposed to be the week that the Seattle Sounders and Portland Timbers met for the first time this year. You may have even noticed that the two teams’ websites have been doing all sorts of content about it, including an oral history of their first-ever meeting of the all-MLS era.

We figured that was a reasonably good excuse to invite our good friend Richard Farley back onto the show. We talked about that game, what it meant for the rivalry and, oddly enough, a lot about the Michael Jordan documentary. It was fun.

Later in the show, Jeremiah and Aaron expressed some deep skepticism over the plan to bring all 26 teams to Orlando for some sort of tournament.

This week's music: Perry Como - "Seattle", "RVIVR - "Ocean Song", Woody Guthrie - "Roll On Columbia", "Your Journey Begins" - OurMusicBox (Jay Man) (CC BY 4.0)

Thanks to James Woollard, Sounders Public Address Announcer, for doing our sponsor reads. You can follow him on Twitter at @BritVoxUS - if you’re looking for a British Voice to advertise your business or non-profit, please reach out to him.