Two Shields are Better than One

The Major League Soccer (MLS), currently in the process of expanding from 13 to 16 teams by 2010, recently announced its 14th team, the Seattle Sounders FC as an expansion team. The Seattle Sounders FC were named after a public poll that included the names Seattle Alliance, Seattle FC and Seattle Republic (you can read the rationalizations for these names here) as well as providing a “write-in” option for the fans to propose something they liked. With 14,500 registered fans, 50% of the votes were write-in options and, from those, 49% offered a variation on the name of Sounders. Now, I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the history of Seattle soccer — I certainly wasn’t — but the Sounders is a name associated with Seattle soccer since the 1970s,