The Sounder Triptych: Compiled
Many, many words on the 2022 Concacaf Champions League, the Seattle Sounders, and Major League Soccer
3 Chapters, 10,000+ words on the Sounders, the Concacaf Champions League, and Major League Soccer as it was, is, and could be. It’s 3 individual posts on the site, all available here:
Part 1: Seattle Winning the Concacaf Champions League is a Big Deal for MLS Going Forward…
Part 2: However, We Should Acknowledge That Seattle is Not Normal…
Part 3: The Rest of the League Has Something to Learn From Them
All 3 parts compiled together for easy reading on your computer or e-reader
Extra Commentary: (Warning - I talk about myself and my writing process here. If you got to this page through some other means and scrolled down past the links above expecting for this text to be the main text of the piece, it’s not, that’s all in the bold hyperlinks above the line and the picture
This is, I think, the longest written work I’ve ever published online. I know that I don’t have the cachet to expect people to read something this lengthy and detailed from me on soccer, but I have to start somewhere, and now that I’m not on most social media (though I might put this on the MLS Reddit because I’ve had good feedback on my stuff there before) and have a more or less full-time job and don’t expect to do this in direct service of theoretical future career, I’m fine with just writing about something that is intriguing to me for as long as it takes to figure it out.
Plus, I’ve also found that writing ideas out fully on paper gets me to stop constantly relitigating them in my head to an extent. Part three, in particular, is built off of bits and pieces of questions and speculations and observations I’ve had rattling around in my head for months to years.
I am a very small fish in a relatively small pond (compared to other leagues’ discursive/blogging… communities? I don’t know how to define that) which I think could potentially be better than being a very small fish in a lake like I would be if I was interested enough to write honestly about the NFL or NBA or European soccer or college sports. There are people who do writing like this - analytical or philosophical or history writing on MLS and American soccer, but many of them work for the league or for larger-scale publications, I’ve seen that the independent sector of MLS writing/commentary/discourse/what-have-you isn’t as large as it is for other leagues and sports. There is a gap that I could fill, I think that I could potentially provide a voice that a growing number of people would be interested in hearing from somebody, I just have to believe that I can do that and then take the steps to make it happen. I know that not a lot of people online have the interest or desire to read something this lengthy, but I did prove to myself that I can create, work on, and finish something like this about this topic - Which I want to take as a step to say “Okay, you can do that in writing, now it is time to do it in video.”
The idea to write this all came during a time when I’ve been specifically trying to finish works. I’ve met and talked to people who also deal with ADHD who have expressed a similar difficulty with finishing what was started, and I’m honestly proud of myself just for the fact that this was wrapped up even after I hit the wall where I normally would give up and say I just wasn’t going to be able to finish it satisfactorily. I don’t care that much if not a single soul reads through this, the fact that I finished it gives it enough purpose for me.
I will have a non-soccer/sports post for you either tomorrow or Friday! For those of you who followed this because you like my writing on topics not related to soccer, I apologize for this spate of six soccer-related posts in a row, but it is what has been on my mind the most recently.
Thank you again for reading - As far as I know, that’s all.
Also I acknowledge that I should’ve called it “The Sounder Trilogy” but “Triptych” was the first word I thought of. I think they mean the same thing. Triptych probably sounds pretentious, sorry