This is a guest post from our buddy Paul, the only person we know who actually cares about soccer. So, we let him talk about Seattle’s newest club, the MLS Sounders FC.

Seattle Sounders FC, Major League Soccer’s newest franchise, kicks off its inaugural season March 19 at Qwest Field against the New York Red Bulls, owners of one of the dumbest names in sports. New York is coming off a surprising trip to last year’s MLS Cup, where it lost to the Columbus Crew, 3-1.

From the get-go, Sounders FC has run a solid game plan (aside from the whole Drew Carey thing: he is NOT funny). They signed stud midfielder Freddie Ljungberg and added veteran goalkeeper — and Washington native — Kasey Keller. General Manager Adrian Hanauer, the former majority owner of the USL Seattle Sounders, and four players from that USL squad were also added. As were a few U-Dub players.

It’s nice to see some local flavor mixed in with the new team. It adds, for me at least, a bit more to the “rooting for the home team” philosophy. It’s perfect marketing: Ljungberg’s here to attract the ladies (for the most part); Keller and the other locals to intrigue the sentimental natives like me; and Sigi Schmid, a popular and well-respected coach who last year guided Columbus to the championship, was added to give bandwagoners hope that a winning team has arrived in Seattle (well, other than UW’s Men’s Basketball Pac-10 Champions!).

The game plan has worked. Seattleites are eating this shit up: more than 20,000 season tickets have been sold, easily more than any other team in MLS (the league average is around 10,000), and even more than the Seattle Mariners (who have only sold about 16,000 season tickets). The home opener vs. New York is already sold out, and 3,000 more tickets were added and gobbled up immediately. The possibility of a winning team has made us ravenous, it seems. Or gullible, anyway.

What makes Sounders FC intriguing to me is its “Democracy in Sports” philosophy: season-ticket holders have a voice on how the franchise is run. Every three years the front office will be re-evaluated. If season-ticket holders aren’t satisfied with the direction in which the team is headed, they will have a say on whether the GM keeps his job. And I hope they have a say on whether “funny man” Carey sticks around (why IS he around?). By then, though, maybe Cleveland will have an expansion team and Carey can waddle back to Ohio and make Clevelanders “laugh.”

Finally, to top things off, Seattle was recently awarded the 2009 MLS Cup, the first time an expansion team has been awarded the championship game. The MLS Cup will be at Qwest Field on Nov. 22. So the season begins in Seattle, and it will end in Seattle. And hopefully, Sounders FC will be playing for the MLS Cup. A victory would be nice, too. Especially with the way last year went.

Regardless of how Sounders FC plays (unless they pull a Huskies’ football team and Coug it by not winning a game), the new kids bring hope to Seatown. Lord knows we need it. Because there was nothing funny about how bad sports sucked in Seattle last year. It made watching Drew Carey worth a consideration. (For maybe five minutes.)