The Gods of Soccer have Blessed Seattle
By Art Thiel
After a professional lifetime of journalism experience in Seattle, which included national and global sports, I presumed I had seen most everything. I was not prepared for what happened Friday in ol’ Dad Yesler’s little sawmill town.
The men’s World Cup came to town for a soccer match and was overwhelmed by a cultural waterfall. A shame for the Australians, unfortunate victims of a vibe measured in megatons.
“I feel the energy here,” Zlatan Ibrahimović, the iconoclastic Swedish superstar now working as a Fox Sports TV talent, said pre-match from the studio desk in Los Angeles. “Imagine what they feel in the stadium today.”
No imagination was required for the 66,925 ticketholders, and thousands more headed to large public TV parties. They marched boisterously from the Harbor Steps and Waterfront Park through Pioneer Square, some reveling in the equine presence of Seattle’s Buffalo Soldiers on the Juneteenth holiday. In what is likely North America’s loudest open-air stadium, attendees and teams then gathered for the ritual salutes.
https://www.postalley.org/2026/06/22/the-gods-of-soccer-have-blessed-seattle/