Sandy » Barely halfway through their inaugural year, the Seattle Sounders are enjoying a season like almost no other expansion team in Major League Soccer history -- especially the Real Salt Lake team they will play tonight at Rio Tinto Stadium.

While the Sounders arrive for their first visit armed with several marquee players and in second place in the MLS Western Conference, RSL in many ways is still trying to fully recover from its disastrous debut season four years ago. It made the playoffs for the first time only last year, yet failed to capitalize on the achievement nearly as well as it had hoped, and now must summon another strong stretch run in order to return to the postseason.

"It's not over," forward Robbie Findley insisted. "We can still get in the playoffs. ... We're not putting our heads down."

Certainly, the Sounders aren't, either.

They have easily become the most successful expansion team since the Chicago Fire won the MLS Cup in 1998, and have raised the level of expectation for the three teams that will be joining the league in the next two years. Fans clad in green pack Qwest Field in Seattle -- the Sounders lead the league in attendance by far, averaging 30,204 fans per game -- and the team has become almost ubiquitous around its home city, with scarves and flags and banners seemingly everywhere.

"There is absolutely zero confusion about whether Seattle is a major-league team in this market," co-owner and general manager Adrian Hanauer said. "We're like the Mariners or the Seahawks."

How did that happen?

It's a complex equation, but team officials believe it all started with the original Sounders in the old North American Soccer League. That team had a strong following that bred a deep soccer culture in Seattle, even after the team folded in 1983. The Sounders returned a decade later as a minor-league team (with Hanauer as owner), fueling the hope that they would someday join the ranks of MLS, while the popularity of youth soccer exploded and assured the sport a growing legion of fans.

"We really have three generations of soccer fans now," said Gary Wright, the senior vice president of business operations.

Rumors persisted for years, and Hanauer even tried to land the franchise that became RSL. His bid in 2004 forced Dave Checketts to write a $10 million check to buy a team, rather than just an option for one. But Hanauer wasn't prepared to move as quickly as Checketts, who promised the league he could have a team up and running for the 2005 season, only nine months away.

In retrospect, Hanauer acknowledged that setback probably helped, by ratcheting anticipation to the point that when the Sounders finally were granted a franchise late in 2007, "the dam broke." They sold 10,000 season-ticket deposits the first month.

Not so much for RSL.

While there was significant public excitement for its launch, the team also was almost immediately engulfed in a divisive controversy over how it would build a new stadium, in a community that did not have nearly the same soccer history as Seattle. Meanwhile, Checketts hired as general manager and coach two men -- Steve Pastorino and John Ellinger -- who had never held those jobs before, and their inexperience quickly showed while the team suffered through a miserable 5-22-5 season while renting ill-suited Rice-Eccles Stadium.

In contrast, the Sounders are led by a high-profile management group that includes Hollywood producer Joe Roth, comedian Drew Carey and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen -- whose ownership of the NFL's Seattle Seahawks has provided the Sounders a stadium in which they could immediately profit from parking and concessions, something most MLS teams do not enjoy unless they build their own homes.

Ownership and the astounding ticket sales also gave the Sounders the money, cachet and confidence to pursue big names, such as legendary coach Sigi Schmid, who had won championships with the Los Angeles Galaxy and Columbus Crew after an illustrious college career. He and Hanauer knew how to build a team -- and they had a few more tools at their disposal than RSL did.

"Not only did the Sounders have twice as much time as RSL to build their franchise, but the league allowed them (as well as expansion

predecessors Toronto and San Jose) about twice as much "allocation" money as RSL and Chivas USA -- about $1 million -- to help pay for

new players, specifically in an effort to avoid the kind of expansion struggles that plagued those teams."

The Sounders also were allowed to put nearly a dozen "discovery" claims on the best of the minor-league Sounders and others that Hanauer knew so well, protecting quality players such as forward Sebastien Le Toux and midfielder Osvaldo Alonso from their MLS rivals, and had a larger pool of players from which to choose in an expansion draft because the league had grown by four teams from the time RSL shared an expansion draft with Chivas USA.

That worked well for Schmid and Hanauer, who were familiar enough with the league to make solid selections such as forward Nate Jacqua, midfielder Brad Evans and defender James Riley. And they did not strike out with their No. 1 pick in the MLS SuperDraft the way RSL did, selecting forward Steve Zakuani, who already has played more games (18) and scored more goals (2) than Nik Besagno did in 3 ½ seasons with RSL.

"They made some really good choices," RSL coach Jason Kreis said.

It has showed.

The Sounders won three straight shutouts to start the season -- including a 2-0 win over RSL in its season opener -- and have all but assured a better finish than any of the last four expansion teams to precede them. But as a player, Kreis endured that first miserable season for RSL, and sort of feels as if other newcomers should do the same.

"I think teams should have to earn it," he said. "I don't think that it should be given to anybody -- and not to say that it was given, because ... they put in a tremendous amount of work and made some tremendous signings and selections for their team this year. But if they hadn't been afforded some of those opportunities, with the allocation money and the expansion draft being changed the way it was, I think they may be struggling a little bit more."

But they are not, and instead are bringing to town a surprisingly strong team that Hanauer said is just the "cherry on top" of his long effort to land an MLS franchise in Seattle.

mcl@sltrib.com