On Saturday night the Seattle Sounders publicly saluted keeper Kasey Keller, who is retiring at the end of the season. The club had a great pre post-game ceremony complete with gifts of a Honda off-road vehicle (driven in by minority owner Drew Carey) as well as bronzed keeper gloves. But the greatest tribute of all might have come from the fans, who unveiled an elaborate display to celebrate one of America’s greatest keepers and a Washington native.
In the offseason we can discuss Keller’s impact on Seattle, the league, and the U.S. national team, but I wanted to share some of the sights and sounds from that evening. By the way, the Seattle crowd of over 64,000 was the fourth largest crowd to see a soccer match on Saturday in the world. As Steve Kelley said in The Seattle Times, Saturday night “was as close to perfection as sports can get”.
A summary video of the owner’s homage can be found here.
Here is the video of the massive Emerald City Supporters tribute to Keller
Here is a story from Yahoo’s Dirty Tackle blog on the off-roader.
And here is the tribute video shown by the team on the video board
The gifts were post game, the crowd made it seems like mid-game.
Almost all stayed, almost all lost their voices. When he saved the
dangerous pathetic back-pass and the three others caused by it, it
was game over at that point. The crowd and excitement couldn’t be
put back. The Sounders were going to win. I kept saying, even if
they lose, this was worth it. Couldn’t not have been better final
reg. season game. Great to see a legend in person. Starting to seem
like a long time ago, since we couldn’t watch superstars play
soccer. Thanks Kasey.