Craig Waibel is cooking, you just have bad taste

To say Wednesday was “busy” is a bit of an understatement. In addition to formally announcing the acquisition of Jesús Ferreira, the Seattle Sounders also effectively announced that Jordan Morris hit an escalator clause in his contract that makes him a full Designated Player, they have re-signed Albert Rusnák as a DP, re-signed João Paulo, and confirmed that they are close to completing a trade for Paul Arriola.

The 2025 roster is not entirely complete, but we now have a very good idea of where it’s going.

Heading into his fifth transfer window as general manager, it feels like we are finally getting a real understanding of Craig Waibel‘s recipe for a great MLS team. While a loud sub-section of Sounders supporters has clearly expressed their distaste for his methods, there are also millions of Americans who like Transformers movies. That is to say, some people just have bad taste.

The “Waibel method” is a major departure from the Garth Lagerwey’s before him. His roster-building philosophy looks to maintain the high standard set by Sounders teams of the past, while also being much better able to adapt to the ways that MLS has changed. As a result the squad he is putting together is the most talented and complete team the Sounders have ever seen.

Step 1: Get Younger

If “The Garth Method” could be boiled down to one catchphrase it would be “sign proven players in their prime.” It’s a meat-and-potatoes, “keep it simple, stupid,” philosophy that meant spending reasonably large fees on dudes with great resumes and cutting them big paychecks. Today, some of Waibel’s loudest detractors see the departure from Lagerwey’s method as a failure in itself. “The Garth Method” did work, but it had downsides that fans have not been happy to deal with in the years since.

Raúl Ruidíaz was 29 years old in his first full season in Seattle. He was already at the tail-end of his prime when Lagerwey paid $7 million to acquire him. While fans loved the “prime” during the first three-and-a-half years, the “tail-end” stretched out nearly as long and was a constant pain point. Ruidíaz missed a staggering 214 days in parts of seven years at the club, and even those prime years were shortened more than we’d possibly like to remember. He missed 29 days in his first full year as a Sounder, he only played more than 2,000 league minutes twice, and he never cracked 2,500 league minutes.

Whether it is entirely his choice, making the most of his budget, or a bit of both, Waibel’s contrasting tendency is to go a bit younger and cheaper.

We first noticed Waibel’s preference for younger players with the signing of Pedro De La Vega last year, and we see it again with Jesús Ferreira. Both will be 24 years old at the start of this season. This change can be seen all across the roster. In 2024, the Sounders got the second-most minutes from their supplemental roster of any team in the league. The supplemental roster is comprised largely of academy grads and second-team products and does not count against the salary cap. These minutes were not just for development – Jackson Ragen and Obed Vargas were among the best players in the team. Ragen was a Defender of the Year finalist, and Obed was the youngest player in MLS’s 22 under 22 top 10.

Step 2: Plan Ahead 

Staying good year after year is almost impossible in MLS. No other team has been remotely as good, as consistently, as the Sounders, and especially not over such a long period of time. This remarkable record obviously pre-dates Waibel’s tenure, but he saw the team through arguably its most difficult period of transition with a combination of long-term planning and very clever contracts. 

MLS is “a league that punishes you for having success,” as LA Galaxy CSO Will Kuntz described in an interview shortly after the Galaxy won the MLS Cup. Winning means players need raises and earn bonuses that have to be paid. This means successful teams are often immediately sold for parts to keep the roster’s most essential players, such as when the Galaxy were forced to trade away MLS Cup MVP Gaston Brugman shortly after winning the title. Even more concerning for the long-term strength of the Galaxy, their best homegrown player, Jalen Neal, has been shipped off to Montreal.

At no point, even before Craig Waibel’s time at the helm, has the success of the Sounders come at the cost of losing key young players. For most clubs in MLS, winning MLS Cup or CCL would likely have been followed by losing players like Morris, Cristian Roldan, or Josh Atencio. Instead, the Sounders have always planned to be able to retain the next generation of the team.

It can certainly be argued that this lowers the Sounders’ ceiling — they rarely go “all-in” on a single season — but it has undeniably allowed them to remain competitive literally every year of their MLS existence.

Waibel was handed a particularly difficult situation when he took over in the winter before the 2023 season. The Sounders were successful in CCL, locked into three DP contracts, and had just missed the playoffs. Core players like Jordan Morris and Cristian Roldan needed to be extended and had earned huge raises. Meanwhile, two of their three DP slots were filled by players well past their prime who were on enormous wages. The solution Waibel came up with was nothing short of inspired – signing Morris to a five-year deal, initially below the DP threshold, but with bonus clauses that potentially paid out in the final three years of the contract if he continued to deliver at a high level. This allowed the club to keep a DP-level player in his prime on the roster, without needing to use a DP slot that they didn’t have available at the time.

While I realize Morris becoming a DP has caused some consternation, let’s be 100% clear: He has performed at a DP level and has been one of the league’s top attackers during the first two years of his contract. In 2024 he was the sixth-best player in the league by total non-penalty expected goals + expected assists (19.0). By American Soccer Analysis’ goals added model he was the second-best striker in the league, behind only Christian Benteke. Since signing his current contract, Morris has had 28 goal contributions in league play and 34 in all competitions. He’s done it all on a team that is still pretty thin in the attack, and while only taking a single penalty kick.

Much of the frustration with this off-season comes from people who absolutely, vehemently, disagree with that assessment of Morris’ talent. Those people are wrong. While I would love to psychoanalyze the bizarre self-hatred many American soccer fans seem to have for American MLS players, I have already covered why Morris has been as good or better than prime Ruidíaz. I think the numbers speak for themselves.

If Morris had not been re-signed after 2022, this team would have lost its best attacking player and one of the best players in the league. If they had refused the DP option, does anyone really believe there was no team in MLS — let alone the world — who wouldn’t have been willing to provide a payday to a 28-year-old who had just played in the World Cup? Waibel deserves his flowers for how he got it done.

Having the next core of the roster already on the roster meant the Sounders were able to handle the decline of both Ruidíaz and Nico Lodeiro. Not only did Morris lead the team back into the playoffs in 2023, but he also helped secure a home playoff seed two years in a row.