"We just love them in this town. We've been waiting for a team for a long time," Dan Sego, a 52-year-old engineer, said on outside Qwest Field.
"The stadium is packed. It's lifted the soccer community."
"There's a huge soccer community in Seattle that I don't think most of the world understands or realises," said 47-year-old Seattle fan Jess Gobel.
"We appreciate the game, and we love the game."
Despite the city's reputation for gloomy weather and reserved attitude, Seattleites leapt at the chance to party on game day.
More than 1,000 fans in the team's "rave green" jerseys - a few with face paint and rainbow wigs - meet before every game in a downtown park to chant and sing with the help of Sound Wave, the team's official 53-piece marching band.
"The Sounders are phenomenal," said Jeffrey Goligoski, who travelled four hours with his nephew to see the pre-game festivities.
"Budget and time mean we can't see every match, but if we could we would."
'EVERYONE'S INTO IT'
It is a measure of the Sounders' progress that Barcelona would even consider stepping on the same field.
"The Pacific Northwest has always loved football (soccer). It's the biggest participatory sport and it's slowly becoming the biggest viewed sport," said Chris Rose, who travels 140 miles (226 km) from Vancouver, Canada for Sounders home games.
"Within a five-mile radius this is like England. Everybody's wearing their jerseys, everyone's upbeat, everyone's into it."
