It ain't easy bein' so European

Or something like that.

Three articles have hit the interweb thingy today that draw comparisons between Sounders FC and European football clubs.

Well, two of them do, and a third talks about our first European player, who in fact wants to be an American player.

Make up your mind, everybody!

Seth Kolloen, Seattle P-I:

WE IN SEATTLE are about to experience something new in North American sports. No, not an attack on a pitcher by his starting infield, though Carlos Silva is doing his best to make that a reality. I mean the "promotion" of the Sounders to Major League Soccer.

Promotion -- when a team advances to a better league by dint of good performance -- is standard in European sports leagues. In Europe, countries have several leagues for each sport -- a top league for the best teams, and several (sometimes very many) lesser leagues. Every year, the best teams move up to the league above, and the worst move down.

Steve MacClare, European Weekly:

Something unusual happened this week in Seattle. 90 people gathered in a pub to watch soccer. That’s not unusual in itself. A scattering of ex patriot pubs will be able to claim this feat many Saturday mornings between September and May. When the USA national side play in the World Cup numbers soar into the hundreds. What was unusual was that the throng who packed the Atlantic Crossing pub weren’t there to watch Chelsea, England or even the USA. They were there to watch the Seattle Sounders. And not even the Seattle Sounders FC that the mainstream press deigns to cover when an MLS related press release is unleashed. They were there to shout, cajole and yell at a TV screen hooked up to a laptop showing our current USL Sounders do battle in Charleston.

And there was hardly a European accent to be heard as the die hard (and many new) members of the Emerald City Supporters (ECS) club were joined by front office staff of the Seattle Seahawks, Sounders Meet Up group members, a few of the increasing core of soccer media in Seattle and some pub regulars who remained there to see what the fuss was about.

John Naito, Seattle P-I:

Le Toux has embraced his new life with enthusiasm.

He has a sweet, if not guileless, view of America -- its embrace of individuality and its inclusiveness, the antithesis of the patrician society he left behind.

Whidbey Island is home, near his girlfriend and her parents, and he shares his house in Langley with Mikael Kerleau-Idrissi, his longtime personal trainer, and Mikael's wife, Eman.

He has developed a fondness for Asian cuisine and acquired a driver's license. He and his housemates recently established a training center in Langley, the French Soccer Academy.