Seattle Sounders fans, who remembers Hercules Gomez? He has not been a player in the Seattle area for 13 years now, so the younger fans may not recall the player. He has played for 13 clubs, including international clubs in Canada and Mexico. Gomez is celebrating his return with fan photos, social media exuberance and lots of fun, which Seattle can frankly use right now after a series of losses.

Gomez sounds pretty excited about being back on the team. He says, “It’s good; it’s nostalgic. I was 20 last time I was here.” Well, this does seem to be the year of nostalgia, so maybe he is just what the Rave Green need in order to succeed this season. In fact, he does hail from an era when the team was listed among the A-league teams, and back then he was a 20-year-old kid. “It’s neat to see how much they’ve grown and how much I’ve grown. It’s come full circle really. We’ve had a special kind of relationship with each other. It feels right,” he said. It sounds like he is invested in being back on the team.

Sounders head coach Sigi Schmid says that during his first round with the Sounders, Gomez was not only young, but on loan. He was actually a member of the LA Galaxy side back then, but he definitely remembers Gomez all the same. He says that his assistant had alerted him to Gomez’s skills and recommended that he take a look at him. Schmid says that Gomez was “certainly feisty and competitive. Nobody handed him anything; he had to earn his way up to the top.” That kind of attitude could help fuel the team’s hunger to win this year.

While some fans are complaining about the acquisition of Gomez, saying that the Sounders need to focus on younger players, we already see the disjointed work that can happen when you take too many vets away from the team to replace them with new blood. Perhaps what we need is a seasoned player who is still new to us. Then again, we have a few great vets that we lost over the last year that could have done us some good lately, too.

What do you think of the team picking up Gomez as a player for the 2016 season? Tell us your thoughts in the comments. We should see him in action soon, as he started training with the team last week.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia