Seattle hires Chris Henderson as 'Technical Director'

KIRKLAND, WASH. – MLS Seattle hired Chris Henderson to serve as Technical Director, the club announced today.

As the club’s technical director, Henderson will assist the team’s general manager, Adrian Hanauer, in all areas of soccer operations, including scouting, player management, coaching decisions, and the youth system.

“We are very excited to add Chris to our MLS Seattle operation,” said Hanauer. “Chris brings tremendous knowledge of the MLS system and players to our organization.”

An MLS original, Henderson played in 317 career games for five teams. He currently ranks second all-time in games (317) and minutes played (26,242). Henderson scored 51 goals and added 80 assists over 11 MLS seasons.

 

Excellent!

 

Sean with the Sounders, Chris with the FC Seattle Storm for one season.

http://goalseattle.com/museum/FCSeattleStorm1989.htm

 

The hiring warrants local coverage in Henderson's home town of Everett, WA:

http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20080125/SPORTS/291966603/1004

"We have two kids in school in Kansas City, and we need to sell our house there," he said. "So depending on how long that takes, I'll be going back on weekends and at different times because I need to help my wife keep the family together. But I'm here now and starting to work with the team and focusing on next year."

 

The buzz around the internet is good, real good. Seattle means business.

http://www.socceramerica.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=25321

THE SEATTLE MLS FRANCHISE IS more than a year away from its first game but has already signed one of Washington state's most famous players. No, not Kasey Keller, at least just yet.

Former U.S. midfielder Chris Henderson, 37, a native of Everett, Wash., who played at UCLA and for five MLS teams, has been hired as technical director. As such, he will assist general manager Adrian Hanauer in all areas pertaining to players and player development.

"It's been real busy," Henderson said during a brief telephone conversation while driving through Seattle. "A lot of meetings today. But I'm real excited. I think the league made a great move coming to this city and you couldn't ask for a better ownership group."

 

An audio interview with Chris is now up at www.mlsinseattle.com/

 

Nice work.

www.MLSinSeattle.com has posted an interview with Chris here:
http://mlsinseattle.com/article.aspx?id=880

 

More from Henderson today:

http://mlsinseattle.com/article.aspx?id=932

We’re in the process of setting up a system where every single MLS game is going to be on our desk the next morning in DVD or DVR’d. USL games will be part of our scouting this year, so there are a lot of games to see and study.

We need to get a lot of background on all the new players who have come into the league, both the foreign players and the new draft picks. We want to go into 2009 knowing about these new players. And we want to build information not just about players in MLS but in world soccer, and that’s it’s good that the owners are into this as well. It will definitely help when we go look for our foreign players.

That’s something that really impresses me about our ownership group. The whole group is very into what’s going on in world soccer and MLS. They are into the sport, and which players are doing well. They are not just here for the business side; they’re in it for the soccer side, which is great.