When in Rome goes the saying, and in terms of football this should apply to any and every place you visit in the world. Never has this been the case when the real G McDowell headed off to Washington DC last week. He made a Schoolboy error of not checking the fixtures before he went. We soon put him right.
As the date got closer, I managed to rearrange the return leg, the airline says I was ok to fly and I was back on again.
Now seeing as this is a football blog and not a holiday/fracture blog, let’s start to talk about the soccer. I’ve never been to an US based soccer game, and I didn’t really intend to either but upon my initial photo uploading to Facebook I got a very quick response from @theballisround, asking ‘are DC United at home?’ Hmm, I thought to myself, when The Ball is Round Bat Phone rings, you answer it pretty damn quickly. So I started a little Googling.
Yes, DC United were at home this weekend, on the Saturday evening, to a team called Real Salt Lake. I think I had Stuart at “Yes”.
DC were not enjoying the best of form…patchy is what you’d call it, a little like my own team Sheffield Wednesday but at least they were a point off the final playoff spot. I’d like to add that by finishing 10th in the MLS you can be in the final playoff spot. No doubt this is some tactic of making the sport seem more popular but I’ll get to that later.
Now I’m a big cynic, a massive cynic at times and as I mentioned, I’m a Sheffield Wednesday fan, so that might have something to do with it. The boys from S6 have been flattering to deceive for a number of years now. Shedding managers like they’re owned by a Russian oligarch but with the financial management of a small third world country.
A former colleague of mine, and a Stevenage fan, emailed me after their 5-1 mauling of the Owls and he said no-one could quite believe how bad they were. We have a front man who can’t stop scoring in Gary Madine, showing promise and at home we seem strong but away, well away it’s appalling.
The simple stat against Charlton Athletic showed we had one shot on target and one goal – they mullered us. Have Charlton ever “mullered” anyone? Well they have now. So, all in all, we will finish mid-table and another new manager plus probably losing our new prolific front-man but this is now what we expect!
Back to our US based story. DC United doing so-so but what about their opponents? Well RSL as I like to call them now, were on the back of a five-game hot-streak. They are pushing for the title and had secured an away victory mid-week. At this point I decided two things (1) I was going (2) I was having a cheeky £5 on RSL based on my Owls experience.
A little more research showed that the ‘Stadium Armoury’, home of DC United was a mere three stops from my hotel on the subway – result! Tickets could be purchased on the day and that it was still typical for crowds around 25,000 – impressive. So, a few Buds (Lites for the waistline) down my neck later I set out.
Tickets were very easy to come by but not being particularly clued up where to sit, I opted for a VIP ticket as befitting my status, which put you squarely alongside the pitch action.
Next I checked out what I believed to be the official shop…but on reflection it might just have been a car-boot sale or raffle?! Sorry Stu, you will have to wait for those slippers for another day.
So, with about 20 minutes to kick off, it was straight in for some beer and snacks. Now did I mention I have a broken arm…yes you say, enough already. Well, it makes carrying more than one thing tricky. So, rather than a huge hotdog as recommended by @lugepravda, our resident US correspondent, I could manage the statutory beer and a pretzel shoved into my back pocket.
Now at this point something dawned on me and more fool me really. Why would soccer ever work in the US? No really. You have the massive franchises of, American Football, Basketball, Baseball and Ice Hockey – where on earth could a ‘new’ sport get traction? Well they’ve done a pretty good job. The system is all geared towards entertainment.
Why would you want to come and watch the equivalent of lower-league English players stomp out a boring 0-0. There’s no place for no scoring games in the US – it’s GOT to be entertaining. So the big name players showing flair, the trade system and the poor quality of goalkeeping help ;-)
So to the match. Both teams started poorly. Settling into very direct patterns of play, trying to hit a tall front man each – it was like watching two John Beck teams play a training match. Ironically for how the match transpired, RSL were the quicker to start trying to knock it around with their upright, dreadlocked number 5 showing good control and distribution but he was alone in the thought process of what he was trying to do, so the passages of play broke down too easily. RSL created the first real chance, a header high wide and handsome after 11 minutes.
On 21 minutes he did change the game. Najar returned the favour of earlier by swinging over a ball from the right and De Rosario ghosted into the area and headed home. As this point, it looked game over and after RSL conceded possession deep in the DC half, the home team countered with pace, culminating with the ball rolling to De Rosario just outside the box who curled a beauty into the top right corner – a peach. The Barmy Army were now in full swing and I had also just noticed a homage to past DC United players, including one John Harkes, formerly of Sheffield Wednesday fame.
Just as I was declaring my new alligence to DC as my US team, De Rosario grabbed his hat-trick and became the new league top scorer on 13 goals and snagged the accolade of the fastest hat-trick ever scored in MLS history. He claimed it with a curling direct free kick into the opposite corner from his last. A good finish but the keeper was both slow and short making it seem more impressive in the cold light of day. No-one was going to deny De Rosario his day in the sun though. Standing ovation and game over before the break.
In all honesty as most matches can do, it petered out somewhat in the second half. There was a lot of toil and RSL wanted to keep the score respectable. That they did with a consolation on 86 minutes but most of the crowd had started leaving by then. I later found that RSL had been resting their star players after mid-week exertions and of course my £5 was gone but I didn’t care and neither did the home fans. I got bored having to try and get my ID out of my pocket every time I wanted a beer despite going to the same server every time – I mean how many other 6ft 1inch one armed Englishmen were there in a crowd of twenty odd thousand? Most of the fans around me were middle-class, well to do families, and there’s nothing wrong with that in a sport which really needs to entertain and find a niche to survive. It’s about the showmen, it’s about the hat-tricks, the cart-wheel celebrations and it’s about my new US team – Go DC United!