{"id":1285,"date":"2006-08-31T00:16:00","date_gmt":"2006-08-31T00:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yurasko.net\/wfy\/2006\/08\/about-that-united-game.html"},"modified":"2006-08-31T00:16:00","modified_gmt":"2006-08-31T00:16:00","slug":"about-that-united-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yurasko.net\/wfy\/2006\/08\/about-that-united-game\/","title":{"rendered":"About that United game"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><center><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/static.flickr.com\/85\/229594812_eab1b06d74.jpg\" border=\"1\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p><strong>WASHINGTON, D.C. &mdash;<\/strong> Last Saturday Erica and I went to our first DC United match. It was a fun experience, despite the poor showing of the home side. They lost to the L.A. Galaxy, 5-2.<\/p>\n<p>Not only was this my first MLS match, it was the first team I had ever been to see organized soccer, other than a few trips to see family members play in the 1980s. I never played it either, which puts me in the 0.00001th percentile of Northern Virginia kids. I went in completely ignorant of just about all aspects of the game umother than each squad tries to score by getting the ball in into the other team&#8217;s goal.<\/p>\n<p>We arrived a little late, I did not take into account Metro taking a little longer since it was the weekend, the fellow in front of me buying over $600 worth of tickets or the surly ticket taker. The upshot of all this is when we got to our seats in 427 L.A. had already taken a 1-0 lead. DC stormed back and tied it and appeared to be playing hard. However, that was short-lived with L.A. getting another goal. It seemed to take the wind of United&#8217;s sails. The second half was pretty brutal for the home team &#8212; I think the fifth goal by L.A. reminded me of an empty-netter in hockey given how late it was in the match. Nevertheless, it was fun though I am still a blank canvas when it comes to soccer and next season I want to go with a knowledgeable fan sometime who can spoon-feed me the sport.<\/p>\n<p>Some other observations:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li type=\"square\">Great atmosphere &#8212; the crowd was into it and loud well into the second half even when it was becoming apparent that it was not DC&#8217;s night. I like all the cheers and chants, though I want to sit in a different section next time because the bass drum in the corner was a bit much after a while. I&#8217;m not saying I don&#8217;t respect it, but given that I was exhausted from biking and swimming, I was not in the optimal mood for it. One HUGE plus was the absence of music piped in over the speakers.\n<li type=\"square\">L.A.&#8217;s Landon Donovan is really easy to hate. He&#8217;s arrogant and enjoys the villain role. Of course, if he were on my team, I&#8217;d probably love him.\n<li type=\"square\">Apparently, Donovan WAS on my team &#8212; US Soccer in the World Cup and was shutout.\n<li type=\"square\">It was not as weird seeing RFK reconfigured as I thought it would be.\n<li type=\"square\">I don&#8217;t know if it is a typical occurrence, but seeing two players taken off the field on stretchers made me respect the sport more. It was so old-school.\n<li type=\"square\">The gameplay was faster than I thought it would be, for some reason I thought the pace would be slower.\n<li type=\"square\">I don&#8217;t like the two-tone nets.\n<li type=\"square\">It was quite nice to see the stands bouncing, it has been a long time since that happened at a Nats game.\n<li type=\"square\">United needs to wear black shoes.\n<li type=\"square\">I liked sitting behind the goal.<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;m interested in going to another match next season, and actually learning more about the sport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON, D.C. &mdash; Last Saturday Erica and I went to our first DC United match. It was a fun experience, despite the poor showing of the home side. They lost to the L.A. Galaxy, 5-2. Not only was this my first MLS match, it was the first team I had ever been to see organized [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,24,31,47,96],"tags":[539,543,1005,1531],"class_list":["post-1285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-datelines","category-dc-unitedmls","category-i-was-there","category-natsmlb-2006","category-the-district","tag-dc","tag-dc-united","tag-la-galaxy","tag-rfk-stadium"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>About that United game - William F. 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