support

i’m not entirely sure why i’ve spent such a logarithmically increasing amount of time in the past two years on watching and playing soccer, all of a sudden. i think the latter part has had a pretty big effect on the former, though. the other part of it, though, is the communal nature of the experience which serves to draw you in.

i went to watch a game at the valley last year, but when i met tons of people in germany, just ‘cause i was wearing a charlton athletic shirt, i was hooked. i’ve been going to revolution games for years, but having season tickets and talking to the same folks for most of the year, it’s a much more involved experience. the crowd on weekend mornings is great fun, even if i don’t care who wins.

which is what made last night’s game so much more satisfying.

first and foremost, if you haven’t seen it yet, you really need to watch taylor twellman’s goal.

sure, just barely over 10k people were at the match; it was cold, and played on short notice, but it wasn’t the families and kids and $75 worth of food crowd; this was a soccer crowd. sure, it wasn’t easy to make a lot of noise in the cavernous bowl of gillette stadium, but what struck me as different was the number of times the crowd got to their feet to watch a threat on the goal. the boos for cuautehmoc blanco when he took a throw, or more frequently, a dive. the marching of the loony supporters with their drums and banners down the ramps. the crazy bastards funneling beer in the parking lot.

it’s a well-known fact that soccer fans in the us can be annoyingly evangelical about it, so i’ll try to steer somewhat clear of that; goodness knows i was an annoying mac guy, back in the day (on the other hand, i was also right). but at the same time, particularly as far as the mls is concerned, it’s fun to feel like you’re in on the ground floor of something cool and new and fun. and who knows, maybe someday kids will go to the games to learn new swear words instead of chowing down on concessions. now that’s a future worth supporting.