by Ethan Johnson
April 29, 2007

I made it to Pizza Hut Park again (Marlena calls it "Pepperoni Park") expecting an afternoon of thrills, chills, and excitement. Well, at least I came away with some pictures with the "good" camera. The zoom really only reaches mid-field, but it was better than a no-zoom point & shoot camera. Anyway.

I sat in the "rowdy" section again (116) and as always it was a blast. Some girls sitting next to me were crestfallen that they couldn't get into a good heckling rhythm because, as one put it, "who is New England?" Going into this, I had seen a few New England games, and wasn't super impressed but one player caught my eye, if only because he looks very similar to a former co-worker from long, long ago. Ladies, here's rookie Adam Cristman (backup Forward for this match):

He's one of those players like Cristiano Ronaldo on Manchester United (or the Portugal side for the 2006 World Cup) that seems to have a tenuous grip on his self esteem and poise. Cristman was warming up using one of the goal posts and thought he'd be able to perform his ritual in peace. Wrong part of the field. I got big ups for shouting "nice pole work!" He went away, but not before I could test out the camera on his smug mug.

This is presumably the final home game where I'll get to see my 2006 World Cup idol Shaka Hislop in goal. The Forum Faithful keep telling me that Dario Sala is much, much better, and the seas will part, and water will become wine when he gets off of his 6-game suspension. I'm new to all of this FCD/MLS stuff, so I am content to remain in amazement that a player I saw in the 2006 Cup was once again mere yards away. And he loooooves the fan attention when the 116'ers sing his praises pre-match. Let's give some love to the backup before he returns to benched oblivion:

It was difficult to get in-game action shots because I was dead center behind the goal. Plus if the action stayed past mid-field on the far end they weren't going to be very decipherable photos anyway. The other down side of the "good" camera is that it requires more set-up time, unlike my "crappy" point-and-shoot camera. I tried to get a good shot of Juan Toja since he makes lots of people happy, but this was as good as I could muster without moving to some other part of the stadium (he is being upstaged by #11 there):

For complete yuks, I got a shot of some photogs shooting the game action. Their shots will be much more interesting than mine, guaranteed:

As for the game, I was incredibly frustrated, as was FCDs coach, I trust. Defensively, FCD did an excellent job of clearing would-be scoring attempts by New England, short of one big one. The midfield was spotty at best, although Toja really is an animal when seeking the ball. It was weird to see how different his playing style is compared to some of the other players. It was like, vanilla, vanilla, vanilla, CHOCOLATE, vanilla. Meaning that he really stood out, like eating chocolate ice cream differs from vanilla. Don't try making this a racial thing.

Offensively, I was ready to eat my hat. I know that it's really easy to sit there in the cheap seats and dub one's self as the know-it-all soccer genius, as opposed to knowing what it's really like on the field at game speed. But here's the thing: From my vantage point, I could see how the offensive plays were trying to come together, and I was reminded of the old NFL adage that a good running back just needs 18 inches of daylight. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that the same holds true for Forwards in MLS, or any other league. HUGE gaps opened up in front of the ball handler, who in turn would opt to either get cute and miss the scoring chance, or more often, sparks would shoot out of his ears and years of soccer-playing experience vanished without a trace. Along comes a defender who swipes the ball, and we're going to the far end of the field. Again.

As I left the stadium in disgust, I thought to myself, "I'm completely gone." I wasn't quite to the level of batshit insanity of some of the Faithful, but I was riding that emotional roller coaster for the full 90 minutes. Especially the final, desperate corner kick that could have tied the game and at least forced a draw. Three guesses how that turned out.

Attendance was down sharply from the home opener, and there was all sorts of theorizing going around as to where everybody went. Was it too hot? Well, 82F and mostly sunny. During peak heat. I did my best to tough it out but I'm sure I'm the target of "redneck" jokes starting tomorrow. Driving home, I saw fields full of park district-style soccer games. That's a huge minus down here: The soccer season really never ends, except for that one day a year when we get 0.00087 inches of snow. Which means the people who could be filling Pepperoni Park are off actually playing the game somewhere. Sideline East was looking absolutely barren, with whole sections entirely empty top to bottom. Unfortunately, that's the side that the cameras see when the game is broadcast on TV. The crowd was much thicker on Sideline West. I made sure to squeeze off a shot of that to hopefully silence the critics who think that only I and 14 other people actually show up to these things:

Oh well, it was an afternoon at the FCD game, and while I wanted to see New England get a good shellacking, I at least got to hang out with some of the Forum goons and get in some sweet heckling. Say it with me: "Peanut butter jelly tiiiiiime!!!" (You had to be there.) FCD is still #1 in the West, and New England will still be in the middle of the East pack next week. The revenge shellacking will have to wait until September.

Next home game is May 20 against Real Salt Lake. There's your shellacking. Who is going with me to the game? <EM>

(Much, much more virtual ink has been spilled by me about Major League Soccer. The fledgling but growing MLS article archive may be found here.)