The appeal of soccer is still, for the most part, lost on me. I appreciate the concept of a sport in which little actually happens, thus serving to make the few genuinely exciting moments even more so; that phenomenon describes some of the better ambient music and more listenable dance singles, not to mention much of the work of Henry James and Marcel Proust and even, one could argue, Moby-Dick. As the father of two young daughters, I have to endorse any sport in which girls are taught to kick instead of grab. The United States, however, is a hands-on nation–too much so, some might say–and as an American male I prefer hands-on pastimes to soccer. Even chess.
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So, partly as a reward for a fine first freshman report card–that was my fatherly rationalization, anyway–I took my daughter the soccer player and fan down to the Fire’s Eastern Conference championship game Friday against the New England Revolution. We slipped past the few scalpers trying to unload pricier tickets to buy a pair of $15 seats at the gate for the “Firehouse” section, on the second level behind the south goal. This would place us right behind the “Supporters,” the team’s most rabid and involved fans.
In soccer, the difficulty extends into the game proper. Goals are such rare and sometimes felicitous events that a team can dominate on the field and not score, while the opponent comes away with a win on a lucky goal. That was this game’s dreadful possibility. The Fire, whose record of 15-7-8 was tops in the East (thus the home-field advantage), controlled the ball through most of the first half and kept it at the Revolution’s end of the field. Yet the Rev, who’d placed second at 12-9-9 but were undefeated over their last nine games, winning seven, had the best scoring chance of the first half. A corner kick sailed past Chicago goalie Zach Thornton near the right post, but Jay Heaps, who had an open net, chunked a header wide. It was such a bad shot that in baseball parlance he could have said he had bees buzzing in his skull.
If anything, the Fire dominated even more thoroughly in the second half–they were now shooting at the south goal, on our side of the field–yet they still couldn’t put the ball in the net. Down at the first level, close to the field, I got a better appreciation for the unique skills of the sport. Midfielder Evan Whitfield had already caught my eye in the first half with a neat maneuver in which he faked a long kick, drew in the defender trying to block it, then nimbly dinked the ball past him and dribbled down the field on a long run. He had also come out of nowhere to boot away a loose ball in the box in front of the Chicago goal, just before a New England player could get to it. In the second half, Whitfield had a couple of nice chances down the right side, but could never quite get a centering pass through the New England defense.
Like any great player, Ralph seemed to turn up the intensity in the sudden-death overtime. He kept pushing the ball forward and straining the New England defense, yet couldn’t get off a good shot. The first of potentially two overtime periods was announced to be 15 minutes, but it suddenly went into stoppage time after 10. A minute later, Mapp got the ball on the right side and with his relatively fresh legs managed to turn the corner on the defender just short of the end line. He centered to Ralph in the box, and Ralph drew the defense and the attention of the goalie, only to kick the ball into an open area to his left, where Armas rushed in to boot it unhindered into the net. The Fire were going to the MLS championship.
