The Fucking Madrid Game

 

Quite unintentionally, I saw the game from minute 25 on: Exeter and Durham, while cute, are small, and we overestimated both the time it'd take to get from one to the other and the time it'd take to explore both, and since we'd made a reservation for a hotel in Durham and don't have the money to chuck a night's stay away to move on, one of my co-travelers called NAP! and viola, a TV set in a hotel in New Hampshire with Telemundo.

I don't begrudge - honestly, truly - United a payday. Not only do I not begrudge United a payday, United deserves a payday, and I thank United for every game at the decrepit money sink hole of RFK I get to see. I hope, even after handing over the first $1M of yesterday's gate United made a wholesome profit.

Goff says:

D.C. United made a lot of money. Real Madrid made a lot of money. The Redskins probably made a few bucks. There were some quality goals and quality goalkeeping. Real got another look at its new crew. United held up well for about 50 minutes before being shredded by Arjen Robben. Cristiano Ronaldo played a half, Kaka 67 minutes. All in all, a pretty productive and entertaining day.

Initially it was the time and (especially) the venue that pissed me off: I'd have dealt with a middle of the afternoon August game at RFK (and have). Then it was United not promoting the Germantown USOC games (until the Rochester game), choosing instead to promote the Madrid game, a game that means (and meant) nothing. Then it was the USOC roster United deployed in the home end of the Firpo home-and-home in CONCACAF which I, rightly or wrongly, thought a tactic against a fixture conjestion that included calculations for the Madrid game. Getting past Firpo in El Salvador defused a huge hunk of my pissedness.

UPDATE!

Via email, Big C on the FedEx experience -

Brutally hot day, but the worst was the Stadium experience - your pre-game sentiments about FedEx were realized to their fullest.  First, we drove in at one entrance and were told that we couldn't drive around the stadium to where the rest of Jim's tailgating friends were...it was simply not allowed, even though we got there at 12:30 and the parking lots weren't a quarter full.  Had to drive back out and find another entrance.  Second, we parked about 750 feet from a Stadium entrance and left to go to our seats at 2:30...plenty of time, right? Wrong!  Took us the full 30 minutes to go the last 100 feet, mainly due to the pimply-faced "security guards" frisking (!) people, and that was before we got to the ticket takers, who apparently had never worked an event like this before, even though they appeared to be FedEx Field staff.  I'd say 10-15% of the crowd missed at least the first 15-20 minutes...just stupid.  Our other friends left at about the 75th and BARELY beat the traffice, but we waited around a solid 45 minutes to an hour after the final whistle and it still took 20 more minutes to get rolling.  Nothing new or unexpected there, but combined with everything else it left a bad taste in our mouths.  I wonder how Metro worked - we saw a ton of people walking from Morgan Blvd.

As for the game: at no point did it appear Madrid, once it gave the slightest shit, couldn't put United away, and Madrid couldn't give the slightest shit and still put United away. Cristiano Ronaldo's shoes cost more than United's house.

But it's sobering to realize the difference between a farting around Madrid and a busting ass United is many times greater than the difference between United and the Ocean City Barons. If nothing else, United got a well paid tutorial on how tenuous and minor league professional soccer still is in America.

O, and Greg Janicki is, as this guy says, the Bohunk Stokes. And Gomez and Emilio don't communicate. And FREDSUX!