Top Five Fridays: Soccer Memories

This is my regular feature called Top Five Fridays. Here I'll list some of my favorite things like, Top 5 Ways to Annoy a Michigan Fan or Top 5 Most Overrated Athletes (cough cough, Brett Favre, cough cough)..... Have no fear, we'll get to both those topics in good time. At the end there will also be a section for those that just missed the cut.

In honor of the opening week of the MLS season, today's topic is:

Top 5 Soccer Related Memories of My Lifetime

1.First Game Day of my Sports Marketing Career
The league was only five years old and I didn't attend many matches previously. Given the circumstances, I hated D.C. United about as much as anyone in my position could. But here I was, turning down an offer for an internship with the Columbus Crew, my favorite MLS team at the time, for two reasons. One, Mrs. Miami, my then girlfriend, was working for the Heritage Foundation that summer. The other? United had won three championships in the first four seasons of league history. They seemed to be the pace setter both on and off the field. It was a no brainer for me. Little did I know, the team would begin a serious rebuilding effort that season and finished up in butt naked last.

I moved into my apartment, a 7-person house off campus in Georgetown, and started interning two days later. My third day on the job there was an exhibition match between D.C. United and Bayer Leverkusen at RFK Stadium. The day before I had met Mia Hamm, who was playing for the Washington Freedom of WUSA at the time. That morning I stepped out on the pitch during a little down time and got to knock the ball around with Chris Albright and Bobby Convey. D.C. United won the game 4-3. I was in complete awe of the situation I was handed. I felt like a kid on Christmas morning.

Afterwards we all proceeded to Fado’s Irish Pub in downtown D.C. Both teams showed up to the after party along with our entire front office staff. It was at this point that I was approached by a couple of the players from Leverkusen and asked if I was Russian.

Cap: Half German actually…and a bit of Polish and Italian.

Ulf: You German? You my new German friend.

At this point he called to the female bartender.

Ulf: Red Bull Vodka for my new German friend.

She grabbed a rocks glass and before she could pour, he interrupted her.

Ulf: No, no, no….BIG glass. BIG glass for my German friend.

I spent most of the rest of the evening getting hammered with Ulf Kirsten on Red Bull vodkas, my introduction to the drink as it turned out. Ohio is always about six months behind the times and as of May 2001, we had not yet heard of this concoction. Needless to say, I had to cab back the next morning and search for my car. All in all, not a bad first day working in “the biz.”

2. La Guerra Fría
February, 2001. Columbus, Ohio. Freezing temperatures. Snow. Walkie Talkies. Good times.

When USSF, the governing body of soccer in this country, found out that the Men’s National Team would begin the final round of qualifying for the 2002 World Cup at home in February, against Mexico no less, they couldn’t have been more excited. They had he first ever American soccer specific stadium in a city that didn’t have many Hispanics. Not only that, but February in this area of the country was biting cold.

Enter Crew Stadium.

The day started out with myself, Mrs. Miami, a teammate of mine from college named Jake and one of his buddies piling into my Honda Prelude. My roommate, Nick, jumped in his similar looking Honda Accord and left a few minutes earlier to pick up his dad and cousin in Middletown. We took walkie-talkies (this is pre-cell phones mind you) and decided to meet up at a specific gas station we both knew on I-71 on the way from Miami University to Columbus. They beat us there, but as we approached I decided to test Nick. In the distance I saw him parked at the gas station right near the curb, facing in the opposite direction.

Cap: Tower, this is Ghost Rider requesting a fly-by.

Without missing a beat, he responded.

Nick: That’s a negative Ghost Rider, the pattern is full.

At this point I proceeded to blow by him at 70 MPH. Good times. Maybe you had to be there.

Before arriving at the game, we met up again at Wendy’s for dinner since it would be too cold and we’d be too bundled up to eat in the stadium. Jake, his friend, and Nick’s cousin painted U-S-A on their chests and faces and Mrs. Miami surprisingly got in on the act letting Jake paint her face. At the game, the three young knuckleheads would proceed to take their shirts and wrapped themselves in a big American flag to try to keep warm.

Game time temperature was a balmy 29 degrees and the crowd was frozen stiff, but the atmosphere was electric. For once it actually felt like a home game for the U.S. I even saw one Mexican fan with a sign that read, "Next time, pick Alaska." It was a crazy game with tons of action despite the temperature and the light snow falling. There was a fight in the game and a few in the stands near the end of the match. In the end, The United States upset Mexico 2-0 on goals from Josh Wolff and Earnie Stewart. Nobody could believe it, especially the handful of Mexican’s that found their way to Ohio for the game. After all, it was the first time since 1980 that we'd beaten them in a World Cup Qualifier.


3. Fall 1997 – First Pioneer Conference victory
Most of you aren’t going to believe this, but for a guy that loves soccer as much as I do, my high school career was not very successful. We had a great team growing up, won tons of tournaments, a gold medal in the Ohio Games, but by the time high school rolled around we’d all gone our separate ways. Eight of our starters ended up at the various Catholic schools in the area and a few other teammates trickled onto the rosters of other area schools as their parents moved away from Middleburg Heights.

Myself, I stayed and went to Midpark High School. I started off that summer training and playing preseason matches with the Junior Varsity, but the day before the opener, the coach handed me the #11 shirt for the Varsity. The next four years would see the team steadily improve overall, winning more and more games each year. However, we finished the regular season of my Senior year having gone 0-28 in Pioneer Conference play. Only a couple times were we blown out. Most of the time it was a 2-1, 3-2, or 2-0 score that did us in. I played sweeper, a drastic change from the striker I played as a kid and the attacking midfielder/winger I would play in college and beyond. We just couldn’t score, and because we couldn’t score, we were stuck defending for the entire match.

In the state of Ohio, every team makes the playoffs in Division I Boys Soccer. Our first round opponent we dispatched quite easily, a 5-2 victory over Bedford. In the second round, we were to play a road game against our arch rival, Berea. Midpark and Berea were in the same school district and therefore, shared some of the same facilities. For four years, they would use our field at Big Creek Elementary School as their game field while practicing at an elementary school in Berea called Park Ridge. The match between the schools always took place on the AstroTurf over at Baldwin Wallace College, the home football field for both schools.

In soccer the field will vary in size and the better team always wants to play in nice weather on a big field where they can spread out their opponent and take their sweet time dismantling them. A small crappy surface will slow the pace down and even things out. Being the home team, they chose the site: Park Ridge Elementary. The weather that day was freezing. It had been raining for two days and the night before began to snow. By game time, visibility was about 50 yards. Giant puddles, six inches of snow, only two yards on the far sideline before you ran into some trees, the smallest field we ever played on…this couldn’t have suited us better.

Tied at halftime, we broke through with two goals in the second half. The first came off a corner kick when a Senior defender headed home the only goal of his high school career. No, it wasn’t me. But a 2-0 victory marked the first time in a long time that Midpark took down a Pioneer Conference school. The next game we battled Strongsville to a 0-0 halftime score, but eventually ran out of gas. They went on to the State Finals and my career finished a horrific 1-29 against conference opponents. I’ll never forget that one win though.

4. 2001 Fall Intramural Co-ed Championship – Miami University
While my high school career was tragically unsuccessful, my college career was very successful, but also mostly tragic. My freshman year I played quite a bit with the Miami Club team, but realistically I was an intramural guy. I transitioned from the sweeper position I held at Midpark to a striker/midfielder and ended up scoring plenty of goals. I discovered early on that I had a knack for putting together competitive teams as our freshman men’s team, The East Quad Players, went all the way to the championship before losing to a fraternity. Over the next five years, I would put together a Men’s and a Co-ed team for each season, Fall Outdoor, Winter Indoor and the Spring Tournament. For the first four years, we would win tons of games and make several championship games only to lose to teams that we thought we should beat.

In an indoor league out in Monroe, about 30 minutes from campus, we entered a men’s team and went three straight years without losing a game. The townies hated us preppy Miami kids. When our girlfriends came, we had them sit on the bench with us because all the old crusty drunk men would come watch the men’s league and taunt us. But we couldn’t crack the Miami Intramural scene until my 5th year. The team was called Das Bundas Ligas and this is a picture of our squad. What a dominating performance we turned in. We would end up losing in the finals of the indoor league, but thanks to the spring tournament, we won the final game of my collegiate life.

5. 6-5. Overtime. Force.
While there are several other moments that could have been in this fifth spot, I chose one of the ones that started it all. The Cleveland Force were my childhood. Although they would fold after this very game and the indoor game would soon be replaced by a top outdoor league in MLS, going to watch these guys as a kid was one of my favorite memories in life, not just sports.

The Force only existed for 10 seasons and they never won a championship. When I go back and look at the record books the Baltimore Blast, Dallas Sidekicks and San Diego Sockers were always a little bit better even though my memory was always of Force wins. I loved all of them. Kai Haaskivi, Ali Kazamani, John Stollmeyer, Craig Allen, Bernie James, P.J. Johns…the list goes on. In the early years, before John Lucas threatened with litigation, the mascot was Darth Vader and the intro music was the Imperial March.

In their tenth season, they made it to the championship, a best-of-seven series against the San Diego Sockers. We got tickets to Game 4, in Cleveland, and on the drive to the Richfield Coliseum my dad, Uncle John from Buffalo and I made our predictions. I don’t remember what theirs were, but mine was Force to win, 6-5 in overtime.

The game went back and forth and was always close. When the thing went into overtime tied at 5, I remember my uncle and dad not believing their eyes. Unfortunately, the Force gave up a goal in the first overtime and we all went home unsatisfied, but nobody more than the nine-year old boy whose team almost made his wildest dream come true. That game clinched the series for San Diego in a sweep and the Force never played another game.


"Juuuuust a bit outside. He tried the corner and missed."

Grand Opening of Toyota Park - My first year working for the front office, the Fire opener a new stadium in Bridgeview, Illinois. There was a "Safety Match" two weeks early, but the Fire won the official opener 2-0 over New York.
US Open Cup Championship 2006 – Later that year I received my first (and only) championship ring in sports as the Chicago Fire won the Open Cup Tournament. The final was a 3-1 victory over Los Angeles and the after party was definitely the best in memory of my short time with the club.
My first red card – Most of you would think it came earlier, but it was fall of 2006. I was injured with some IT band problems and meniscus damage and hobbled around the entire game because the team needed me, but mostly because I was stubborn. This one guy kept hammering me all game, every time I touched the ball he came in hard at my knee. On a break away, I suffered one of the hardest fouls I've ever felt, just as I was about to shoot what would have been the winning goal. After getting to my feet, I noticed the referee was signaling for a goal kick. No foul? So I took matters into my own hands. We were both sent off.
Ryan Giggs Wonder Goal - My favorite player ever, the Welsh Wizard, scored one of the most dramatic goals in Manchester United history in 1999. It was in extra time after the match ended in a 1-1 draw. It was the FA Cup semi-final, so the winner went on to the Championship game. Not only that, but it was a replay, meaning the teams were tied after 120 minutes the first time they played. Unbelievable.

1994 World Cup, USA vs. Switzerland - My dad surprised us with tickets to the game and we made the drive from Cleveland up to Pontiac, Michigan. This was the first game played indoors in the history of the World Cup. They had to keep the building so humid to keep the natural grass alive that it was something like 105 degrees on the field and only 98 degrees outside. Eric Wynalda scored the first American goal in a World Cup since 1950 and the two teams tied. That and the upset win over Columbia would be enough for the United States to earn a trip to Pasadena for a 4th of July loss in the round of 16 against the eventual champion Brazil.
1999 Champions League Final – After winning the FA Cup, and the Premier League title Manchester United trailed FC Bayern Munich 1-0 on a goal just six minutes into the match. I had actually forgotten about the game and gone for a run with one of my fraternity brothers who had also stuck around Oxford for the summer. I walked into my room, turned on the television and saw the fourth official signal that there would be three minutes of stoppage time. I thought to myself, "crap, I missed it." And then, "at least I didn't miss them winning it all." It was that exact moment when a David Beckham corner kick was redirected on a sho from Ryan Giggs right to Teddy Sheringham, who burried it for the equaliser. Then, 30 seconds later, Beckham lined up for another corner. Sheringham headed it straight down and Ole Gunnar Solskjær stuck out his foot and the ball rocketed up into the roof of the goal for the game winner. The two last minute goals were timed at 90:36 and 92:17.