hansel
06 Jun 2005, 02:58 AM
Bruce Arena: "The perfect setting to play an important game."
DMB: "I think it was the first time we had a real home crowd."
I'm glad we showed the USMNT a good time. 40,000 strong in the stands, and about 90 percent of them loud for the United States made me feel good. Obviously the situation would have been different if we were playing Mexico, but I hope that SLC gets some future action.
As an aside, I'd like to share a fun experience. You guys may have heard my stories of being basically a USMNT groupie this week, but Saturday topped it all off. Through some very interesting circumstances, I actually got to watch the game from Dave Checkett's luxury box (I can explain later). At halftime, I walk out into the hall to find the food, and Cory Gibbs, Oguchi Onyewu, Eddie Johnson, and John O'Brien walk by. So basically I walked with them downstairs and waited in the food line with them for about twenty minutes, just chattin' it up like a giddy little school boy. EJ kept saying, "Man, where's Pam? Can't she get us to the front of the line?" Cory Gibbs was really quiet, and Gooch was so nice, he honestly seemed to think it was great that he had at least one fan in the U.S. I talked with JOB for about ten minutes about how strange it must be to go from Holland, where everybody knows him, to the U.S., his home country, where he can stand in the food line in the luxury boxes of his own team's game and nobody has any idea who he is (not a single person in the entire crowded room approached any of these guys). He said he actually kind of liked it, and that most of his teammates in the Netherlands loved to vacation in the U.S. for exactly that reason.
Anyway, I'm not trying to make anyone jealous, or say, "wow you're cool," I'm still just buzzing from one of the coolest experiences of my life. I took some pics with JOB and Don Garber, who was also there (and one of the nicest and most personable guys I've ever met, BTW), but they were on my girlfriend's old-school camera. I'll get them developed tomorrow and hopefully scanned in this week and post them for you guys.
BTW, Dave Checketts is probably one of my favorite people right now, but it was interesting that his family knows absolutely NOTHING about soccer. His twenty-something year-old son kept asking another guy, "so, when's the next World Cup? Next year? It's every four years, I think, right?" Funny, I thought.
DMB: "I think it was the first time we had a real home crowd."
I'm glad we showed the USMNT a good time. 40,000 strong in the stands, and about 90 percent of them loud for the United States made me feel good. Obviously the situation would have been different if we were playing Mexico, but I hope that SLC gets some future action.
As an aside, I'd like to share a fun experience. You guys may have heard my stories of being basically a USMNT groupie this week, but Saturday topped it all off. Through some very interesting circumstances, I actually got to watch the game from Dave Checkett's luxury box (I can explain later). At halftime, I walk out into the hall to find the food, and Cory Gibbs, Oguchi Onyewu, Eddie Johnson, and John O'Brien walk by. So basically I walked with them downstairs and waited in the food line with them for about twenty minutes, just chattin' it up like a giddy little school boy. EJ kept saying, "Man, where's Pam? Can't she get us to the front of the line?" Cory Gibbs was really quiet, and Gooch was so nice, he honestly seemed to think it was great that he had at least one fan in the U.S. I talked with JOB for about ten minutes about how strange it must be to go from Holland, where everybody knows him, to the U.S., his home country, where he can stand in the food line in the luxury boxes of his own team's game and nobody has any idea who he is (not a single person in the entire crowded room approached any of these guys). He said he actually kind of liked it, and that most of his teammates in the Netherlands loved to vacation in the U.S. for exactly that reason.
Anyway, I'm not trying to make anyone jealous, or say, "wow you're cool," I'm still just buzzing from one of the coolest experiences of my life. I took some pics with JOB and Don Garber, who was also there (and one of the nicest and most personable guys I've ever met, BTW), but they were on my girlfriend's old-school camera. I'll get them developed tomorrow and hopefully scanned in this week and post them for you guys.
BTW, Dave Checketts is probably one of my favorite people right now, but it was interesting that his family knows absolutely NOTHING about soccer. His twenty-something year-old son kept asking another guy, "so, when's the next World Cup? Next year? It's every four years, I think, right?" Funny, I thought.