I'm not sure if the broadcast includes the @hangthadj pitch invasion or not. That was one heck of a great night.
Still have my autographed "Goal" card from the game--somewhere. One of the three soccer items I'd like to get framed someday. The other two? Mike Clark's game-worn All Star Game jersey--with an autographed photo of Clark wearing it (with Dante and McBride). And the game ticket. Game worn Gladbach jersey from a game Mrs KG and I went to with a picture of the goal the wearer scored and our tickets.
For those of you with kids: I took Mook to this game. Rained like hell the whole time. Everyone was cold and soaked to the bone. Very sparse crowd; I used to say that I attended that game with 5000 of my closest freinds. We had a ball. He still talks about it. It's one of his favorite childhood memories: he and his Dad braving the elements watching the Crew win their first hardware on a night when the pussies stayed home. Take your kids. Screw the weather. Crew memories are the best.
The screenshot posted earlier in this thread is literally seconds before I ran and hug/tackled Jon Busch and was worried I tore his knee. I ran around aimlessly hugging a few others before running back to the stands. On the Fox broadcast if you look closely you can see @3stripe around midfield. I think she hugs McBride, something I always wanted to do. There were less than a half dozen of us that ran on the field that night. But I remember my friend Blake screaming in the final seconds....”THEYCANARRESTUSBUTHEYCANNEVERARRESTOURPASSION!!!” What a night.
I flew my Crew car flag on my passenger side window for an entire week after we won that Cup. My co-workers were asking me why it was there, and I said I was celebrating their first championship. Which led to a ten-minute conversation where I tried to explain the concept of a Cup competition that ran parallel to a league season.
I've watched the first 30 minutes of the match between work. Here's some thoughts. Wow! What memories of some of the names that were household names in the league. Vagenas, Ruiz, Reis in LA, Elliott before his Crew days. Maze, Westie, Dunnie, Garcia. Garcia had a heck of a first thirty minutes. The game has evolved 50 times over since 2002. Watching this it looked like kickball. The Crew's strategy was to find McBride or Cunningham with long balls. No kicking the ball around looking for an opening. Some wide play through Garcia and West. The Galaxy's strategy was to play 100 miles per minute. Turnover, push forward, put the ball in the box for Ruiz or Albright. Both teams pressed high exposing their own defense at times. It seems like the ball was bouncing all over the field. Lots of high bounces. Maybe the pitch was hard because of the date of the game or maybe the ball had extra bounce that year. It seems like rarely did Jeff get a ball at his feet. I haven't seen so many players on both teams consistently challenging balls in the air, or trapping with their chest. Busch was God in goal! That Crew team from 1998/1999 through 2002/2003 was fun to watch and had firepower. I didn't even remember that we were down two to KC in the semis early in the second half before coming back to win.
3. We didn't pass the ball back every time we got it at midfield. 5. Just imagine if we had his skill, combined with Presthus' height. 6. I completely agree. At one point, I think we had five or six guys who could play forward. We had McBride, Washington, West, Cunningham and I'm probably forgetting several. Bonus point: I was watching the USSF stream of the original Dos a Cero game. At one point, the announcer said something about how Brian Maisonneuve was bounding back from another knee injury and hoped to play for the USMNT again. To keep coming back like that...he was an absolute trooper. I think at one point, he was out for the majority of a season.
To be fair, West was never a striker. Replace his name with Buddle and you can admire that list. And that's without adding the name Stern John and his magical season. I forgot to add one thing to the list on the original post.. 7. How sweet were those gray uniforms?
Ridiculous. Not even close to the best Crew jersey ever. https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2020/04/01/every-mls-teams-best-jersey-all-time-sam-jones
Agree that's not the best. I did really like that jersey, but the material is so thin you can see chest hair and nipples; it looks really really weird. I never wear it.