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| This is like that Big Foot photo. Defining. |
Some part of my subconscious anticipated that these history posts would eventually reach a point where the talking points start and end with who won what trophy and which players made it possible. I didn’t think it’d happen so soon, but…
Fortunately, that also signals that Major League Soccer had survived its growing pains – the acne (teal uniforms), hair in places that it wasn’t before (going with the Tampa Bay Mutiny), breaking voices (no ties and the shootout) and random boners (I don’t know…the Colorado Rapids?). MLS has been a (probably) viable league (old habits die hard) since then and the panting of The Grim Reaper grew fainter and fainter with every season after 2001 (well, until the COVID). In general terms, the league keeps adding teams and raising the salary cap; fans see only tweaks to the rules of competition, maybe a poorly-scheduled post-season now and again, but they’re not seeing, say, rearranged conferences or the local team evaporating. Starting at a certain point, one very close to 2003, Major League Soccer looked like the same league it was the season before, only with more faces.
2003 didn’t see more faces – expansion hadn’t happened yet (and neither had relocation) – but the competitive rules did evolve a bit. First, they ended the one year experiment of letting teams qualify regardless of conference (see 2002 post); the top four teams in each five-team conference would make the 2003 MLS Cup Playoffs. They also managed the playoffs differently – i.e., for reasons that still don’t make sense, but…sure, only the conference semifinals featured a three-game home-and-away series, while both the conference finals and MLS Cup would be one-and-done. I can’t recall or state with confidence that those choices made anyone happy, but, the 2003 playoffs did include one hell of a powerful argument for the greatest all-time comeback in MLS history. The team that won it was the San Jose Earthquakes, and they’d go on to win 2003 MLS Cup as well, beating a restructured Chicago Fire team 4-2 in what remains one of the highest scoring finals in league history.
The venue is noteworthy too: the Home Depot Center, MLS’s second soccer-specific stadium, opened that season (June 7, 2003) and hosted MLS Cup. It gave the Los Angeles Galaxy a home and, in some ways, a home field for U.S. Soccer as a whole (they only used Crew Stadium when they wanted the closest possible version of a home-field or make Latin American players cold/uncomfortable; related, this is fun, and check out the venue that landed No. 1). I’ve heard a lot of things about this stadium down the years, some good, some bad, but it’s also unquestionably one of the original “cathedrals to the game” for MLS. Anyway, back to the game…
Fortunately, that also signals that Major League Soccer had survived its growing pains – the acne (teal uniforms), hair in places that it wasn’t before (going with the Tampa Bay Mutiny), breaking voices (no ties and the shootout) and random boners (I don’t know…the Colorado Rapids?). MLS has been a (probably) viable league (old habits die hard) since then and the panting of The Grim Reaper grew fainter and fainter with every season after 2001 (well, until the COVID). In general terms, the league keeps adding teams and raising the salary cap; fans see only tweaks to the rules of competition, maybe a poorly-scheduled post-season now and again, but they’re not seeing, say, rearranged conferences or the local team evaporating. Starting at a certain point, one very close to 2003, Major League Soccer looked like the same league it was the season before, only with more faces.
2003 didn’t see more faces – expansion hadn’t happened yet (and neither had relocation) – but the competitive rules did evolve a bit. First, they ended the one year experiment of letting teams qualify regardless of conference (see 2002 post); the top four teams in each five-team conference would make the 2003 MLS Cup Playoffs. They also managed the playoffs differently – i.e., for reasons that still don’t make sense, but…sure, only the conference semifinals featured a three-game home-and-away series, while both the conference finals and MLS Cup would be one-and-done. I can’t recall or state with confidence that those choices made anyone happy, but, the 2003 playoffs did include one hell of a powerful argument for the greatest all-time comeback in MLS history. The team that won it was the San Jose Earthquakes, and they’d go on to win 2003 MLS Cup as well, beating a restructured Chicago Fire team 4-2 in what remains one of the highest scoring finals in league history.
The venue is noteworthy too: the Home Depot Center, MLS’s second soccer-specific stadium, opened that season (June 7, 2003) and hosted MLS Cup. It gave the Los Angeles Galaxy a home and, in some ways, a home field for U.S. Soccer as a whole (they only used Crew Stadium when they wanted the closest possible version of a home-field or make Latin American players cold/uncomfortable; related, this is fun, and check out the venue that landed No. 1). I’ve heard a lot of things about this stadium down the years, some good, some bad, but it’s also unquestionably one of the original “cathedrals to the game” for MLS. Anyway, back to the game…
Some famous names played in the 2003 final. To start with the obvious ones – e.g., Landon Donovan, Ante Razov, Carlos Bocanegra and, last but not least, Jeff Agoos, the man who’d (surely) won more trophies than any other MLS player (five, three with DC United, two with San Jose; that’s on top of scoring a gorgeous free-kick in that comeback) – but then and future legends showed up all over both rosters – e.g., Richard Mulrooney. Pat Onstad, and Eddie Robinson for San Jose, plus DaMarcus Beasley, Jesse Marsch, Chris Armas, and Carlos Bocanegra for Chicago…
…so what’s more awesome than some total fucking rando coming within one unlikely event of playing the defining role in the game? In a better(/sadder) twist: MLS Cup 2003 was that same player’s last professional game. His name was Chris Roner, a midfielder for San Jose. The ‘Quakes went up early on a free-kick by Ronnie Ekelund, and they were up by two before the half, courtesy of Donovan. (This is all from the slick ‘n’ short highlight reel, btw). Beasley pulled one back by way of the near post just one minute before a slip allowed Mulrooney to rebuild San Jose’s two-point gap…then, stop, Roner time! First came his own-goal – one of those accidental headers where the ball clears your mark’s head and finds yours - which cut Mulrooney’s insurance in half. Then came a tackle from behind in the penalty area on Damani Ralph – which lead to the first penalty kick in MLS final history, by the way. Razov, one of the league’s better forwards that season, stepped to the spot with a chance to equalize.
You can read the final score as well as I can, obviously, so, yes, Razov also went on to register the first missed penalty kick in MLS history. Donovan got another goal about 10-12 minutes later, and, even with Chicago doubling San Jose’s shots total, that was that. Oh, and that made Donovan the first player to score more than one goal in an MLS Cup. I think that’s all the firsts, but I could be wrong and does it really matter? If you watch the highlights to the final and hear the talk about the ‘Quakes as underdogs, ignore that nonsense. While Fire did win the Supporters’ Shield that season, San Jose had something they didn’t: a rock-solid defense. It’s not that Chicago’s defense was bad – they slipped just 0.3 under the league average of 43.3 for goals against – but San Jose tied the Galaxy for league-best defense (35 goals allowed) only, unlike LA, they could score goals. To sharpen that point, when a good defensive team (e.g., San Jose), drops four goals on you, your chances of winning approach zero; the fact that Razov could have tied this game at 3-3 speaks well of this Chicago team. About that…
I checked in with all the teams competing in MLS circa 2003 and, like a good obsessive, I paid a little more attention to names, details and numbers; with this being my eighth post (because MLS’s eighth season), I’ve got more context, plus my memory (soggy as it is), to…well, half-ass recreate the 2003 Major League Soccer season. Think those wild-ass stabs that paleo-historians use to recreate cultures before writing…only I do have limited writing to work with. Seriously, the internet started to catch up to recording itself with this season (I said started).
To start with the big narrative, both San Jose and Chicago made decent sense as finalists for that season; after four years of missing (see my 1999 post), the ‘Quakes had put together a solid core – the mix of a strong spine and soloist attacking talent was strong – while Chicago, now playing its third MLS Cup after joining the league in its third season, had been a contender from its beginning. That said, Chicago made some changes in its attack – e.g., shipping out old ex-Soviet bloc players like Piotr Nowak, Hristo Stoichov and Dema Kovalenko (latter two to DC United), along with Josh Wolff (to KC, for some reason). They gambled on Damani Ralph to replace Wolff, et. al., but also on Beasley stepping up, along with Andy Williams, Justin Mapp and…the rest of the team. And, seeing that they won the Supporters’ Shield and came close enough to an MLS Cup, good call, Chicago.
That starting forward combo – Ralph and Razov – set the standard with their combined 25 goals and 12 assists. The two teams that matched that pace – e.g., New England between Taylor Twellman and Pat Noonan (25 goals, 11 assists) and the Rapids between John Spencer and Mark Chung (ditto) – fared better than most. They also failed for not having what the 2003 ‘Quakes had: New England scored the most goals in the league for the second season running, but they also had the worst defense in MLS (47 allowed), excluding a Dallas Burn team that wrecked the average by allowing a whopping (in context) 64 goals that season; the Rapids, meanwhile, didn’t couldn’t cover the big guns when they misfired, and they allowed too many goals…again, I want to emphasize that I’m calling the Rapids’ attack “weak” for scoring five less goals than San Jose, who were themselves on the low side of over the average at 45 goals. The margins were not large in ’03…
Given that, 2003 feels like another season when defenses ruled the game (for the record, I’m including 2000 and 2002 in that sample, and for the teams that won MLS Cup in those seasons). The ‘Quakes defense was significantly better than most the league’s; moreover, most the teams who stayed close to them on the defensive side failed to score enough goals to show up in the grand scheme – e.g., obviously goal-shy teams like the Galaxy, DC and, to a lesser extent, the MetroStars. San Jose won in 2003 because they had league-elite attacking players with a strong enough spine to let them roam free. That spine would relocate to Houston in a couple years and win a couple more MLS Cups, along with putting in one of MLS’s strongest showings in the CONCACAF club tournaments, and, by my math, that makes this San Jose/Houston line-up the first line-up to dominate the American topflight for close to a decade. I’m getting ahead of myself a bit, but the point is how vital that core proved to be: Craig Waibel, Eddie Robinson, Mulrooney, Ramiro Corrales, and Dwayne DeRosario carried them a long way down the road, and then along comes Brian Ching (just six goals and four assists in 2003). That level of success is pretty damn cool in a league built around tight fists and parity.
I’m going to close out by putting the rest of the teams in MLS in the proper place of their grand narrative. I’ll start with the teams that went wildly against type in 2003 – one of which was alluded to above - followed by a mercifully quick tour of the teams that followed type, or close to it.
Dallas Burn
As noted above, their defense died in 2003; well, their offense didn’t exactly shine either and those years where a team dies on both ends of the field tend to be historic worsts. It was less a matter of losing a key player or three, but of the kind of global under-performance (see Jason Kreis leading team scoring with seven goals and two assists) that broken defenses reliably cause They’d make changes in future years (if memory serves, watch for Steve Morrow), but it they went cheap ‘n’ random on defense – e.g., Brian Dunseth, Ezra Hendrickson, Shavar Thomas, Ryan Suarez, second year player (and 2002 No. 1 draft pick), Chris Gbandi – and paid the price. The weird thing about this team is seeing names – e.g., Oscar Pareja, Eddie Johnson and Ronnie O’Brien – who would give them better seasons, but who all but withered in 2003.
Columbus Crew
The team that makes the strongest argument for the thin margin of error, Columbus returned most of the 2002 team that missed the Eastern Conference title solely by goal-differential. They were the other team to miss the 2003 MLS Playoffs (Dallas was the other), victims of the change in how teams qualify for the MLS Playoffs (they would have beat LA by two points had the “regardless of conference” rule held) and of losing a game that DC United tied. The key attacking players hit their numbers – except Jeff Cunningham, who fell off a little too much – but playing break-even soccer (e.g., 44 goals scored, 44 allowed) wasn’t enough in 2003…that it turned out to be nothing was a bit of a shock…
Now, for the teams that held steady…
New York/New Jersey MetroStars
They more or less did the same thing as Columbus, only with a stronger defense (i.e., 40 goals for, 40 against), and that got them one series into the playoffs, but New England and Chicago ruled the East that season. This was a big season in that they added a future star in Amado Guevara (maybe not so future; he had a three goal, 10 assist 2003), but it’s the churn that stands out; they shipped another big name, Brad Davis, to Dallas between 2002-03. Another fun detail: you can see the DC diaspora in their 2003 roster in names like Jaime Moreno, Richie Williams and, biggest of all, Eddie Pope. All the same, the MetroStars stuck to its original brand of erratic mediocrity.
Chicago Fire
More or less covered above, but it’s entirely possible their glory days dried up around here. If nothing else, this was Chicago’s last MLS Cup…
San Jose
Covered above, and to a greater extent.
Kansas City Wizards
The human highlight to flag here is Preki, who was 40 (fucking) years old in 2003. How’d he do? Eh, just scoring champion (12 goals, 17 assists), and league MVP. Mind-blowing. The more I review the history of the league, the more Preki looks like the best MLS original. He had a decent supporting cast that season – e.g., Eric Quill turned in decent numbers, as did Chris Klein and Igor Simutenkov - and they still had that brick-like defense, only with a couple chips in it (so says the nine more goals they allowed over San Jose and LA).
New England Revolution
I noted the weak-ish defense above, but the Revs laid the foundation for future seasons when Noonan came on board, They’d basically built the team of eternal runners-up at this point – e.g., Shalrie Joseph was there - but the defense was still random (was Jay Heaps a centerback then?) and that, as noted above, explains why their league-leading offense couldn’t carry them to glory in 2003. Those pieces would come, even if the trophies never did.
LA Galaxy
The defense was stellar, but, as happened with Columbus, it was just a global off-season for attacking players. A fun point of interest on this roster: Chris Albright came into MLS (to DC, I think) as a forward, but LA converted him into the right back he’d be for most of the rest of his career.
DC United
I completely forgot that Miami Fusion talisman, Ray Hudson, was their coach this season, or ever. As hinted at above, DC had lost a lot of the pieces from its championship seasons (see “diaspora”), but they also kept relying on the wrong pieces – e.g., an ever-aging Marco Etchevery – and the wrong new additions – e.g., Hristo Stoichov. Their defense, however – ft. Mike Petke, Brandon Prideaux, Ryan Nelsen and Sergei Ivanov - was locked down, and that served them well in future year. No typo…
And…that’s another season wrapped up. See ya in 2004, y’all!
You can read the final score as well as I can, obviously, so, yes, Razov also went on to register the first missed penalty kick in MLS history. Donovan got another goal about 10-12 minutes later, and, even with Chicago doubling San Jose’s shots total, that was that. Oh, and that made Donovan the first player to score more than one goal in an MLS Cup. I think that’s all the firsts, but I could be wrong and does it really matter? If you watch the highlights to the final and hear the talk about the ‘Quakes as underdogs, ignore that nonsense. While Fire did win the Supporters’ Shield that season, San Jose had something they didn’t: a rock-solid defense. It’s not that Chicago’s defense was bad – they slipped just 0.3 under the league average of 43.3 for goals against – but San Jose tied the Galaxy for league-best defense (35 goals allowed) only, unlike LA, they could score goals. To sharpen that point, when a good defensive team (e.g., San Jose), drops four goals on you, your chances of winning approach zero; the fact that Razov could have tied this game at 3-3 speaks well of this Chicago team. About that…
I checked in with all the teams competing in MLS circa 2003 and, like a good obsessive, I paid a little more attention to names, details and numbers; with this being my eighth post (because MLS’s eighth season), I’ve got more context, plus my memory (soggy as it is), to…well, half-ass recreate the 2003 Major League Soccer season. Think those wild-ass stabs that paleo-historians use to recreate cultures before writing…only I do have limited writing to work with. Seriously, the internet started to catch up to recording itself with this season (I said started).
To start with the big narrative, both San Jose and Chicago made decent sense as finalists for that season; after four years of missing (see my 1999 post), the ‘Quakes had put together a solid core – the mix of a strong spine and soloist attacking talent was strong – while Chicago, now playing its third MLS Cup after joining the league in its third season, had been a contender from its beginning. That said, Chicago made some changes in its attack – e.g., shipping out old ex-Soviet bloc players like Piotr Nowak, Hristo Stoichov and Dema Kovalenko (latter two to DC United), along with Josh Wolff (to KC, for some reason). They gambled on Damani Ralph to replace Wolff, et. al., but also on Beasley stepping up, along with Andy Williams, Justin Mapp and…the rest of the team. And, seeing that they won the Supporters’ Shield and came close enough to an MLS Cup, good call, Chicago.
That starting forward combo – Ralph and Razov – set the standard with their combined 25 goals and 12 assists. The two teams that matched that pace – e.g., New England between Taylor Twellman and Pat Noonan (25 goals, 11 assists) and the Rapids between John Spencer and Mark Chung (ditto) – fared better than most. They also failed for not having what the 2003 ‘Quakes had: New England scored the most goals in the league for the second season running, but they also had the worst defense in MLS (47 allowed), excluding a Dallas Burn team that wrecked the average by allowing a whopping (in context) 64 goals that season; the Rapids, meanwhile, didn’t couldn’t cover the big guns when they misfired, and they allowed too many goals…again, I want to emphasize that I’m calling the Rapids’ attack “weak” for scoring five less goals than San Jose, who were themselves on the low side of over the average at 45 goals. The margins were not large in ’03…
Given that, 2003 feels like another season when defenses ruled the game (for the record, I’m including 2000 and 2002 in that sample, and for the teams that won MLS Cup in those seasons). The ‘Quakes defense was significantly better than most the league’s; moreover, most the teams who stayed close to them on the defensive side failed to score enough goals to show up in the grand scheme – e.g., obviously goal-shy teams like the Galaxy, DC and, to a lesser extent, the MetroStars. San Jose won in 2003 because they had league-elite attacking players with a strong enough spine to let them roam free. That spine would relocate to Houston in a couple years and win a couple more MLS Cups, along with putting in one of MLS’s strongest showings in the CONCACAF club tournaments, and, by my math, that makes this San Jose/Houston line-up the first line-up to dominate the American topflight for close to a decade. I’m getting ahead of myself a bit, but the point is how vital that core proved to be: Craig Waibel, Eddie Robinson, Mulrooney, Ramiro Corrales, and Dwayne DeRosario carried them a long way down the road, and then along comes Brian Ching (just six goals and four assists in 2003). That level of success is pretty damn cool in a league built around tight fists and parity.
I’m going to close out by putting the rest of the teams in MLS in the proper place of their grand narrative. I’ll start with the teams that went wildly against type in 2003 – one of which was alluded to above - followed by a mercifully quick tour of the teams that followed type, or close to it.
Dallas Burn
As noted above, their defense died in 2003; well, their offense didn’t exactly shine either and those years where a team dies on both ends of the field tend to be historic worsts. It was less a matter of losing a key player or three, but of the kind of global under-performance (see Jason Kreis leading team scoring with seven goals and two assists) that broken defenses reliably cause They’d make changes in future years (if memory serves, watch for Steve Morrow), but it they went cheap ‘n’ random on defense – e.g., Brian Dunseth, Ezra Hendrickson, Shavar Thomas, Ryan Suarez, second year player (and 2002 No. 1 draft pick), Chris Gbandi – and paid the price. The weird thing about this team is seeing names – e.g., Oscar Pareja, Eddie Johnson and Ronnie O’Brien – who would give them better seasons, but who all but withered in 2003.
Columbus Crew
The team that makes the strongest argument for the thin margin of error, Columbus returned most of the 2002 team that missed the Eastern Conference title solely by goal-differential. They were the other team to miss the 2003 MLS Playoffs (Dallas was the other), victims of the change in how teams qualify for the MLS Playoffs (they would have beat LA by two points had the “regardless of conference” rule held) and of losing a game that DC United tied. The key attacking players hit their numbers – except Jeff Cunningham, who fell off a little too much – but playing break-even soccer (e.g., 44 goals scored, 44 allowed) wasn’t enough in 2003…that it turned out to be nothing was a bit of a shock…
Now, for the teams that held steady…
New York/New Jersey MetroStars
They more or less did the same thing as Columbus, only with a stronger defense (i.e., 40 goals for, 40 against), and that got them one series into the playoffs, but New England and Chicago ruled the East that season. This was a big season in that they added a future star in Amado Guevara (maybe not so future; he had a three goal, 10 assist 2003), but it’s the churn that stands out; they shipped another big name, Brad Davis, to Dallas between 2002-03. Another fun detail: you can see the DC diaspora in their 2003 roster in names like Jaime Moreno, Richie Williams and, biggest of all, Eddie Pope. All the same, the MetroStars stuck to its original brand of erratic mediocrity.
Chicago Fire
More or less covered above, but it’s entirely possible their glory days dried up around here. If nothing else, this was Chicago’s last MLS Cup…
San Jose
Covered above, and to a greater extent.
Kansas City Wizards
The human highlight to flag here is Preki, who was 40 (fucking) years old in 2003. How’d he do? Eh, just scoring champion (12 goals, 17 assists), and league MVP. Mind-blowing. The more I review the history of the league, the more Preki looks like the best MLS original. He had a decent supporting cast that season – e.g., Eric Quill turned in decent numbers, as did Chris Klein and Igor Simutenkov - and they still had that brick-like defense, only with a couple chips in it (so says the nine more goals they allowed over San Jose and LA).
New England Revolution
I noted the weak-ish defense above, but the Revs laid the foundation for future seasons when Noonan came on board, They’d basically built the team of eternal runners-up at this point – e.g., Shalrie Joseph was there - but the defense was still random (was Jay Heaps a centerback then?) and that, as noted above, explains why their league-leading offense couldn’t carry them to glory in 2003. Those pieces would come, even if the trophies never did.
LA Galaxy
The defense was stellar, but, as happened with Columbus, it was just a global off-season for attacking players. A fun point of interest on this roster: Chris Albright came into MLS (to DC, I think) as a forward, but LA converted him into the right back he’d be for most of the rest of his career.
DC United
I completely forgot that Miami Fusion talisman, Ray Hudson, was their coach this season, or ever. As hinted at above, DC had lost a lot of the pieces from its championship seasons (see “diaspora”), but they also kept relying on the wrong pieces – e.g., an ever-aging Marco Etchevery – and the wrong new additions – e.g., Hristo Stoichov. Their defense, however – ft. Mike Petke, Brandon Prideaux, Ryan Nelsen and Sergei Ivanov - was locked down, and that served them well in future year. No typo…
And…that’s another season wrapped up. See ya in 2004, y’all!
Hi! I found valuable soccer match video.
ReplyDeleteTampa Bay Mutiny vs Columbus Crew in 1996.
Famous player Valderrama,Friedel,Caligiuri.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri2xw_3JfoA