A Mash Note for 'Arry

I realize sports are a tougher sell on this fine blog, but given the rough times of the Caps and United plus the perennial false optimism around DC for the Redskins, an actual happy sports story is much needed.

On Wednesday Tottenham Hotspur finally (finally!) snagged a spot in Champions League*, something that has been long overdue for a team of our stature (you'll notice me slipping into "we" at points during this post, but that's sports fandom for ya). And the man who got us there is the congenial, ever ruddy faced Harry Redknapp, who for good measure just snagged coach of the year as well.

When Redknapp took over early last season, Spurs were literally a national laughing stock and were headed toward relegation (one of many jokes from the time: "What's the difference between Tottenham and a triangle?" "A triangle has three points").

Harry turned things around literally from the second he arrived. The team won their first game under their change, and having actually been at that game, I can speak to one improvement I noticed right from the start. Tottenham had signed Luka Modric as our playmaker at the beginning of that season, but he had underperformed under the previous manager. That first game under 'Arry he looked like a completely different player, covering the whole pitch and creating all sorts of chances. I don't know what did it, but I would bet Redknapp probably just told him to play his game, and let him cover wide swaths of turf.

And that was just the first of many players he seems to have gotten the best out of. In the game on Wednesday, there were six English players. After the game all six had a better than even chance of being on the plane to South Africa for the World Cup. And that includes our captain Ledley King, who can only play one game a week due to perpetual knee issues. But those are just the Englishman. Our keeper has gone from joke to game saver. Two of our main offensive weapons were in the doghouse for the better part of the year, but when they came on the pitch, they started producing like crazy. Gareth Bale (to the right) has the making of being a top class midfielder, and he's only 20! And Palacios, what a signing! The list goes on and on. People can argue about the quality of 'Arry's tactics, but he's for most part one of the classiest leaders in the game. When reporters praise one defender after the game he'll be quick to compliment the unit, or he'll also heap praise on his midfield. When he won coach of the year he thanked his team by name and emphasized their role. There's a fetish in
England with having English managers doing well, but for me, it's just nice to have a manager who on the whole I can just be proud of. He has made this a better team from top to bottom, and he's done it with a lot of class.

By the end of the season we didn't just look like a team that could beat just about anybody, we actually were beating damn near everyone. In a span of five days Tottenham beat their bitterest rival Arsenal, and the top team on the table Chelsea, in games where I would have been content with a draw. Next season will not be a cakewalk, but for the rest of the summer I will be coasting on the glory of Tottenham Hotspur.



* Champions League is like a super-playoffs that takes the top few teams from each European league and puts them in a season-long tournament that is played concurrently with the normal club season. It sounds weird,
but soccer is weird.

"Vamos United!" and the Worst/Best Stadium there is

Thursday, Max Nova and I attended the DC United game against the New York Red Bulls. Despite the rain, it was a good game with a great ending. It was also the second time I'd ever been to the RFK Stadium in Southeast, DC. The first time I was there was to see the newly formed Washington Nationals. It was season one for the Nationals back then, and the need to build a new stadium for the new team was very, very apparent. The exteriors, though once a progressive design, had become aged. The interior dimensions never made sense as a baseball field to begin with. The stands literally, and I do mean literally, would shake; entire bleachers that move up and down as you walk them. For a brand new team trying to start something fresh in DC, the ghosts of the old Washington Senators were still haunting the halls. And unlike the ghosts of say, Yankee Stadium, the ghosts of the Senators were mostly people you wouldn't want around anymore. Then, like now, the Washington Redskins were the team of the town.

DC Stadium - which would eventually be renamed the Robert F. Kennedy Stadium - was originally built to house both the Senators/Nationals as well as the Redskins. So naturally, it was well-suited for neither. Truth is though, I was never at a Redskins game during the 1960's, or the 1990's for that matter. Same goes for a Senators game. But I was there for a Nationals game in 2005, and so while I can't personally speak to the nature of RFK Stadium 40 some years ago, I can tell you that it was a comically poor facility for a baseball team 4 years ago.

As for DC United on the other hand... now that's a different story.

All that made for a particularly bad baseball arena seems to make for a fantastic soccer arena. Those bleachers that bounce are fitting for an extremely loyal fanbase that rants and jumps and chants and yells and sings and sets smoke-bombs and waves flags and curses and plays percussion instruments all in unison. Those annoying dimensions left stands in all the wrong places for a baseball or football stadium, but for soccer, the stands tightly hug the field, with a ground level that wraps all the way around. And because DC United is the only team that still plays there, there's no field shuffling, leaving the grass and field in RFK perfectly green and gorgeous. It really is a perfect soccer stadium.

People often get worked up about team stadiums, but not for lack of reason. Like settings or buildings in a film, stadiums are often just as much a part of a team as any other element. Stadiums provide personality and character, and they provide a homefield advantage. For comparisons sake - since I know many of our readers don't follow sports so closely - it might be easy to think about it as being like a theater stage or a writing desk. Surely for the theater students at the University of Maryland for instance, the difference between rehearsing at the old Tawes Building versus rehearsing at the dazzling new Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center is enormous. For a writer, it might be the difference between being curled up with a blanket in bed with a flashlight, a pen and paper writing thoughts, and sitting at a work desk on a large monitor computer. That is the difference between RFK Stadium and the new Nationals Park.

Nationals Ballpark (above) now stands clean and mighty in the Navy Yards neighborhood of Southeast, DC. There were many versions of the Washington Senators/Nationals, some good, some not so much. The ones today are the worst team in baseball. But at least they have an appropriate home. There's been much talk recently about DC United getting a new playing ground as well... but it would be in either Maryland or Northern Virginia. I'm growing increasingly annoyed by teams playing outside the supposed city designation (the Washington Redskins play in Landover, MD for instance, and the New York Giants and the the New York Jets actually both play in New Jersey) - but I suppose that's an entirely different rant. I'll leave this rant by saying that DC United should stay in DC because RFK is already there, it's metro-accesible, and it's awesome... for soccer.