Eskandarian's strong left foot carried United to glory. (Juan Miranda/MLS)
Posted on 11/14/2004 4:18:58 PM PST by soccer_linux_mozilla
D.C. United completed its return to glory Sunday, winning its fourth Major League Soccer championship in nine seasons with a wildly entertaining 3-2 victory against the Kansas City Wizards at the Home Depot Center in Carson, Calif.
United's triumph in MLS Cup 2004 before 25,797 at the Home Depot Center was its first since 1999, when it capped a run of appearances in the first four MLS title games with a then-third championship.
Eskandarian's strong left foot carried United to glory. (Juan Miranda/MLS)
The announcement will bring MLS Cup to Texas for the first time in history. It will also mark the fourth time in 10 years that the league's showcase event will be held in a soccer-specific stadium. In 2001 the final was held at Columbus Crew Stadium in Columbus, Ohio, and the 2003 event took place at The Home Depot Center in Carson, Calif., which will also house the championship match this weekend.
The new facility in Frisco will be a massive 117-acre complex. In addition to accommodating all FC Dallas home matches, the site will also be the new corporate headquarters of the United States Youth Soccer Association (U.S. Youth Soccer). A 20-year agreement with U.S. Youth Soccer and a 15-year marketing agreement between FC Dallas and the North Texas State Soccer Association will help to make the Frisco Soccer & Entertainment Center one of the most important locales for soccer in the USA.
The centerpiece of the complex will be a 21,193-seat soccer stadium, which be used for FC Dallas games, international soccer matches, major concerts, high school football and other activities. Surrounding the stadium will be 17 full-size, tournament-grade soccer fields, which will be utilized year round. An estimated 1.4 million athletes and spectators are expected to visit the monstrous facility each year.
Take your soccer out of our country before we have to deal with soccer hooligans along with demon-rats!
Just remember that once the NFL was a marginal sport much like soccer now...
Yeah, but soccer`s been a marginal sport in the U.S. for like 75 years! That`s a wide assed margin. To each his own I guess.
MLS is a 9-year old league. More and more teams have their own soccer specific stadiums. MLS beats NHL in ratings and attendance. MLS expands by 2 teams next year. . .
Look at the NBA in the early 1980's. The finals were shown on tape delay late at night on CBS. Do you think people then said "this will never catch on"? Sure. Did they look stupid when it did? Yep.
Twenty plus years ago, baseball was truly the national pasttime. Now? NFL has got MLB beat. You think people back in the late 1970's were thinking "no sport will ever catch up with MLB"? Yep. Did they look stupid when NFL surpassed it? Yep.
MLS is here to stay and grow . . .
And by the way, soccer is the original football, American Football seems derived from Rugby and Rugby from Soccer/Football.
The US has some proud moments in International Play.
If I understand, the championship in the US had long been what is now called the U.S. Open Cup nowadays. In the early days, ethnic teams often vied for this Cup and some of those teams still exist like the United Hungarian German team of Pennsylvania.
You can see from the statistics of that Cup; that the MLS still plays in it and has won it the last several years.
I really appreciate the names of the teams that won this cup if you examine it.
Thank you for posting this article. American soccer-football is refreshing.
I know they use goal differentiation to determine who wins the series but because of those 2 games series, I feel a bit let down when there is just this one game.
Also, if I understand correctly now, our 2 top teams go on to play in some International Tournaments of other championship teams of other nations. Maybe it's the Copa Americana, maybe it is some other tournament. That would be proper as well.
I'll take watching our US Men's soccer team over any thug-based so-called "Dream Team" any day of the week.
It would be nice if the MLS can start bringing in some top-flight international stars, like a Beckham. I lived in Fort Lauderdale back when we still had the NASL Strikers. It has some big name players, albeit in the tail-end of their careers, like Gerd Muller, George Best, Teofilio Cubillas, Gordie Banks, just to name a few. And it was always fun to play the hated Tampa Bay Rowdies. That's what the MLS needs, rivalries.
I hate basketball worse than any sport. I`d rather watch curling.
Hey, baseball was a marginal sport after the White Sox scandal. It was like pro-wrestling and largely considered fake. That is the reason that Babe Ruth is so great - he helped bring back respect and credibility to the game.
There was some speculation a year ago that Beckham would actually come play for the Metrostars, and that apparently he still is interested in eventually coming to New York.
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