Go USA!!

Matt and I went to the US soccer game vs. Cuba this weekend at RFK stadium in DC. I got the tickets for Matt's birthday about a month ago so I was excited the weekend was finally here. The game was a world cup qualifying match (for the 2010 world cup in South Africa) and Matt tells me that winning this game got us in to the next round of qualifying. The US won 6-1 so it was an exciting game because there was a lot of goal scoring, most soccer games are pretty low scoring. Matt also told me that this was the first goal the US has allowed in a qualifying match yet, and it was a bogus goal because the Cuban player was offside anyway but they never called it (no instant replay in soccer!). Also, a Cuban player received two yellow cards in the first half and therefore was ejected from the game.

In soccer, severe enough penalties result in a yellow card being given to the offending player, this serves as sort of a warning that you better be careful because if you commit a second yellow card offense, you will receive a red card, which means you are ejected from the game. Sometimes, if the penalty is bad enough, the red card will come out right away with no yellow card. The most significant result of getting a red card though, is not only are you ejected from the game, but your team has to play one man down for the rest of the game, they can not send in a substitute when a player is kicked out. So for the end of the first half and the second half, Cuba had to play with 9 players on the field, while the US got to have 10 (not counting goalies). Matt tells me that red cards are relatively rare, however I feel like whenever I watch a soccer game, I see someone get ejected from the game so I must pick the good ones to watch :)

Here are some pictures from the event:

View of the field from our seats, there weren't very many people in the upper deck but the lower sections on both sides seemed to be sold out, so I'm not sure they even tried to sell most of the upper deck seats


US team warming up


US soccer flag over what seemed to be the crazy fan section, everyone on the other side of the field seemed to be very organized with their cheering and they were all jumping up and down in unison, it literally looked like they were on a platform moving up and down because they were so in sync, Matt and I were trying to figure out how to get over there...


Final score


Self Portrait, I am sweet at these :)


So all in all it was a good time, I would go to another game but the only problem is they play all over the country, never consistently in one place so it might be tough to be in the same place as them again.