First, a confession: I’m the worst kind of soccer fan. Despite having played competitively from about age nine through senior year in high school, I barely follow the sport anymore. Oh sure, I’ll watch an English Premiere League game if a stumble across it on TV, but I couldn’t begin to tell you how my former favorite sides (Liverpool!) are doing. And despite them being by far the most successful professional sports team in the area, the embarrassing truth is I’ve been to a grand total of one DC United game. Horrible, I know.
I could blame my lack of attentiveness on the fact that Katie isn’t so much into the sports viewing, but the truth is that in the pantheon of life activities, attending matches just tends to get pushed to the backburner. So I really have no cause to complain about the team’s decisions (even though I’m the proud owner of a first generation United jersey from 1996.)
Even so, the news that the team is moving to PG County was definitely a bummer to me. At first I was all like DISTRICT CRED LOSS, but then I read the comments thread over at DCist, and it turns out that the move is basically necessitated by economics, and kind of pivotal for the club’s survival (I don’t actually follow the goings-on on the team, remember.)
Hopefully the new stadium ends up being Metro-accessible; as it stands it couldn’t really be much easier to get to for most Districians. And hopefully the move will mean that things look a little sunnier financially for the United and fútbol (isn’t it annoying when Americans try and pull that off) continues to be waged in the District. Even though it’ll kill me a little bit to see a suburb-dwelling team display the “DC” moniker. I’m snobby like that.
Photo from Flickr.
