Reflection #2: D.C. United

On the way to the D.C. United game, I wasn’t really excited. I was happy I was going to get to spend the night out and with friends, but I wasn’t really that into soccer. Upon arriving we took our seats in a section that was filled mostly with children, parents and the occasional “rowdy” fan. Once we had actually sat down and the game had started it took about three seconds for my eyes to wander to the other side of the stadium where a large group of people were actually being rowdy fans. They waved flags, held pictures of the players, chanted and yelled obscenities; and I wanted to be one of them.

Sure enough, I wasn’t the only person who wanted a taste of the action across the stadium. Slowly, Jesse, Dayna and I made our way to the other side. As we tried to make our way into the hooligan like section, we did our best to blend in. Blending in consisted of yelling when others did, clapping when others did and trying to pick up the words to the chants as quickly as possible.

As we all became a little more comfortable with our new surroundings, we started to take stalk of what was happening around us. There were three men, all standing atop the seats, who seemed to be the leaders of our section. One man in front of us looked like he’d been plucked right out of a firm in England. Another had his face painted in D.C. United colors and the final leader, like the rest wore red and black but added a top hat. It was these men’s job to make sure all of us in his section were yelling as loudly as possible. When the yelling would die down even slightly, one, if not all, of the leaders would begin to scream at the section. “I can’t hear you!” and “This is my section and if you’re not going to stand up and you’re not going to yell, then get the fuck out!” were only a few of the comments made. Needless to say, upon hearing those words the yelling would become far more boisterous.

Observing this hierarchy of command was interesting to say the least. The top dogs mentioned above seemed to control when our section chanted, what it chanted and for how long it would continue with that chant. The three of them used hand signals to alert the others as to what chant they thought should go next and when they should be stopped. And while it was hard to tell who was at the very top of this chain of command, it was clear that the man who looked like he really did belong in an English firm and the man with the top hat had some sort of veto power over the chants and the section in general.

The chants themselves were interesting. There were many that were mostly Spanish and this was fitting, a decent sized portion of the rowdy sections were Latin Americans. The chants also ranged from very wordy to very simple. One of the simplest chants and the one that became our favorite was, “Come on D.C. score a goal, it’s so fucking simple. Put the ball into the net and we’ll go fucking mental!” While I would also like to give an example of the really wordy ones, they were much harder to pick up on so I never quite got all of them.

Going over to “the other side” was an awesome experience. It allowed me to feel like I was really getting a taste of what “How Soccer Explains the World” was talking about. The mob mentality of it all was astounding. I had entered the stadium not wanting any particular side to win, but upon leaving, a small part of me wanted to yell at the opposing teams fans as they walked by. I was struck by how strongly I felt, I had only been to one game, but it seemed that that was enough. I was filled with D.C. pride and, needless to say, I’ll be going back for another game.