Ticket Giveaway Contest: Give Us Your Best CCL Moment

The second leg vs Panama this year, Jaqua knocks in the game winning goal and arlos call game me goosebumps. Jumped around my room celebrating!!!

My best memory in Seattle’s short CCL history is Alvaro’s first Sounder goal on the road against Isidro Metapan to get us into the group stages. The classy CCL commentary pushes this to the top.

My favorite CCL memory was also after Alvaro scored his first goal for us, @ Isidro Metapan. I’ll never forget jumping up and down in my living room with my brother. The best part of the memory for me is the celebration after the goal. The image of the other mud-covered Sounders christening a squeaky clean Alvaro as a new member of our family. That is the stuff of legend.

My friend and I were staying in a vacation home in Chelan and we spent most of our vacation trying to find wifi so we could watch the second Metapan game. We eventually found the house’s wifi password taped to their hidden router and for some reason we had to watch in Spanish. We ran around screaming GGGGOOOAAALLLL when Flaco scored!

In 2007 DC United played at Chivas (the real Chivas) in the Champions Cup Semifinal. We didn’t have our MLS club yet, and although I went to plenty of USL Sounders matches, DCU had been my adopted MLS team for a while. I appreciated the Barra Brava & Screaming Eagles; for a while they were the best supporters in MLS.

Of course, the game was on Fox Soccer Channel, which I didn’t get. I was in Kirkland at the time, so I went down to a new bar that seemed soccer friendly – the Wilde Rover. As I should have guessed, they had the Mariners on almost every TV. But in the back there were a group of Liverpool fans watching a match on replay.

I sat down and watched with them. I’d never understood why Americans would root for an English club when we have our own domestic league to cheer on and root for from its infancy. After a few beers, I got brave, and I asked them if they watched MLS. They found out I was there to watch an East Coast American club play in a tournament nobody had ever heard of. I was mocked, so I shut up.

Their game ended and I don’t remember if Liverpool won or not. I looked at the clock and did some drunk math in my head and realized the DCU/Chivas match was not over, so I asked the bar to flip on FSC. I wasn’t very hopeful because, as everybody knows, no MLS club had ever won on Mexican soil. But when the game came on, the score was 1-1. 1-1!! DCU was hanging in there against a good Mexican club!! Maybe this was when we’d get the breakthrough that would get American soccer some respect in Mexico! Or at least, in this phony Eastside Euro bar I was stuck in for the night!!

One of the Liverpool guys was still left paying his tab, and I figured this was my big chance. I told him in no uncertain terms that MLS was going to be as big as the EPL someday, and just look, we’re tied at Chivas and about to make the Champions Cup Final. The Champions Cup Final!!! And then, at that exact moment that I was crowing about the present and future triumph of America over the football world…

Troy Perkins let a softly-struck shot go right. through. his. hands.

I watched the rest of the match alone. DCU lost. And now Perkins is a Timber. Of course he’s a Timber. What a douche.

Here’s the good news though. That was absolutely the last time that I ever gave two craps about what a “Eurosnob” thinks about American soccer, MLS, or my club.

Like many others, my favorite moment in the CCL (considering the Sounders’ limited success last year), was in the preliminary round last year against Metapan.

The Sounders have gone down 1-0 in El Salvador against a vastly inferior opponent who we inexplicably beat only 1-0 at home earlier. Extra time, in Central American heat, is of course a potential death sentence (and we should all be thankful that the second-leg against Panama was at home).

On comes Alvaro Fernandez, who me and my friends were told played for 4th-place Uruguay in the World Cup the past summer (but none of us could recall actually seeing him play) came on as a substitute in what could only be called a “sluggish” game.

From 12 or so yards out, off of an excellent cross from James Riley, Flaco heads it towards the goal. I say “towards” goal rather than “on” goal simply because the Sounders had so been lacking in an aerial threat following Jaqua’s injury problems during the season, I had forgotten that the rules allowed teams to score in such a fashion.

The ball closed in on the near post as the keeper dove to his left, almost certainly out of obligation to see it wide. The announcer, as non-chalantly and uncaring as possible (as we have come to know and hate from FSC announcers) calmly exhales as his “commentating” (a.k.a. breathing normally) continues. The ball has appeared to hit side-netting; nothing to get excited about.

But the keeper stayed on the ground. Surely, he injured his arm on the fall. But the ball never rolled back away from goal; it was almost as if the ball was caught in the net somehow. But for that to have happened, that ball would have to be IN the net; like, in the GOAL.

Goal? Goal? GOAL!? Why is this announcer not jumping and fist pumping and hugging everyone around him like I am? Fernandez just pulled out a header from the top drawer that any player in any league would brag about.

From that day forward, in addition to Fernandez becoming my instant second-favorite player (behind the impossible to love Alonso), the Sounders won my heart as an internationally viable team.