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Barry Svrluga
Sports columnist with beat writing experience on baseball, golf, the NFL, college basketball and college football
It took till 10:52 p.m. Thursday for Audi Field to finally fall quiet, and in an instant. For nearly three hours, it had pulsed and throbbed, rocked and rolled. The hosts at these shiny new digs at a place called Buzzard Point, D.C. United, had dared the visiting Columbus Crew to beat them from almost the opening kick. But a late goal from sub Nick DeLeon provided hope and possibility that the party would continue.
But it was DeLeon who, finally, had the season on his foot in the most random way to decide whether a year is over or extended: penalty kicks in the playoffs.
“I shanked it,” DeLeon said, and there wasn’t really another way to put it. His final shot sailed over the crossbar. So what had been a magical year for United ended, painfully, in MLS’s knockout round.
[D.C. United falters in PKs, falls to Columbus in MLS playoffs]
That’s what it took to shut this place up.
“The crowd, the atmosphere, the way it was,” Wayne Rooney said, “was fantastic.”
Midfielder Luciano Acosta (on ground) is stunned after Nick DeLeon’s missed penalty kick ended D.C. United’s season. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
That’s what to remember, for sure. There will be no home match Sunday against the New York Red Bulls, no extension of one of the most improbable and exciting runs in franchise history. That’s a bummer, because this team and this stadium have so much to show this city.
You felt it Thursday, whatever the result was. Audi Field, on a fall night, beating to the drums of Barra Brava and the screams of the Screaming Eagles, getting the whole of a sellout crowd of 20,600 to sing and chant along with them. Maybe it’s not Wembley Stadium or Old Trafford or the haunts Rooney used to inhabit back home in England. But on a given night — say, Thursday, in the knockout round of the MLS playoffs — it can darn well feel like the place to be in Washington.
“It was the best atmosphere we’ve had at Audi Field — no question,” United Coach Ben Olsen said. “That’s part of the disappointment, [that] we don’t get to come back.”
This wasn’t how this was supposed to go, of course. There wasn’t supposed to be overtime, because United’s record at its new house was 12-2-1, and United hadn’t lost in its past 10 matches, and United was the league’s hottest team, and United was supposed to win and advance and host the Red Bulls on Sunday in the playoffs’ next round.
[D.C. United hot streak is making MLS history and recalling club history]
But the Crew wrecked it and closed Audi for the winter when it felt like the party was just getting ready to really roll. It doesn’t matter that, in the estimation of Olsen, “PKs are for the birds.” Those are the rules, and United lost by them. Not that the result was unfair, because Columbus played streaking D.C. evenly throughout, and it took DeLeon’s late goal in extra time to force the penalties, the crapshoot.
It’s too bad, not just because of Thursday. It’s too bad, because there is something real building here.
“It sucks,” goalkeeper Bill Hamid said, “because I think we really believed we had the squad to win a trophy in the inaugural season of Audi Field.”
Rooney, of course, is the star who is credited with dragging United from last place to a home date in the playoffs. But it’s clear, too, the stadium is a central character in what happens next. Olsen’s team, he said, was responsible for “setting the right tone for the stadium and setting the foundation for the next generation of D.C. United.” Check out the atmosphere, and that makes complete sense.
The loss came on the field, but it means a lost opportunity for the club, too, because a shuttered stadium can’t sing and sway like this place did Thursday. D.C. United has always had its supporters, and they have always been vocal. But now, they have this team and this place, and they’re both worthy of bragging. The days and weeks to come were supposed to be about holding an open house down on Buzzard Point, using Rooney — imported midseason from England — as the hook, but then selling the outsiders on the raised level of play from everyone around him.
Columbus wrecked that, for the night and for the season. But hold the thought over the winter. Because we know now that United, with four MLS Cups to its credit, intends to contend for more. It can’t be this year anymore. But it can be next.
[For United Coach Ben Olsen, winning in D.C. has been a lifelong pursuit]
Rooney is one reason, of course, and for sure the sexiest. His right foot brings with it possibility. Audi Field swells with anticipation every time he settles a ball. He already has a sixth sense for finding splendidly skilled Luciano Acosta, Robin to Rooney’s Batman. And when he lines up a set piece, settle in.
To put you in a District sports frame of mind, this is Ovechkin from the left faceoff circle, Bryce up with two on and two out, Wall with the ball on the break. It is Rooney’s jersey that already dots the stands at the new place. It is Rooney’s presence that is felt even before kickoff, because he carries himself like the captain he has already become in warm-ups. It is Rooney who draws the eye.
The message, overall, about this new facility with this interesting team: If you’re thinking about coming, come. More than that: If you haven’t considered coming, come. It’s not just a way to see United, which will expose you to Rooney, which in turn will expose you to the sly Acosta, which in turn will allow you to watch Hamid, back in his rightful place in United’s goal.
The exposure, though, is to more than a team. Think back a dozen years, just as ground was being broken for Nationals Park, east on Potomac Avenue across South Capitol Street. Maybe there were visionaries back in the mid-aughts who saw not only the baseball yard, but a beautiful wooden walkway along the Anacostia, with more restaurants than there once were stray hubcaps lining the streets. But did anyone, back then, envision this gem on Buzzard Point?
Maybe it’s because they were the last denizens of RFK Stadium, but I always considered United the most “D.C.” of Washington’s pro sports teams. It plays an international game in an international city, but there was always a scrappiness, an edge, to who they were. With RFK quite literally crumbling around them, they had to look for a new home, and when the burbs were mentioned, something seemed . . . off.
Instead, there is this new part of the city, seemingly rising out of nothing. There is this stadium, both a home-field advantage for the team that plays on the pitch and just a heck of a nice time for the people who fill the stands.
And there’s a team, too, that once again expects more of itself.
“No one said a word in that locker room,” Olsen said. “They’re gutted.”
Gutted about the night, and the sudden silence. Not gutted about the future, not at all.
Till spring, then. Till spring.
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