How do I even

So to keep this all chronological I'm going to just go ahead and do my spiel on the Open Cup final now and get to predictions after my afternoon meetings.

All I can say is wow. That took over #1 as the best sporting (and Sporting) event I've ever personally been to. Better than the Man U game for sure. I was even in the parking lot for the 1991 Twin World Series Game 7, which was neat as a little kid, but this was just an order of magnitude different. And it wasn't even that good of a game.

I will say that maybe this is one of those cases where being at the game made a difference for me. Normally good games feel like good games and bad games feel like bad games whether you're at home or in the stands, but according to everyone commenting on it both teams played sloppy and it was poor to watch as a neutral. Part of that might be chalked up to the nature of Cup finals, but from where I was sitting I honestly though large stretches of the match were great stuff. A couple great opportunities, real physical challenges, very few sloppy mistakes, and a whole lot of action. Just no run of play goals, which has been an SKC problem for awhile now.

I don't really want to address the PK shoot out controversy, it's been done to death. The big call I feel Sounders fans should be upset about is the Ianni ejection. We all know how much Seattle has been able to rip out the hearts of SKC fans in the dying moments of games, so playing down to 10 men after 118 minutes was harsh to them, especially since I thought it was a very poor decision to give a second yellow card. I almost wonder if Salazar didn't realize who he was carding until it was too late...

Anyway, here's some photos. I wish I could link to every picture out there because there's so many great ones, but, odds are, you've already seen most of them.

Annnnd... I don't know what else to say. It's odd how it sorts of hits me and then I calm down and then I remember something and get excited again, but maybe that's normal? I dunno. We'll see what happens when we win the MLS Cup.

I honestly would love to have a rematch with Seattle for that. I'd even love to have it IN Seattle. It would be a rematch of epic amazingness.