As Columbus Crew and LAFC prepare to meet in the 28th edition of the MLS Cup Saturday, US soccer’s crown-jewel showdown has come a long way since its inaugural final back in 1996, played between DC United and LA Galaxy on a rain-soaked pitch in Foxborough, Massachusetts.
Yet despite the unquestionable uptick in quality of play, coaching and infrastructure the league has witnesses since, the first-ever MLS Cup might never be beaten for sheer entertainment.
Long before Lionel Messi’s seismic impact upon arriving Stateside and still more than a decade shy of David Beckham’s epoch-shifting time in the league, Major League Soccer was formed in the wake of the USA-hosted 1994 World Cup as the first professional American soccer league since the NASL’s disbandment in 1984.
“It was a bit of a start-up situation where everyone was trying to figure it out,” says Cobi Jones, the LA Galaxy winger who was one of the early stars of the new league. “You talk about the Premier League and football in England, it’s been around hundreds of years. Major league baseball had been around over 100 years. This was very new. The LA Galaxy expected 15,000 to 20,000 fans at the first game. They ended up having 67,000 show up. They were a little under-prepared – didn’t know the market, didn’t know what to expect.”
Alongside Jones, the Galaxy boasted one of the league’s early star signings in the flamboyant Mexican goalkeeper Jorge Campos and were coached by former national team boss Lothar Osiander. They raced to the summit of the Western Conference, winning 12 successive games to open the season.
It was a different story in DC. Bruce Arena’s side won just one of their first seven games, before a turnaround in the latter part of the campaign saw them secure the second seed in the East.
“The team had started slow,” remembers midfielder Tony Sanneh, a mid-season signing for DC. “Bruce was trying to get me earlier, but the league wouldn’t pay me any more. They had these really strict cap limits on what they would pay people based on where they were from. It just didn’t make sense for me to move to a big city and actually lose money. So they started to lose. The more they lost, I got more and more calls.
“[Arena] runs a very competitive environment. You could tell right away that he was building winners. By the end of the season, our biggest competition was in practice.”
After beating the New York/New Jersey MetroStars two games to one in the first round of the playoffs, DC continued their momentum as they swept the top-seeded Tampa Bay Mutiny in the Eastern Conference Finals. On the other side of the playoff bracket, the Galaxy beat the San Jose Clash in three games before sweeping the Kansas City Wiz to set-up a final showdown with DC in Foxborough.
When they arrived in New England, the DC and LA players found the Foxborough field flooded. Heavy rain from Hurricane Lilli threatened MLS’s inaugural showpiece.
“I didn’t cross our mind [that out would be called off],” Jones says. “I think if it was in today’s era of the game, it would have been called off. There was a cyclone and a downpour on a field that wasn’t prepared for soccer in that type of environment. It was a solid field and the water was dumping everywhere, making it hard to play.”
“It was bad weather, but usually you play in bad weather,” adds Sanneh. “It wasn’t until we got there and saw the condition of the field that we thought it may be cancelled. We just had to roll with it. The field was worse than we thought it was going to be.”
Initially, the Galaxy adjusted best to the adverse weather conditions. Eduardo Hurtado fired the Western Conference champions into an early lead. Then, 10 minutes into the second half, midfielder Chris Armas waltzed through the DC defence and put LA 2-0 ahead with a low shot that skidded over the sodden grass and into the bottom corner of Mark Simpson’s goal.
“Going up by two, you’re thinking, ‘This is good,’” Jones says. “And it wasn’t just that we were up two. We were playing well, too. It was just unfortunate that some injuries happened and some substitutions threw everything out of whack, with Jorge Salcedo being taken off. It showed how much he was helping win balls in midfield with Chris Armas that when he was taken off, it turned things around.”
It was one of Arena’s substitutions that had the biggest impact of all. Sanneh had been a regular starter for DC until an injury late in the season. Having returned to fitness, he was disappointed to have been named on the bench for the MLS Cup final. When he was called on to replace John Maessner after 59 minutes, he wasted no time in showing why he felt he should’ve been on the sodden field the whole time, rising to head home from a Marco Etcheverry free kick in the 73rd minute.
“Once we got into the final, Bruce was like, ‘We’re going to go with the same line-up as the last game,’” Sanneh recalls. “I was like, ‘Wait a minute? I played every single minute, I get one injury and I’m not getting my place back.’
“For me, personally, I was really, really upset. It wasn’t until the day before the game, at kick around, my sponsor, Adidas, gave me a nice little gift at the stadium. I just thought, ‘You know what? Life could be worse. I’m playing in the pros, I’m here, I’m getting free stuff. Just be ready.’