Backpass: Four Away Games You Shouldn't Miss
When to hit the road once you've gotten your shot.
You’ve been on lockdown now for 13 months. Sounds like the opening bars of a Dr Dre song, but unfortunately, it’s a thing that we all actually have experienced. House arrest ain’t the latest Tyler Perry Madea joint - the struggle is real.
But the upside is that if you’re anything like me, you’re itching to get out and do things. And you’re close. And perhaps, due to the lack of safe and responsible travel options over the past year, you’ve saved up a bit of cheddar for a bit of splurge travel coming up. Maybe times were a little rougher on you and you’ve been picking up unemployment and a stimulus - I feel you. I’ve been there.
If you can rub two pennies together at all, and you’ve taken your instagram Pfizer/Astra-Zenica/ J&J/ Moderna selfie, you deserve to get the hell out of dodge and go see a proper football match. Go ahead. Tell your credit card company to raise your limit “because my rabbi told me to.” That ought to work.
Since the schedule came out yesterday, I have my recommendations for away matches to see this year. Fo sho you should also hit up Dick’s Sporting Goods Park for a few games too. But if you’re a Colorado native, the idea of hitting the open road bound for … Commerce City might be a little less invigorating than a full on ‘To Wong Fu’-level pink Cadillac top down revel. So here’s my recs for away games to consider this year:
May 22nd Away at LAFC’s Banc Stadium
Los Angeles is pretty darn nice place to visit in May. Or October. Or really, anytime. It’s got a little of everything anybody could want. Space Shuttle? They have one. Disneyland? Yup. Hollywood Walk of Fame and Gromann’s Chinese? Indeed. (For the full Hollywood experience, I recommend the Warner Bros Studio Tour. Mucho fun.) For food, you’ve got tamales and tacos to die for; the world’s largest ex-pat Korean community serving up the best BBQ this side of Seoul; Carney’s Chili-Cheeseburgers for low cuisine, and Nobu Matsuhisa for the high end crowd.
And LAFC’s Banc Stadium is a fantastic place to catch a match. You can take the light rail there easily. Food options are great. Supporters group the 3252 absolutely brings the ruckus. And the team is always one of MLS’ best. For more, check out my robust dive into LAFC’s digs here.
June 19 Away at FC Cincinnati’s West End Stadium
No, I’m not going to wax poetic about the many allures of Cincinnati, because honestly I’ve never really been there. I drove through on my move from Colorado to Pittsburgh. Didn’t even slow down. The city’s amenities and draws are: none? Not even the food?Nobody who likes food thinks Skyline Chili should be a thing to brag about.
So why go out of your way to Ohio’s third best city1 to watch two-time Wooden Spoon winners (in two years in MLS) FC Cincinnati? Well,
You only get to say ‘I was there in the stadium’s first year in existence’ once. We all know that new car smell is intoxicating (yes, it’s the outgassing of chemicals but still). New stadium smell must be AMAZING.
Note: if you’d rather do a ‘christen the stadium’ trip to Texas, the Rapids inaugurate Austin FC’s Q2 Stadium on July 31.
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July 24 (or October 16) at Real Salt Lake’s Rio Tinto
Hate is not allowed in modern society. In a world of violent insurrections and mass shootings and a proliferation of PC culture, the only sane path for a well-adjusted human being is to live-and-let-live. Dislike, sure. ‘Don’t prefer’, absolutely. Hate? Not cool, man.
Society has carved out for you one exception: your team’s bitter-rival sports team. You can hate them. Nay, you SHOULD hate them. Hate is a human emotion -it is good to control it, but suppressing it completely is probably unhealthy . You have to find an outlet.
That outlet is RSL. Not the actual humans of RSL - the fans are just people with the misfortune of being born in Utah. The players are just earning their keep before they can move somewhere else and be like “Man I am glad to be out of there.” But RSL itself - you can and should hate.
To properly experience it, you ought to, at least once in your lifetime, journey to the belly of the beast. Sit in the away section with a hundred or so Rapids fans. Wear a kit that you love but that you also would be ok with having to wash. Because you’re going to get a beer thrown at you2. To hook up with other away fans, you want strength in numbers - meet up with them for tailgate, pick the same hotel, coordinate your ticket purchase. The best place to go for that is the Colorado Rapids Traveling Fans page on Facebook. Hyperlink is right there, kids.
This year also, if you might be skittish about getting locked into a giant metal tube with 200 strangers during a pandemic shortly after getting a shot that is supposed to change you from ‘susceptible to a deadly disease’ to ‘totally good now, bruv’, RSL is your shortest driving match. If you take the 9 hour route over Route 40, you can stop over in lovely Steamboat Springs and Dinosaur National Monument and make a full vacation of it with the fam. If you take the shorter 8 hour route through Wyoming, you get to see Southern Wyoming. Which is mostly windswept nothing and the occasional motel.
September 15 vs Portland Timbers’ Providence Park
The fourth away match is a judgement call. I wanted to pick an existing stadium with a great supporters culture and nice amenities. I’ve been away to both Sporting Kansas City and Seattle Sounders, and both are amazing experiences.3 But I want to be aspirational here and pick the oldest field4 in MLS that is also one of the best: Providence Park in Portland. In 2019, back before the universe collapsed, I got to take a work trip to Portland and had a blast. Yes, the coffee is really that good. Yes, it is a beautiful place. Yes, Powell’s Book Store is a mecca for bibliophiles. Yes, of course, it rained.
The stadium was under renovation at the time, and now that repairs and improvements are done, the stadium holds 25,218. In addition, Providence is the only field on this list that hosts both men’s and women’s football. And the Portland Thorns are perennial title challengers in the NWSL. No, the NWSL schedule is not out yet, so we don’t yet if you can make this a doubleheader trip.
And also, full disclosure, that date is a Wednesday match. But if you can’t take vacation days from work, you could very reasonably take your job on the road and work remotely. You could even take a picture of your current actually apartment Zoom background and install it as your virtual background. You boss probably wouldn’t even know you were literally joining the meeting from a pub near the stadium.
…
Maybe you can’t get away this year, or you’re still a little nervous. Very understandable. But if you’re game and you need an nudge in the right direction, consider yourself nudged.
One last relatively thing that is vaguely related to the schedule drop: I don’t understand the new MLS schedule.
As we discussed on the pod this week, it made no damn sense - you don’t save on travel because a plane flight is a plane flight, and the price differences between $300 and $600 a person based on domestic destinations will save you $12,000 a trip (figure about 40 traveling players and staff). Maybe you get that savings 8 times this year based on shorter flights. You’ve saved … the cost of one single inexpensive players. Two ticket sales staff. One-third of an international slot. It isn’t much. Maybe teams want to cut cost any way they can, and 96K is a big deal. I don’t think so though?
Perhaps the league is moving to a more permanent split between West and East - make inter-divisional play more exciting; build hype for the playoffs. That doesn’t excite me, but it’s possible.
Feel free to explain it to me on twitter or send in an email to the podcast of your theories. You can reach us at rapids96podcast@gmail.com .
Oh yeah, also, happy kit drop day. Cash out your doge coin and get one of these:
Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati; followed by Dayton and Akron.
Just be glad you aren’t a Liga MX fan. Rumor is the yellow stuff in the cups that they throw at you ain’t beer.
Here’s my write-up of the away match at Seattle, which, to be fair, was also my first away match as media, so there was a lot of geeking out at having access and free food and meeting Susannah Collins (who is really, really nice.) So that may have skewed my experience. Also holy bejeebus I was hung over the next day.
Multnomah Field was built on the site in 1891. It didn’t really host soccer regularly until 2001, when the Timbers moved there as an A-League (USL) expansion team. As such, I think it’s the second-longest tenured field in MLS behind the Revs Gillette Stadium, which … the Revs don’t really want to be in for obvious reasons.