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The Red Card Wedding: An Oral History (The Teaser)
62 Plays8 years ago
With the Seattle Sounders and Portland Timbers set to meet in the U.S. Open Cup for the first time since the game we've dubbed "The Red Card Wedding," now seems as good a time as any to share a project we've been working on in conjunction with Soccer Made In Portland.
This is only a teaser trailer, but it we're hoping to release the full thing within the next couple weeks. For now, though, we've got interviews with Ross Fletcher, Brad Evans, Lamar Neagle, Andy Rose, Nat Borchers and Jack Jewsbury in the can. They had some wonderful perspectives on the proceedings of that fateful night.
For now, here's a taste of what's to come.
Music credit: The Rains of Castamere
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Transcript
Anticipation for the US Open Cup Clash
00:00:00
Speaker
So this is a night that so many sounders fans have been looking forward to. US Open Cup, a tournament they had owned since coming into Major League Soccer, at Starfire, a place that was an absolute fortress, Seattle unbeaten in all their Open Cup games there, against their hated rivals, the Portland Timbers.
Intense Atmosphere at Starfire
00:00:19
Speaker
dimly lit field, poor surface, 4000 baying fans screaming and throat rasping from only feet away from the players. They can feel them, smell them, almost touch them. It has a little bit of a feel of Mad Max beyond the Thunderdough. Here are these fans in this dimly lit arena, baying for the blood of their opponents.
00:00:44
Speaker
and little would we know that the setting will be overshadowed by the events.
Unique Challenges of the Starfire Pitch
00:00:52
Speaker
So it's special, I think the environment that you're usually playing in, for some reason we seem to always lose the coin flip and so we're at the smaller confines there at Starfire.
00:01:05
Speaker
It's an awesome environment. When you break it down, Starfire is a small European venue, almost high school football, high school soccer. But when you pack the house, it really has a vibrance to it.
Players' Determination Amid Difficulties
00:01:27
Speaker
It hurts my knees and my Achilles tendons in particular just to think about playing on that pitch because it is like they put a bunch of plywood down and then they threw over some green confetti and they just called it a field. I've seen people try to take a yellow card or a red card away from the ref but I've never seen anything like that.
Coach Ziggy Schmidt's Reaction
00:01:51
Speaker
I try to keep on going because at the end of the day that's what the fans deserve.
00:01:57
Speaker
There was no way I think a lot of guys would, um, would have turned to Alan. And it's honestly a really proud moment.
00:02:09
Speaker
You realise at the end of it Ziggy Schmidt, the Sounders coach, didn't coach the rest of the game from that Dempsey moment. That he was so riled up at what he'd seen that he took himself away from the coaching position. And I think he went and stood in the bottom quarter of Starfire Stadium and watched there because otherwise, as he was then quoted in the post-match media scrum, he would have quote, choked out the referee, unquote.
00:02:39
Speaker
And that just sums up an evening that the sound has completely lost control.