Do Not Hold Your Fire I : Happy-Fun Ball Landon Donovan

Ramifications of DC-LA

Kinney's excellent debrief is up, but already starting to edge down the page, so I please go read the 11.24 debriefing before you read this post. I'll be waiting.

Okay, there are some points out of LA that I'd like to think about before we move onward to our encounter with LA's other team next week. So I'll have a series of posts throughout the day on some of the items from this game we should analyze. We start with Landon Donovan.

Kinney rightly called this out, and Dave Lifton also spoke about it on the SE Podcast with his plea to stop making banners that taunt Landon Donovan. And those banners were clever: "Donovan Under Alles" was amusing, as was "Donovan +10 = Zero". So, should DC fans lay off Donovan since it only seems to get him riled up?

Personally, I say no. Sure, Donovan seems to respond well to the harassment at RFK. This, of course, illustrated Sam's Army's great mistake during the world cup. We thought that the best way to support our team was to cheer the USA and wear red. What we should have been doing was heaping abuse upon Donovan until he saw red. No doubt had we done that, Bruce Arena would still be coach of the US National Team.

Still, the point remains -- Go ahead and taunt Landon. Yes, he may get jazzed up, but if you start modifying fan behavior based on that, then you should probably stop taunting everyone, just in case it fires them up. Which is ridiculous. The Eagles, the Barra, La Norte should taunt everyone, and LD doesn't deserve a pass. DCU should expect most teams to play at RFK with motivation right now, and not taunting Landon won't change that. To my fellow fans, I say, do not hold your fire on Landon Donovan.