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Soccer’s fun kicked in
with Adu’s arrival

I'M not going to pretend I know what was going on out there, last night, at the Aloha Soccer Cup. There were elbows everywhere. Kung fu fighting high kicks, bodies crashing, pushing, forearms to the chin, blows thrown. In the middle of it all -- you knew this even from the very last row -- somebody was down there was yelling, "Hold me back! Hold me back!"

And this was just in the saimin line.

I kid.

But all of that did happen last night, down on the field. Apparently pro soccer is one painful game. I say apparently because either this is the most brutal of team sports or Hilary Swank is in the wrong business.

Every time someone went down he would lie there writhing, gasping, every one of them dying Daffy Duck deaths. Then, a minute later -- miracle! -- Heikoti Fakava had some memorable comebacks, but he'd never had a knee reattached in 30 seconds or less.

It was all clutching, grabbing, tackling. Death scenes worthy of "Hamlet." Stop and go. Officials hadn't given out this much yellow since Michigan State.

We didn't even waste much time getting into a full-scale melee, between these teams, D.C. United and the Los Angeles Galaxy, which included the above-mentioned swings of hand, not foot.

"There was no closed fist," a Galaxy official insisted, up in the press box.

Don't worry. We're not horrified. Our threshold for righteous indignation has been raised a little, these past few years. This is Aloha Stadium. I don't even blink an eye anymore, unless tear gas is involved.

But then, in the second half, something happened.

Soccer happened.

I'm not going to pretend I know what was going on out there. But suddenly the game was wide open, and fast, and as exciting as advertised.

Suddenly, there was more sprinting than tripping. Suddenly, more attacking the net than attacking each other.

Suddenly, you could see why the Brazilians (it was either the Brazilians or the Star-Bulletin's Al Chase) had dubbed this "the beautiful game."

All of a sudden, at the start of the second half, there were heart-stopping shots, and great saves. Ricochets and long runs.

Maybe it was thanks to the arrival of D.C. United's Freddy Adu, who was finally freed from the bench, who plays with a 15-year-old's spark. He runs like a young man. He has youth's enthusiasm; a kid's burst.

He shines, out there. Don't ask me to explain it, but he does.

He looks, in the open field, like Chad Owens with a yo-yo on his foot.

And suddenly, we were seeing a real-live football match, out there. At last we were experiencing the game the world loves.

There were more muggings, of course. Adu made a move that almost left a guy for dead and the defender retaliated by leaving Adu almost dead. There were more crashes, more grabs, more elbows. One or two more Oscar-worthy performances.

But for a few seconds, we'd seen it. For several minutes, we'd known.

This was the game we'd heard so much about. It is real, and it's spectacular.

It was fleeting, what Adu had brought. But then, so is youth.