MLS Player Malfunctions, Dribbles Ball Directly Out of Bounds

MLS in 15 seconds. pic.twitter.com/MvYhn12FJ0
— Deacon (@TheSoccerDcn) May 18, 2015

An astonishing and beautiful soccer thing happened during the Philadelphia Union's game against D.C. United. While we can all agree that Andrew Wenger just kind of dribbling the ball out of bounds for no apparent reason is one of the better things that's ever happened in soccer, there's more going on here than a 15-second video can convey. Here are two perspectives on it from Aaron Gordon, who knows and cares about soccer, and David Roth, who is a fast typist and has turtles as pets.

AG: Perhaps due to brilliant tactical scheming, or perhaps not, Andrew Wenger of the Philadelphia Union streaks down the left wing with tons of space. As he approaches the back line, he's in prime position to put in a dangerous cross, but he doesn't have any open runners. So he holds it, and holds it, and holds it, and holds it, until time and space squeezes in on him like a C-clamp grasping his testicles. Paralyzed by choice, he does what lesser versions of ourselves can only hope to do. He continues, forging ahead, refusing to break from his determined run forward.

Never you mind that he dribbles the ball directly out of bounds. Andrew Wenger is pure heart, triple distilled into a fine spirit of determination, and he won't let crappy teammates who don't give him a half-decent run stop him from getting to where he needs to go.

"He's not having a very good season," the commentator incorrectly sighs. Andrew Wenger is the only one out there, Mr. Commentator. He is all alone.

DR: I gather that video game technology has improved a great deal since the last time I played one. This is probably a good thing for people that play video games, but there is a part of me that's sad for the ones young enough never to have had a truly shitty sports video game experience.

This was the only kind I had, because I was shitty at sports video games and because the sports video games I played were mostly shitty. Every player looked like a small, lowish-resolution photo of Klay Thompson that had been blown up to 500 times its size; the games were prankish and unreal and weird, and their ostensible Easter eggs were the purest nonsense; announcers periodically announced their presence by barking one of a few canned phrases through what sounded like a megaphone being used underwater. I especially remember a hockey game in which the announcer periodically gargled, as if via pay phone from a parallel dimension, what sounded like, "hit the ball." It wound ring in my ears for hours after; I'd ride my bike home from my friend's place hearing "hippuh paw." In a couple hours of game-play, you'd hear the same 8-bit word-blurps hundreds of times. It was immersive, and it sucked.

My fondest memory of these games was how the uncontrolled players milled around. While Player 1 and Player 2 herky-jerked their flabby avatars from one side of the screen to the next, the other players paced or circled or wandered offscreen unbidden. The only thing I can liken it to is watching the Puppy Bowl, when some spaniel or other takes a break from the action for an in-stream nap or a quick sniff of a peer's b-hole. That or Andrea Bargnani in peak Ambien Sleep-Eating Rampage mode. This did not really add anything to the game-play, obviously, but it did quite a lot for the overall experience. There was something dreamlike about it, and nicely uncanny—the sense was that whatever technological miracle was dictating the game-play was overloaded or distracted or even bored, that there was something chaotic nibbling at the edges of the simulation, and conspiring to make these painstakingly real things weirder and funnier.

It saddened me, in an absent way, that games have now evolved such that kids would no longer get the experience of seeing these impenetrable moments of ghost-in-the-machine goofiness. I clearly do not watch enough MLS games.