Living in Los Angeles I was finally able to make it to my first Sounders FC and first Major League Soccer game versus Chivas at the HDC (Home Depot Center) this Saturday. I’ve been to a handful of matches including USL, NCAA, Premiership and international friendlies. Thanks to Chivas USA, the MLS now ranks at the bottom of that list.

Tagging along with a group of 100+ SoCal Sound and Emerald City Supporters (who by the way were awesome) we ordered tickets through the Chivas front office so we could be in the same section. The ordering and paying for the tickets was no problem it was actually getting the tickets that ended up being the difficult part.

Apparently there was some breakdown in communication between the Chivas sales people and the HDC ticket window and tickets weren't at will call two hours before the game. We were told to come back later.

Fast forward to an hour before the game… still no tickets; specifically for the crowd of Sounders fans beginning to pile up next to the ticket window.

As a Liverpool fan I know about what incompetence and mismanagement at the ticket office can cause.

People started cracking and buying second sets of tickets just to get in and see the game after already throwing down for parking and in some cases flying down from Seattle.

Finally tickets "arrived" less than 30 minutes before kickoff after a group of us started getting verbally hostile i.e. "can I see your supervisor?" or "…I paid for the ticket so I’m waiting here until I get the ticket."

The whole Chivas/HDC thing is a wee bit sketchy. It’s hard to believe that tickets had such a hard time arriving when the Chivas offices are in the same fucking building and on top of that HDC staff were acting like this is a common occurrence. All I can see here is this convenient glitch in the system benefits Chivas by bumping revenue and padding attendance figures for their quarter-full stadium. Apparently 13,117 people were at the game on Saturday, I must have missed them...

The other group getting screwed here is the HDC because all the time fans are stuck outside waiting for tickets we're not throwing down for $8 beers and $5 nachos.