The night before DC’s home opener against the Chicago Fire I dreamt that I was playing on the right wing for the red and black, and that I set up the first goal of the game for Eliseo Quintanilla after five minutes. Former Liverpool FC 1970s midfielder Jimmy Case was also in the DC side, while on the touchline coach Ray Hudson was yelling at a five-piece country and western band to play in rhythm with the soccer.

If only the game itself had been half as interesting. Quintanilla didn’t manage a single shot in 90 minutes (perhaps because Ray forgot to put me down on the team sheet), there were no players of Case’s poise and skill to be seen on either side, and the only rhythm came from the regularity with which one side ceded possession to the other. I now realise that my surreal vision of a Nashville quintet was a veiled warning that I should have gone to watch Yo La Tengo at the 9:30 Club instead.

Difficult as it is to explain to Americans who disdain soccer, there are such things as exciting 0-0 ties. Many would point to the Italy v Holland Euro 2000 semi-final match as a classic example of a virile backline holding out against a flair-led attack in a scoreless game with barely a dull second. Unfortunately, Saturday’s showdown, or should we say ‘slowdown’, was a nightmare — the kind of nightmare where you take a soccer-sceptical American friend along to his first match, and then have it confirm all his worst prejudices.

This was a game that not only gasped for a goal, it was craving, in Hudson’s words, "a bit of magic". Just one bit. Like the through pass San Jose’s Landon Donovan provided to Brian Mullan to set up an equaliser in the Earthquakes’ game against Kansas City. Or even a moment of calamitous clowning, as provided by Donovan’s goalkeeping teammate Pat Onstad in the same game when he took two limp-wristed attempts to pat the ball into his own net and score the supreme leader of all own goals.

It was just one of those nights when nothing goes right, perhaps best summed up by Dema Kovalenko’s 84^th. minute attempt at a long range shot that ended up going out for a throw-in at a point that was almost closer to the halfway line than it was to the corner flag. Kovalenko was one of the DC midfielders who, along with Stewart and Olsen, played too deep to be effective offensively, while Quintanilla and especially Santino Quaranta up front seemed strangely static and often outnumbered, offering few options for the playmakers seeking them out.

On a forgettable night that ultimately got the result it deserved, even debutant Alecko Eskandarian suffered the sort of first appearance in professional soccer he’ll be hard pushed to tell his grandkids about. In the sixteen minutes he was on the field before going off with concussion, the nearest he got to the ball was when Ben Olsen barged in front of him to rob him of a potential chance, and the aerial challenge that left him flattened.

Still, they didn’t lose, and after some of the games that have been thrown away here in the past three years, we had to be grateful for the clean sheet. This was largely thanks to the solid defence of Petke, Nelsen (despite being left for dead by Chris Arnas for Chicago’s best chance) and the battle-worn Brandon Prideaux, who should have been given the MVP award.

The doughty defender should feel more than a little miffed that the award was inexplicably sent Marco Etcheverry’s way, unless it was mistakenly given in the belief that MVP stands for Most Volatile Player. It was back to old times for the captain as his game-long dialogue with the referee ended with a yellow card. The only surprise was that it took so long in coming.

As I left the stadium on Saturday night, I finally spotted something that piqued my interest - an aggrieved opossum scurrying around the bowels of RFK. It was clearly distressed by what it had seen and, like many other fans, was desperately looking for an exit. Sadly for the confused marsupial it could only run aimlessly from one pillar to another and then back again. Maybe it was vying for a place in the DC United midfield. Although to get a spot up front it might have been better playing dead.