While the diehards waited around the edge of the field—occasionally rewarded by, like, Tyrone Marshall walking by—the post-match press conference was getting underway in a brightly lit little room under the stands. There were 28 people in the room, 27 of them men. Sounders coach Sigi Schmid sat at a table set up in front of Sounders-logo wallpaper. He has silver hair, flinty eyes, a gap between his front teeth, and tons of intelligence—you could tell he is smart enough to field any question whatsoever, but the reporters weren't asking anything interesting. The reporters were all slumped this way and that, and their questions were dull. How did he think the game went? He thought it went great. How did it feel to win? "It helps us. It certainly helps us." And so on. Then he took his last question and someone said Freddie Ljungberg was taking questions next. Schmid left.

There was a long pause while we waited for Freddie Ljungberg—the highest-paid player on the team ($1.3 million this year), the Calvin Klein underwear model, the Swede with the big brain—to materialize. When he walked in, he sent a ripple of energy through the room. One of his calves was double its size with a translucent ice pack strapped to it. Whereas with Schmid reporters just held their recorders in their hands, now they all approached the table, bent in weird supplication, to place their recorders as close to the former underwear model as possible. Another long pause. No one dared go first. Ljungberg smiled. A handler said, at last, "Someone have a question?"

Someone stammered out a question about his yellow card at the end of the game. "In Europe, the referees see you as more of equals," Ljungberg said. "You can talk to them." He said he was trying to bring the European way of playing to America, but in a they-just-do-things-differently-here-and-I-have-to-get-used-to-it way. (He added, about the team generally, "We don't want any more red cards.") After another pause, someone stammered: How did it feel to score that goal? It was such a blankly stupid question—how do you think it felt?—that Ljungberg struggled for what to say. Then questioner went on: Can you take us through the setup of that goal and how you did it? Ljungberg said, "To be honest I don't remember the setup." Then he figured out a way to deliver what they wanted to hear, and he said, "It worked. So, happy days."

Then someone asked another throwaway question about how people thought of him and Fredy Montero as "the two Freddies," and whether he thought working well together with Montero was important. Then the next question was, essentially, I'm sorry, I didn't hear your answer about how it felt to score that goal, could you repeat your answer about that? Ljungberg just smiled and said the things he was supposed to say. This was a sport in itself, watching these men whose speciality is words and meaning and making sense, get thoroughly beaten by a guy whose chief speciality is kicking something—action, physical space, animal instinct. I had the sense that the reporters thought there was something basic and strong about their questions, something masculine, time-tested, traditional: these are the questions that always get asked, therefore these are the best questions to ask. But nothing was being said.

Last question. Someone cleared his throat and said, in all seriousness, "Was this a must-win tonight, would you say?" The question sat there while Ljungberg pondered what to do with it. I felt bad for him. That's not a question. Ljungberg said, precisely, pricelessly, "I don't think it's a must-win... but it's nice to win at home." And again this was received as if it were something, as if it were news. The press conference ended. "OK, guys. Thank you," Ljungberg said to the reporters with heart-shaped eyes. "Hope you enjoyed it."

Out in the hallway, one of the reporters said to another, giddily, "That's the first time I've ever seen him speak."