Earlier in the day it seemed like anyone going to the MLS Cup final at Qwest Field last night was going to be rained on and frozen solid, but then the rain cleared and everyone wrapped themselves in the Sounders scarves they wore to matches all summer (finally in season!), even though the Sounders weren't going to be playing. The MLS Cup venue is decided months in advance, and just happened to be Seattle this year. "It's not that I want Real [Salt Lake] to win, it's that I want [LA] Galaxy to lose," a man in a Sounders scarf pronounced to a friend before it started. "I guess I'm giving LA the edge but I just want to see good soccer," another man shrouded in Sounders scarves and a Sounders hat said elsewhere. In other words, a mixed crowd, not very committed either way, except for the LA fans in a far corner of the stands—a clump of people covered in white, like they'd been snowed on. ("You'd think there would be more of them," someone said, pointing to the LA fans. "They have all the money.")

Because there was nothing on the line for Seattle, most of the 46,011 people in the crowd seemed to be watching nonchalantly, with a cool distance, except whenever there was an excuse to shout about the Sounders, like before the game when the Sounders made an appearance on the field (prompting several sad-sounding rounds of "Seaaaaaahhhtuuhhl Soooouuuunnnddders") or later on when an injured goalkeeper prompted someone in the stands to shout out for Seattle's star goalkeeper ("Let's go Sounders! Put in Kasey Keller!").

But the crowd's cool distance had nothing on Landon Donovan's cool distance. For a lot of the game, the 2009 MVP and U.S. national team forward seemed barely present (except for one beautiful assist). David Beckham didn't do much to call attention to himself either, unless you count his bright blond mohawk thing. The match went into overtime, and then a not-very-present moment on behalf of Salt Lake's Andy Williams kept him from capitalizing on a wide-open goal—"No way he didn't make that! No way!" someone in the stands shouted, because the mistake was staggering and also because, after two fruitless 15 minute blocks of overtime, the match was officially in need of an ending—so then the match had to go into penalty kickoffs. This would be only the second MLS Cup final decided on penalty kicks, USA Today pointed out. "This is a horrible way to end a game, much less a season," a friend grumbled.

So the final minutes of this final match looked a lot like that photo above—player after player taking penalty kicks while the goalkeeper stood there and guessed which way they were going to shoot (sometimes incorrectly, diving hard in the wrong direction, as in the photo). And then Landon Donovan went up for his penalty kick and—man, it's almost too painful to type. Too embarrassing. Not only did the ball not go where the goalkeeper was expecting it to, it didn't go where Donovan or the crowd or the laws of physics or God himself expected it to. Behold.

The reaction in the stands in my immediate vicinity:

Oh, Donovan! Missing the net!?!?

Unforgivable! Unforgivable! Unforgivable!

OOHHH MYYYY GAAWWD!

Choke of the century! Are you kidding me?!

After a few more penalty kicks—which were hard to keep track of, considering everyone's brains just went numb at the sight of Donovan standing in front of a goal and somehow not kicking the ball into it, and considering there was no lighted sign keeping track of the penalty kicks, just like there's never any lighted sign keeping track of add-on time—Real Salt Lake started streaming into a pile at one end of the field, jumping through the air, whipping their dreadlocks around. They'd won. The underdogs had won the MLS Cup. The stadium was suddenly full of Salt Lake partisans, or maybe just underdog partisans. Congratulations, underdogs.

Photos by Scott Maira, from Flickr pool.