It's the fifth anniversary of the infamous 1999 season, when we finally accepted that we were the rock bottom shit of the soccer world. "Worst Club in the World"? That was because of 1999. Let's stop for a second and remember the 1999 season.

1. The Mondelo sacking at the end of 1998, which got the whole thing in gear. Some of us had a misguided chuckle at the brilliance of bringing in the most impenetrable and most defensive mercenary in the soccer coaching world to lock the playoffs down. Our thinking was that Bora would play for 0-0 every game of the post-season, forcing a series of shootouts that would lead the crap MetroStars (we didn't even know the meaning of crap in 1998) to the MLS Cup. But of course he abandoned our well-planned scheme and we idiotically tried to attack against Columbus in the first round. I can't remember much about that series except they scored five on us one game, though Miles Joseph not only scored, but nailed a beautiful shot from range.

2. The big trades to start the year. Shitcanning Alexi "the Finger" Lalas I understand, and in retrospect, giving up Meola ultimately made room for Tim Howard's two-and-a-half brilliant seasons, and Diego Sonora somehow never fit in. But WHY SAVARESE? I'm not saying he would have lasted any longer in MLS than Roy Lassiter. But his ugly goals came cheap, and he loved playing here. And moreover, once I saw him on the Q65A bus off Queens Boulevard, and despite myself said "Hey, Gio!" and he tried to hide from me behind the standing passengers. It was embarrassing at the time (for both of us I'm sure), but in retrospect, his desperate desire to avoid moron fans cinches his place in the Metro hall of fame.

3. The standing vacancy in the foreign player slot. In retrospect, it was clear that there was a roster slot for Lothar waiting there the whole time. Gio was sent packing because Charlie Stillitano and Doug Logan and whoever else had their little tentacles palpating their way towards Munich. Beckenbauer naturally had more important things on his mind, like blowing the Champions League final, to let his Neanderthal sweeper go so quickly. So the Metros, having staked so much on their success in the stands (don't think that Charlie gave a moment's thought to how we did on the field after, say, 1996) got treated to that desperately spinning lazy Susan of international bullshit, which eventually cost the following people their jobs:

A. Bora
B. Charlie
C. Doug Logan
D. Sunil
E. John Kluge
F. Stu Subotnick
G-Z. Ex-Metro players tainted by association with 1999, and Lothar Matthaus, who had all the characteristics of a 99 Metro but was unfortunate to play for us in 2000. Maybe he stole the bathroom fixtures from Trump Towers as a booby prize. "Der Blingen-bling!"

4. Who was it who got brought in to salvage the 1999 season? First Arley Palacios and Roy Myers, who somehow weren't enough to exhume the Metro corpse and set it dancing the Charleston.

(Interlude: we lose 6-0 to fellow bottom-feeders Kansas City. And we lose 5-2 to Dallas, which was a pretty good game for us despite giving up two goals OFF OUR OWN CORNER KICKS.)

Then we get Henry Zambrano and the uncontrollable Serb, Sasa Curcic. Maybe Curcic is evidence of supernatural forces at work. Yeah, he was out of his gourd, yeah his social obligations made Clint Mathis look like he lives in a convent, but he was so totally unstable that he could have given us fond memories of fucked-up '99. If you saw him dribble Edwin Gorter onto the grass and nutmeg him as he fell, you glimpsed a way that the season could have given us something other than ignominy. Of course, you wondered, watching Curcic slalom through defenders, if he knew the goal was the other way. But you forgave him, until he wrecked his knee in August or so.

5. Somewhere in here are the international games: the Gotham Cup, notable mainly for the number of baldies Aston Villa put on the pitch at once (10, plus David James), and the game between a Mexican team and a Colombian team. All week, the MFO had been feeding the papers advance word of a 30k-40k crowd, and the day of the game arrived to see beautiful late summer weather and 3,200 suckers in the stands. Maybe that was when the wheels came off for Charlie Stillitano.

6. The players who stayed behind were overmatched to the point of obliviousness. Hurtado is the prime example. What a tragedy that Zurich weren't willing to pay half a million for an obese, aging striker who had somehow managed four goals in 1500 minutes.

7. It seemed like the season couldn't end, but after an encouraging start in 2000, we got Mathis, and were returned to a more sane level of bullshit. But while DC fans parade around their phony Interamerican Cup (won against Ft Lauderdale Vasco da Gama), and Chicago fans run out of fingers when calculating how many trophies they'll win this year (the pentatuple? the octuple? how about goal of the year?), we'll always have 1999. It was the Vietnam War of soccer, and it added about eight years to my life.