DC United: How they became the original MLS dynasty | OneFootball

By Charles Boehm

EDITOR'S NOTE: In celebration of Major League Soccer's 30th season, MLSsoccer.com is exploring untold stories about all 30 clubs. "30 Clubs, 30 Stories" will be unveiled throughout 2025.

Troy Lesesne is describing what D.C. United’s proud history means to the club, and how he and his staff work to connect the present-day Black-and-Red to that story.

Sometimes, though, heritage is more easily shown than told.

“If you don't mind, I'll walk,” said United’s head coach near the conclusion of a video-conference interview, grabbing his laptop and venturing down the hallway at their training facility in exurban Virginia for an impromptu tour.

Club history

Since taking the helm last year, Lesesne has sought to rekindle D.C.’s relationship with both their past and their purpose, installing a series of wall displays in common areas at the Inova Performance Complex. One reads ‘United For Family,’ arrayed with photos of loved ones. Another is ‘United For Our Community,’ with images of their charitable efforts and service projects across the D.C./Maryland/Virginia region – the club’s founding motto is “win championships, and serve the community,” after all.

Then there’s ‘United For Our History,’ a long sequence of photos from three decades of achievement in Major League Soccer and beyond, from the memorable group that hoisted the first-ever MLS Cup in 1996 to current star Christian Benteke’s capture of Golden Boot and Best XI honors in 2024.

Perhaps the most eye-catching is the ‘United For Our Legacy’ display: Two glossy boards emblazoned with a list of honors, both team and individual, up for grabs each season. Next to each item is the number of times it’s been won by a D.C. team or player – and those numbers are on removable tiles, so that present and future generations can add to the tally.

“There's really not many clubs that have the legacy. It’s just us and the LA Galaxy, really, to have that degree of legacy, right? And so this is actually an actionable wall,” Lesesne explained.

“It's almost a mission and a sort of bridging the generational gap between these early years and now, and how the educational piece of that is important for the players to know,” he noted. “Because it'll mean more, but also, it'll inspire them to be a part of it.”

Setting the standard

Though many of his squad weren’t even born yet, Lesesne, 41, knows plenty about the old days. Growing up in Columbia, South Carolina, D.C. were his closest MLS club in geographic terms, and United’s excellence made them far and away the most respected and recognizable side in the league’s first half-decade – its first dynasty.

“It was the club that set the standard, really, in the league,” said Lesesne, “and the types of talent that they had in terms of Marco Etcheverry, Jaime Moreno, John Harkes, Eddie Pope, Tony Sanneh, the list goes on – those were the players that I looked up to.

“The first thing that stands out is the amount of talent that the team had. There was a ton of personalities in that group that were extremely competitive, played at some really high levels that MLS hadn't seen … That really set the tone for what a club could be.”

Not only did they win three of the first four MLS Cups out of the gate. They also claimed a US Open Cup, two Supporters’ Shields and a Concacaf Champions Cup – to this day, that remains an honor only two other MLS clubs have ever achieved – and did something truly unparalleled in 1998, defeating Brazilian powers Vasco da Gama over two legs in the final edition of the Copa Interamericana, becoming the only US or Canadian side who can claim to be champions of the entire hemisphere.

“We have the best team in America. We beat the champion of the Copa Libertadores, we are the winners of the Concacaf championship. So D.C. United was the best team in America, from North to South America,” recalled Etcheverry, the team’s silky-smooth playmaker. “If you realize, it's unbelievable. D.C. United was the best team – we're representing USA, soccer from USA. I think it's a big, big result for soccer in America.”

Stars align

Even though expansion newcomers Chicago Fire FC, led by former D.C. assistant Bob Bradley, upset them in the league title match, that ‘98 side was probably United’s peak.

Etcheverry pulled the strings as the No. 10; MLS Rookie of the Year winner Ben Olsen, tenacious terrier Richie Williams and longtime US men’s national team captain John Harkes brought range and class in midfield. Prolific scorers Jaime Moreno and Roy Lassiter provided both pace and guile up front. Eddie Pope and Jeff Agoos, who between them logged 216 caps and five World Cup campaigns for the USMNT, anchored a stout defense.

“Great memories. Such a talented group, and also combined the talent with just a passion to win, a real grittiness,” Harkes told MLSsoccer.com this week. “It was just a great mix, a great group of people. That camaraderie, that everybody fighting for each other, was evident.”

Overseeing it all was Bruce Arena, in his first of many jobs at the professional level after building an NCAA soccer powerhouse at the University of Virginia, where he won five national championships from 1989-94 and nurtured the likes of Agoos, Harkes and Olsen.

This was no overnight success story, however. D.C. lost seven of their first 14 matches in the inaugural ‘96 season, prompting Arena – who in the opening months was also juggling his role as the coach of that summer’s U.S. Olympic team – to make major changes to the roster as year one unfolded. Even as he chopped and changed in search of the mix he wanted, the coach crafted tight bonds among the squad, holding barbeques at United’s training facility to which spouses and children were invited, fostering a family atmosphere.

“He knows I love him. He's unbelievable, man. He's unbelievable, how he treats the player, how he works, he understands; he knew when a player was feeling good, or maybe not, because it's a normal life and we’re human and we have problems,” said Etcheverry, who speaks of Arena as “a second dad” to him and his teammates.

“I think one of my best coaches I have in my life.”

Dynamic leadership

Moreno’s midsummer arrival from English outfit Middlesbrough turned out to be a watershed moment; the Black-and-Red won six of their last eight down the stretch as the Bolivian struck up strong chemistry with his compatriot Etcheverry and Salvadoran striker Raúl Díaz Arce. Quick, clever and clinical, Moreno would blossom into a club icon, playing a key role in all four of the club’s MLS Cup wins and becoming a four-time All-Star, five-time MLS Best XI, and MLS All-Time Best XI honoree. Even today, his 133 goals in 340 games rank fifth on the league’s all-time scoring chart.

It took a comeback of epic proportions to secure their first trophy, United storming back from 2-0 down to edge the Galaxy 3-2 via Pope’s extra-time golden goal on a rain-soaked pitch at the old Foxboro Stadium in Massachusetts. Yet their collective swagger was well-established as the ‘97 campaign got underway, turning noisy RFK Stadium into one of the league’s most dreaded destinations.

“Yes, you do need to have talent. But Bruce can take a situation – I think it's been proven out over his career – and get a collective group to push in the same direction,” said Dave Johnson, United’s broadcast voice since year one on both television and radio.

“For this league to still be around right now, it needed a D.C. United in the early years,” he noted. “It needed a franchise, a club that had dynamic leadership, and you will not find more dynamic than Kevin Payne and Bruce Arena.”

Intertwined with success on the pitch was the vibrant supporter culture United fostered in the stands at RFK, their home for the first 22 years of their existence, and their outreach efforts, not just introducing themselves and the sport to their communities but investing time and money into service projects.

Payne, D.C.’s president and CEO, was an experienced soccer hand who right away saw the importance of providing space for the Washington region’s devoted fans, many hailing from a constellation of expatriate and immigrant communities, to chant, sing and drum for 90 minutes like their counterparts around the world, even when it shocked stadium staff accustomed to the more orderly norms of U.S. sports.

“He would go into the stands and calm situations where security had never – yes, the Washington football team had crazy atmosphere,” recalled Johnson, “but RFK never bounced like that, with drums and people standing up. Because what do the ushers and security typically tell Americans at sporting events? ‘Sit down, behave,’ whatever, and all of a sudden you've got people throwing stuff in the air and beer showers. And you had Kevin Payne in the middle trying to calm things down and to educate the security on the supporters. So it was every little detail like that.”

Winning over the city

D.C.’s fans quickly discovered that the stand on aging RFK’s west side, which was designed to move along rails so the venue could be configured for baseball as well as football and soccer, would sway and bounce when they jumped in unison. That turned the supporters’ section into a pulsating maelstrom right on the midfield stripe, “the loud side” in United parlance, while the west stand, or “quiet side,” welcomed newbies, families with small children and others with slightly less intensity of fervor.

“RFK was a cathedral for us,” said Harkes. “It was a feeling that when we came out of that tunnel, it was like, ‘Wow, this is a stage.’ We knew we were playing for the people. We weren't playing for ourselves. We were always playing for our fans, who from day one came out and supported us, and were probably the loudest in the country and the most raucous.

“The stands were shifting and moving and bouncing, and even if we were losing games, that was going on,” he added. “For us, it was like a true connection.”

Over time, the psychological advantage became palpable.

“They don't want to go to RFK; they know they're going to have a very bad time. They know the fan is going to be all the 90 minutes, supporting our team. It was very loud,” said Etcheverry, whose skill and confidence helped draw legions from the area’s large Bolivian community. “That was beautiful, beautiful. I remember every minute, from ‘96 to when I retired.”

Those fans got to witness United’s second MLS Cup triumph in person. A sellout crowd of 57,431 braved a cold, heavy rain to pack RFK – even with the NFL’s Washington and Baltimore teams facing off down the road in Landover, Maryland around the same time – as D.C. beat the Colorado Rapids 2-1. Three days later the Black-and-Red beat the Dallas Burn on penalties in the US Open Cup final in Indianapolis, the United legend taking root.

They kept rolling even after Arena departed to take over the USMNT after the 1998 season, succeeded by Thomas Rongen, who led D.C. to a Shield-Cup double in ‘99. Soon the dynasty began to crumble, squad depth ebbing away as the fledgling league’s leaders fretted that their dominance would compromise MLS’s parity. United missed the playoffs entirely in 2000 and didn't make it back until 2003, before regaining glory under Peter Nowak and Tom Soehn with a 2004 MLS Cup win and back-to-back Shield-winning campaigns in 2006-07.

Recapturing the magic

Few faces or traces remain from the old days now. After decades of searching, D.C. finally moved into Audi Field, the soccer-specific home they so badly needed, in 2018, and opened the Inova Performance Complex three years later. As necessary as the new digs were, RFK’s soul has been difficult to replace: Audi has hosted just one MLS postseason match thus far, a knockout-round loss to Columbus in its first season, and United have failed to qualify for five years straight, laboring to keep pace in a rapidly growing, advancing league.

Lesesne and his colleagues are working to change that, and hope raising the echoes of the past can inspire new achievements from their group.

“It goes deeper at D.C. United than just wins and losses. That's the number-one criteria, don't get me wrong. But it's also about how you're doing that, how you're connecting with the community. We're really working hard in all those ways to try to get the club back to where it deserves to be,” said United’s current boss.

“We have a lot of work to do in order to get anywhere close to where those guys set the standard in the early years. But that's something that's inspirational for our group, and that's what we're working towards.”