DC United : Ask Biography

Home | Football Club | DC United

D.C. United is an American professional soccer (association football) club based in Washington, D.C. which competes in Major League Soccer (MLS), the top professional soccer league in the United States and Canada. It is one of the ten charter clubs of MLS, having competed in the league since its inception, in 1996.

Over the club's history, D.C. United has been considered to be the flagship franchise of MLS winning 12 international and domestic titles. Domestically, United has been one of the most successful MLS clubs. United has won the U.S. Open Cup twice, and holds an MLS record for most MLS Cup and MLS Supporters' Shields apiece, winning each honor four times. United was the also the first club to win both the MLS Cup and MLS Supporters' Shield consecutively.

On the international stage, D.C. United has competed in both the CONCACAF Champions League and its predecessor, the CONCACAF Champions' Cup. The club is also the only American soccer club to ever compete in a CONMEBOL (South American) competition, participating in the 2005 and 2007 editions of the Copa Sudamericana. In 1998, the club won the CONCACAF Champions' Cup. Subsequently, United won the now-defunct Copa Interamericana, a competition between the CONCACAF on CONMEBOL champion that year to determine the best soccer club in the Americas. In the 1998, and final edition of the Copa Interamericana, D.C. United defeated Vasco da Gama of Brazil to take the title.

The team's home field is the 45,596-seat Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, owned by the District of Columbia and located on the Anacostia River. The team has proposed building a new 24,000-seat soccer-specific stadium at multiple possible sites in the Washington metropolitan area. The team is owned by San Francisco-based William H.C. Chang through the consortium D.C. United Holdings. The team's head coach is long-time starting midfielder Ben Olsen, who has coached the team since 2010.

Players such as Jaime Moreno, Marco Etcheverry, and Eddie Pope are among the team's most successful stars. D.C. United has a strong fan base, with three supporters' clubs and one of the highest attendance averages in Major League Soccer. The club's official nickname is the "Black-and-Red" and home uniforms are black and white with accents of red. The team's name alludes to the "United" appellation commonly found in the names of soccer teams in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.