DC United win at Chicago Fire, 1-0

This is the best our team has looked in quite a while. DC United just worked harder in this match, which is great to see. We won most of the 50-50 balls tonight, which has been rare the past few months. The team's first win against an MLS opponent since 7/18 couldn't have come at a better time.

The only thing I didn't like about our performance was the number of fouls given in close range. It continues to be part of Chicago's strategy to go down at the smallest hint of contact near the box. We were a bit lucky that Blanco didn't test Wicks more in his numerous chances.


1. Bryan Namoff continues to have maybe his best season, playing quite well on defense, and adding his second goal of the year on a header from a Gomez free kick.

2. I had my doubts about starting Ben Olsen at right wing against the very underrated Marco Pappa, but he did great, and it turned into a bit of a fluid role as he was moved into central midfield towards the end of the first half. Olsen looked awesome going forward, and came pretty close to scoring on a Burch to Quaranta cross in the 62nd minute. I could almost hear the "YEESSSS!" before the ball went just wide.

3. The reason that the 4-4-2 looked so good in this match was because Clyde Simms was doing the job of two defensive midfielders. Dude was all over the place!

4. Julius James and Dejan Jakovic were an excellent combination as the center backs. James broke up several plays, and gave Jakovic the freedom to advance the ball into the midfield, as he often does so calmly. James was the leading offender of commiting fouls near the box though, so that's something to keep our eyes on.


1. Give some credit to some of the other attackers like Christian Gomez, Fred, Santino Quaranta, and Luciano Emilio. These guys worked tirelessly to make sure it wouldn't be easy for the Fire to advance the ball out of the midfield, and made some defensive contributions too. The chemistry among our entire team was clearly evident tonight.


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Notice the only two starters I'm not rating are Josh Wicks and Marc Burch. The feud between these two guys had me worried for a minute. We already knew that both of these guys are sort of hotheads. But is it really a problem for two passionate guys to go at it like that? I have no doubt that they will work it out in the locker room, but we'll all be watching for comments on the Goffblog.

I've been ragging on referees a lot lately, so let me point out that this was a really well officiated match by Kevin Stott. We probably deserved all of our yellow cards, and he kept control of a match between two teams that have broken into fisticuffs in previous meetings. My only complaint comes from the time keeping. Four minutes of stoppage time when there weren't any injuries?

I don't know if we could have picked a better time to beat a tough Eastern Conference opponent on the road. We've finally broken our long winless streak. But more importantly, now we've got some momentum going into the Open Cup Final on Wednesday. Look for our best eleven to start this match. I've got my tickets. Do you?

DC United lose to Toluca, 3-1

I had my doubts about this lineup going in because it just seemed way too defensive. I'm in favor of continuing with the 4-4-2 formation for the duration of this tournament, but my vision of a 4-4-2 involves attacking wingers, and maybe a creative attacking central midfielder. McTavish and Allen aren't really what you think of in terms of attacking wingers, and Andrew Jacobson isn't really the most creative CAM either.

This would have been the perfect match for Danny Szetela. I understand he's in the doghouse, and obviously Coach Soehn knows more about why than any of us so I give him the benefit of the doubt, but it really would have been nice to see his creative skills on the field in place of any one of the previously mentioned midfielders. And if not Szetela, either Gomez, Fred, or Quaranta should have started this match. Oh yeah, and I guess Ely Allen is ahead of John DiRaimondo on the depth chart for now? I guess that might have changed after this match.

As for the back line, I'm fine with Namoff-Jakovic-Burch as our top lineup and Habarugira-James-John as our B squad. I'm also perfectly fine with Marc Burch as a CB in a four-man back. But if we have to add one of the A squad members to the B line each match, do we really want it to be Burch? Why is Burch more capable than Jakovic or Namoff at playing two matches per week?

As I stated, I liked the four-man back line. But from the 28th minute on, I was calling for Gomez to come in for Habarugira. Dude as AWFUL.


1. I've said before that some of DC United's best moments in 2009 have come from the combination of Santino Quaranta and Chris Pontius. These two immediately connected for a goal as soon as the Phoenix entered the match. I wonder if Soehn has been misusing these two in the regular season when he often puts Quaranta up top and Pontius on the right wing. It really should be the other way around.


1. Goal-saving play by Julius James in the 80th minute, and pretty consistently good defense throughout the match. It looked like he might have been the competent backup CB we've been looking for, that is until the deflection that led to the third goal.

2. There have been some mentions on this blog and others about the seemingly increasing number of giveaways from Clyde Simms this year. Well if you watch him closely, you'll see that he wins more balls than he loses. And winning balls is what the man is paid to do.


1. I've been a little bit of a Greg Janicki apologist over the past week, because I have tendency to believe that his terrible match against Marathon was more of an aberation than the norm. Because we've seen better from him before. Thefore I believe that the mistake by David Habarugira that resulted in an early goal for Toluca was much worse than the mistake by Janicki that resulted in an early goal for Marathon. Janicki's error seemed like more of a fluke mistake. I just don't get the impression that Habarugira knows any better! Maybe Wicks should have done better to call him off, but there's no way that goal would have happened with Namoff or Jakovic in that position instead. Habarugira also made several bad passes, left a man unmarked at the back post that led to a free header on goal in the 33rd minute, and earned a really bad yellow card early in the second half. I wonder which defender will have an awful match in our next Champions League appearance? My money is on Avery John.

2. Josh Wicks is usually pretty vocal, but I didn't see or hear him yelling "KEEPER!" to Habarugira on the first goal. He also misplayed the ball in the 80th minute, forcing a great goal-saving tackle by James. And the third goal was a bit unlucky, but if I'm going to blame any player for it, I might put some blame on Wicks.

3. Marc Burch got beat on the winning goal, plain and simple.

4. Removing Ely Allen at the 33 minute mark was more than just a tactical substitution in my mind, as the commentator suggested. I just can't think of one positive contribution that he made. At least it was good to see that it only took Soehn one third of the match to realize how poor his starting lineup was.

5. The more I think about it, the more I'm against the starting lineup used by Tom Soehn in this match. I've been definitively and consistently against the "Fire Soehn" crowd for all of 2009. This is the first match when I've began to consider how much longer I want him coaching this team. I just don't see how this lineup really had any chance of winning.

The next week and a half might be the most important of the season for us. Our road match against Chicago on Saturday is winnable. If they can lose 2-0 to the Beckham-less and Lewis-less Galaxy last week, I think we have a good chance of earning at least a point. And then Wednesday is of course the Open Cup Final (now offering $10 student tickets!), which has suddenly become the most important match we'll play in 2009 based on our nascent rivalry with the Sounders. The week ends with another winnable road match against FC Dallas. Earlier this week I wrote about how a long line of poor officiating has kept us from earning points this year. Now would be a really nice time for kharma to pay us back and shoot some luck in our direction for once.

Roster reset

With DC United in the process of finalizing a loan for Tiyi Shipalane from the Harrisburg City Islanders, I was pretty darn confused as to the status of our roster, since we'll now have 27 players listed on our first team roster when the league maximum is 24. Sounds like a good time for a late season roster reset!

Senior (20):
1 Wicks, 2 John, 3 Habarugira, 4 James, 5 Burch, 6 Jakovic, 7 Janicki, 8 McTavish, 9 Namoff, 10 Szetela, 11 Fred, 12 Gomez, 13 Jacobson, 14 Olsen, 15 Pontius, 16 Quaranta, 17 Simms, 18 Emilio, 19 Khumalo, 20 Moreno.

Developmental (4):
1 Kocic, 2 Wallace, 3 DiRaimondo, 4 Allen

Brandon Barklage has been placed on season-ending injured reserve, which freed up a spot for Ely Allen on the developmental roster.

David Habarugira was brought in under MLS's "Short-Term Injury Replacements" program (Rule II.K) for Ange N'Silu on 8/14/09, making N'Silu ineligible for at least 6 league matches.

So with Shipalane on his way south on I-83, United is going to have to make a roster move. And what of Adam Smarte? The Liberian PDL striker who has been training with the team for over a week now? The popular opinion is of course to overreact to the most recent matches and call for the sacrifice of Greg Janicki, but I don't think I see United cutting him just because of one awful performance. The more likely move I think will be to move Boyzzz Khumalo over to that short-term disabled list also. After all, how many South African wingers can you have on the active roster at once?

The officials strike again

I know I'm not the only one who thinks that DC United has gotten screwed by poor officiating multiple times this season, but this is really starting to get out of control. I can now count 7 points that have been stolen from us in 2009. If you're in the mood to be pissed off, view the videos and see for yourself.

3/22/09 DC United tie at LA Galaxy, 2-2
Referees award penalty kick to LA for a handball after the ball hits Rodney Wallace's thigh. Should have ended 2-1 DC. +2 points (Marrufo)

5/17/09 DC United tie at Chivas, 2-2
First goal scored by Galindo after he was clearly a full yard offsides. Second goal scored by Lillingston after another Chivas player had knocked over Louis Crayton with no foul called. Should have ended 2-1 or 2-0 DC. +2 points (Geiger)

5/30/09 DC United loss at New England Revolution, 2-1
Referees call a PK against United after Taylor Twellman falls down on his own in the box. Should have ended 1-1. +1 point (Grajeda)

8/22/09 DC United tie vs LA Galaxy, 0-0
Referees disallow a goal by Emilio for offsides when he was in line with a defender, fail to call a PK for United after Emilio is pushed over by Todd Dunivant, and then fail to call another PK for United after a handball by Miglioranzi. Should have ended at least 2-0, maybe 3-0. +2 points (Geiger)

With 7 more points by my count, DC United would be in second place in the Eastern Conference with 36. Also, LA would drop 4 points down to fourth place in the Western Conference.

DC United tie vs LA Galaxy, 0-0

If I was going to look at our remaining schedule and pick one match that would probably end scoreless, this would not have been it. You know the league has got to hate when two of its marquee teams finish with a scoreless draw. I certainly expected a couple of goals once the match seemed to open up late in the first half, but some good defending combined with quality performances from two of the lesser known goalkeepers in the league preserved clean sheets for each team.

But should it have been a scoreless draw? The offside call which disallowed a goal by Emilio from Fred early on looked too close to call for me. And then there was the shove on Emilio midway through the second half, which could have easily been called a PK. Maybe Geiger didn't have a great view, but if the side judge sees outstretched arms by the defender, he's got to call the penalty. I also rewound the tape a couple of times to confirm that in the 84th minute there was definitely a handball from Miglioranzi in the box. DCU could have scored 2-3 goals with a more lenient referee.


1. Bryan Namoff made two sliding saves, had a couple good steals, and almost scored with his head on a corner kick. He seemed to be in Donovan's head a bit too.

2. A couple good late saves from Josh Wicks to keep this one scoreless. If nothing else, I hope that shutting out Donovan and Beckham gives our defense some confidence.


1. Santino Quaranta looked like the best attacker on the field for most of the match, and that includes Donovan.

2. I have a feeling that some fans are going to criticize Luciano Emilio for this match, but keep in mind that he could have scored 1 goal and set up 1 penalty kick had the referees been watching the game more closely instead of admiring Beckham's good looks.


1. Rodney Wallace was the worst of the 3 national champion Terps on the field tonight. Sullivan said late in the match that Wallace has had a lot of chances from the wing. But very few of those chances resulted in shots on goal.

Speaking of Sullivan, I have to admit that he and Bretos did a pretty good job announcing this match impartially and without blunder, which is a bit rare, but a nice improvement over the terrible Christian Miles from the Marathon match.

So where does that leave us? Still out of the playoffs for now, but I'm not too discouraged quite yet. DC has 29 points, which puts them in 9th place overall. But they are only 1 point behind Toronto, Chivas, and Colorado who each have 30. Toronto is a good team, but I've got to think that Chivas and Colorado are going to fade at some point, and with 5 of our final matches at RFK where we're still undefeated, I still think United has a good chance of making the playoffs. But before we can continue with the regular season, we first have a midweek home match against Toluca, and then of course the Open Cup Final next Wednesday!

Quantity of matches

I wrote a couple of weeks ago that DC United will play more matches than any other MLS team this season. I figured it wouldn't be a bad idea to back that up with some numbers:


Read into that what you will.

For clarification though, this chart does not include the previous year's Champions Cup matches that Houston played prior to the start of the 2009 MLS season, or any other preseason matches.

DC United lose at Marathon, 3-1

A loss is pretty much what we expected on the road in Honduras, but it's disappointing all the same because it could have been so much more. And we're once again reminded of 2008. If you're unfortunate enough to recall the 2008 Champions' Cup and Superliga, you'll remember that DC United looked to be of fairly equal caliber to most of their opponents, but ultimately flunked out of the tournaments due to several individual mistakes and unlucky breaks.

Well the same thing happened tonight, only this time there was one lone target of blame: Greg Janicki. Which is really too bad because he showed a lot of potential towards the end of last year. And once again we're left wondering, as we do in all international tournaments, what could have been if our league allowed larger rosters and a bigger salary cap. Sure would have been nice if we had another reserve forward on our roster to bring in for Emilio late in the match. Marathon on the other hand substituted in multiple additional forwards, and we could only counter by bringing on extra defensive midfields. Not exactly the best tactics for a win.


1. Luciano Emilio looked like a freakin' warrior! Scoring and bloodying his face all in the same motion. Even at the 93 minute mark, Emilio was still going at goal. This performance just might earn Luci a Grosy nomination.

2. Maybe it took him a little while to settle in, but Andrew Jacobson has looked much better the past couple weeks. Surprisingly, he took on more of an attacking midfield role than Moreno for a lot of this match.


1. I had my doubts, but the starting lineup used by Tom Soehn turned out to be pretty darn effective. Other than one massive mistake by Janicki, we escaped the first half scoreless, and held our own until the final 10 minutes. The four-man back line worked exactly how it should in limiting chances, and our midfield won most of its battles. I do question the tactics towards the end though. Mainly, I didn't understand taking out Habarugira in favor of Simms. This move forced Simms to play in the backline, where he has not played in over two years. If we needed to insert another defender, why not Burch? Or why not move McTavish back instead, who at least played defense in 2008.

2. In our first glance at David Habarugira (Spanglish translation: "Habarooga") and Julius James, we saw some things to be happy about, and some things that made us nervous. The Habarugira dude has got speed, and likes getting forward. And when he does get forward, he doesn't leave huge gaps behind him like Avery John does. But he also committed a lot of fouls, including a yellow card that could have been a red with some other referees that we've faced. James was decent, and definitely had his highs and lows. He almost gave up an own goal in the first 10 minutes, but also started the sequence with a header that led to Emilio's goal.

3. The organization of Jaime Moreno and Ben Olsen was precisely what was missing from this team on Saturday.


1. It's not often that a single player is responsible for all three goals allowed, but that was the case tonight with Greg Janicki. He made a terrible mistake in misplaying the first goal, and his poor slide tackle in the box set up the penalty kick for the third goal. Marathon's second goal was a bit more deserved, but it was still against the run of play, and I still feel like Jakovic would have stopped it if he were playing instead.

2. Did you happen to notice that every good chance Marathon had in the first half came from their right flank? That would be the territory of Ely Allen and Avery John. Allen had a couple decent touches early, but was ultimately beaten too often, and John had just too many giveaways, although he did alright defensively for most of the match.

So hopefully the team can keep their heads held high going into Saturday's home match against the Galaxy. Hopefully we won't be starstruck and make the same stupid mistakes against Beckham and Donovan. And let's keep in mind that this could have easily been a 1-1 result if not for those mistakes. This team still has a lot left to fight for in the CCL. I'm very interested to see how we do against Marathon in the home leg on 9/24.

DC United lose at Toronto FC, 2-0

Thomas Rongen said early in the match that since both teams were playing with a 3-5-2 formation, it was likely that the team with the most individual talent would win. If you add up all the talent on United's roster and all the talent on Toronto's roster, United might prevail. But unfortunately games aren't actually won and lost that way. There are other elements that come into play. Like teamwork. Motivation. Desire.

What Rongen also missed is that although United might be the more talented team overall, the most talented individual soccer player on the field was clearly Dwayne De Rosario, and this game was in the books from the moment he ran around Jakovic to score the first goal. DC never looked like they had enough hustle to get back in it.


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1. I had my eye on John DiRaimondo for part of the first half because I wanted to see what the coaching staff saw in him to grant him his first league start. What I saw was a lot of good movement off the ball, and what seemed like pretty good vision. I would have liked to see him do better on stopping the cross that led to the first goal, but it's good to see that he's at least serviceable as a replacement winger.

2. We've seen some pretty good things out of Andrew Jacobson this season when he has a chance to get forward. I think he's at his best when Simms is also on the field so he doesn't have as much responsibility defensively.


1. Maybe this is just a minor gripe about Josh Wicks, but when the goalkeeper gets beat, wouldn't you at least like for him to look like he's trying to make a save? He may not have been able to stop DeRo's header, but at least make a dive for it! Don't just stand there and watch it go into the net. He did the same thing earlier in the match too on a Jim Brennan header that hit the post.

2. Very disappointing match from Dejan Jakovic, who might actually be regressing over the course of the season? Fullback hits on all the right points with him. Jakovic is usually pretty good at breaking up plays and escaping out of the back, but I would sure feel more comfortable if he had another central defender next to him.

3. Apparently Christian Gomez shaved off his passing ability in addition to his hair. No creativity from him in this one. It seemed like most of our decent scoring opportunities (and they were rare) came from Quaranta, not Gomez.

4. Good ol' brickfoot Luciano Emilio drew a couple fouls, but that was about his only positive offensive contribution. Fullback hits on all the right points with him.

5. I've been saying for weeks that this match would be an appropriate time for Tom Soehn to start with a 4-4-2 formation. I believe that formation will suit us best when used on the road against teams with multiple skilled attackers. Sadly, our back three were much worse than the back three of Toronto in this match, and that was ultimately our downfall. How about giving the 4-4-2 a try on the road next week against the speedy Marathon?

I posted before that this was a "must-not-lose" game. Apparently the players and coaching staff don't read as much DCUMD as they should, because they didn't seem to understand the importance of this match. With Toronto just 1 point behind us in the standings prior to today, I would argue that this was our most important league match since 6/13.

Not a good start to the most hectic portion of our 2009 schedule. If the team looked slow today, how are they going to look after an 8 hour flight to Honduras in just three short days? Then it's back home for a tough match against the resurgent LA Galaxy (Fellas, it's Ladies Night!)

Oh yeah and one more thing... Did that really look like anything close to a crowd of over 20,000 people? Or was my hearing off when Dave Johnson announced that as the attendance?

Delayed reaction to USMNT loss to Mexico

Plenty enough has been said elsewhere on the internet about the US Men's National Team's disappointing performance at Azteca earlier this week. Probably not enough has been made in the national media of the vomit-filled cups that were hurled (pun intended) at Landon Donovan while he was taking corner kicks. Real classy, Mexican fans.

But this is a DC United blog, so let me put it in a different perspective. I felt like what the US was really missing in this match was a Gomez. Or a Moreno. The US defenders were mostly solid, but every time they cleared the ball up the field, possession went right back immediately to Mexico. What the team was missing was a CAM or withdrawn forward who would be positioned immediately behind the front runners, and who could act as an outlet pass from the back, and then hold the ball up to start transitioning the other way. Mexico dominated our midfielders, but maybe having two defensive-minded central midfielders and two attack-minded wide midfielders was not the best strategy.

Here's some other quick observations from my viewing experience at the crowded Pour House:

• Only one person could be heard clapping after the Mexico goal. Clearly he or she had wandered into the wrong bar.
• Huge ovation after the Davies goal, as would have been expected.
• No one seemed to appreciate referee Roberto Moreno, as would have been expected. (Update: My blog post about him is still the top hit on google when you search for referee Roberto Moreno. It's going to take him a long time to live that match down.)
• When the camera showed Brian Ching starting to walk off the field, lots of clapping and cheers for "Jozy!" We were all disappointed to see Feilhaber and Holden standing up instead, although they both proved to be good additions.
• The second biggest ovation of the day came when Altidore entered the match. And then he proceeded to disappear.
• Nice little round of applause when mun2 showed the American troops in Iraq, but much louder boos when the soldiers started waving a Mexican flag. Funny how they didn't wave that flag until after their team was winning.
• DCU staffers were on hand with flyers, tshirts, stickers, and the actual 2008 US Open Cup! I grabbed a handful of wewintrophies.com stickers to post around town. One already made it into a restroom in the Ronald Reagan Building.

It was pretty cool actually to get to touch the Open Cup. I didn't find out until later that this was the first stop on the team's "We Win Trophies Tour", which is taking the Cup to bars all over DC for the next couple weeks. I definitely recommend checking it out.

Tweet this

I figured it's much more efficient for me to blog with 140 character bursts than to write out full posts, so I decided to give this whole Twitter thing a try.  Naturally, the moniker is @DCUMD.  Join me there for instant match reactions and more.

My twitter feed will likely be much more sarcastic, more jovial, and probably more lame, than this blog.  But I've got some big things in store for DCUMD over the next few months, so follow along at twitter.com/dcumd.  And feel free to send me a message on twitter or in the comments section if you think I should be following you as well.

Viewing party

This just in! For the US/Mexico match tomorrow afternoon, I will be attending the Screaming Eagles viewing party at the official DC bar for US Soccer, the Pour House (319 Pennsylvania Ave SE). I've got class at 6:30 that night though, so I'll be doing my best to keep it to a two-drink maximum, regardless of the outcome of the match.

See you there?

DC United lose vs Real Madrid, 3-0

If you think about it, this result actually makes a lot of sense. DC United's starters at full fitness were able to admirably shut down Real Madrid's starters for the entire first half. But as our players grew more fatigued in the 95 degree heat, our defense was worn down by some of the world's best players. You could see this coming when Real Madrid turned to their bench to bring in substitutes like Arjen Robben and Christoph Metzelder, and United countered with Milos Kocic and Ely Allen. And once DC allowed Madrid to score their first, as has happened to our club before, the flood gates opened, the levees broke, the dam collapsed, and any other water related clichés you can think of.

Hopefully, DC United won over a few new fans yesterday. If our average attendance this season is somewhere in the range of 16-18 thousand, yet 72,368 showed up to see Real Madrid, it's easy to do the math here. I don't know that we're going to sell very many new season ticket packages to those 56,000 additional attendees, but maybe some of them wind up going to one or two DCU matches a year? It would have been nice to see United get a few more chances on goal. Zero shots on target in the first half doesn't make for an exciting match to the casual fan. And it's a bit of a shame that the most exciting moment for DC came from Christian Gomez scoring while clearly offside.

I'm with Goff when he says that player ratings are tough for this kind of match. I'm hesitant to give anyone a low rating after shutting out Madrid for 45 minutes, and no one really separated themselves from the pack in either direction. Therefore we're left with…

and:
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1. Josh Wicks, Greg Janicki, and Marc Burch were all strong candidates for Top Shelf at the halftime whistle. Wicks made two or three really good saves in the first half, before getting beat twice by Higuain in the second. Janicki's first half may have been his best of the season, but he failed to stop Higuain's run straight down the middle of the field for the first goal. Burch also looked good breaking up several plays in the first half, but was utterly abused by Robben in the second.

2. Hopefully this will be our last time seeing Rodney Wallace in Simms' CDM role for a little while. He was seen running behind the play in two out of the three goals. But he was tasked with keeping Kaka scoreless in the first half, and succeeded at that.

3. It's become customary for me to rate new acquisitions in their first appearances for United (see John, DiRaimondo, and Szetela). How about Ely Allen getting his first appearance in a DC jersey against Real Madrid? Allen had some positive touches and didn't look out of place on the field with the rest of our reserves. He also gets credit for being the leading candidate to win a Bryan Namoff lookalike contest.

So with this heavily promoted friendly behind them, DC United now has six days of rest before heading up to Toronto for an important league match. What's troubling is that this six day break is the longest break that our players will get until after the match on 9/15. The coaching staff will have some pretty tough decisions to make in weighing starters for the Toronto match, and then a long trip down to Marathon just three days later. I'm not going to go so far as to call TFC on Saturday a "must-win", but I think it might be a "must-not-lose" match. With them trailing us by only 1 point with 10 games remaining, we cannot let Toronto emerge with a full 3 points.

The Fourth Sixth

This is the fourth in a recurring series where we look at the DC United season, five games at a time.

Results: 1-2-2. 9 GF, 11 GA

Standings: Third place in the Eastern Conference

Statistical Leaders: Christian Gomez (3 goals, 2 assists), Luciano Emilio (3 goals), Bryan Namoff, Jaime Moreno, and Fred (1 goal, 1 assist each)

Most frequent lineup:

What we liked:

• The Christian Gomez of 2007 - In the first half of the season, there was a wide variety of candidates for DC United's MVP: Quaranta, Pontius, Moreno, Gomez, maybe even Wicks or Jakovic. But at this point, I think Christian Gomez has emerged once again as our all-around best attacker, and the legitimate force that we'll need to stay level with our Eastern Conference competitors who each have dynamic attackers of their own in Chicago (No-neck), Columbus (GBS), and Toronto (DeRo).
  
• The return of the 4-4-2 - One of my New Years' Resolutions for 2009 for the club was to bury the 3-5-2. The club has yet to embrace that recommendation, as our personnel this year has been more appropriately aligned with a three-man backline. But the second half of the Houston match saw the return of the 4-4-2, with surprising success. Only time will tell though whether or not we start using this formation more often than just after giving up three goals in five minutes. I've hypothesized that it might be best to use a four-man backline when playing on the road against a strong attacking team (like maybe against Toronto next week?). Never the less, surely it's a good thing that we now seem to have the ability to play in multiple formations at different times, and that we're able to adjust when necessary.

What we didn't like:

• Where is the star power? – To put things in perspective, during this five game stretch, Jaime Moreno and Santino Quaranta each only started one match, and Luciano Emilio only started two. Those are three of our top scorers who didn’t see nearly enough time on the field. Of course this isn’t entirely the coach’s fault for keeping them away. Quaranta was out fighting for his nation at the Gold Cup and Emilio was suspended for one match due to a certain water bottle incident. I understand the desire to involve the rookies more, but Soehn should look at these disappointing results and take it as a signal that he should be getting Moreno onto the field as much as possible.


• Conceding multiple goals – Not only have we now gone seven straight league matches without posting a shutout, but we also had three multi-goal matches in this stretch of five games. Relinquishing a two goal lead in San Jose is indefensible.
  
• Disappointing reserves - We knew this would be a difficult part of the schedule when Quaranta and Jakovic were called up for Gold Cup duty, and that problem was exacerbated by minor injuries to Moreno, Emilio, and Simms. So we were counting on reserves like Ange N'Silu, Boyzzz Khumalo, Andrew Jacobson, and Greg Janicki to step up while filling in for our regular starters. Some of these players were adequate while on the field, but N'Silu and Janicki were particularly disappointing in their appearances.

Defining moment: I've got two of 'em. Bryan Namoff's own goal, followed later in the same match by his diving header against Colorado at home. These two goals epitomize the back-and-forth nature of four out of the five games we faced in this stretch. Namoff's resiliency was what propelled the team to a win in that match, and we saw that same sort of resiliency two weeks later from Emilio, coming off the bench with a head of steam to bring us one goal away from tying Houston after being down by 3.

Overall impression: United's 1-2-2 record in the fourth Sixth is a bit misleading, because this stretch of the season also included three Open Cup victories to return DC to the Final, and a home-and-home series victory over Firpo to return DC to the Champions League group stage. These wins have now guaranteed that DC United will play more matches within the 2009 season than any other MLS team. DC will play 45 matches (not including preseason), while the most any other team will play is Houston with 39. There's certainly pros and cons to that fact. Fatigue will be an issue during much of the playoff push over the next two months. But when the CCL and Open Cup are all over, our players should be in better shape than anyone else, and the international experience should benefit these guys for years to come. As for making the playoffs though, a lot is going to depend on the form of some other clubs. There is some new competition out there from teams like Toronto, Seattle, and Colorado who aren't normally in the MLS playoff hunt, and if they can maintain consistency, we could be in for a tough fight at the end of the season. I can see already some potential must-win matches in our future (10/3 Chivas, 10/17 Columbus).

DC United win at Firpo, 1-1 (5-4)

Win or lose, some of our guys looked like superheroes out there. I was so impressed with the way that Fred, Rodney Wallace, and Bryan Namoff were able to run so hard for 120 minutes straight. True warriors. Way to wear the shirt, boys.

This was a fun match to watch, as I felt like both teams really wanted the win. And after 210 minutes of action, penalty kicks was the only way to separate two evenly matched sides. We may be regretting it in October and November since we now have six more matches added to our schedule, but right now, I'm really happy to be in the next round. The group stage will be tough, but this team has so much more pride than last year's, so I'm hoping for better results.


1. We would not be playing any further CCL matches, were it not for another beautiful free kick and a converted fifth penalty from Christian Gomez, who should be our undisputed MVP at this point in the season.

2. This was the first match where Rodney Wallace was trusted with the true CDM role, and he turned out to be a really good ball winner.


1. Shouts out to Chris Pontius, Danny Szetela, Ben Olsen, and Marc Burch for all converting their penalty kicks. Going five for five with that kind of pressure is impressive.


I'm going to say None because I'm in a good mood, but if not for his converted PK, Burch would have found himself down here for his handball in the box. Which is the second time a United player has done that in the past month. What is Tommy teaching these kids?

This victory is going to make the Real Madrid match on Sunday feel like a party. Gomez, Moreno, Emilio, and Olsen won't be asked to play more than 45 minutes at most. And then it's back to reality with a visit to Toronto the following Saturday.

Before I get some much needed sleep, I just wanted to throw some props over to FSC. Besides some typically inane Bretosisms, I thought they put on a really nice broadcast, with good audio and video. The crowd in Cuzcatlan sounded awesome. If not for the horribly repititive and obvious diving, I could grow to like this Firpo team because their crowd was so entertaining. But that doesn't change the fact that we won. Good night :)

DC United lose at Houston Dynamo, 4-3

Two main points learned from this match: 1) Houston is really good. 2) The DC defense isn't.

Can you imagine how great this team would be if Dwayne De Rosario was still on the roster? This is already an all-star midfield, with Stuart Holden, Brad Davis, and Ricardo Clark all playing the best of their careers. I'd say that we really missed Clyde Simms again here, but I'm not sure he even would have made a difference tonight. We were dominated in possession.

But where I was most disappointed was in our defense. With Wicks and Jakovic playing in place of Wells/Crayton and los Gonzalos, our defense was supposed to be better this year. That just doesn't seem to be true though. After 20 matches in 2008, United had allowed 34 goals. Now through the same point of the season in 2009, we've allowed 32.


1. Bringing on Luciano Emilio for Gomez to start the second half turned out to be the most important call of the match for Soehn. Emilio was clearly hungry, and although his first goal was a bit lucky after getting a deflection, his second goal was well deserved after he almost scored on a backheel. Hopefully the best thing we'll take from this match is that Emilio is back in business.

2. This was a Gros-esque performance from Fred, who covered a lot of ground in the first half, and then added a goal in the second after being allowed to roam free a bit more, which was an important result from the formation shift


1. Two of Houston's goals came off Bryan Namoff's side of the field, and he may have been at fault on their third, although I would argue more that it was just an awesome goal. Regardless, Namoff still had some really good defensive plays, and he also earned an assist on Emilio's first.


1. This was the worst match we've seen from Josh Wicks in a United uniform. It seems that just like Crayton, he started off strong, but the fanbase will eventually lose confidence in him. Wicks might be above average by MLS standards, which is something we haven't been able to say since the departure of Perkins, but I just think it's rare to see that type of disappointing performance from the more consistent MLS keepers like Onstad, Busch, and Reis. In order to remain our long term starter, we need to see more consistency from Wicks.

2. Not the best night for Dejan Jakovic. If not for his penalty kick foul, this match may have ended in a 3-3 tie.

3. Santino Quaranta was a total non-factor in this one. He looked like a guy who's only played one match in the past month. You can thank Bob Bradley for that.

4. It was Ben Olsen's fault that Brad Davis had so much space to shoot for Houston's first goal, and he also turned the ball over on the play that led to their second.

The big question that remains though after one of the most exciting MLS matches of the season is whether we should be using a 4-4-2 formation more often. United won the second half 3-1. Now that's not exactly fair to the Dynamo because they weren't pushing as hard since they had a 3 goal lead for the majority of the period. But at the same time, it seemed as if our backline was much stronger after adding a fourth defender, and we didn't lose much in the midfield. As with any other tactical decision, I think it depends on the situation. On the road against a team with several strong attackers might be a good situation for the 4-4-2. Let's see if DC goes to this formation again in their next league match on the road against Toronto in two weeks.

DC United win vs Rochester Rhinos, 2-1

Just realized I never gave ratings for this match... Based on game highlights:

Top Shelf: Boyzzz Khumalo, Devon McTavish, Rodney Wallace
Call: Andrew Jacobson
Rail: Greg Janicki, John DiRaimondo