Yesterday, a lightning bolt seared the heavens and struck the DCU offices out of the blue sky. Eventually, there will be only one. DC has 45 people dedicated to sales and marketing. Why couldn't it have been one of them? Surely we could have gone without one of the half-dozen employees with Brand Engagement in their titles.
With this lineup, the only way they aren't in the mix for the Spoon is if Brillant and Felipe Martins (spit!) continue to overperform. Who's going to score the goals?
You must have missed it. Kamara is going to score 15 with a brand new #10 coming into the mix. I have it from a solid source ... kindda like that episode of the X-Files when the smoking man said the Buffalo Bills will never win a Super Bowl.
I presume the lineup will change before the first kickoff. But if it doesn't, the only way this team is even passably mediocre would be to go All Hands on defense. It would look like the end of last season after Rooney and Acosta had checked out. Canouse at RB, empty bucket with Martins and Moreno never crossing the halfway line, full Bennyball with eight defenders, just hoping for an undeserved gift from VAR or a goal off a corner kick, and then dodging bullets in a shooting gallery until the ref mercifully blows their whistle. If the defense is as stalwart as it was at the end of the season, it's not completely inconceivable that DC could be a mid table team. But that's a low ceiling. And if the defense isn't absolutely perfect for 90 minutes in every single game the floor is very, very low.
Yes, we could win, or tie, some games this way, but the matches would be boring and painful to watch. How many of us would willingly brave the many inconveniences of Audi Field to attend?
We were a midtable spend before Rooney went away ... although Kamara gets a raise, so we'll probably be a lower midtable spend, so a midtable result is about the best we can hope for with another billionaire coming into the conference in Miami, where the ownership has the resources to build a roof over the stands in the temporary stadium they're building. We should take our midtable finish and be glad we even have a team ... they could have ended up in Austin.
If DC United hired more beer vendors and fiddled with the price and selection they could make a killing.
The first half of the first year in Audi we found someone who gave a good bourbon pour in the south end and revisited and tipped that person well - they nixed that shit hard and all the pours since have been, if you'll excuse the bad pun, piss poor. As a cocktail-pourer/bartender, If you're gonna err in a pour in that corporate place, it better be on the low side or you'll be reprimanded.
He's worked for two; the first "Miami" team; and then DC United pre-Levien (or if you wanna go further back, the Payne era)
We're a real team, we just have shit ownership at the moment. Sooner or later, they'll have to sell, they're already out of their depth, they just haven't figured it out yet. The new stadium bought us a mid-level payroll this year, ~$11M. Give it time for the tide to rise. You've already got big, big spending teams in the East with Toronto, Atlanta, and NYC. New England might be starting to spend. Cincy will figure it out sooner or later especially with the half billion Meg Whitman just put into the club and the Charlotte team is backed by a guy with a $12B net worth. God help us if hapless Chicago ever figures out how to build a good team on $13.5M in this league. As I said, they've brought the short end of a broken stick to a gun fight. I figure Levien & Co. stick around until expansion is done or at least slows down. Their shares of the buy-ins are probably like nice cash dividends. My guess is 32-40 teams is what MLS "needs" to get to a point where east & west play all inter-conference toward an MLS Cup final, like MLS was before intraleague play. The current unbalanced schedule is just growing pains. The goal was never to be like a Euro or S American league, most of those countries are the size of Pennsylvania. Brazil is smaller than the eastern time zone I think. The goal was always to build a league like the NFL or NBA in scale.
Did Meg Whitman really put half a billion into FC Cincinnati? And she's not even from there (although she started her professional career there at P&G). We need a billionaire of our very own for DC United. The one who comes to mind is David Rubenstein, but he's into more important things like the arts and cultural preservation. And no, Jeff Bezos doesn't really live here, although he is remodeling a gigantic residence. Any chance his ex, McKenzie Bezos, could be turned on to soccer in DC? She scored a $38B settlement from him, and I'm sure she's looking for a worthy cause.
She’s actually from there I read and P&G has a massive corporate presence in Cincy. They are a customer of my company. actually it was $100M for a 20% stake valuing the club at $500M https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/...-values-cincinnati-soccer-team-at-500-million
So. I think DK has grown into the job. If Benny is staying on, then I'd like to see is a big investment in 1) scouts (both USL/MSL and overseas), 2) technical development of DC youth teams, and 3) scrape the pay to play in said youth teams. Any chance we any of it?
Haven't we already seen numerous announcements of new scouting partnerhsips, new technical directors to assist Ben where he sorely lacks, news of sending Ben to experience camps at other clubs owned by our owners, better youth team technical development has also been announced. Yes they should absolutely scrap the pay for play in the youth system - it's an embarassment to the league and to the beautiful game that only kids of means can play at United youth academy - but that's not the problem here. It's that we have an ill-equiped captain on a ship he's barely been able to navigate at all.
Ben will go eventually. For whatever reason they've kept him - stasis, cost, etc... - let's start getting the other stuff right. Setup a strong system that begins to bring young talent into the team. It will ratchet up the pressure and the obvious inability of Ben to take advantage. At the same time, the ownership will see that we are missing the boat on less expensive talent, that is also saleable for profit. They don't understand or value "the beautiful game", but are thinking about profit.
Haha, you say that like that hasnt been the ethos of this team the last 10, save for a couple breaks (DeRo, early LuchaRoo)