Game: DC United vs FC Dallas Date: Saturday, October 13th Time: 3:55 PM [CST] Location: Audi Field, Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America Weather Forecast: AM Showers; H 58, L 43 Competition: Major League Soccer Last 5 For Opponent: W-W-D-W-D Live TV: KUNV-23 Univision | Twitter Radio: FCDallas.com/radio [English] | KFLC 1270 AM La Voz del Pueblo [Spanish] The last time DC lost was August 29th at home to Philly. They are still fighting for their playoff lives. This will be a tough one but I see us getting at least a draw out of it.
Any ideas about a starting lineup with Cannon and Gruezo out? Hollingshead for Cannon? Jacori for Gruezo?
The Army has seen fit to order me to Ft. Belvoir this week in the service of the nation, so I'll be in attendance wearing my hoops. Anybody else going to the game, perchance? (This also comes with the added bonus of not having to listen to Univision announcers.)
My kingdom for a playmaker! We had sooo many promising beginnings that fizzled in the final third because nobody could make an incisive pass. Plus the fact that none of our guys appear capable of putting a dangerous shot on goal. Just infuriating. Audi Field is pretty nice. They definitely put the upper deck on the wrong sideline, though. The sun is blasting you in the face until at least 7:15 P.M. up there. I prefer the stadium in Frisco, though. FCD's concessions are better, and you can watch the game from the concourse. Zero parking in D.C., though the trains are nice here. Long walk from the stadium to the station, however. I'd honestly love to have major public transit available to Frisco.
Our attacking players take way too much time and too many touches before making a decision. Every single one of them. I really wonder how much Pareja questions them on this in training. Urruti, Mosquera, Lamah, Barrios, they all hold onto the ball much longer than necessary and it's easy to defend against as the opposition as this gives them all the time in the world to set up and organize themselves defensively. Very frustrating to watch, but we were still unlucky to lose here to such a poor set piece goal late on. This game highlighted the reality of our attack in my opinion and if we don't make any notable changes, you can forget about winning the MLS Cup with this much wastefulness. We need more qualitative possession over quantitative, but I'm not sure I'm seeing that with this front 4 all in at once. Oscar's done well to figure out the defensive side of things lately, but he's still got some glaring offensive issues to address if we are to have a lengthier post-season this time around.
Frustrating ending to a game we mostly took to them. As others have pointed out, the attack is too ponderous. Defense is very impressive this season but we don't score enough to make up for the occasional defensive brain fart. Next week just became a must-win.
Lots of mixed feelings about this one. Sucks to lose on a cluster******** goal, but we got two gifts in the first half when Hedges gave Rooney an open shot after getting wrongfooted on a long ball, and when the ref disallowed their goal on the corner kick for Hollingshead fouling a guy off the ball. I thought we were the better team, but geez the struggle to put a shot on goal, much less in the goal. Some credit goes to DC's defense, but mostly our non-scoring is due to the FCD ineptitude discussed in posts above. Forget what I said last week about Mosquera being a possible striker.
this team's grind it out style works most of the time, but is also subject to the fluke goal, or what I suspect will happen in the playoffs, someone on the opposing team that is a true difference maker and creates magic moments. This team does not have that player and hasn't for a long while. (if you say Mauro, I will ask you to tell me the last time Diaz made a magic moment in a meaningful game)
Depends on what you define as a magic moment, but his hattrick of assists in the Galaxy win at TS was pretty impressive, particularly the ones for Lamah. Best performance we've seen all year from anyone in that #10 role and definitely different to what we'll get from an Urruti there.
"meaningful game" - early season rout of last place LA doesn't qualify in my book "in a long while" - 2+ years ago was kinda a reference to that being the last time he was that for FCD
I hate fan arguments like this. Person A says "show me the last time Player X did something good". Person B comes with evidence, and Person A retorts "oh that team they played isn't good, that doesn't count." So would it have been better if he didn't have those 3 assists in that game then? He registered 3 assists, 2 very good ones, and outshone Ibra and Alessandrini, two of the best players in the league, in one of his final home games for the club. And LA wasn't even last place and even if they were, it's a moot point given that they're in contention for a playoff spot now in the same season. And given that we're only in the top 2 now by a tiny margin, I'd say the points from that game aren't unmeaningful at all. Those were magic moments that we got from Diaz before his departure, there's no point in downplaying it, especially when we don't have a player who's doing anything similar now in his place when we play even worse teams like SJ, Houston, Orlando, etc, let alone the teams we'll actually play in the post-season. We simply don't have that player right now and have had to find other ways to achieve success, which we're doing albeit with lots of room for improvement.
You know what DoubleB? You're right. While that performance didn't qualify the definition I intended, if someone thinks that qualifies, so be it. But, if we agree that qualifies, it was one time too few since he'd been injured. In the end I think we all agree the team is lacking a player that can take over and produce magic in a grind it out game - and I worry there are others in the West that do - and will against Dallas in the coming weeks.