Could we possibly be starting this season on any worse of a note? I haven't actually paid DAILY attention to what has been going on thus far but it doesn't sound so great. First, we breeze through some lower-tiered college level teams and start to think that we are some sort of offensive machine with very few weaknesses throughout the lineup - Hudson is beaming. Then, we get waxed - totally waxed - by a couple of MLS teams. Didn't we lose by 4 or 5 in two consecutive matches and then fail to find the net in a 3rd scoreless match? Again, I have been paing half-attention to what has been going on, thus far. Strangely, this once called "potent" offense seems rather impotent. So..... back to the scrimmages against college teams. And WHAM!!! The guy we hired to coach and instruct our youth players-to give them respect and disipline- freaks out because of a questionable OFFSIDE call allowed a goal to be scored! A few weeks ago I thought we were on the onset of acheiving new heights but this definitely is an all-time low. An yes, I know, it is only pre-season, but yikes!!!!
Something you should note however, we have hardly had a full roster all preseason. Rimando has been banged up, Q1 has been with the birth of his child, Bobby has been gone for U-20 matches, Nellie has been injured, it's hard to put the pieces together when you don't have all the pieces. Yes, this team will struggle early, but I think they will turn it up big time late in the season.
The unfortunate Stoichkov incident is really the big negative. Psychologically it is almost certain to take some of the edge off the team's play in the short run. Ultimately, we cannot change the past, so we need to move on and concentrate on building the team. I think the players will do that. Actually, we played 3 MLS teams, none with our full starting lineup, and we tied one (Chicago) and lost two (Columbus and KC). We've won or tied every other game we've played. IMHO, preseason results are almost meaningless. Hudson and Trask essentially said at the meet the coaches night that we tried very hard not to show our MLS competition our true team or game plan. Of note, the 4 goals scored by a very potent Columbus attack, 2 were scored while DC United had only 9 men on the field, and the other two were scored when we experimented with Ivanov in midfield--an experiment that failed. So while the score looked very bad, it wasn't actually as bad as it seemed. Against KC, where we allowed 5 goals, that's the only really bad showing we've had. I'm not jumping for joy at how we're playing, but I'm not going Pollyanna and screaming the sky is falling either. This is a team of very many new parts and positions. It will undoubtedly take time to mesh. I'm comfortable with the team that Hudson's assembled. If we aren't a force by the end of the season, then Hudson's neck will be on the chopping block, but I'm willing to give him the entire season to turn this team into a well oiled machine. -Digital
Maybe we can still blame everything on Rongen ... I don't buy the line about not having all the pieces together. Sure - not everyone is healthy and not everyone is with the team but these are not problems unique to DC United. Plenty of other MLS teams have unhealthy players and plenty of other MLS teams have players with the U-20s etc. That's no excuse. And it's bull to say that it's still the off-season. We're playing other teams in the same damned off-season and plain and simple - they're better than us. They're in better shape than us. They're more organized than us. They've clearly got more discipline and control than us. The off-season is not an excuse when you stink in comparison to other off-season teams. As far as I can tell we're paces behind pretty much every MLS team going into the start of the season. Sure we're probably going to get better as the season goes along. But the other teams will get better too. My sense is that we're going to spend the entire season playing catch up to ever better teams that got off the mark before we did. I will simply note this: Even in the last Rongen years and even last year, I always began the season thinking to myself that this would be the year that things would snap back into shape. This season I don't think that at all. ... pass the Scotch ...
Why not? Look at our preseason games, we've been missing large parts of our team. Sure, now they are all back and getting healthy. But back in the preseason games, when your starting keeper doesn't play at all, that's not going to be the same result you will get in the regular season.
I'm with Knave on this one.. These are simply poor excuses that we seem to trot out every time we lose.. We're all guilty of using them from time to time and this is the same old crap all over again.. The original poster of this thread is thinking exactly the same way I am.. I'm worried, very worried.. Anyone who says that they aren't worried are being a bit too optimistic at this point.. With that being said, I agree'd with all of the offseason changes and am looking forward to the new season, but, this preseason has been an unmitigated disaster with all the injuries, missing players and now this Stoichkov thing... This doesn't necesarrily equate to having a losing season once again, but it certainly doesn't help a team who already suffers from a lack of confidence..
I'm also with Knave. Losing by 4 (5?) goals to Kansas really isn't acceptable. Also, we'll be without many of our key players for fairly long stretches during the season.
Awesome Team I agree that the preseason has been "awesome" for one reason: It has proven what we all thought to be impossible, that DCU couldn't get much worse. Right now, I think we are a worse team than where we ended last season. That is an "awesome" accomplishment. I hope our boys put it together and prove all of us wrong.
I'm not sure where to post this, but I found it on the mls web site, "According to the Washington Post, Keller and Spurs may play at RFK against DC United next month." figured it will give you guys something else to talk about
Ok people, when has the preseason in any sport been a good indicator of how the season has turned out? With Wrongen we usually did really well and when the season started we, well we know how we did. Do I have concerns? Yes, but they were there before the preseason ever started. Am I all of a sudden going to change my tune because C-Bus hit us for 4 and KC hit us for 5? No, maybe they had an off day. Last weekend in the EPL, Friedle and Co. were hit for 5 by Newcastle...do they all of a sudden stink? No Get a grip people....these games don't make a season. Yes other teams appear to be better of then we are right now, but that means absolutely nothing. Last season should have taught you that. As I recall the Revs were as bad as we were and they took LA to overtime before losing in the cup. We were a just out of it after the last game of the season. Yes we were not knocked out of the playoffs until the last weekend of the season and we were much worse last year than we will be this year in depth alone. With the way MLS is setup all it takes is a good run of games at the right time (see Revs of last year). So sit back take a chill pill and relax. There were questions before the season starts, they are still here, but we don't have any new ones. If you expected all the questions to be answered and us to look like we are world beaters right now with all the changes we have had you have been way to optimistic from the get go. I am not worried, but then I don't expect great things at the start of the season. I do thing we will be in the fight at the end of the season (by the way incase you forgot it is 30 games this year). A lot can happen over the duration of the season and all the teams, except maybe LA (the leagues favorites), still have questions to be answered
Months ago, when I first saw SoccerAmerica's summary of where the MLS teams were training and who they were playing I thought that we had the weakest set of warm-up opponents. Now, granted that many of these opponents for other MLS teams may not have been playing their hardest, or their full first team rosters, but underlying it all is that we have played very few professional teams in preparing for the season, and when we did we got killed. People can argue that we've had injuries, etc., but the basic fact is that we have seldom been tested this preseason by equivalent or better teams, and certainly haven't had a preseason as challenging as any of the other MLS teams. So I, too, do not have a good feeling about how we will do this season. I just wonder what United's managmeent and coaching staff were thinking when they set up this preseason schedule.
We're counting the wrong goals As much as I'd like to think that United has managed to get worse, I think that we're looking at the wrong measurement scale. Going into preseason games, different coaches look at different things to improve on. They have different "goals" for their clubs. Whether it is to maintain a high level of fitness, focus on completing designed plays, or learning the names of the new players, every team has a different objective during preseason. I'd imagine that Columbus would have have a different goal going into a pre-season match than United would. And I'd like to think that part of DC's goals would be to learn each others tendancies so that we will be able to play as a team without relying on one or two players. This type of learning can only come when playing with each other. And you learn what not to do just as much as you can learn what to do when you play with each other. The differences in skill level surely was the reason for the early results against the college teams of S. Florida, and not because United had somehow managed to "come together". That was obvious when we met the MLS clubs. But as the preseason went on the players have become more comfortable with each other and with the way each other plays. But this type of learning is going to take time, especially when we don't start off at the beginning with a starting 11 on the field. Withi injuries, call-ups, and the experiments as to who plays well together, DC has had a very difficult time "coming together". Ray is trying to get 20+ players to play together. The best 11 will start. Most other MLS teams have a starting 9 or 10 with a few spots open for new players. While we look at some of the players who will start, I'm sure that Hudson is looking for the players to fit in when player "X" isn't performing. If we are suppose to put together the type of free flowing play that the Fusion accomplished, then we will no doubt have to have a fluid change from one player to another. So, we've lost, big at times, the American U match was our worst loss of preseason. That loss hurt the chemistry of the team. Lossing 4-2 vs Crew and 5-0 to the Wizards (not sure on the scores), weren't as big as the scores made them out to be. The only real way to judge our performance during preseason is see how we play during the season. Either way, win or lose, during preseason, I can't wait for this (incredible long) preseason to end.
I think we will suffer less from losing players than many teams. With the U-20s cancelled, that means Convey and Tino are freed up a bit. Convey of course will get nat call ups, and will be our most valuable loss. I know BA loves Olsen, but I think his day is almost done at the nat level, unless he really impresses early on with DCU. Marco isn't getting callups anymore. Stewart is up for Venezuala, but since BA wants to look at kids more, he might not get many calls this summer. Nelsen is a concern, possibly Rimando, though I think Nick is destined for 3rd string at best, behind Howard and Thornton, in the post-Friedel/Keller/Meola era. All in all, having a lame team could give us a slight edge when summer callups are announced, IMHO.
I thought the U-20s were postponed until (possibly fall) and not cancelled. If that is the case we are hurt more than if it were played now. I don't want to go into the final stretch of the season without Convey and Quranta.
The way things are in the world right now, postponed = cancelled, unfortunately, but this is a good point. I know they haven't been rescheduled officially, but who knows what will happen down the road. Thanks.
Very few people have actually seen DCU perform this offseason (other than practices in the DC area). So we're going by "results". Those may or may not mean much. 1. If Hudson and Co. put a lot of emphasis on results in the preseason, fielded competitive lineups with strategy to attack the opposition, than the results so far are catastrophic. 2. If Hudson and Co. DELIBERATELY did not field our natural lineups with planned roles, against teams OR if the focus was more on conditioning, combination play and experimentation, then the results are close to meaningless. I also buy the argument that probably the 2 (maybe 3) worst teams we could have played in pre-season would be: KC, LA and Columbus in that order. Why? Those 3 teams are basically fielding intact lineups from last year with little change in formation or roles, KC and LA (and to a great extent Columbus) are 3 of the more "organized" teams in the league which means the focus more in preseason on getting their system in and playing that system (less experimentation). Case in point: KC started fast last year (despite not having the most talent or close to it IMO in the league) but faded after the first half of the season. I think the real reasons to be concerned have more to do with some elements that no-one can accurately discuss: --is Nelson a good D-mid? --is Ivanov a classy central defender and organizer who can provide the glue for the defense? --is Stewart the kind of finisher who will solve our problems from last year and give us 12-16 goals? Unless you've watched those guys play in games or against some kind of competition, we just don't know the answers to those questions. We might suspect we know, but realistically we don't know. And I think the answers to those 3 will dictate how the season goes. All other issues (does have Petke have enough outside speed for a 3-man backline? Will Quaranta or Eskandarian step up? What kind of season will Etcheverry have? Will Stoichkov stay healthy? Will Reyes improve this year? and others) are things that DCU has several different options for or can recover from if the answer is "no." But the first 3 are ones we need answers to. Those answers--more than any preseason games against KC, etc. will determine our season success.
Count me in on this train of thought. We are hearing the same excuses we heard last season. Good coaches and good teams find a way to win. I thought we had upgraded our reserves? Brought in better players that would compete? But we have an injury or two or some players missing and it's the same thing. "We didn't have our full team" wah wah wah! I remember a season where DCU didn't start the same team EVERY GAME, and we still won MLS Cup. No more excuses!
That's not the way I remember Pollyanna... Maybe I need to go rent it again. Nah, Parent Trap was a much better Hayley Mills movie anyway.
I understand some of this idea of not fielding a real team because you don't want to tip your hand to the rest of the league, but with a finite number of pre-season games available and with so many new faces on the team, was this really the best strategy? These guys need as much time on the field getting to know how they play against real opponents, not in intra-squad scirmmaging ar beating up on college teams. If they didn't want to tip their hand to other MLS teams then why not go abroad like other teams did so you can play what you think will be your best line-up? Maybe it's just me but I've never been a big believer in "hiding" anything. Put your best 11 out there get them to use to each other, do some experimentation, but not because you're hiding formations or tactics but because it's a legitimate experiment. Hudson admitted to not playing his best side because he didn't to show anything to the other team. I just don't see how with so many changes this was the wisest thing he could have done. Only time will tell.
I bet he didn't know who his best 11 were at the time. If Reyes came in out of condition, he may not have been someone that Ray would have started at that time, but he was planning on having him as a starter. Same goes for Etch. It has been a very interesting preseason none the less.