Now imagine working right next door to it. (Blue Plains, not the team; although the experience is probably similar!)
I feel like I got full value for my ticket yesterday. I came looking for heaping plate of suck and I got it. There was no skimping on the suck. Don't think for one minute United will let you go home with out the full measure of suck! BTW Chivas were quite good. If one were looking to switch from a diet of suck, it would do to take a peek in the kitchen and see what chef Preki is cookin'.
If I was Tom, well not that I would want to be him right now, next 2 games are must win no exceptions, but one game at a time, we still have CCL, tough task in mexico but not impossible! Heres my XI for 10/17: --------------Kocic------------- John---James--Jakovic--Walllace --------------Simms------------ Quaranta-----------Fred/Szetela -------------Gomez------------- -------Moreno-----Pontius------
My biggest fear at this point is that - if DCU will qualify to the next round of CCL (like it'll probably happen) - the club is going to reconfirm Soehn...
It was a real kick in the nuts last night to get home and find my season ticket invoice waiting for me from DC United. The sad thing is the size of the crowd in comparison to the performance...and the crowd was awesome. The audio was incredible watching the replay. I started to switch around to the other MLS games I recorded yesterday off of DK and FSC and there was no comparison. Our match, thanks to our supporter groups, looks and sounds like a real match not a collegiate showcase. ******** you Tom Soehn. ******** you Dave Kasper. ******** you Kevin Payne.
I'm so glad I was feeling the beginning of the flu yesterday and elected to stay home. I remember that Miami game from 2000, when we lost 6-2. If last night was that bad, I'm glad I missed it.
I still dont get why TS pulled out gomez...... for moreno? I am thinking in his head he simply thought 'lets pull out gomez for moreno cause everyone else is young and can play the whole game, both of them on the field... not happening. They are too old'. I tihnk had gomez and moreno been on together, wtih pontius we could of played better/different.... the moreno/gomez combo was what got us the SS in 06 and 07...
It needs to be said: Kevin Stott is horrible. The clutching and grabbing on both sides was almost non-stop. Has he no idea what soccer is supposed to look like? I can't quarrel with the second half flurry of cards -- particularly after watching them again on TV, but if he had done his job in the first half, most of them would not have been necessary. But Stott was not the difference last night. From the start it was obvious that Chivas was the more athletic team, virtually all over the field. Even with Bornstein playing center back, Chivas looked bigger, stronger, faster at almost every position. Olsen and Gomez seemed to shrink as the game went on. By the time Gomez departed, he looked like a first grader trying to play against the sixth grade. And Simms, James, and Burch looked overmatched physically for much of the game as well. Justin Braun may have scored only one goal this year, but he was enough of a physical presence to keep our center backs occupied for much of the night. One hopes that the front office was paying attention. Athleticism really matters in MLS particularly with refs like Stott in charge. If (or should it be when?) Emilio, Gomez, Moreno, Fred and Olsen depart, DCU will be left with a few players with real promise (esp. Quaranta, Wallace (we missed him last night) Jakovic, and Pontius) and a decent bunch of journeymen, but not the makings of a good team. Even with something like $1.3 million in salary available if the big five depart, DCU will have a hard time filling those slots with players good enough to form the core of a competitive team. I feel sure that the current front office could not do it, but I also suspect that a new front office team would struggle to do it either. It's just too hard to locate the right players from overseas. I think the team needs to concentrate on the drafting well and on finding more MLS reclamation projects, but that won't be enough to restock the team for next year. Next year could therefore be a real struggle -- new coach, bunch of new players ...and so on.
Yes, and Marco won us three MLS Cups, an Open Cup, and the InterAmerican cup by 1998. The point is that 2006 was three years ago. That's a lifetime in the career of an older player. Having Gomez and Moreno on at the same time would just have had two aging stars on the field instead of one.
True...... I mean really though, if i was tommy, i'd give them a shot for the hell of it on the field together. Quaranta looked like crap last night, having trouble trapping the ball or fumbling it up somehow. I would have thrown moreno out there instead of him, and had gomez, and pontius running off of morenos passes. I always wanted to see pontius, gomez, and moreno on the field together with pontius being played at forward, but i have yet to see all three together, and see what would happen.
60% of this team's salary cap is in Emilio, Moreno, Gomez, Fred and Olsen. Has there been a single match this season in which all five were on the pitch at the same time?
Thank you. First time I've been able to laugh today. But back in the early- to mid-80s, I really did think that Barry Manilow and Joe Montana were the same person.
Without question that loss was as bad as any I've seen, with the possible exception of the excrement that was the 4-0 shellacking at home against Chicago, and that was at least a playoff game. But lets be serious. A big part of our woes all season long were structural. The 5 Bootsy mentions -- specifically because they cover so little ground -- probably shouldn't have been on the field at the same time. We couldn't play in any league with a team that slow. Sadly, with the personnel we had, I don't believe what Jaime wanted (playing the same 11 consistently) was really possible. From the start we knew that Benny and Jaime were on their last legs (quite literally). We got more out of both of them (last night's game notwithstanding) than we had any right to expect IMHO over the season. Gomez was effectively a last minute pickup, since we weren't able to find a #10 in the offseason. Being honest, we started with a core that was old and slow and unable to go the distance regularly. That's not disrespect, I have their jerseys. That's just a question of age. That said, with the young guns that we were lucky to pick up -- and we did pick up some real quality I believe -- we could have had a good team this year provided two things: The first was that Emilio and Fred stepped up. Both have skills, both have flair, but in the end neither one had the passion or the work rate to take the game in hand or earn any part of their incredibly inappropriate salaries. [Note: I have to assume Emilio has pictures of Payne in a bra and panties, because I can think of no other reason why they agreed, after he was already having a mediocre year, to pay him DP money]. FWIW I'm not sure if I'd have started either one last night on the basis of their productivity this year or the commitment they've showed. The second thing that was needed was coaching. Not managing minutes, not keeping peace, but real coaching. This was by sad design a tough job. Given the mix of old and young we needed a new style to compensate for our weaknesses in an increasingly fast and physical league. We needed creativity and intensity. Instead what we got -- from the top on down to the fcking medical staff -- was what can only be described as bumbling. There was no system in evidence last night. No fitness edge. No intensity. Think of the number of times this year that the team has come out at the half flat, or has not been up for the start of a big game. If you can't motivate and you can't do the tactical part of the coaching job, you can't be that good of a coach. This would have been a tough year for a good coach, but Tommy made a true mess of it. What I think infuriates the fans is not that the team did not win the games it could have. Stuff happens, and life (as well as MLS refs) are often unfair. What infuriates me and many is the way that the team lost -- jogging, backpassing, with no sense of purpose or the run until you puke intensity that champions have. I'm sad for Ben. It wasn't a good night, but he was often the only one carrying the torch this year. I'm sad for Jaime, since a good coach could have used his skills so much better. I'm sad for the fans, since a season like this hardly helps the stadium cause and is gut wrenching. We fans really do love this team. But its painful to watch the team -- and some of our most storied players -- go out this way.
I was out of town and had to give up my tickets, but what shocked me about the result was that I had seen Chivas on TV just a week earlier and they looked awful. More back passing than even DCU, if that can be believed. So they come to our house and run rings around us, so I hear. Now maybe they were having a bad day when I watched them, or maybe we were having an especially bad day when they whipped us, or ---maybe we simply suck. One thing I do know is that Preki may not be beloved by his players but he can really coach 'em up.
Chivas has really not been impressive at all for a few weeks now, and yet we found a way to play worse than them. I almost couldn't believe the things I saw in the first half. When did we get our first shot on goal, 30th min, maybe? Ridiculous. At home, in a must win game, in front of a very good crowd, and that's the steaming pile put on the field? It's like, at every point this season that I thought they had really pulled a sticky brown one out of their asses and failed miserably, somehow it managed to be topped at the next big game. Totally unreal.
Good point... I dont know why TS lost trust in jaime and gomez being on the field together... jaime was playing fine last season, even playing hurt yet stilil being a good playmaker. I remember reading a interview of jaime which he had wtih a bolivian newspaper, he said the day he stops being a starter and just becomes a bench guy is when he retires.... I hope he doesnt retire, but i understand resting him sometimes, but really.... him and gomez still need to be on the field together, I dont think they both have been on together this whole season! In TS's mind its one or the other on the field, cause of their 'age' forget their talent and compatibility when playing together.....
The most evident comparison taken from this match was how simplistic Chivas tactics were in breaking us down. How an arguably inferior team can come into DC and put a beat down of a match without any substantialy effective tactical adjustment on DC's part should glaringly point out our team's managerial deficiencies. And I don't mean to say all the problems surrounding the team can be mounted there, there's plenty else that needs addressing. But once that laundary list is compiled, you can't argue that the first step is bringing in management that can start making decisions now based on a vision for the future, rather than avoiding these large issues and simply trying to conduct a band-aid repair job while avoiding any real accountability. I say real because analyzing the team this year, you can't point to what logic Soehn is using to then evaluate his decisions. And at no time do his comments illuminate any further clues into much of this. Playing devils' advocate, if he were retained, on what basis would his renewal have been earned exactly?
Actually, I think you're misinterpreting this a bit. You have to admit that neither Jaime nor Christian can go for 90 minutes consistently (or at all, even) and putting them both in means that you have two substitutions tied up. That's a serious handicap. For all their compatibility (and it was awesome to see when they were younger) it hasn't been too productive this year.