I never ever never want to ********ing see Tan on the field again. Why the ******** did you take out Boskovic for Saragosa? Terribly coached game. What ********ing ever.
Let's not mince words. We sucked. We sucked total ass. We didn't hold the ball. We gave away the ball dozens and dozens and dozens of time. We threw the ball downfield because we have no midfield play. We subbed in old man Wolff, we started Long Tan and we played what amount to bad players in Chabala, Korb, Saragosa and on. We have a terrible record against 'good' teams and we have a terrible record on the road. We got bossed and unless we do 'something,' we will continue to suck. That something isn't acquiring scrubs like Tan or "Portland fan favorites" like Chabala. If someone is a Portland fan favorite, you should launch them into the proverbial soccer sun, not start them the first match after they are acquired. I feel strongly that this team has 0 chance of the Cup this year and now a 50% or sub 50% chance of even getting into the playoffs.
That performance was a carbon copy of two seasons ago. Our schedule is mind boggling though. When we were playing well we went on a huge break.
Flipped on the game shortly after the 50th minute mark. It went about like I expected it to. KC is the only team in the league that I think DC stands no chance against.
Anyone that thought the result was going to be anything other than a loss after the forced line-up changes was either fooling themselves or very poor at understanding how this game and this league works.
we would have been better off starting with the 3-5-2 than starting chabala. on the road at KC is probably not the best time to break in your new signing, that being said, where was he on the go ahead goal? that was his space. it's probably unfair to place blame on any one player though as dc was outplayed all over the pitch. that game was not as close as the score by light years.
Ben Olsen and Chad Ashton are jokes. This is how I imagine practice going. Chad says "Whoever can kick the ball the longest wins!" Then game day arrives and we have to watch two dumbass center backs with no pressure whatsoever kick the ball to the other team EVERY SINGLE TIME. We have no midfield play because they never even attempt to play them the ball, and I see the midfield checking to the ball still never getting it. This leaves the team completely stretched and then the midfield gets runover as our forwards are chasing down worthless long balls they know they will never reach. The best part is we consistently do it!!! That is terrible coaching. I even believe the KC fans where chanting "PINBALL UNITED" in the first half. How embarrassing. Fire these idiots.
Oh yeah don't get me wrong, I expected a loss. What I didn't expect was a DC team playing as if they were a USL Pro side. A striker in Tan who didn't seem to know that a soccer game was taking place. A coach making bizarre substitutions and poor tactics (not for the first time). Let's be honest, those KC players were tired as hell out there tonight, they had a 2 hour game a couple of days ago. But they still made us look like amateurs, very very poorly coached game.
This game was not lost on defensive positioning. It was lost because United had no possession, no attack. This was because the back four (Dudar and Mac especially) kept knocking the ball up field. Bypassing the midfield. And without Santos to win those balls we kept giving away possession. Missing DeRo seemed to make the back four (Dudar and Mac) think that Andy, who created United's goal, and Deloen, who scored United goal were not our best options. Pontius and Tan are not go to create attacks from long balls off the foot of Dudar, Mac or Hamid. We aere only goign to create form the wings and 1-2's using Bosko. Oh and by the way it is not on Olsen except for the fact he keeps playing Mac. This team needs Jakovic and Dudar in the middle.
Not surprising given the absences of DeRo, Santos and Salihi. Olsen better realize that Long Tan is not MLS material. The clincher for me was whe he had a moment of space and took three steps instead of drilling the ball. Pontius, DeRo, Santos or Salihi would have shot earlier. Instead, Tan's diterhing let that hack Collin from non-league English football cover back. Technique can be coached, but decisionmaking that poor from a forward like Tan says "NASL" all over. This team is still very much a work in progress. DeLeon will be more consistent next year, he's reached the rookie wall and has moments, like his goal and then moments like his failure to track back and mark Zusi on KC's second goal. Korb is depth, but he's not starting material in this league, he just plays too far off of his mark and permits uncontested crosses into the box. I wish Kitchen was two inches taller and about 20 pounds of muscle heavier -- sometimes he just doesn't have the size to match up with bigger players. In the off-season DCU will have to focus on a right back and left back and getting another midfielder who can hold and distribute the ball. Right now, those positions are the biggest problems. I hope Woolard returns soon. The Philly game is huge.
they were chanting "handball united," there was an incidental handball in the box. i feel your pain on distribution from the back but sadly when our centerbacks do pass to the fullbacks and mids the outcome is the same or worse. honestly if i was in their place i'd launch it too, our midfield had no chance of making anything happen. it is consistently a problem and is more glaring because our centerbacks have the ball so, so much compared to other teams.
The problem is MacDonald and Hamid and their pointless long balls. He even has Dudar playing them now!!!
So tell me how does the Galaxy (a very poor team this season that needed a 7-1-2 stretch just to pull them into playoff contention) manage to win multiple games without Beckham and Donovan this season? Point is, teams play matches without their best players all the time and somehow manage to win games. This team as it's constructed does not. That is a problem..
It's not trolling to say Ben Olsen isn't doing an adequate job and that his coaching decisions have been extremely poor. We're lucky to even be at the point count we are, considering the long stretch of consecutive games (largely against weak or struggling opponents) vaulted us ahead of where we should have been. Last week it took Long Tan being godawful as usual and missing his kick on goal for Chris Pontius to put the rebound away. We were close to drawing, at home, against Columbus. Against every single quality opponent this year we resort to long-ball, low-soccer-IQ garbage. We also make poor acquisitions and fail to utilize our existing acquisitions. I look at KC acquiring Markovic and think "wow, imagine that guy putting in balls to Santos or Salihi," I look at everyone getting stronger and then we acquire Long Tan.... because he has "a good motor." We acquire Chabala, because we HAD TO, since we didn't take the trade window seriously to add real, talented depth to our back line. For the last few years, outside of getting DeRo, we haven't done much right. That trend continues. Ben is a great guy and a United legend, but his strategy of long-ball soccer or "fight" over "skill" is antiquated (if it was ever good). Good teams see us as predictable and easy to take advantage of.
The major problem is that after Bosko, the central midfield is, to put it charitably, full of journeymen holding midfielders who can't and don't hold possession well. Kitchen is still a work in progress and I wish he were bigger, but he has promise at age 20. Saragosa, Neal and King are WYSIWYG. Maybe this Brazilian on loan might offer something -- but I'm not expecting much from him, if anything, this year.
I don't know the psychological block that infects this team when they hop on a bus/plane to play MLS matches. They are a completely different team on the road and honestly it's been bad away from RFK since early May (they technically won the Union match 1-0 on the road, but we all know United got played off the field that night). The talent is there but honestly I don't think the soccer IQ is just quite there yet. Too many matches with poor possession (or no possession, just like tonight) and moments where the defense just doesn't make the smart play. Again, we saw the 3rd goal on a corner kick be scored at the far post (2nd by Sporting against us this year) this season without a player on that post (who would have easily saved all 3 that went in). We also saw another example of terrible defensive shape on the game-winning goal. I mean really, what on Earth was Chris Korb thinking on that play? Why was he so far upfield? I can't really blame Chabala for not being there because he was covering the guy running free in front of goal, where ya know, McDonald and Dudar should have been. Just terrible team shape. And let's be honest, this scoreline should have been a lot worse. They hit the post 3 times and Hamid made a number of very good saves to even keep this in single digits. Here is the scenario that is before United at the moment. They have been great at home, winning 7 straight. What happens when they start losing home games? It's not like they can rely on their road form to keep them afloat. They have to solve this issue away from RFK right now. If they don't they'll see teams like Chicago, Columbus and Montreal passing them in the standings. Oh, and one last thing.. Can Dave Johnson please stop reminding us that United has games in hand. I'm not sure if he's aware of this or not, but if you don't win any of your games in hand, it doesn't mean dickola.. Signing off a very frustrated fan of this team right now.
Its not trolling when you are a DC fan, which I am, bud. I know this team could have played much better than they obviously did tonight and they showed no heart. I expected a tie out of tonight's game considering KC played on Wednesday and 120 minutes at that. The problem I have is that over the course of the season this team has gotten worse and the backs are kicking long balls more than ever. These coaches clearly do not value possession of the ball and I don't care about the excuse of people being injured. You really think with the way Dero has been playing lately that he would have helped much? Dudes been a turnover maching trying cute flicks every time he touches the ball. Really wish I could go watch a practice and see what they actually do. It would probably be quite amusing. Coach's fault tonight guys.
If Tan is the answer, I don't want to know the question. Unless Boskovic was injured, bringing in Saragosa made no sense to me, either.
Sadly, I agree with you. It looked to me like DC was the team which had played 120 minutes on Wednesday AND they looked like they were a man down for the whole frigging match!
This team is lost. And even if we weren't lost, we're worn down. I wouldn't have believed it earlier, but there's reason to be concerned about this team's prospects right now. The problems do, I think, go back to Olsen. But the problems aren't insurmountable for Olsen in that they're exactly what you'd expect from a young coach. He's relying too much on some guys and they're wearing out (that's demonstrable). And (conjecturing) I think he's second guessing himself and has trouble stamping the team top to bottom with a consistent identity. It's a lack of certainty and commitment and that's all on Olsen. And he's gotta get over it. The team needs to know who it is and how it plays and we need to be able to swap guys in and out without changing this team's character every week.
Indeed, although I think the "handball" in question was just outside the box. I believe the Handball United goes back to MLS Cup 2004, where Esky's second goal started with a handball and then Dema handles a ball off the line. We won that match btw. Sounds like Sporting Sour Grapes to me. asitis
I'm not sure what the hell that was tonight. I get that Boskovic was not particularly effective in the first half, but I'm curious how the offense was intended to function with Saragosa out there. My understanding was that he is a defensive mid and nothing in his play tonight suggested to me that he is not. Wolff? At that point, I assumed that Olsen had given up. At least, I hope that wasn't intended on a change that was going to turn the tide. Where was Salihi? I don't think that this is his sort of game, but I knew that it wasn't Wolff's. With DeLeon and Najar on the wings, I assumed that much of the attack would run up the wings. Indeed, that seemed to be where DC got the most joy at the beginning of the game. However, that ended and the ball was going up the middle to Pontius, Tan, or Wolff and that's when it wasn't being booted up field. But then, given how often the midfield lost the ball when they did try to pass it out of the back, I'm not sure that I blame them. Oh, and then there's the fact that Kitchen keep coming back to collect the ball, the only problem is that he would do it by moving into space into which the defender who had the ball was trying to move, which effectively closed off other passing options. I digress. Point is, Najar and DeLeon needed to be the engine for that game they disappeared or had to come centrally to get the ball. Maybe they thought if they continued to run the attack through the middle that DeRo would spontaneously manifest and take control of the game. You know what though? DC keeps playing teams down on their luck or against players who are in poor form and then makes them look good. KC beat Seattle at home on Wednesday and it took them 120 + PKs to do it. Previous to that, you'd have to go back to June to find an SKC home win. Zusi and Bunbury are MLS darlings, but they haven't been in great form of late. That was Bunbury's what? 5th goal? Zusi, regardless of form, provides assists, not goals. I think DC are a mid-table club and we need to adjust our expectations for this year. That first place in the East tomfoolery was the result of DC playing a lot more games than other clubs, playing a string of weak teams, and playing a lot of games at home. They're not going to get back there and they're not going to get close. Tonight's performance may or may not have been their worst, but I wouldn't call it an outlier.