If you're thinking about general level of play throughout a player's career, praising Cien and ripping Etch is a hideous double standard.
The discussion about Cienfuegos was hypothetic,a player that fit the description : high energy and talent.The discussions about DCU are most of the time specific and it is touching the Ech performance right now. I do not recall any hypothetic discussion about Ech, lately. IMHO, there are totally different situations. P.S I really apreciate the "Deliriously Optimistic DCU FAN" it sounds like "a mystic poem" total,unconditional,devotion and no questions.I love that!! It is a beautifull state of grace,unfortunately for me, I am not worthy of price.
Bingo.... If anything, Etch's MLS career is way more influential than anything Cien ever did.. It's pretty obvious that Marco's best days are behind him, but the one thing that always seperated him from his peers was his ability to read the game, control the ball and spot that opening.. To some extent, he still possesess that ability.. The fact that the surrounding cast (an aging and oft injured Moreno and others) has not been able to capitalize on Marco's brilliance seems to dim Marco's contributions of late.. It all goes hand in hand.. If Conteh-Lassiter-Curtis were able to finish some of the prime opportunities given to them by Marco, we probably wouldn't be thinking that Marco is past it at this point..
Ok, fair enough. I think either of those guys in their prime would have fit in well on nearly any team, but now neither can truly carry a team; they are far more dependent on their teammates than they used to be. Still, I don't think Cien is a good example of a player who would help DC's midfield at this point. Right now, we need a d-mid of some sort, to play alongside Richie or McKinley in a 3-5-2, (those two can't play there together effectively) who can organize and distribute some from deep in the midfield. Etch is having to come too far back, and whatever talents of his that remain are being wasted when he receives the ball in front of the defenders. He needs to play directly behind the forwards for us to be even remotely dangerous. Ultimately, he is still our most dangerous midfielder in the middle of the field (with Convey earning that distinction out wide).
Reyes as Dmid/Hmid/Libero Reyes seems to be doing great in his new role as Midfield Man-marker. It's not exactly a Dmid role, but rather more like a Libero or Hmid (holding midfielder), but our defense has been the best in the league since we began playing this lineup. Allowing Nelsen to organize a back three of man-marker Prideaux and man-marker Pope with Nellie in the middle seems to have eliminated the center of the pitch and stablized our defending inside the box. Having Richie mark out the central midfielder and Reyes the wing attacker seems to have muted almost all dangerous situations. It's not the traditional 352, but it appears to be a very successful one. Now if we could only get some finishing for all of the chances our attackers have been making, we'd be on fire. If we had added Twellman, I think we'd be the favorites to unseat the eQuakes this year. Yeah, I think our defense is THAT good. -Tron
Re: Reyes as Dmid/Hmid/Libero Agreement here. Hudson has really done a fine job rehabbing our defense. I'd say that our current defense is better than the 99 edition and probably as good as 98. hell, it's probably even better than 98 since there are no holes like at right back this year. Now that offense.... maybe we could find a way to graft Rongen's understanding of offense to Hudson's defense genes we'd have a complete team. Hmmmm. Maybe we'd call the result "Arena".