Ive followed MLS for a while now, and I just wanted the DC fans opinion of the current....shall we say, "situation". This is in no way derogatory of the team or fans, and wether you give it in 3 words or 33 paragraphs, thats cool. *Ian* UK ps Good luck
Good luck as in the for the future......not like, "Ha, good luck explaining that one!" You get me, right?
It started when we named Thomas Rongen as our head coach. After winning a championship in his first year it was all downhill. I think his championship was a result of what Bruce Arena had left behind and not anything that he did with the team. Then he shipped off a lot of our best players and, honestly, some of them had to go due to the salary cap issue. He didn't do a very good job of replacing all the defenders he shipped off, insisting on drafting a bunch of very young players. Hopefully Ray Hudson can get us back to a playoff contender next season. Things have been dreadfully wrong for three years and it is time for that to change.
I'd have to say it all started with the mass house cleaning Kevin Payne administered to. The one thing that the early United teams had was chemistry. That was killed off in a blink of an eye. That and lack of vision for the future spelled doom. We will recover. I just hope it doesn't take another year or two.
I think some of his declining play is directly related to the shite performances of the team. It has drained his fire and desire. He has lost some of his ability for sure, but some of that might come back with better team performance and a few more victories.
Wait, I've got it.... I just checked my astrological charts and the Mayan calendar. The planets weren't aligned properly, and the Mayans predicted this would happen. It is part of their apocalypse prediciton. Maybe the apocalypse really is here.
Three pieces of the puzzle... 1. Rongen - tactical genius but couldn't motivate team/build team confidence & respect 2. Hudson - great motivator, all heart, but perhaps tactically lacking (on and off the field) 3. Injuries - Key players in & out (Moreno, Benny, Convey, Etch, Pope, Q1), also the bodies seem to heal but the mental scars linger (Convey, Moreno)
That hits it on the head I think. I would add a fourth point however: 4. Organizational Complacency (and/or arrogance) - KP & Co. thinking that they had it all figured out and refusing to address the problems of an aging playing staff, rising salaries, player scouting, and the lack of a proper training facility.
Bingo. The league also got better as we were downgraded at other positions. Right now we've got about half a good team, but an awful lot of work left to do.
Now that's humor. Anyways, I think what's clear now is that we need to splice Rongen's and Hudson's DNA, grow a clone in a secret vat at United Park, and voila! Meet the new coach: Raymas Ronson.
It was caused by a poor strategy begun by Kevin Payne, when Arena left the picture, and Payne (who is a businessman not someone with any soccer knowledge) decided to keep Marco, Jaime and Eddie let evryone else go and try to corner the market on young American players. Moore, Albright, Convey, Quaranta etc. From a business sense with the cap he saw this as the way to go but the problem was that the stars didn't hold up very well, with long peroids of absence due to injury. MLS has proved so far to be a place where players with some development, overseas or in college, can shine (Olsen, Donovan, Twellman) when given the chance to play regularly, but not a very good place to develop high school age youth. No reserves and no U-19 sides leaves them either thrown in over their heads or sitting on the bench. The model for success in MLS is the same as for Divsion 1 and 2 in England. Some journeyman professionals, one player who was a star hanging on in relative old age but with skills still in him, and some young players developed somewhere else and on their way up. San Jose, Chicago and KC all fit this mold. I blame Payne --- his confusion that being friends with Arena and others would make him capable of running a soccer team and the miserable decisions he made left us where we are today. We need to put togther a side that fits the mold.
Just to add to several of your valid points. KP saw World Cup qualifying as a major disruption. he figured by eliminating Goos, Llamosa, Harkes it would be problem solved. What he didn't take in to account was the fact that those were some humongous shoes to fill. The leadership on the early teams did not come from any one individual. It came from the likes of Gori diving head first into the boards to keep the ball in play. Aunger taking one for the team. Maessner going a hundred miles an hour for 90 minutes. Things like that you can't teach, you hopoefully find the players with that kind of heart and mesh them into a cohesive unit. KP blew all that up. Which leads me into your other point on player scouting. We've been sorerly lacking in that department for a long time. Some of the decisions that we've made over the last few years has been rather suspect. For every Santino that comes along we have an Albright who cost us way too much. As did Amman. We need to have a better judge of talent, and with the number 1 pick looming in the distance I just hope we don't burn it.
Some people may not like me for saying this but I think Etch has to go. Sure, he has some flashes of brilliance but I don't think they're enough to justify having him out there. I think the team would be better served by finding a young prospect and building him into a team leader or getting one from another team. Of course neither is a very easy pill to take for the team or fans. Another problem I see is all the injuries, and reinjuries. Is there just a lack of conditioning or, what's going on with this? I don't know enough about how they do things. I just know there's a few teams out there that have a lot more injuries, and reinjuries than the rest of the league. We all need Moreno, Convey, Olsen, and Quaranta to get healthy and stay that way. I think them, and Pope are a good base that the team can be built back up on. Of course, they need to stay healthy. With them healthy, and the aging Etch out of the way I think they can start rebuilding the team to what it once was. They'll need to pick up some new players to fill in spaces but I think they can have some success and build their confidence. Something they've lacked this year.
I agree with pretty much evertying that's been proferred so far (though laying it all on Rongen is a bit too simple), but I'd emphasize a couple of important factors: (1) Our stars have not lead the league in their positions, as they did in the early years. This is due to aging and loss of skill in addition to injuries. Etch is no longer dominant in the midfield. Moreno isn't scoring. Pope doesn't really intimidate opposing attackers - at least not consistently. Olsen simply hasn't played. The return of Lassiter is a sad shadow of his former self. Going back a year or two, the second coming of RDA also was but a shell of earlier glory, and Agoos and Llamosa were inconsistent at best in their final season. (2) The league improved. This has been mentioned, but it is fairly significant. DC did at one point have at least a slight edge in talent and depth over most teams. That is gone.
We stopped scoring more goals than the other teams and we didn't do anything to correct it, assuming that we were entitled to win, rather than having to earn wins. Then, we starting making many quick desparation personnel moves.