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| Give us a push back stage, love, and you can see it. |
Pretty much anyone who follows MLS knows that DC United was its first great team. How that success came about may be less known. Bruce Arena built his reputation there, of course, but it also started with winning the lottery on one of their first Marquee Player picks (Marco Etcheverry; scroll down here to see the full list), that selection connecting them to the Tahuichi Academy, Bolivia’s (then?) premier player development academy (hence, Jaime Moreno), and the signing of a semi-random striker who would hold the single-season record for goals scored for 23 years (Roy Lassiter). With a nod to all the teams that made it possible (i.e., the poor fuckers who allowed them), MLS was a free-scoring league over its first five seasons, and DC generally led the way (with the 1998 LA Galaxy as the other big swinger). After the 2001 contraction, scoring fell off cliff (from 51 goals scored/allowed in 2000 to 42.1 in 2002), and with the ability to just buy talent seven to eight years in the future (or, honestly, more like 12), the margins separating the best teams from the worst shrunk. It’s possible that DC’s on-field successes (plus playing in a global capital) helped them pull off their generally forgotten Renaissance in the mid-2000s. With Moreno back from a stint in the EPL, shiny new playmaker, Christian Gomez, pulling the strings from midfield, Ben Olsen and Brian Carroll doing the dirty work and OG Kiwi Ryan Nelsen anchoring the backline, DC won its last MLS Cup in 2004. Several of those same players carried them to consecutive Supporters’ Shields in 2006 and 2007, if with replacements/upgrades like Bobby Boswell at the back and Luciano Emilio spearheading the attack. All of that success created a firewall thick enough for them to (still!) hold on at sixth place on the all-time Joy Points Scale (methodology below*) despite getting slapped with four (4!) Wooden Spoons and some of the literally worst seasons in MLS history. When DC sucks, in other words, they suck. As laid out below, they won their last trophy of any kind back in 2013 and its entirely fairly to say they haven’t been meaningfully competitive for going on a decade. That doesn’t mean they haven’t signed some real talent – e.g., a young Luciano Acosta, Wayne Rooney and, more recently, Christian Benteke – but, after their glory years, their hit-rate with signing top-rate talent from outside MLS has been patchy at best – e.g., Edison Flores - and too-often under-supported by the talent around it. Some of that might follow from betting too heavily and too long on the next future soccer star; Freddy Adu was just the most egregious (and now-outdated) example, but DC also pissed away years in the 2000s/2010s waiting for, say, Santino Quaranta and Nick DeLeon to fill their forever-potential. A strategy of rescuing once-great cast-offs from other MLS teams – e.g., Julius James, Fabian Espindola, Chris Rolfe, Alvaro Saborio, and Pedro Santos – provides another theory for how and why DC has fallen so far behind, not just their once-lofty standard, but the league as a whole. The choices they’re making aren’t uncommon by any means; it’s more that DC sucks at making the right choices and have for multiple seasons.
Total Joy Points: 38
How They Earned Them (& *How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
Supporters’ Shield: 1997, 1999, 2006, 2007
MLS Cup: 1996, 1997, 1999, 2004
MLS Cup Runner-Up: 1998
MLS Playoffs Semifinals: 2006, 2012
MLS Playoffs/Quarterfinals: 2003, 2005, 2007, 2014, 2015
Wooden Spoon: 2002, 2010, 2013, 2022
CONCACAF Champions Cup: 1998
CONCACAF Champions Cup Runner-Up: 2008
CCL Quarterfinals: 2015, 2016
U.S. Open Cup: 1996, 2008, 2013
U.S. Open Cup Runner-Up: 1997, 2009,
Long-Term Tendencies
DC doesn’t have long-term tendencies so much as phases of wild success and flaming failure. For instance, they built their first trophy-winning seasons on high-flying, live-wire attacks that often had to cover for bad-to-average defenses. Their mid-2000s team kept the strong attack (the Gomez/Emilio pairing really was something), but backed it with a half-decade long succession of equally strong defenses. On the opposite end of the spectrum, some of the shittiest attacking teams in MLS history delivered two of those Wooden Spoons – including DC’s 2010 season, which still rate as the worst-ever haul of goals scored over a full season (their 2013, second-worst) - and, just to note it, they were tied for that “honor” at four until the San Jose Earthquakes added their fifth in 2024. Insofar as DC has had a “normal” since their fall from grace (i.e., counting from 2015), it has featured sub-par defenses (sometimes sub-sub-par defenses) and a barely-competent offense. And here’s a fun little detail: despite its reputation for playing it safe, the Benny-ball era (2010-2020) didn’t consistently translate into improved defensive performances: DC either hit over or above the average for goals allowed in eight of his 10 seasons coaching the team.
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| He looks surprised? |
As measured against the “normal” named above, DC 2024 fit a lot better than the glove fit O.J. With a nod to Benteke for making it possible, DC came within 1.5 goals scored of the league average, but the defense su-su-sucked. In what must have been a maddening twist for their fans, they saved their best form for the final games of the season, going 6-2-2 over the 10 games before Decision Day. With the way results ultimately broke, they could have picked up the last wild card spot with just a draw at home versus Charlotte FC. Instead, DC continued its ever-extending history of failure courtesy of getting on the wrong side of an 0-3 drubbing. With that, another season came to an early end. With the next section in mind, it bears noting that DC started 2024 with a new coach (Troy Lesesne) and an energy-drink style that had people shoving them into the playoff picture. The defense didn’t look half as shit as it proved to be, they had spastic little rascals like Jared Stroud and Teddy Ku-DiPietro to help the press squeeze, Mateusz Klich and Gabriel Pirani to make things happen (if less often than they’d like), and the gently-hyped Matti Peltola to free the Klich and Pirani to cook. Throw in an (MLS-) elite fullback like Aaron Herrera and DC had what looked like a presentable, effective team. Yeah....
Questions for Their 2025 Season
On some level, it’s as simple as what went wrong? I’m not about to argue DC had a league-beating roster, but to completely miss the playoffs in the same Eastern Conference that sent a wildly inconsistent Atlanta United FC over the top (and a collision course with the head of Inter Miami CF)? As someone who stopped tracking DC when they went adrift last season, I don’t have a lot to ask beyond whether or not Lesesne tries the same approach or goes with something more subtle (also, can he go with something more subtle?) Their raw numbers present as a team that chose to live and die by the press and, in the end, died too often. What I can say is that the shipped Klich to Atlanta – who, fwiw, doesn’t feel like a strong pressing player – and I doubt Christopher McVey's departure to San Diego will hurt beyond replacing the 2,148 minutes he played. Not much of that makes me think they covered for where they fell short. Maybe they get there in 2025…but the trends look like shit.
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