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| Is the future so bright that I need shades? |
DC United
1-3-3, 6 pts., 9 gf, 17 ga (-8); home 1-1-2, away 0-2-1
Last 5 Results: DWDLL
Locale/Strength of Schedule
v SKC (2-1 W); v MTL (0-0 D); @ ORL (1-4 L); v CLB (1-2 L); @ SJ (1-6 L)
Notes from the Field
Because I didn’t think the debacle at San Jose would yield much useful data – just from the seven-plus minutes of the highlights, DC gifted San Jose the first two goals, got in one another’s way all over the field, and broke the basic rules of holding a good defensive line on goals four and five – I spent most of my time (about 45 minutes) watching their home loss to Columbus Crew SC. Based on that review, head coach Troy Lesesne still has DC defending high and playing to force turnovers all over the field (i.e., they hunt the ball), Christian Benteke remains their key player/salvation (he’s scored over half their goals so far), and, besides that, it’s mostly a lot of semi-headless running around. They kept the game versus Columbus tighter (bravo), but they still did plenty of getting in one another’s way and players that compel one to say, “look out for this guy,” of “one of the league’s best” are in short supply. Despite all of the above, DC posts respectable top-line numbers – e.g., they’ve reliably posted shots in the double digits and get around a half dozen on goal every game (the Columbus game was the exception) – and the defensive numbers rarely looked egregious…though the 4.0 goals allowed/game over the past three games would appear to suggest some issues…
Notes on Formation & Personnel
Despite the above, Lesesne has stuck with the same line up/personnel combo over the past four games, with only a couple adjustments barely worth noting (prime example, for reference). The back four in his inevitable 4-2-3-1 has included David Schnegg at left back, Lucas Bartlett and Kye Rowles for center backs and Aaron “I Hope He Likes Living in DC” Herrera as the preferred right back; a youngster named Derek Dodson has acted as understudy and started in the San Jose disaster. Matti Peltola has paired with Hosei Kijima at the two in every line up I reviewed, while the preferred three appears to be Joao Peglow (their assist leader, fwiw, at two), Gabriel Pirani, and the high-effort, ever-combative Jared Stroud (Dominique Badji, who is too old for this shit, started over him at San Jose). Benteke tops off the formation at the one, aka, the loneliest number (number). Again, Columbus played one step ahead of DC on both sides of the ball and, gods willing, Cincinnati will do the same, but both the game at Orlando and the game at San Jose present as implosions – i.e., decent performances utterly undone by repeated, catastrophic mistakes.
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| Benteke, artist's rendition |
Put all the above together and you land on something close to, DC isn’t a bad team, but they’re also clearly not good. Several notes above imply as much, but to state it plainly: DC does better when they can get service to Benteke, a man who can make a feast out of scraps and, in his best day, season it to perfection. Peglow looks and plays like someone brought in to provide crosses, but he’s both new to the team and young, and I thought they called in Pirani to become The Guy, but he’s even younger than Peglow (22 v 23) and hasn’t delivered much over 50 games played, 30 of them starts, and just north of 2,700 minutes total. Herrera can cross a ball, of course, and I see former Nashville man, Randall Leal, on their official roster, but he has yet to start and, barring some things I don’t know, that leaves Benteke trying to run the whole damn operation a la the head of Richard Nixon in a fishbowl. Stop Benteke, stop DC, basically. To flag one unlikely wild card, I saw Dodson get open up the right with space and more time to work with than he appeared to appreciate, but he also did the first, obvious thing every time and he did it reflexively, i.e., without even trying to get his foot on the ball and look around. He looks like a decent bet to take that step one day, so call that something to watch, if without much interest. That's something that carries to DC as a whole: they reliably take the first reasonable/available option when they get on the ball; you don’t see many of them do much in terms of getting a foot on the ball and their head up to find a better option. Columbus reading them like a children’s book might have created that perception, but…noted. DC basically presents as a team that wants to get vertical as a first and second principal, basically.
To pull back a little further to what the bigger picture may suggest, DC’s first two games – which I didn’t list above because I want to keep the notes on form current – were 2-2 draws versus Toronto FC and at Chicago Fire FC. Follow those through to their only win versus Sporting Kansas City, the goal-less draw at a, frankly, execrable Montreal team, and run it into the brick wall of their past three games, a couple theories open up. The broadest version has them as a mediocre team that sucks in the road, perhaps quite a bit. Cincy plays them in DC, of course, so that’s one thing to consider when thinking about…
What FC Cincinnati Does About All That
First and foremost, play through whatever press DC throws at them. Whatever their players lack in talent, they make up for in energy (Stroud’s a bit of a talisman in that regard). Just because I never saw their press come off doesn’t mean it can’t, of course, but to float a theory over my skis, I suspect they lost a little on the other side of the press – i.e., the kinds of players (e.g., Mateusz Klich, theoretically?), who can get the first pass out of a turnover and make something of it – so I’d encourage any and all Cincinnati players to chase a DC turnover to see whether they like Columbus did in their first goal a couple weeks back. Another potential avenue to exploit: once they got DC out of the press and into a compact shape, Columbus picked them apart like vultures going at a carcass. Without tempting any arguments about who does it better between Cincy and Columbus, the lone goal Cincinnati scored last week against the New England Revolution didn’t look so different from several of Columbus’ builds in the second half at DC. They/Diego Rossi got a little lucky on the insurance goal, but the weight of all the pressure that came before teed it up.
As implied by that last sentence, I’d trust the line up Pat Noonan started last week to beat DC on Saturday – i.e., I wouldn’t rush any impact player back into the starting XI for this one, i.e., sub if you gotta, but don’t start ‘em like you don’t have a choice. There are points to be had here for Cincy and cool heads should get them there. DC isn’t incapable, by any means, and they have one of the better aces-in-the-hole in Benteke, but everything else about them tracks as average. As such, any team with aspirations to be a little above has to prove it.
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