Noooooooooooo!

brian — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 16:10:30 +0000

I just realized something this morning. There are nly seven football games left in the season. College is done – I don’t count the all-star games. There are four NFL playoff games today, two next week, a week off, then the Super Bowl. The Pro Bowl also doesn’t count.

Seven games, then nothing, nada, zip. The only respite will be World Cup qualifying for the U.S. men’s soccer team. They have a friendly this month, then a big match against Mexico on Feb. 11. After that, I have to wait until March Madness starts, then the MLS season in mid-March.

I hope I survive.

Where Do I Start?

brian — Thu, 22 May 2008 13:48:27 +0000

A few weeks ago, I sat in my basement, drinking a beer and watching D.C. United play. I don’t know which game it was because they have pretty much all melded into one great big ball of suck at this point. I looked at the TV and said, to no one because I was all alone, “we suck.”

I wish this thought has snuck up on me. I wish I didn’t come to grips with that reality less than 10 games into the MLS season. But after seven losses in nine games and pretty much no hope to make the MLS playoffs before we even hit freaking Memorial Day, I can say that my earlier assessment is official.

Even though it will make some people feel good, I’m not going to go on a rant about how Dave Kaspar and Tom Soehn suck and deserve to die and everything will be OK if we just fire the GM and coach. I won’t do that because I’m trying not to succumb to emotions, plus I realize that will be – as a good friend used to put it – like putting whipped cream on dog shit.

Sure, it will look nice to blame someone, but that will hardly change the basic fact that DCU is simply a bad soccer team. Firing Tom and Dave might make supporters and ownership feel good, but it won’t make Zach Wells less jumpy. Cleaning house at the top might show accountability, but it won’t make Franco Niell a good fit for the team. Dropping the hammer might show that everyone hopes the season is salvageable, but won’t heal Ben Olsen’s ankle.

I’m not saying those guys should keep their jobs. I just don’t have any hope that it will make the situation better, except from a visceral level. This isn’t a good team with bad leadership. This is just a bad team.

You usually need 40 points to get into the MLS playoffs. DCU has six points with 21 games remaining. If 40 is the magic number in 2008, United will have to average 1.7 points per game the rest of the way. That means, they almost need to not lose again (getting a win and a tie from each pair of matches is an average of two points a game).

The good news is that the Open Cup winner now gets into next year’s Champion’s League and we still have the opening stages of the Champion’s League this summer to try and qualify for the World Club Cup in 2009. To me, the league is toast, but those tournaments as well as the SuperLiga cash grab, still lie out there.

That’s the best I can do – hope this team can come together for short tournaments because anything resembling a cohesive effort over many months just seems out of the question, regardless of who is in charge.

D.C. United – Regular Guy

Noooooooooooo!

Where Do I Start?