Kansas City 4 - 0 D.C. United - Recap

It's a good thing there was a beautiful woman waiting at home for me because the rest of that night was just ugly. I'm actually having a little trouble breaking this game down, not only because it was such a disaster, but because it was the first game of the year and the poor showings were incidents, not yet trends. Nevertheless, there are a few points I'd like to make.

3-Man Defense - This is one of the big obvious ones. It may be that Onalfo felt this was necessary. McTavish, Burch, and Namoff are all injured, while Pena was unavailable having just completed his visa. Maybe Onalfo felt that because he was playing on the ping-pong-table-that-passes-for-that-K.C.-field, he wouldn't need four players in defense. Whatever the reason, Talley joined the team a couple days ago and Wallace started in defense, what? Once last year? Julius James was available, but started on the bench. The disorganization was unbelievable back there and Jakovic did not look like the player from last year.

5-Man Midfield - Really? There were five in the midfield? It was hard to tell since D.C.'s midfield couldn't maintain possession to save its life. Morsink wasn't terrible, he was mostly invisible, but otherwise no worse than any other D.C. player on the pitch. Castillo did not impress me: he was okay, but high-profile signing? I saw little special. Najar is certainly young, but I thought he looked one of the better players out there. I don't think Tino has the skills or mind for central mid. It is too early to make this decision, but he missed a lot of open "wide" players. Not getting the ball out to the wings is impressive on that pitch, considering the lanes on I-395 are wider. Of course, Tino never really had a lot of good passes to make.

No Off-the-Ball Movement - D.C.'s best off-the-ball move came when Tino slapped Smith. Other than that, there was very little movement, few overlapping runs even. There's not a whole lot more to be said about this - without a natural goal-scorer, D.C. is going to have to rely on excellent movement so Tino and Moreno can slide passes through and pick apart the defense. After last night, that seems like a distant hope.

Pontius and Moreno - I have mixed feeling about this partnership. I would love to partner Pontius with a young Moreno - Pontius seems much more skilled and prone to pulling the ball back and looking to pass than to receiving one and immediately looking for an opening to shoot. Pontius did not shoot much last night (no one did, really). Whether they can make their offensive partnership work or not, both, but particularly Pontius, spent way too much time dropping back to defend. Given the defensive frailties, that might be understandable, but neither Moreno nor Pontius has explosive speed - they're going to need to stay further up the pitch if D.C. is going to have a viable counter-attack.

There's plenty more to be said. No one, including Perkins, had a particularly good showing. I'd like to say "There's no where to go but up," however NY/NJ last season has given the lie to that particular saying. The field was miniscule, the defensive roster was drained, and this was the first game of the season - these are the reasons not to despair. The only silver lining though was that the Metro didn't charge me for the trip down to Molly Malone's. And really, that's just another D.C. failure.