Caught in Possession

Pretend, for a minute, you're Tommy Soehn. Your team just lost its regular season opener and at times looked listless in the process, but now has to travel directly to a remote mountain town in Mexico which is known for, if anything, a local history of mining and a gasp-inducing base altitude of 7,000+ feet, to take on a very talented side that knows how to win big games in big tournaments.

Your hamstrung captain is on the comeback trail but surely nowhere near 100 % healthy. Your star striker came into preseason unfit and still looks a step off the pace. Your new bilingual back line experiment might be running into some communication problems after all. And oh yeah, almost forgot -- you're trying to overcome your otherwise proud club's dismal history of futility on Mexican soil.

Bottom line: the CONCACAF Champions Cup is one trophy you and your entire organization have been lusting over for years, and to get back to the final you've got to walk a tightrope that's studded with glass shards, metaphorically speaking.

So what do you do in Pachuca on Tuesday night?

I believe United is going to sit in and weather the storm. It's just what they tried to do under similar circumstances in their last trip to Mexico, when they traveled to Chivas Guadalajara for the second leg of their Copa Sudamericana series clinging to a 2-1 aggregate lead. And it almost worked, only for Mexican international Ramon Morales to produce a moment of pure class with a 20-yard piledriver for the match and series winner.

No doubt hoping to hold a bit of possession and push 'Los Tuzos' onto the back foot, Soehn may start in DC's normal 4-4-2 shape with Niell and Emilio up top. Jaime Moreno might well make a second-half appearance to try and keep the ball, calm the game's pace and add a bit of trickery around the opposition's penalty box. But I think it's just a matter of time before Dan Stratford comes on as an additional midfielder to clog up the central passing lanes, likely leaving Emilio alone up top in a 4-5-1 which will probably sentence the 2007 MLS MVP to an extended period of chasing after hopeful punts and lost causes.

Last week I talked to Clyde Simms about the matchup with Pachuca and he sounded like someone already eager to get back to RFK.

Against Pachuca, do you expect to sit in and bunker?
"Maybe a little bit, with the altitude and having the game on Saturday. But I believe they have a game on Saturday also," he said. "We’ve always had the second leg away in these tournaments the last couple of years, and I think it’ll benefit us to have the second leg here this year. I feel like it takes at least a half to get a feel for the other team when you play in these types of tournaments and so that first game we’ll get a feel for them."

What do you think?