Caught in Possession

Fall is here, and even I can no longer avoid or deny it.

It's been raining more or less all day here in the District of Columbia, and in a few hours DC United will send a second-choice squad out into this damp mist over at RFK Stadium to face Club Deportivo Social y Cultural Cruz Azul. Don't believe me? Then read this guy, or this guy, or this guy, or that guy saying the same thing again, albeit in a more edgy, internet-y kind of way.

Call it Tom Soehn's Davy Crockett Moment. Or perhaps William Travis?

Cruz Azul are a good side from Mexico and a likely candidate to advance out of CONCACAF Champions League Group A, even after their slow start to the competition. Depending on how many veterans and skill players are sprinkled into the mix, United's kids are either going to lose by a little, or lose by a lot to Los Cementeros. Even with my strongest instincts towards evenhandedness on full alert, I am unable to seriously consider the possibility of a positive result for the home team tonight. A mere draw with Cruz Azul -- perhaps paced by a once-in-a-blue-moon, virtuouso individual performance from someone like Quavas Kirk or helped by the leveling influence of a wet, sloppy field -- would easily qualify as United's biggest triumph of the 2008 season.

It's shaping up as another depressing night for United fans, in a campaign which has featured plenty of them already. Certainly the team itself is mired in a silent, suffocating funk characterized by sulking frustration and utter lack of collective confidence -- which will require a sudden, nimble about-face of stunning proportions if the postseason is to be reached.

Looks like BLCKDGRD was ahead of the curve when he spake thusly a little more than a week ago:

Cooked, baked, broiled, toasted, BBQed, burnt.

We all have our first draft of this season's obituary written in our heads, yes?