Caught in Possession

Attention MLS fans (ESPECIALLY those in the Washington, DC area still clinging to any residual smugness towards the "Yellow Football Team"): Columbus Crew jokes are officially off the kosher list.

That's a good squad playing over there at the Ohio Fairgrounds and regardless of how "small," "boring," or "middle-America" the city may or may not be, its soccer club has finally assembled a talented, successful team that's also fun to watch. Covering the SuperDraft in B-more early this year, I found head coach Sigi Schmid's honesty refreshing: he was drafting players that could help the Crew win now, because if the team kept losing he wasn't going to be around to see the kids develop down the line. And sure enough, his rookies have chipped in a bit while several trades have paid big-time dividends.

As Ives discussed in his recent ESPN piece, Argentinean maestro Guillermo Barros Schelotto is obviously the one who makes the Crew tick, but I'd give local boy Brian Carroll (Springfield, Va.) plenty of credit as well.

"BC" had an off-color year with DC United last season and duly lost his starting spot to Clyde Simms, but he's returned to form and has resumed his iron-man act in C-bus. Carroll leads the team in minutes played and is one of only two players to have started every single league match. I'd rank him as a top contender for Comeback Player of the Year, were it not for the fact that United prodigal son Tino Quaranta has surely locked down that honor. Right?

And oh yeah, United has another international match this week, and let's face it, Tom Soehn and his threadbare squad are going to have to park the team bus in front of goal to have any chance of getting a positive result off of the Big Green Honduran T-Rex. Dark days on East Capitol Street...

...day in, day out, month after month, for years in succession? Your brain and heart making your body perform consistently, sustainably, and at a high level for months on end, powered by the inexorable daily grind: training, conditioning, production, recovery (and repeat X times).

How does the mind of the professional athlete take that on?

That's why Jaime Moreno is a specimen, a museum piece. Maybe a freak of nature, even.

DC United is gassed. And there's really no end or break in sight for the players. Though it might offend some peoples' media ethics for me to say it...I feel bad for these guys. Yes, they get paid to do something that many of us love to do, even pay to do. But they have to negotiate mind-numbing routines and grind on relentlessly at times when most of us would crash into the proverbial mountain.

For me, watching this gassed, shorthanded and generally bummed-out team play Deportivo Saprissa in front of 600 6,000-some people at RFK is just a bit depressing. And it makes me angry at league suits who treat the first touches, challenges, hard running etc. of these living, breathing human bodies like just another digit in an equation, a vector on a spreadsheet alongside capital investment, tax incremental financing, advertising revenue and the like.

All MLS teams probably play too many games. Consistently successful MLS teams DEFINITELY play too many games. And meanwhile we're told that the idea of NOT playing MLS matches on international fixture dates is asking just a bit too much of the league office.

The Deportivo Saprissa game was United's 36th competitive match of 2008. There are 11 more ahead, plus (for a moment being charitable enough to imply that DC might actually get to the MLS Cup final this season) as many as four postseason matches. By comparison:

*As of September 17, 1996, DC United's inaugural team had played 31 matches, and only had one more to go, plus six playoff games.
*As of September 17, 2002, DC United's 2002 squad had played 27 matches.
*As of September 17, 2008, the expansion San Jose Earthquakes have played 25 matches.

It's late, so don't quote me in concrete on these. But it's clear that at some point in this kind of marathon, there is the proverbial 'erosion of skills,' and results suffer duly. DC United has hit that wall, and hard. I'll let others play the blame game, for now at least.

Good g*d, it is hot.

Lately I feel like I am reminded of summer's slow fade nearly every moment of the day, with days getting shorter and nights growing cooler. As a devoted warm-weather junkie, this pains me.

But here in the RFK press box it's utterly still (for some incomprehensible reason, all the wall fans were removed when the Nationals moved into the building, even as the baseball press box got A/C, comfy chairs and various other perks), and with all the heat in the stadium's lower bowl percolating up towards the rafters this rickety box clings to, the air is every bit as stifling as you could imagine. There's one portable fan on match nights, but somehow it always winds up being trained right at the DC United PR department.

It's mid-September, and thus it is supposed to be getting cooler around here. United is supposed to be easing into the stretch run with MLS playoffs barely a month off. United is also supposed to be eagerly diving into CONCACAF Champions League right now, with their bevy of slick South Americans leading a squad built for international success. The front office probably also reckoned that yet another Supporters' Shield would be within reach at this point.

But Sunday's forecast calls for a high of 98 degrees, and United is limping their way into a murderous month of constant matches and long-distance travel, ravaged by a destabilizing injury bug that simply won't go away (and those slick South Americans are the most painful casualties), and the team is clinging to fifth place in the Eastern Conference, treading water on the very edge of the playoff picture, and...and...

Why not blow a lead at home and drop two priceless points while you're at it?

It IS getting hot in here.

...to his own blog?

I've been living in the DC area for nearly five years now. Yet I continue to be annually amused by one of the city's biggest quirks: the sluggish emptiness that drapes itself over the metropolis during the month of August, when muggy heat combines with Capitol Hill's typically light legislative schedule to push thousands into a languid semi-tropical lifestyle, or just drive them out of town althogether.

For a Texan nurtured in triple-digit temps, it all seems pretty silly. And yet there must be something to it, because here I stand before you (metaphorically speaking) on 09 September, a so-called writer who hasn't written on this blog in almost a month.

Was it the frantic pace at my other workplace, where there is no slow season? Or perhaps the lingering influence of a five-day trip to California's Central Valley, where I helped a friend with his family's almond harvest and raked the groves all day in blistering sun but, blessedly, did not once touch a computer? Or, more prosaically, did things just fall apart? Submit answers in the comments section, please.

In any case...forward ever, backwards never, as the Roots Radics (and other roots radicals) would urge. I am excited to catch you up on the latest ins and outs of the DC-area soccer scene, including the mobile MASH unit that DC United has become, and maybe weigh in on a few notable happenings elsewhere in our beautiful world of footie. Starting with...

*When I finished up my two-part PSW profile of local starlet Chris Agorsor, I really had no idea where the kid's career would take him in the coming months.

For many, his choice to attend UVa reignited the old "NCAA ball is a waste of time and talent" debate, a topic adeptly encapsulated by the hard-working Andrea Canales a while back. But so far Chris is lighting it up with the Cavs, and continuing to attract nationwide attention in the process. Here's hoping he keeps it going.

*I go to great lengths to avoid the stereotypical "nattering nabob of negativity" role so many of my colleagues feel compelled to play in order to be heard or even noticed in the deafening din of modern sports media, so I extend sincere gratitude and congratulations to Bob Bradley and the US National team for starting the present round of CONCACAF World Cup qualifying with two victories in two potentially tricky away matches.

But Mike Woitalla is right. The Nats are flirting with crappiness right now. The optimist in me is happy to recognize U.S. soccer's tremendous progress over the past two decades, therefore the realist in me must correspondingly adjust goals -- and raise expectations. We can no longer pretend to be gutsy underdogs (with the exception of actual World Cup play) or proud pioneers: we are the shark in the CONCACAF bathtub and should demand more than mere qualification.

Coach Bob: can you show us the foundations of a bright, beautiful future where we contend for real honors worldwide? That is where we wish to go, yes? To get there, we're going to need crisp passing, fluid possession and menace in the final third, aren't we?

That's what I will be watching for when Los Gringos host the Trinis in Bridgeview tomorrow night. It's not too much to ask.