Monday, April 14, 2008
Remembering a forgettable night in Salt Lake
I took the time to put some thoughts down over on a BigSoccer discussion thread, and thought I might share it here to.
The subject - D.C. United's horrible loss to the horrible Real Salt Lake on a horrible field.
Although the thread topic was "fire the coach", my contribution was more reflective of the meaninglessness of the MLS regular season, and offered the idea that coach Tom Soehn actually made a smart decision in not really going for the win - but rather wanting to see if the bench could win.
Here is/was my take (BTW, my BigSoccer handle is "chummer"):
I really felt while watching [the DC/RSL match Saturday] that [Coach] Soehn had literally punted this game on purpose. Not that they didn't want to win, but that they really didn't care if they won or not. This game was NEVER going to mean anything. It was depressing, disappointing, and even a little inspiring at the same time for me:
Depressing because we really looked bad - not a single player had a "good" game, and it just wasn't soccer. Any game with visible "throwball" lines is depressing for me, even the ManU v Arsenal match would be depressing played on turf with football lines. Pushing to build SSS is the best thing MLS ever did, and will go down in history as the BIGGEST reason the league survived the "early years" when historians look back in 40 years when we're bigger than Hockey and Baseball.
Disappointing because with all talk about our adding "depth", this game made it look like we were no better off than a crappy team like RSL that has a brand new front office and barely a candle to hold against our foreign recruiting relationships. Have we really invested all this effort only to have to rely on $17K/year reserve players?
A little Inspiring because I actually get a warm fuzzy thinking that Soehn basically stood up on the mountain top - literally - and screamed to the league
"I'm not going to waste my time trying to win every MLS regular season game because it's a meaningless endeavor that only keeps us from our primary goals. Teams that only have MLS Cup to play must take seriously what I cannot, because D.C. United has other major concerns. All we have to do in the MLS regular season is get results at RFK and then peak at playoff time."
The inspiration continues as I imagine him continuing with "The season is all about winning a couple of tournaments for us. We put our all into CCC and clearly could have advanced, while beating the so called "best" team in Mexico. We will now focus on SuperLiga and the Champions League, and winning at RFK so we can also then focus this Fall on the tournament that is MLS Cup playoffs. EVERYTHING ELSE between now and those tournaments is little more than training for us. As long as we win 9 games we'll be in the MLS Cup playoffs, so take your away games on a concrete field with throwball lines and shove it MLS."
If this thought process is even close to what TS was/is privately thinking, then we shouldn't fire him, we should enshrine him for knowing how to focus on what's really important. And who can blame the players for not thinking the same thing. You never like to see a professional "take a night off", but we did, and it was a good lesson, but it is in the past now and should be completely forgotten, as most of the regular season in the early months truly is forgettable.Labels: d.c. united, Real Salt Lake, Tom Soehn, Turf Fields
The subject - D.C. United's horrible loss to the horrible Real Salt Lake on a horrible field.
Although the thread topic was "fire the coach", my contribution was more reflective of the meaninglessness of the MLS regular season, and offered the idea that coach Tom Soehn actually made a smart decision in not really going for the win - but rather wanting to see if the bench could win.
Here is/was my take (BTW, my BigSoccer handle is "chummer"):
I really felt while watching [the DC/RSL match Saturday] that [Coach] Soehn had literally punted this game on purpose. Not that they didn't want to win, but that they really didn't care if they won or not. This game was NEVER going to mean anything. It was depressing, disappointing, and even a little inspiring at the same time for me:
Depressing because we really looked bad - not a single player had a "good" game, and it just wasn't soccer. Any game with visible "throwball" lines is depressing for me, even the ManU v Arsenal match would be depressing played on turf with football lines. Pushing to build SSS is the best thing MLS ever did, and will go down in history as the BIGGEST reason the league survived the "early years" when historians look back in 40 years when we're bigger than Hockey and Baseball.
Disappointing because with all talk about our adding "depth", this game made it look like we were no better off than a crappy team like RSL that has a brand new front office and barely a candle to hold against our foreign recruiting relationships. Have we really invested all this effort only to have to rely on $17K/year reserve players?
A little Inspiring because I actually get a warm fuzzy thinking that Soehn basically stood up on the mountain top - literally - and screamed to the league
"I'm not going to waste my time trying to win every MLS regular season game because it's a meaningless endeavor that only keeps us from our primary goals. Teams that only have MLS Cup to play must take seriously what I cannot, because D.C. United has other major concerns. All we have to do in the MLS regular season is get results at RFK and then peak at playoff time."
The inspiration continues as I imagine him continuing with "The season is all about winning a couple of tournaments for us. We put our all into CCC and clearly could have advanced, while beating the so called "best" team in Mexico. We will now focus on SuperLiga and the Champions League, and winning at RFK so we can also then focus this Fall on the tournament that is MLS Cup playoffs. EVERYTHING ELSE between now and those tournaments is little more than training for us. As long as we win 9 games we'll be in the MLS Cup playoffs, so take your away games on a concrete field with throwball lines and shove it MLS."
If this thought process is even close to what TS was/is privately thinking, then we shouldn't fire him, we should enshrine him for knowing how to focus on what's really important. And who can blame the players for not thinking the same thing. You never like to see a professional "take a night off", but we did, and it was a good lesson, but it is in the past now and should be completely forgotten, as most of the regular season in the early months truly is forgettable.
Labels: d.c. united, Real Salt Lake, Tom Soehn, Turf Fields
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