D.C. United searching for blue skies amidst the turbulence of 2016

by Matt Hoffman

In May 2011, U.S. troops and CIA operatives shot and killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A slightly less momentous event occurred later that month when D.C. United defeated the Portland Timbers. It would be the Timbers first ever home loss in the MLS era and, barring a D.C. United victory against the Timbers on Saturday, DCU’s only win against the Portland franchise.

Let’s face it, this is what we remember from that game:

Thanks to the unbalanced schedule that Major League Soccer instituted in 2014, the teams have played each other six times with Portland winning half of those games with the teams drawing twice. That’s actually on par with how well D.C. United fares against other Cascadia teams going 5-11-6 overall in their 22 games against Portland, Seattle and Vancouver.

In fact, the last time the Portland headed to the nation’s capital, the Timbers won handily with a lineup featuring Ryan Johnson and Frederic Piquionne together up top. The backline consisting of Michael Harrington (now with Chicago), Pa Mouda Kah (Vancouver), Andrew Jean-Baptiste (Estrella San Agustín in Spain’s Primera Andaluza Grupo 2) and Jack Jewsbury at right kept the clean sheet not so much by a demonstrative defense effort so much as sequences like this.

Both D.C. and Portland would play in CCL action the following year. The Timbers because they won the West. D.C. United took a more circuitous route winning only three games that season but advancing to win the U.S. Open Cup. DCU kept Ben Olsen on board and he rewarded them with consecutive playoff appearances in 2014 and 2015.

The success D.C. enjoyed was about finding and exploiting market inefficiencies. In other words, other teams zigged for foreign signings and young players, United zagged by signing veterans. Veterans like Chris Rolfe and Fabian Espindola kept the offense on track, Perry Kitchen patrolled the midfield and Bill Hamid continued to shine as one of the best American goaltenders in the game. And for two years this strange brew of guile and experience worked.

At least it did until 2016, when it didn’t. Leaving his Lamborghini at the docks, Kitchen is now in Edinburgh with Hearts. Espindola is in Mexico after the Whitecaps traded for him not fully realizing that Espindola wasn’t posturing when he said he would not play in Vancouver. Current leading scorer, forward Alvaro Saborio has been linked with a move to Costa Rica’s Saprissa.

Hamid is back in the lineup after missing an extended period of games. In that time, the backup goalkeeper Tally Hall decided to pursue a career in law enforcement. It shows where soccer is in the American consciousness when, for any other country (except for maybe Gibraltar), that the prospect of leaving professional soccer behind to become a policeman would be noteworthy.

Poignantly, midfielder Chris Rolfe’s career may be over. The Washington Post’s Steven Goff (support local media!) wrote in a heartbreaking story about Rolfe’s issues , “[Rolfe,] United’s team MVP last year started the first nine games this season but has not played since. He won’t return to the field anytime soon, if ever.”

At 5-8-9. DC United is at risk of missing the postseason even in the East where the margins are notoriously wider than with their Western counterparts. Having said that, with 12 games remaining, D.C. is not out of luck yet. In fact, if they can beat the teams they should beat (Orlando and Chicago (twice) and Columbus), D.C. could be right back into it.

As things stand now, D.C. is two points back of making the playoffs which is remarkable given how poorly they play at home. In a league in which a quarter of the teams are undefeated at home, DCU is a mediocre 4-4-3 at RFK Stadium.

The defense remains intact well enough that the club, reportedly received offers from Turkey and Israel for Sean Franklin and Steve Birnbaum respectively. That will keep them in a lot of games.

The problem remains that you can’t win games when you can’t score and that has been the issue. Rolfe and Espindola alone combined for 15 goals and 11 assists in 2015. On the current roster Saborio leads the pack with four goals in fifteen games and Lamar Neagle and Patrick Nyarko each have three. At 29, Neagle is the youngest of the three. For sake of comparison, Kei Kamara already has four goals in his twelve games with the New England Revolution.

That speaks to D.C. United’s calling card this year: consistent inconsistency. United hasn’t lost consecutive games nor have they won consecutive games. They have, on one occasion, drawn consecutive games.

Their most recent contest, the 2-2 draw at home against Philadelphia saw coach Ben Olsen ejected for, in Olsen’s words, “Generally being annoying throughout the game.”

If you are new to MLS or even if you are, you may not be aware that Ben Olsen is one of the greatest quotes in MLS. His post-training remark on a story in National Geographic is legendary:

“There is a parasite that goes into a rat and takes over the rat’s body and makes the rat think it likes cat pee. Because the parasite wants to be in something special in the cat, they go find cat pee. The rats are basically killing themselves. The parasite takes them over like a zombie and makes them like the smell of cat pee so they go over to the cat and the cat eats them. Because the parasite wants to be in the cat. Is that &^%$ crazy? This magazine changed by life.

Olsen and D.C. have been restocking to try to make that push adding Lloyd Sam from the Red Bulls, Patrick Mullins, the number two draft pick from a suddenly stuffed NYCFC attacking corps, and Kennedy Igboananik from Chicago in recent weeks. Despite the maddening inconsistency, Olsen maintains, he tells Goff, that D.C. United has, “a very high ceiling.”

The new additions have impressed with each player making contributions. Going by their recent form (as opposed to their results), D.C. is due for a win. Their last two matches–the aforementioned consecutive draws–D.C. was the better team, outworking their opponents only to be stymied by bad luck. In fact it took a last second Birnbaum goal to even secure the point against Philadelphia.

Following their 3-0 win over Sporting Kansas City on Sunday, Timbers coach Caleb Porter warned clubs about the folly of looking where you are in the table and playing to that level. D.C. United isn’t quite out of it yet.