KC @ DC – Those points are tax-deductible right?

By: SombraAla | May 6th, 2010

Given that going into last night’s match-up between D. C. United and the Kansas City Wizards:

KC had already beat DC 4-0 in the season opener, albeit the game being in KC
KC had started very well: 2 wins, tying a very good LA team and losing in controversial style in Seattle
D. C. had started off as poorly as you could, losing every game up thus far
Kansas City had allowed only 4 goals, with two of those goals being conceded while a man down away from home
D. C. had only scored 2 goals, both away in Philadelphia against an expansion side and had been shutout the other 4 games

Well, taking all of that into account, if I had looked into the future and simply saw a scoreline of 2-0 before 35 minutes had been played then I would’ve been pretty excited. Obviously it was yet another rout of D. C. United this season by the Wizards. The build-up to the game just made it all the more certain – D. C. was going with a 19 year-old in goal, the kid’s MLS debut.

So you can imagine my (and many of my fellow Wizards fans’) displeasure when we actually got to this point in the game and it was the WRONG TEAM that was winning. Such a thing is so unpossibile it defies reason and threatens to tear apart the foundation of everything we hold dear. Quite simply, the world was probably (hopefully?) going to end before the end of the match and, even if it didn’t… is this the type of world we want to live in? Suddenly things like ice-cream and chocolate were no longer appealing; flowers were no longer beautiful; the baked beans and burnt ends at Jack Stack tasted like gruel… everything was just wrong. Many of us still have the marks on our arms where we continually pinched ourselves harder and harder, hoping that if this wasn’t a ‘normal’ dream, maybe we were just held by the Matrix instead.

OK, so maybe it isn’t that bad. Sure, it isn’t great that the Wizards continued to struggle finding our scoring touch, the #1 draft pick from a few years ago had a game that made the JaMarcus Russell pick look good (OK, sorry, no more American Football analogies) and the back line looked more adept at setting up United’s goals than United’s own midfield. There were a lot of things that did not go well yesterday – I don’t have to tell most of you that.

The defense looking as bad as it did was a bit troubling. It’s easy to say Escobar is young and will make mistakes, but it would’ve been nice if DC’s 19-year-old Hamid had made any sort of mistakes as well. Of course, it seems to me that players playing in their debuts tend to outperform… and even Escobar fits this observation as he looked much better in his first times in than he has since. It is very safe to say that we should be very happy with the back line’s performance up until the Houston game – we shouldn’t expect 1 goal every 4 games from here on out… 5 goals every 2 games is unacceptable as well… but considering the Wizards have guys playing new positions except for Conrad (who, while good, just isn’t the defender he once was). Conrad’s tutelage will be important for these young guys, and we all hope they can learn quick.

Chance did not look good, and perhaps he still isn’t ready to start yet. I thought he was ready due to how well he has done off the bench so far this season, but perhaps he is just better as a sub right now. Despite being into his 3rd season, he’s been held back by some poor luck with illness and injury. I’m going to give him another chance, but I do think that perhaps that chance should come from the bench for right now.

The rest of the ‘badness’ that occurred last night isn’t comforting, for sure… but I figure that the Wizards took a few teams by surprise with the numerous changes we made in the off season and now teams are starting to adapt. That would be very troubling if we were playing near our potential, but I don’t think we have even approached it. With so many changes and a new system to play in it is going to take a while for everything to come together, and when it does it will be pretty special.

So I’m going to try to be patient, and even if it doesn’t come together like I think it will – we are much better than we were last year.