Pregame Preview: 90 Minutes Until Kickoff

By: Michael | April 14th, 2007

So here I am, far from DC, waiting anxiously for the next hour and a half to pass… Soon we will finally start our season (finally!), and soon we will face DC United at RFK. Anyone following MLS last year can probably remember how DC took 16 of 16 points from us, so if we’re going to prove that this year is going to be different from last, this opener could set a great precedent for the rest of the year.

Our starting lineup will be largely the same as the Seattle Sounders exhibition earlier this week, which I believe went like this:

————-Hartman————-
Jewsbury-Hohlbein-Conrad-Burciaga
————Zavagnin————–
Arnaud—–Victorine—–Harrington
—–Sealy———–Johnson——

The most notable changes are along the right side of the defense. This will be Jewsbury’s first MLS season start at right back and Hohlbein will be playing in place of Nick Garcia, who is out with a red card from last year’s season finale against RBNY.

That said, I will be predicting the result of each Wizards game this year, but I will not, as others do, post my record against reality. Instead, I am blowing the dust off of my old FIFA ‘03 for PC and putting up my dukes in a man vs. machine attempt to guess the outcome of every Wizards’ game this season. While the rosters are completely different in ‘03 and RSL, Chivas USA, Toronto FC, and Houston aren’t in the game, I’ll be making a CPU vs. CPU friendly of each game and posting the results here. For the teams that didn’t exist in ‘03, I’ll pit the Wizards against the San Jose Earthquake, who are currently on hiatus (and ironically featured Jimmy Conrad - amongst others - in ‘03).

So, here is the first duel of Michael vs. FIFA ‘03:

My Prediction: DC United 1 - 1 KC Wizards. United strikes early off a Hohlbein confusion and is content to meander through the rest of the game until at 72′ Sealy puts in the equalizer, set up by… I’ll go out on a limb and say EJo. They survive the final minutes and leave DC having happily stolen a point from United.

FIFA ‘03 Prediction: DC United 2 - 1 KC Wizards. Wizards score first, and then in the second half United scores a double. All in all both teams looked pretty bad, and I’m not sure if that’s simply what it looks like when the CPU plays itself, or if the game was making a commentary about how bad the level of play is in a DC/KC faceoff.

This week I’ll be starting my weekly “Interrogative XI” feature, so if you have any questions to add to this Q&A section of kcwizards.theoffside.com, feel free to leave them here.