Wednesday night soccer at the CAB. KC-DC Pregame

By: Herschel | May 5th, 2009

It’s Wednesday night soccer at the CAB when DC United comes to town to take on the Wizards. Wizards got a week off after a tough (and underserved) loss on the road against Toronto, while DC has come back to beat the worst teams in the league, NY and Dallas the last 2 weeks.

DC comes in with the MLS player of the week Jaime Moreno who will try to keep their team’s comeback streak alive. He is a game changing player who will disappear at times and then pop up to hurt you. Stil, my main concern are the 2 rookies in the DC squad: Rodney Wallace who seems to run up and down the wings every game and loves to attack; and Chris Pontius who has been a spark in the DC midfield (and showed he can score). Veteran and opportunistic scorer Luciano Emilio still remains a threat for a KC defense that has looked vulnerable at times (especially last week trying to stop Pablo Vitti). Hopefully Onalfo will have an answer for DC’s 3-5-2 scheme that can easily suffocate an opponent’s midfield. They play 2 holding mids that double as defenders and do a good job at distributing the ball to Pontius, Moreno and Wallace.

It’s going to be a physical match (as all KC-DC games are). I expect the Wizards to make some changes in the lineup since they lost their last game and Curt Onalfo rarely leaves the lineup the same after a loss (I actually can’t really remember when it last happened). It wouldn’t surprise me to see Hirsig on the bench and Jack Jewsbury back at holding mid, and maybe even Espinoza back on the bench, while I could also see a change up front with maybe Abe Thompson coming in for the ghost of the Toronto game, Josh Wolff. The DC defense is not that strong and their merry-go-round of goalkeepers gives KC an advantage up front. That being said it’s going to come down to dominating the DC mids and making that possession lead to scoring opportunities, which has been KC’s weak spot all season (i.e. pathetic offense against NY and many scoring opportunities but no goals against Toronto).

I believe the KC lineup for the game will be: Hartman, Besler, Hohlbein, Conrad, Watson, Espinoza, Jewsbury, Arnaud, Harrington, Lopez, Thompson/Wolff.

As a final note, as a Wizards fan I would hope that for once, the team try something new and allow someone else take corners and free kicks. I am done with Claudio Lopez’s short crosses and bad kicks. Do something different, please.

See you at the game.