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Gallardo is back in D.C. (is it too little, too late?)

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D.C. United playmaker Marcelo Gallardo has returned to the United States after a two-week stay in Argentina to rehab a groin injury that has sidelined him for an extended period of time. He is not expected to play in D.C. United’s CONCACAF Champions League match against Cruz Azul on Wednesday, but might see minutes in the team’s match against Chivas USA this weekend.

Here is the question I have for D.C. fans (and MLS fans in general): Will Gallardo’s return be enough to help D.C. turn around the tailspin it is currently in? With the upcoming schedule loaded with tough MLS matches and Champions League matches, D.C. United’s season looks to be in real trouble.

For those of you not keeping track, D.C. United is winless in its past five MLS matches and currently enduring a four-match losing streak in all competitions. The slump has caused D.C. to slide out of a playoff spot and the club will need points in its final four matches to avoid missing the post-season for the first time since 2002.

It won’t be easy, not with the four remaining matches coming against the top two teams in each conference (and with CONCACAF Champions League matches also mixed in).

Here is more info on the D.C. United situation from the Washington Examiner’s Craig Stouffer.

Can Gallardo help turn things around, or has the season officially spun out of control?

Share your thoughts below.

Comments

  1. Who exactly is Gallardo going to pass the ball to this weekend against Chivas? Emilio is hurt and Moreno has to sit out. They ain’t going nowhere.

    Posted by: SonicDeathMonkey | September 30, 2008 at 08:46 PM

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    Not to mention that Chivas are pretty hot right now, and are getting key players back from injury.

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  2. Who exactly is Gallardo going to pass the ball to this weekend against Chivas? Emilio is hurt and Moreno has to sit out. They ain’t going nowhere.

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  3. DCU’s offense has been nonexistant the past 2 or 3 games. If Gallardo can make the midfield fluid again, maybe the team can quit pushing too far forward, leaving the defense hopeless, and maybe squeeze into the playoffs.

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  4. Look what Columbus pays for Schelotto and what they get as a return on their investment vs. Gallardo and the return on investment DC gets.

    Enough said- the answer is no on Gallardo no matter how you state the question in MLS’s world draconian salary caps. ( with or without Gallardo’s designated salary cap exception.)

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  5. Gallardo will help the defense some because the midfield won’t leak as much. He and Jaime are the ones DCU looks to to control possesion.

    That said, I’m not sure the Gallardo experiment has worked for DCU this year. With Olsen healthy, Moreno in form, Emilio not hurt, and a back line that plys like the promise they held at the start of the season – then Gallardo’s a solid part of the team. Add Crayton, and you have a contender – and, I think, a threat in the Int’l tournements.

    But, that’s not reality. Injuries happen, schedules get cluttered, strikers dry up. It’s in the clutch situations you expect your stars to rise. Gallardo hasn’t.

    So, he’s good. He’s valuable. He’s sorely needed and welcomed back. But, he’s not been worth the DP money.

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  6. Bangers, you are focusing on the wrong teams. DC has to worry about RSL and FCD, not San Jose and LA. And in case you haven’t noticed, RSL and FCD are in form at the moment. No defense + no goals = no playoffs for DCU.

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  7. Damn…straight down the middle…that makes me feel special about my vote :). Well anyways people who say that Gallardo wont help with the Defense are wrong. Good players like Cristiano Ronaldo or as James Tyler likes to call him, ‘that portugese bastard’, pressure off the defense not by making tackles but by dropping back, giving them someone to pass to, and making good passes when he does drop back for a tackle.

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  8. I’m not a DC fan but an objective observer (or at least as objective as anyone from RB-land can be). I think DCU is done.

    1. They’ve got a ton of injuries and absence problems. Moreno is suspended for their next MLS match. Emilio is hurt again. That’s their frontline.

    2. Defensively, even with most of their first-choice defenders available, they’ve stunk.

    3. Collectively the team isn’t playing well. All teams (even good ones) can reach a point where the combination of bad form, bad karma, missing pieces and bad luck coalesce to produce a team that as soon as they give up a goal (and it’s usually a soft one) you just know the collective psyche on the team goes “here we go again” and that is where DC is this year. Although it won’t show record-wise, I think they may end up as the worst team in MLS this season in terms of how they’re playing at the end. Right now, they go into games against teams that aren’t that great (FCD) and are just totally outplayed.

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  9. When in peak form and fitness, DC United could be the best team in the league, but extended absenses from Gallardo, Olsen, Peralta, and Mediate have caused players like McTavish, Burch, Fred, Moreno, and Emilio to be over worked. The team is physically and mentally fatigued, leading to more injuries, mental lapses on the field, and extending the amount of time the players need to recover.

    The team clearly played it’s best soccer in the month of June, once it became accustomed to Gallardo’s style of play, but at this point, it’s too little, too late. Blame shouldn’t be directly pointed at Soeh, but I don’t think that he’s done enough with his team this season to warrant a return to United next season.

    Although, I suspect that United knew this (fatigue) was a huge risk, which is why they threw everthing at the Open Cup.

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  10. It doesn’t matter if Gallardo is back. What the team is missing is character. He has talent, not character (otherwise, he wouldn’t have taken a vacation at a critical point in the season). DC has talent without him, but no character.

    They lost character when Olsen and Gros stopped playing. Nobody has filled that void.

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  11. No its too late. This team might have had a chance if he came back earlier this month. But they’re done. They are mentally and physically done. You can see it in their play. I love this team to death, but I’m ready to start thinking about next season.

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  12. Half the league is sniffing around for that last playoff spot and none of the contenders are making a good case for themselves. DC, LA, NYRB and SJ all lost on the weekend and TFC tied (not that they’re REALLY in it, but math is math). One team is going to wake up and take it and there is no reason why it couldn’t be DCU. They stunk out the league for the first 6 weeks and managed to pull it back together. But they’re gonna have to be serious about since, with the exception of SJ, all of their games are against top teams. I bet they are wishing they still had three games against Toronto at this point!

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  13. It is too late. He hasn’t played a game in 3 months and look at DCU last game. No one was able to click. If he can pull off a miracle and give the guys a boost I’m all for it. But I just dont see them making the playoffs. Sucks.

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  14. I am a totally committed DCU fan but I do believe this is too little too late. I don’t see how we can get 2 home wins against tough opposition and one away game with the battered and bruised group. I would love to be proven wrong but think I’ll fold up my #14 Olsen jersey, put it in the closet and wait for next year.

    Reply

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