Photo by Troy Taormina/USA TODAY Sports
By RYAN TOLMICH
D.C. United have cemented their spot atop the Eastern Conference while dooming the Houston Dynamo to an early exit.
The Eastern Conference leaders all but clinched the conference’s number one seed Sunday at BBVA Compass Stadium with a 3-1 victory over the Dynamo, who saw their playoff hopes come to an end with the loss.
After a weather delay that disjointed the game’s opening half, D.C. United opened the scoring just before halftime via a finish from Taylor Kemp.
Kemp’s 41st minute finish came just seconds after Dynamo goalkeeper Tyler Deric came off his line to disrupt a Chris Pontius chance. Unfortunately for Deric, the ball found its way to Kemp while the Dynamo goalkeeper was stuck in no land, leaving Kemp with an open net for a simple finish.
Despite a controversial handball call and then non-call against D.C. United late in the first-half, it was D.C. United that provided what was essentially the dagger to the Dynamo’s season in the 65th minute.
The Dynamo’s hopes were all but extinguished by a Fabian Espindola finish, as the D.C. United forward galloped on a 60-yard run following a clearance before chipping up and over Deric to push the lead to two.
The visitors gave themselves hope in the 81st minute via a Giles Barnes penalty kick, but substitute Eddie Johnson added D.C. United’s third in the 87th minute to put an exclamation point on the D.C. United victory.
With the win, D.C. United open up a six point lead atop the Eastern Conference with just two games to play. The number-one-seed-to-be are back in action Saturday against the Chicago Fire, while the Dynamo still have plenty of say in regards to the playoff positions of others in their clash with the New England Revolution Thursday.
Check out the highlights below:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DwHBqe3c0c]
How did DCU’s destruction of Houston turn in to a pro-rel debate?
Another streak for the Dynamo ends. DC had never won in Houston….
Hey… the Red Sox won a World Series. Streaks are meant to be broken.
I’ll just be happy that the Dynamo have plenty of these streaks in the first place!
Good observation!
Seriously, if there were 40 solid and viable soccer franchises in the US, capable of drawing 20K plus fans and capable of surviving and thriving after demotion- then we can talk about pro/rel. I’m not sure the US has even 20 such franchises. It’s really not worth talking about for another 20 years, assuming soccer growth continues…
DC should have been relegated last year.
Houston would still be in playoff hunt.
That is what MLS gets for not doing Pro/Rel which would weed out the bad franchises (DC) and would enable the good ones to rise and stay at the top (Houston). Mickey Mouse league.
Quit whining about soccer in the US.
I think he’s being sarcastic. He’s showing how you would have punished a team (DC) who sucked last year, but has rocked it this year, while you would have awarded a dull, mediocre team like Huston by keeping them up based on defensive displays.
16-9-7 and 3rd overall in the first division (1st in the east) as a practical matter (with a history of titles) — how is that a bad franchise — and you’re saying they should be in the second division to copy Europe and make some abstract point?
People who want pro/rel should go look at minor league rosters and tell me how many names they even recognize. Look at CCL, look at USOC, the leagues are not even competitive.
DCs main problem is the stadium situation, but with their history I’d give them years to work that out.
Kinnear is a decent system coach. But 2 of the past 5 years (2010 and this year) he has purposefully assembled defenses so bad that they were an anchor around the team from which postseason could not be salvaged. And as a general matter in the faster MLS his idea of a defensive 442 style has suffered from the lack of footspeed of the centerbacks he deployed, even when the team had better years recently. He seems to think it is still 2007 with a dozen or so less talented teams around. It’s 2014, you have to be better than nearly 20 teams, and the speed has increased where dribbling cones don’t get the job done in the middle.
He also settles at forward, where the Dynamo had a primary scorer (Bruin) net 10, a converted midfielder (Barnes), and a broken down forward sub who scored 2 all season (Cummings). This might have been OK patchwork, but it was instead his plan. All too often in recent seasons when the Dynamo have lost late in the playoffs, they lacked forward firepower, because they failed to acquire a top striker and went with Ching 3 years too long. But in a year like this one, where the defense allowed 54, mustering 37 GF dooms you. That is the lowest total of any East team.
So, IMO, he’s a decent system coach but a hit and miss personnel man. The offense is perennially underpowered and the defense, even when less porous, is too slow. And the concept of getting by at forward, and having stick figures in the central backfield, seems to be a decade old. I’m sure Dynamo fans will attack me based on his history, but it is nearly decade old history by now. Those were teams staffed with internationals at nearly every spot, not Brunner, Horst, etc. The team has become a journeyman parody of itself (can you imagine the Dynamo if Kinnear accumulated decent people? but it never works that way anymore) in a league where Seattle and LA spend millions on top attacking talent, and other playoff teams have forwards with as many as 25 goals.
Part of our problem is spending — we don’t keep up — but part of it is personnel selection arrogance. The coach thinks he can slap together 11 any old players and beat theirs. He does a decent job of extracting something, but the teams that used to have a DeRo, Ching, Onstad, et al. are increasingly flawed “plucky” teams praised more for systemic play and effort than for being the collections of studs that won the titles in SJ and the early Houston years.
Kinnear has lost the plot and I hope he gets the SJ job. The team is becoming a xerox of a xerox of a xerox and could use some freshness.
Great analysis. Agree on all points.
Now, I know Kinnear was limited in the $$$ department (which hopefully will change a bit with the raised salary cap next season), but we desperately need new ideas, even if next season is a rebuilding year.
I love the “internationals at every position” argument, because it very succinctly describes the problem with our woeful “internationals at no positions” defense (prior to nabbing Beasley).
I wonder if a new majority owner will emerge any time soon to take the organization off AEG’s hands and elevate it to a higher level it deserves.