Photo by Jean-Yves Ahern/USA TODAY Sports
By RYAN TOLMICH
D.C. United certainly wasn’t the best team on the field Saturday night, but they were the victorious one.
Outplayed by the opposition for large stretches, D.C. United did just enough to escape Stade Saputo with a 1-0 win over the Montreal Impact via a Chris Rolfe finish.
In the victory, D.C. United became the first team in MLS history to win despite only producing one total shot.
Playing without All-Star centerback Laurent Ciman due to suspension, the Impact fielded the duo of Wandrille Lefevre and Victor Cabrera. Working out the kinks early, the Impact were made to pay when a mistake at the back yielded an early D.C. United goal.
Following a turnover at the back in the 13th minute, D.C. United Jairo Arrieta made a run at goal with Chris Rolfe, with the former sliding the ball to the latter as he fell to the ground. Now alone on goal, Rolfe had all the time in the world to slot a shot past Evan Bush, giving the Eastern Conference leaders a 1-0 lead early while netting Rolfe his ninth goal of the campaign.
From there, the Impact settled down and took control of the game. Dominating possession while holding D.C. to zero additional shots. Despite taking charge of the game, the Impact were bested by the heroics of Bill Hamid.
The D.C. United goalkeeper, playing for the first time since June 27, provided a pair of saves in the first half to stop Andres Romero and Dominic Oduro in the 34th and 44th minutes, respectively.
Still chasing, the Impact continued to push for an equalizer, but proved wasteful throughout the second half. With Eric Miller missing the team’s best opportunity in the 80th minute, the Impact fired 24 shots but put just eight of them on frame.
The hosts were punished for their repeated squandering of chances, falling in a chippy contests that yielded five yellow cards.
With the victory, D.C. United remains atop the Eastern Conference ahead of next Thursday’s meeting with New York City FC. The Impact, meanwhile, drop their first contest since July 18 and will look to bounce back against the Philadelphia Union on August 22.
This is the worst/best picture I’ve ever seen.
In the foreground, an invitation to skip together is rejected.
In the background, Rolfe does his best bitter beer face.
Bill Hamid is what happened to Montreal……..
Put in an average keeper, and it’s still probably a 1-1 tie. When the write up includes just a mention of a few scoring opportunities per 90-minute domination, it leads me to believe it may not have been such a dominating demonstration of domination.
This United team is charmed. Two weeks ago they gave up two goals in the first few minutes to the Union…and won. They gave another pair of early goals to RSL last weekend – four goals total…and won. The got one shot total tonight…and won.
Whatever Olsen is feeding them…I want some.
I’m afraid I don’t understand why Montreal wa ‘the better team’ tonight. Isn’t the point of the game to score goals? How can a team that gets shut out at home possibly be considered the ‘better team’? Sure, Montreal played ‘prettier’ and had more shots, but was the game decided on a fluke? No. No one ever counts the goalie as a member of the team for this purpose. If you can’t beat the goalie, that doesn’t meant you outplayed them, that means he outplayed you.
I agree, of coarse when you have the lead on the road your going to sit back and defend more.
What Ryan Tolmich meant was that D.C. didn’t press the attack when defending a lead, or in other words played a defensive scheme, so obviously Montreal was the better team – because attacking is everything, right?
I’m guessing if Montreal had found an equalizer, then United may have opened it back up (or not, because a tie on the road also isn’t a bad result). But short of that, why would D.C. open up and take on additional risk?
Bottom line, however, is that D.C. isn’t a great team. They’re fairly solid, but not great. Goalkeeping and coaching has them on top of the table.
By the way, what should a possession team do when it falls behind? Transition to direct attack. When the leading team switches to a defensive approach, they’ll allow the possession team to knock the ball around the midfield all day. So long as you keep your defensive organization, that’s not a threat. A possession team has to be able to penetrate at some point, and clearly D.C. was betting that Montreal couldn’t do that effectively. But when you transition to direct attack, you can create far more scoring opportunities – more albeit lower percentage shots on goal. It’s all a numbers game, and when protecting a lead, the ratio of percentage isn’t an important number.
And there’s the point. Dcu is built to make team play against type. Sure, Montreal had 24 shots, but 11 were from outside the 18, and six more were from wide of the six. Can you score shooting through traffic from 25 yards? Of course. Are you likely to? Nope. Which is why if you you’re usually nominated for goal of the week. Wait for the other team to make a mistake and make them beat you with quality, that’s how you win on the road in MLS, it took last minute goals for both Dallas and Seattl to win, and a master class from Giovinco for Toronto to win. (To be fair, it took last gasp goals for DC to beat Orlando and LA as wel, so it comes out in the wash) there just aren’t a lot of guys in MLS who can consistently beat Bill Hamid from 25 in traffic. And that’s a bet the team is making every week, and so far it’s working. It may not work in the MLS cup tournament (didn’t last year, obviously) but hanging around in every game giving up less than a goal a game (with Hamid) and scoring 1.1 is a recipie for making a serious run at the Supporter’s shield. So yeah, with Hamid (and he counts!) dcu is as good of a team as any in MLS. If they’re not ‘great’ by MLS standards right now, who is?
Well said.
Rolfe for MLS MVP.