HARRISON, N.J – D.C. United’s Achilles’ heel reared its ugly head yet again Sunday night, leading to the end of the team’s 2015 season.
Much like it did throughout the regular season, D.C. United’s inability to score led to their demise in a 1-0 loss to the New York Red Bulls. The loss saw D.C. eliminated from postseason play by the rival Red Bulls for the second straight season.
Following a regular season that yielded just 43 goals in 34 games, D.C. United always knew that the team would have to prove opportunistic and lethal when the time came. Yet, Sunday’s performance produced just one shot on goal, one more than the team mustered seven days earlier in front of their home fans.
“The game plan against New York is never going to get 15 shots on goal. It’s never going to happen with us,” head coach Ben Olsen said after the loss. “We’re going to get a few looks in each half, and we have to do well with them. In the end, situations came about enough in this game to win this game, but we didn’t make that happen. That quality in the final third just wasn’t there.
“We fell short with the difficult part, and that was to score a goal,” Olsen added. “Everyone put in a good performance. They gave us everything and we went out in the right way.”
Throughout Sunday’s second leg, D.C. struggled to generate much of anything in the attacking end.
Stifled by the Red Bulls press time and time again, D.C. was limited mainly to long shots and set pieces, but it failed to muster opportunities on frame each time.
Olsen conceded that part of that was by design. Facing a talented Red Bull team, D.C. knew they couldn’t get into a pure shootout. Rather, those set pieces and little bounces would prove vital, and they did, but just not in D.C.’s favor.
It was via a set piece that the Red Bulls scored what turned out to be the series clinching goal via a Dax McCarty header in the first leg. Then, with time winding down, a moment of brilliance from Gonzalo Veron sprung Bradley Wright-Phillips for a tap-in to clinch the series.
Playing without Sean Franklin, Davy Arnaud and Chris Pontius, the duo of Fabian Espindola and Alvaro Saborio were kept under wraps by the Red Bulls back line. The midfield, meanwhile, was repeatedly crushed by the trio of Sacha Kljestan, McCarty and Felipe, leaving little room to move the ball from feet to feet.
“It was too many long balls,” Espindola said, “and not much of playing in between the lines. They defended well and we did that almost the entire game besides the last 10 minutes.”
“They’re a good team,” added Chris Rolfe. “They beat us the two times we played here earlier. They’re a good team and we had to put in a little bit more and change our style against them, and I thought we did well, but they came out on top.”
Despite the loss, Olsen isn’t one to write off the group that he currently manages.
At the end of the day, Olsen acknowledged that D.C. just lacked that spark in the final third, and no matter how good the team defended, their inability to find the back of the net proved to be their downfall.
With the season coming to a close, D.C. knows full well that there are changes on the horizon, whether they’re small tinkers or wholesale shuffles.
Several D.C. players admitted that the decisions were up to management, while stating that it was much too soon to think about anything other than the game at hand.
Captain Bobby Boswell isn’t quite ready to think about 2016. Rather, he’d prefer to reflect on a 2015 that, while disappointing, proved to be a major lesson to those that currently make up the D.C. United locker room.
“It’s been some extremes and some lows,” Boswell said, “but sometimes you learn a lot about yourself in a year like this, and I think everyone in here can say they did. Depending on how we react to that, we might come out as better people in the end.”
“The effort was there,” Olsen added. “It was just that little lack of quality. Is this who we are? Are we peaked out? That’s a fair question and we’ll evaluate it.”
Espindola, Saborio, and Rolfe aren’t terrifying, but they’re not chumps either. DC’s attacking failures lie mostly at the feet of Olsen. Benny’s slavish dedication to regressive tactics is befitting of 1950. He wants crosses in from the wings, but his wingers aren’t very good. Kemp can cross the ball, but he doesn’t have the defensive support to allow him to get forward. And what coach, seeing an opponent repeatedly in game after game dominate his team simply by playing three central midfielders instead of two, fails to make an adjustment to counter that? The Red Bulls aren’t easy to play against, but making an adjustment to give your team a chance rather than knocking your head against the wall over and over is basic stuff. As a Red Bulls fan, I hope Benny remains DC’s coach for a long, long time.
@Bill Usually the NY Red Bulls play exciting attacking soccer but DC United decided to play bunker and ping pong instead and that is why the quality of play was sub par. If you go to the next Red Bull Playoff game on November 29 I can guarantee you a more exciting game.
Bill, the game was choppy because DC United was without most of its attacking talent due to injury. Since they were so low on attacking talent, their strategy was to play stingy defense and counterattack. Red Bull has a very clogged up middle third with extremely high pressure so you can’t really pass through it without giving up a turnover and having your counterattack counterattacked. The only space is to dribble down the flanks. The outside mids and back who have that skillset were mostly injured. Consequently, that’s why United had to play long balls and try to take the second ball. It’s not pretty soccer but it was the best strategy they could muster with such an injury-depleted team.
I was at the game. Awesome atmosphere. The main RB supporters sang through the entire game and we super loud. Pretty exciting stuff, especially considering that DC has no attack. But the place was only about 80% full. Quality of play seemed noticeably lower than EPL, which may be a total duh statement given the wage differences. I don’t catch too many MLS games, so I’m not sue if this is typical. I was assuming that since this was the playoffs the play would be a little stronger.
No Olsen, at the end of the day DC sucks big donkey balls…