Deep into the final minutes of D.C. United’s 1-0 loss to theColumbus Crew on Saturday night, the Black-and-Red looked poised to find anequalizer.
In the 87th minute, a wild scramble in the Columbus penaltyarea ended only after both Dwayne De Rosario and Long Tan had point-blank shotsblocked by the Crew defense. Aminute later Chris Korb beat Columbus goalie Andy Gruenebaum, only to see hisshot hit the wrong side of the near post. A series of four consecutive added time corner kicks provided D.C. witha flurry of last chances, none of which ended in a goal.
After all was said and done, the fact that United came so agonizinglyclose to salvaging a road point only served to further theBlack-and-Red’s frustration.
“It just wasn’t a good enough performance – over ninetyminutes - to get a road result,” midfielder Perry Kitchen said bluntly frominside the D.C. locker room. “Itwasn’t good enough overall. Wecould have had more edge and been more organized.”
Dwayne De Rosario agreed with his counterpart in central midfield,and offered some clear starting points if D.C. is to pull itself out of thismid-summer malaise.
“We still need to get a little angrier defensively,” said DeRosario. “We are too niceback there. We need to get in moreon tackles. We have to have more bite and more aggressiveness.”
Compounding United’s misery were a series of other results from around MLS. Victories for New York and Houston made for further crowdingatop the eastern table, and D.C.’s status as a conference-title contender is squarelyin jeopardy. After sitting infirst place for much of June, the Black-and-Red now find themselves in fourth.
“Hopefully guys didn’t get complacent because you can seehow fast things turn around in this league,” noted midfielder Chris Pontius. “Wewent from first to fourth in a week or so. There’s no reason to have any cockiness, any complacency, wehaven’t made the playoffs in four years.”
While his players echoed each others’ frustrations, HeadCoach Ben Olsen called his team ‘unlucky’ not to have earned a draw. The young coach seldom lauded his groupduring the May winning streak that saw D.C. shoot up the standings, and he wasn’tabout to condemn them on Saturday night.
Instead, Olsen had already turned his attention to August 4 - when his teamwill get another shot at the Crew.
“It’s not the end of the world,” Olsen said. “We’ll get back at it. We have a week where we will play ParisSt. Germain, and use that as a good exercise. Then we’ll try and get our revenge against Columbus.”
