Payne’s D.C. United pain

In an exclusive conversation with the D.C. United president and CEO on Thursday, Payne gave his always frank opinion on the fortunes of his team not only this season but the last three – all of which ended without any playoffs. Although there aren’t exactly concrete developments, Payne also talked about the next steps for the club as it searches for players, a new head coach and, of course, its own stadium [Answers have been split this up into hopefully more manageable sections]:

What is your perspective on how difficult this season has been?

“Every season has its own difficulties, even the ones that turn out in moments of triumph. But obviously, this has been extraordinarily difficult, partly because, to be really honest, we didn’t see this coming. We didn’t expect that we were going to win MLS Cup or the Supporters’ Shield this year. But we absolutely thought we were going to compete for a playoff spot. We knew we were in a transition year. We knew that we were going to have a very young team in general. But our preseason was encouraging. We played very well. We were very sound defensively, and we thought that would carry over.”

On the start of the season:

“We got off balance the first game of the year, the 4-0 loss [at Kansas City], and it seemed like it took us a while to get our feet back on the ground. We had several games in a row, for what it’s worth, where we were the better team on the day but we couldn’t score and then we gave up late goals. The New England game [0-2 loss], the New York game [0-2 loss], the Chicago game [0-2 loss]. Those were all really difficult, difficult losses to absorb, and I think that the psyche of the team got damaged. It wasn’t a team that had a lot of leadership to begin with, and I think the young players were shaken by what happened early in the year.”

On the injuries:

“I’m not going to use it as an excuse, but it’s impossible to ignore the injuries. We’re sitting around in January and thinking we have Bryan Namoff and Devon McTavish at right back and Marc Burch and Rodney Wallace at left back. We start the season missing three of those guys and end up playing the majority of the season with Namoff out the whole year, Burch has hardly played at all and Rodney goes out early in the season. Those are devastating injuries, and that’s why we end up having to play younger players like Jordan Graye, who had to play a lot of games out of position at left back. It’s a challenging enough to play in our league as a rookie. Then it’s just been one injury after the other all year long.”

On the lack of goals:

“Probably the most perplexing thing is our uncanny ability to not score goals. We probably create as many or more realistic chances as any team in the league. There’s virtually not a game that goes by where we don’t create several chances that you say, ‘This has to be a goal,’ and somehow we manage not to score. It really is kind of astounding at this point. It’s one of those things that it’s very difficult to correct it during the season. The coaching staff has done all sorts of finishing work, and some of it’s mental now with the players, where they start to over think it instead of reacting instinctively and making plays.”

On the expected roster turnover

“It’s been an extraordinarily difficult year. We know that we’re going to have some natural turnover, and then as a result of the year, there will be more turnover than there might’ve been otherwise. We’re already scouting players that we think will help us dramatically, and our focus is down the middle of the field. We clearly need at least a goal-scoring forward, but probably two forwards. We need better play in the central midfield position, more on the defensive side, and we need more consistent play and more leadership out of the center back position.”

On the goalkeeper situation

“Another thing that really caught us by surprise was the struggles we had in goal. We obviously believe that Bill Hamid has a very bright future, and Bill, frankly, had a good year for us. It’s been a struggle for Troy [Perkins]. We didn’t anticipate that. In 2006, he was goalkeeper of the year in MLS and in the Best XI; in 2007, he led the league in wins and shutouts; and then he went to Norway and got better and pushed himself into consideration for the U.S. national team.

“It’s been an extraordinarily difficult year for Troy, and he’d be the first to say it. When we went into the season that was the one position on the field we absolutely didn’t worry about at all. We thought, we’re fine there, and we’re fine there for a long time. We expect that he will get his feet back on the ground. The last few games he’s looked like the Troy Perkins we know, and we expect that he and Bill will have a very healthy competition next year for the starting job, or it may be a situation where they split time. That’ll be up to the new coaches.”

How do this season fit into the larger struggles the last three seasons?

“It makes me a little bit angry when people try to lump the three years together because they are three very distinct years. In 2008, we made an attempt to build a team that could win CONCACAF [Champions League]. We ended up losing in the semifinals, to the team that eventually won it, by one goal…

“On June 29, when we beat Los Angeles here, 4-1, on national television, we were second in the league in points with a game in hand. We were clearly the best team in the league at that point. We never played that lineup on the field the rest of the season. Marcelo Gallardo was leading the league in touches per game and scoring chances created. We had a rock solid back line – people like [Fox Soccer Channel’s] Chris Sullivan were calling it the best back line in the league – and we just struggled with one injury after another the rest of the season. Marcelo, in particular, developed really severe problems with his groin and adductor. We had surgery done on him, but it wasn’t sufficient to fix it. He needed a lot of rest, and we couldn’t give him the rest. It was a challenging year. As it was, we lost the last game of the regular season. We played more games than any team in the league and traveled more miles than probably any competitive team in the world that year.

“Last year we were in a bit of a transition, but for most of the year, we were a pretty solid team. We got caught up in the number of games late in the season, going to the final of the U.S. Open Cup. Also having to play in to CONCACAF and then playing deep into CONCACAF was very challenging. If you look at our record during the period of time of CONCACAF and after, we struggled to get points in the league, and that’s really what bit us…

“Are we disappointed to have missed the playoffs three years in a row? Absolutely, but I’m sorry, that’s beer talk. That’s bar talk that people talk about the three years together. I don’t buy it. Now, I also don’t want to pretend this year was totally out of our control. There’s always things that happen in a season that are out of your control, whether injuries or odd decisions – sometimes the game just doesn’t reward the better team – but clearly we made mistakes in some of the players that relied on this year. We made some assumptions, and I still look back on them, and we did our due diligence. You can’t always translate what players do in other leagues into this league. There are some guys that come in and you think, they’re surely going to succeed, and they don’t. I think of Luis Hernandez, who was a physical, tough, fast, aggressive player. You thought, he’s perfect for MLS. He’s going to get it and succeed. He didn’t succeed.

“You don’t ever know for sure. We had a few players that we thought were going to succeed that didn’t, that haven’t done what we expected of them, and we made mistakes. I think we got away from our philosophy a little bit. I don’t think we were prepared as well as we needed to be overall going into the season, and these are all things that we have to correct for next year and for future years.”

On similar disappointing seasons in Houston, New England and Chicago

“All four of those teams missing the playoffs, and for them, having very, very bad seasons – there is a cyclical nature to our league. It doesn’t mean you can’t overcome it by making better decisions, and we’re not shirking the fact that we made mistakes. Clearly, we made a big mistake, I think for the right reasons, but we made a mistake in blowing our 2007 team up to try to improve dramatically in 2008. I think we probably overreached what our league permits, but if you look, there really is a clear pattern in our league…

“It’s not a coincidence that Chicago, Houston, New England and D.C., the four teams that have been the most successful in the history of the league, are all missing the playoffs at the same time. Some of it is natural. We’re all trying to figure out, how do you prevent that? You don’t want to be in a boom or bust cycle. I was just at a competition committee meeting, and we’re all trying to figure this out, how do we not punish the best teams in trying to make the poorer performing teams better, and how do we achieve a balance that lets teams have hope but not at expense of better teams.”

On the coaching search:

“We’ve begun the process. [United general manager] Dave [Kasper] and I have spoken to a number of coaches, some of whom we know well, some we don’t know at all. The ones that we didn’t know at all, we started with phone conversations with them, and they’re based outside the country. We’ll decide soon if we’re going to bring them in for face-to-face interviews. We still need to talk to some other people that are based here in the states. We have also interviewed face-to-face some guys who we do know pretty well, who are familiar with the league and so forth. And then there are a few potential candidates whose teams are still playing so we really don’t want to distract them. We don’t want to create any problems for them at a critical time of the year so we’ll have to be a little bit patient with the process.”

On whether Ben Olsen is a candidate:

“Ben is not a candidate. Ben has dealt with the situation exactly as I thought Ben would deal with the situation, which is why we asked Ben to step in front of that particular bus. It was a pretty thankless situation, the way we laid it out to him, and he embraced it as he always does, and he did what was best for D.C. United. Ben will have his opportunity at some point, but I really want him to have his chance to be very, very successful when he starts. That’s not to say he couldn’t be successful now, but the likelihood is less than if he gets more experience and has a chance to learn more about the profession of coaching. It is a profession. I know it looks very easy to everybody out there. It’s a lot more art than science. It’s not a coincidence that the most successful coaches in this league, Bruce [Arena], in particular, and Sigi [Schmid], they had tremendous years of coaching experience before they ever came into the league. Both achieved highest levels of success. Younger coaches, when things go south or they have to deal with players, it’s hard for them to deal with because they haven’t done it before. All of a sudden, they’ve having to learn it on a bigger stage… It’s not in any way a reflection on Ben.”

On the stadium pursuit:

“I’m assuming that the [Baltimore] feasibility study won’t come out until after election day. We’ve had conversations in the District, and there’s a couple of developers helping us. Again, it was an election year so it wasn’t something that anybody wanted to be talking about front and center. I believe that the incoming mayor wants us to remain in D.C. We have to figure out how to do that in a way that makes sense. At the same time, there’s a real opportunity, I think, in Baltimore. We’re going to have to weigh the realities that we’re faced with.”