When English powerhouse Chelsea faces off against a team of MLS All-Stars on Aug. 5, the one player the two-time English premier league champions must fear is D.C. United defender Bobby Boswell.
Okay, that’s a stretch. But Boswell was the one player to score against Chelsea in last year’s friendly at FedEx Field.
Boswell, Facundo Erpen and Kansas City’s Jimmy Conrad are currently in a close race in all-star voting for the third and final starting defender spot in the All-Star game. The MLS All-Star game against Chelsea will take place at recently-opened Toyota Park, the Chicago Fire’s new stadium in Bridgeview, Ill.
“It would be awesome to play those guys again and I think it would be great to be an All-Star, to be put up there in the league with some of the other guys,” said Boswell. “[But] I don’t really focus on that, I look forward to the season games that mean a lot to the organization and to the team.”
Boswell’s reported salary is less than $30,000. Chelsea recently signed Ukraine striker Andrei Shevchenko for a reported 30.8 million pounds ($55. 7 million).
Online all-star voting by fans, which counts for 25 percent of the total vote, ends July 7. Freddy Adu and Ben Olsen also are among the frontrunners to start in the MLS squad’s midfield.
Swept away
D.C. United’s (10-1-5) four straight wins over Kansas City complete the team’s first regular-season series sweep since 2001, and the third over the Wizards in United’s history. D.C. beat Kansas City in each of two meetings in 1999 and 2001. In 1999, United also swept four-game series against Columbus, now-defunct Miami and the then-MetroStars on the way to its third MLS Cup.
