After filling in as Comcast SportsNet’s backup for much of D.C. United’s season, former MLS goalkeeper Garth Lagerwey recently moved into the broadcast booth to provide color commentary for the rest of United’s matches this season. He replaces John Harkes, who was named assistant coach at Red Bull New York, where he’ll serve under Bruce Arena.
Lagerwey was in Chicago last weekend for the MLS All-Star Game and he’ll be taking a day trip to Seattle on Wednesday to broadcast D.C. United’s friendly versus Spanish giants Real Madrid.
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Examiner: What does the MLS All-Stars’ win over Chelsea ultimately mean?
Garth Lagerwey: It seems to me that MLS is not that far off from some of the other leagues. It’s very fair to say that the MLS team wanted it a lot more than Chelsea did, but I can’t count myself among the list of people that were surprised or thought we might get blown out.
Not because I’m blindly loyal to MLS, but [fitness] was always going to be to the MLS players’ advantage.
The other thing is that when you bring eight D.C. United players, you have a lot more cohesion than you might out of a regular all-star team.
E: Which MLS players raised their stock against Chelsea?
GL: The obvious one is [Houston midfielder Dwayne] DeRosario. He was completely motivated going in because for him he’s never going to play in a World Cup [DeRosario is Canadian].
The flip side is that games like this are good for exposing where players are in their development. The Freddy Adu/Michael Essien match was interesting to me. Essien almost let Adu beat him a couple of times, and then just had such good closing pace and positioning that he was able to track him down and win the ball back. It was evidence of a guy that has to do more in order to go up to this next level.
E: Could multiple international friendlies start to wear out D.C. United?
GL: I know the guys want to play the games. [D.C. United] is still a relatively young team and a lot of these guys recognize that the more games they get at this profile, the more their marketability is increased.
Bobby Boswell having a great game is good for his development. But at bottom, that really expands his career earning potential – [Boswell earns $29,400] – and his ability to be exposed overseas, even if it’s only for contract leverage. To say the least, that aspect of it makes these games pretty palatable to guys like that.
As told to The Examiner’s Craig Stouffer
