It’s easy to explain away D.C. United’s first two games of the season, both losses, and the radical changes in the team’s starting lineup from the first game to the second.
Sporting Kansas City and the Los Angeles Galaxy finished the 2011 regular season atop the Eastern and Western Conferences, respectively, with the Galaxy winning MLS Cup. Both teams return rosters that have seen very little turnover and are both very capable offensively.
Meanwhile, D.C. United went through a pretty significant offseason overhaul, didn’t get to play its first team together in a competitive match at all during the preseason, has at least a few players who aren’t completely match fit, and immediately was hamstrung by U.S. call-ups for Olympic qualifying.
Thus, a 1-0 loss to Kansas City and a 3-1 defeat at Los Angeles are no reason to panic.
But if that’s the case, then why did D.C. United start panicking even before the Galaxy game?
“It’ll be a work in progress, but there’s a lot of good stuff out there,” United coach Ben Olsen said after coming within 60 seconds of a scoreless draw with Kansas City in the season opener. “We’ll continue to figure each other out and get fitter.”
Yet, instead of keeping intact, as much as possible, the group that he’d put in place for the Kansas City game, Olsen went beyond the two changes forced by the absences of Bill Hamid and Perry Kitchen to make three more adjustments to his starting 11, including the shocking decision to leave both Branko Boskovic and Hamdi Salihi on the bench against the Galaxy.
“I expect him to be a huge part of this team,” is what Olsen had said about Boskovic during preseason.
“We’ve been searching for the right No. 9 for this club for a while now, and we think we’ve found it,” Olsen said about Salihi when the Albanian striker was introduced in February. “We’re very lucky to have his services at this point.”
So what changed after one game? Olsen’s commitment to both of D.C. United’s designated players couldn’t look more hollow. While it’s admirable for Olsen to hold both of them to the same obligation that every other player on the team has, to fight and earn their starting jobs each week, Boskovic and Salihi are two of D.C. United’s three highest-earning players. The franchise has made a commitment to each of them. Olsen singled out Boskovic repeatedly as a big reason why D.C. didn’t achieve what it had hoped last season, and from everything Olsen has said during preseason, he played as big a role as he could himself in landing Salihi. Without further explanation from Olsen after last weekend on his lineup change, benching the pair looks like the strong-arm tactic of an inexperienced coach.
There’s little reason to suggest that leaving Boskovic and Salihi among the substitutes was merited against the Galaxy. Tactically, the reigning MLS Cup champions’ biggest liability is in the center of the defense, where they lost Omar Gonzalez to a knee injury. But more importantly, it’s the second game of the season. What did Olsen and United have to lose? They lost anyway. Wouldn’t the expectation be that players like Boskovic and Salihi would rise to the occasion against a big-time opponent? Isn’t playing the matches themselves the best way to get players match fit? And by the way, couldn’t D.C. have used Nick DeLeon in the season opener instead of keeping him out of the 18-man gameday roster? He showed he was ready on Sunday.
Olsen’s biggest achievement in his first full season was getting the players behind him even if the team wasn’t getting results. And make no mistake, down the stretch, D.C. didn’t get any results. With a chance to make the playoffs, United finished 2011 by going winless in their last six matches (0-5-1). No matter the players at his disposal or injured, those results are on Olsen.
The hardest part for any club or team that is trying to change and break free from losing ways is to stay focused on the process whether results are positive or negative. D.C. United had a chance to do that after the Sporting Kansas City match.
Instead, Olsen was reactionary, and United (0-2-0) is starting over at Vancouver on Saturday after having sacrificed its first two results of the year. More changes are inevitable, too, with Dejan Jakovic listed as questionable with groin injury and Andy Najar having departed the team to join up with the Honduran under-23 squad.
A result against the undefeated Whitecaps (2-0-0) on Saturday would help stem the tide of criticism. But after how Olsen has handled the first two games of the season, the question is, will it help the process?
