D.C. United’s group in practice today was small after half the team played in the reserve match yesterday, a 6-2 win over Real Maryland. In fact, the Monarchs’ goalkeeper, Brian Levey, was among the participants. That helped make up for the absence of Troy Perkins, who was out with some sort of stomach virus or food poisoning. Andrew Quinn, who also played yesterday, and Bill Hamid were both in attendance. Hamid did some work — he said to me on Saturday that he expected to be fully cleared on Wednesday from his shoulder injury.
“For me, it’s just invaluable to have those games,” said United head coach Curt Onalfo of the reserve match. “We’ll schedule a lot of those, at least two a month, because one, it gives guys the opportunity to get the 90-minute game fitness that they need. Two, it was another team the dropped off and played low pressure, and when you makes some mistakes you learn from it.”
Danny Allsopp scored twice in the reserve match, seemingly cementing his inclusion in some form this weekend at Philadelphia.
“He’s been really sharp over the last two weeks,” said Onalfo. “He’s a really good player and will likely see time this weekend.”
Scoring goals remains the main topic of concern for D.C., but Jaime Moreno said it didn’t merit and special frustration.
“We know that we’re going to create chances, and when we don’t create many, we got to at least put one away. We know that, and that’s what we’re going to work on this week,” he said. “Last game, after the first goal, our reaction wasn’t good enough. But I think we’re human. That’s normal, and it was like after putting 78 minutes of really hard work, receive that goal, it was really disappointing, and that’s where we have to do better.”
Health-wise, the three guys – Carey Talley, Christian Castillo and Brandon Barklage – who were subbed from Saturday’s game, all presumably with injuries, participated in practice. Barklage finished the day with a nice big bag of ice on his left knee and didn’t do the fitness work to finish up the day.
Also among other players in practice were Nigel White, who is filling in the role of practice player and warm body, and Junior Da Silva, the younger brother of former D.C. and now Union midfielder Fred.
“We’re going to continue to look at him and see, does he make sense to be a guy that we put some time as a developmental player. It’s too early to make that assessment,” said Onalfo.
Onalfo had a nice 10-second long pause when he was asked about Luciano Emilio, whose MLS rights are still the possession of D.C. even though he’s unsigned: “He’s currently signed with another team. That’s all I’ll say.”
I did also ask Onalfo about Santino Quaranta’s development in the attacking midfield role:
“I thought he had a really solid performance,” said Onalfo. “He made enormous progress from the first game. He’s only played about six games in that spot. He was harder to play against defensively and I thought he was good in terms of launching some of our attacks and also with his runs. It’s just a matter of him continuing to get more comfortable there, continuing to get more comfortable with his back to the ball and being in tight spots. But I was really pleased with the progress.”
Add Penalty Kicks to your RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Penalty-kicks
Follow me on Twitter: @craigstouffer
