Three things.
1. Santino Quaranta said he won’t give Stephen King and Andy Najar a hard time – until Monday.
“Him and King are on my list,” said Quaranta. “I’ll let him slide this one time.”
The second part is a reference to Najar’s botched counterattack in the 81st minute of Saturday’s scoreless deadlock with Real Salt Lake, a play in which Najar was again drawing defenders, like he had all night, and should’ve given the ball up to an overlapping Quaranta. Given how dangerous he was, United will take it as part of Najar’s growing process, but the 17-year-old needs to find some balance between taking on the world and just making the right pass.
“Early on, he made things happen on his own, and that’s a great thing to have,” said United head coach Curt Onalfo. “He drew three players, and as a young player, now he has to realize, ‘I’ve drawn three players, I have to get the ball off my feet quicker because now I’m going to open up something for somebody else.’ So that’s all part of developing a 17-year-old. But he’s certainly exciting to watch, and the fans that pay their hard earned money to watch him, to watch our team, it’s well worth it.”
As for King, the first miss was disappointing. The second was downright dumbfounding.
“I thought we all three were going to bump heads on that one,” said Quaranta. “The ball was just bouncing there, and it was me, him and [Danny] Allsopp. [King’s] just got to keep his head up. He’s a great guy, and he’s done well for our team. I’ll stand by him and give him some stuff on Monday when we come back in.”
2. The first D.C. shutout of the year went to Troy Perkins, the goalkeeper that couldn’t get a break to save his life at the start of the year. Who would’ve seen that coming?
“Curt wants competition,” said Perkins. “And to be honest, in a professional environment, that’s what you need because if not, you get stuck being the same. You never improve so we have that all over the field now, and as you can see, guys are really starting to put the effort in.”
3. Apparently, Real Salt Lake midfielder Will Johnson hasn’t been watching very many D.C. United matches and doesn’t realize how many goals D.C. has given up in the final 15 minutes of games. The answer: 7 out of 20 goals allowed.
“I think at the end of the day you take a point,” said Johnson. “I would say I’m more surprised more than anything. We were sitting back, being patient, wanted to try and hit them on the counter. We figured them being at home, and having such a poor record, they’re desperate for points but they stayed back in their shape the whole game. So at the end of the game, we’re like fine we’ll just take a point… I was confused, I don’t know if they’re planning on winning all their road games or what, but for me their tactics that they just sat there for 90 minutes is a little bit strange.”
To be fair, some of the D.C. players thought RSL was pressing late, so go figure.
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