There isn’t a lot new being said right now in the D.C. United locker room. In fact, there’s not much being said at all. Sort of like the number of offensive chances the team is generating.
This may be nitpicking, but the free kicks are quite possibly the most stinging example.
I’m not sure any of United’s free kicks made Matt Pickens react at all in Saturday’s historic 1-0 defeat to Colorado. And that was with referee Jorge Gonzalez trying to get the Rapids to set up their wall 12-15 yards back and even handing out a yellow card to Pablo Mastroeni for constantly moving forward in the wall – okay, no argument with the card itself for that stuff.
As for the attempts themselves: Into the wall. Over the goal. You name it. Yuck. Christian Castillo‘s free kicks were terrible, even if his overall play wasn’t. His waste of a blast in second-half stoppage time was the worst of the bunch, considering he had all of his teammates except for Hamid in the box waiting for him to loop it over.
“If you can’t put shots on frame, or at the very least, make the keeper make a save, it adds up,” said United midfielder Kurt Morsink.
It also underminds the morale that stems from improved possession and control of the tempo, an area where United is making strides.
“It’s the same thing over and over again: what now?” said forward Adam Cristman. “We’re responding. Guys are trying to drive the game and create stuff. But whether it’s before the goals or after it, we’re still not getting the service that we need. We’re not getting good shots off, and creating the goal scoring opportunities that we need to win the game.”
“Our objective is to get the ball wide and get some crosses in,” said midfielder Clyde Simms. “We got some big guys up top and in the box. We worked on that, and I felt like we had a couple chances to clip some back post tonight that were cut short or cut out short. We just got to continue to work on it. We’re getting the runs down, and we’re getting guys in the box. We just need a little better service.”
And better finishing on free kicks.
And points.
“We need points, and we need points at home,” said United head coach Curt Onalfo. “We had another great crowd, and I’m just – I can’t even tell you. I would never imagine we’d start this way, and I’m sick. I want nothing more than to give the fans points that they deserve. But having said that, we can’t sit here and complain about it. We’ve got to find a way. That means we have to dig even deeper. It’s going to be nice getting some of our players back. I think we sorely missed [Chris] Pontius and [Santino] Quaranta tonight, just in the attacking part of the field. All those things add up and make it more difficult, but make no mistake about it. This has been difficult, and we’re going to have to just find a way to dig deeper, and there has to be some good that comes out of it. There just has to be.”
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