The Captain is going down with his Ship.

We have all heard the old saying; that a Captain goes down with his sinking ship. A captain is ultimately responsible for the actions of his crew, regardless of what they do. Hell, Captain Kirk even took responsibility for the actions of his crew in Star Trek VI.

In sports, we have the manager/coach of the team that seems to always go down with his sinking team. Coaches get fired routinely in baseball, soccer, football, basketball and such. Usually you cannot go a month into a sports season without some reporter printing a story that already lists those coaches/managers that are already on the hot seat. MLS is no different.

DC United is suffering, if not sinking. The rest of the Eastern Conference is quickly leaving the Black & Red behind as United fail time and time again, to put in a full 90 minutes of soccer. Saturday night, United traveled to Los Angeles and took on Chivas USA, another club that is stuck in quicksand. After scoring their first road goal of the 2008 season, United wilted in the second half and allowed 3 quick goals and lost 3-1. You can blame who you want, the players for not completing the game, or for not having heart or a fire in their belly, but regardless of whom you blame, their needs to be a change in some way, shape or form.

A change is needed simply because the status quo is definitely not working. As in most other sports, when the results are not found on the field, the coach is usually the one left with the bill… or left on the sinking ship.

Coach Tom Soehn is not a bad coach. He proved that he was able to correct problems last year and he was able to guide United to its second consecutive Supporters Shield and qualify for both the CONCACAF Champions Cup and the CONCACAF Champions League. However, due to how many changes were thrust upon him this season, Tom Soehn is in over his head.

A lot of people blame the fact that DC United is playing poorly because of losing Ben Olsen and Josh Gros. I actually do not buy this idea. I can understand where people are coming from, but considering the whole picture, losing Josh Gros and Ben Olsen are not as big a problem as the fact that Soehn had to incorporate four players who have never played in MLS before, or with the other members of the club. MLS is not like other leagues, as it is much more physical and the type of play where you have time to dribble the ball is not one that really prospers here. Getting his new players to come to grasp with MLS play has not been a success for Soehn.

Furthermore, Coach Soehn doesn’t seem to truly know how to motivate and encourage his players in order for them to play a full 90 minutes. Now in this area, I do agree that the loss of Ben Olsen has really hurt Coach Soehn. When Ben Olsen was running around the field like a mad man, he was the one who provided that lift for the players who started to slack off. Hell, even when Benny wasn’t out there, Christian Gomez was able to convince guys to keep running and stay on focus. Without these two players wearing United jersey’s on the field, the responsibility for getting guys in the proper mindset for a match falls to Soehn, and he has failed.

What United needs is a great motivator. Someone who will come in and bench Emillio, not only for one half of a match, but for the whole match. Someone who will get in people’s faces when they start to slack off for 20 to 30 minutes in a match. They also need someone who will be able to properly manage the whole match, all 90 minutes. Neither of these qualities seems to be in Tom Soehn’s toolbox.

I called for a removal of Tom Soehn last week, and I am still finding myself waking up every morning expecting to see a report that he has been released. This season of change, bringing in a new core of starting players has shown that Tom Soehn lacks the true tools to coach a team. He hasn’t been able to get the same type of results out of what many claim to be a club that actually has better talent this year than last year’s club. Week after week, we see the same lazy play from the Black & Red and afterwards, we hear of how players and the club have to go back to work and dig deeper. I do not know about most people, but I can hit my head against a wall only for so long until I realize that the wall is not going to move and my head hurts.

So, if Soehn does get the boot, which I fully believe will happen after United loses this Wednesday evening in Toronto, who should be the one or ones who comes in to fix the problems?

Honestly, I have said it before, but I think that United should look into the past to fix the current club. Bruce Arena is available, as is Marco Etcheverry. I think that if these two guys were brought in as head Coach (Arena) and Assistant Head Coach (Etcheverry) then United would get the two intangibles that they are missing. They will get a coach (Arena) who would be able to manage the club, its substitutes and is someone who isn’t afraid to bench a player or two. They will also get a coach (Etcheverry) who has the fire in his belly and knows how to play in MLS. More importantly, he played pretty much the same type of game that Gallardo plays, so he would be able to help mold the club around Gallardo’s skills and style, something that after 12 competitive matches this season, the club is still failing to do.

Two weeks ago I said that the next four matches will define our season. I also said that United will be lucky to get 2 points out of the possible 12. We dropped our first 3 Saturday night and have a very short week before the next match… which happens to only be three days before the third match in this stretch. Follow that up with another short week before a trip to New England. 2 points might even be out of reach, if United fails to put in a full 90 minutes in any of these matches.

It might be just as bad a situation if United replaces Soehn during this stretch as opposed to waiting until June. I really cannot see the club getting any better with Soehn at the helm. Maybe it is time for him to go down with his ship?

And there was much rejoicing!!!!

We should see a scene very similar to this on the 21st. Guys in red jersey's hoisting a trohpy. Gotta love a sight like that!

My Take: DC United 0 - 2 Chicago Fire

Last night's match showed alot more than just how good Chicago is this season. It showed how United is really not that great even after the massive amounts of change was went through over the offseason. It also showed how poor a coach Tom Soehn is.

First things first, Chicago was the better club and deserved to win last night. They took their shots and took advantage of what United gave them. Furthermore, they have one of the best defenses that I have seen in MLS in a long time. The way that their midfield and defenders completely snuffed out any attack that United tried was impressive.

However, as good as they were, United's players were that bad. Again, last night I saw too many attempts to walk the ball into the 6 yard box and try a nifty shot. I saw too many times a guy would have the ball inside the 18 yard box and his first and only decision was to pass. Guys, you win games by scoring goals. You score goals by taking shots.

Clearly the Fire were the better team, but United helped them last night by failing to take shots and to play the full 90 minutes. They also helped Chicago by the way that they were coached. I blame Tom Soehn for this.

Emillio should have been benched last night, newly signed DP or not. He has sucked it up on the field the past 8 or so matches and has failed to pull out of the funk he is in. Benching him and his new bonus might get things into his head that he needs to wake the hell up.

Neill really hasn't been the shining light that the Front office made him out to be over the break. He is too small of a forward and gets knocked around too often to really cause a problem for defenders. If Doe is good enough to get a contract, he should be good enough to get more playing time than he did last night.

Coach Soehn has yet to really show that he has the coaching skill needed to bring these guys together, or to properly manage a squad. If he did, Emillio and Gallardo would already have the kind of rapport that Emillio had with Gomez. Soehn would know when to pull players and bench them. He showed these qualities last season, but seems to be out thinking himself this season. This season his use of subs in matches has been truly baffling. I really don't know exactly how much longer the Front office or the club in general can hold out the hope that the on the field performances and the coaching get better.

With United facing a long week of training and three matches of four on the road, this is major crunch time. DC United's season will hinge on these next four matches. I do not really think that the club has it in itself, with the current coach, to get through these matches with anything more than maybe, 2 points.

If the Front office does remove Soehn, then I honestly think that the most logical steps would be to hire Marco Etcheverry as the head coach and bring Ben Olsen, who's career seems to be cut short as an assistant. Either that, or bring in Bruce Arena with Olsen as an assistant.

Whatever is done, a change needs to be done soon. As they do have a long week, if they do remove Soehn today and install someone today, the players and whomever they bring in will have a full 7 days to work together, which isn't much in the scheme of things, but it would be better than if they had even less time.

A breath of fresh air is needed. Change needs to come. The time is now.

The People's MLS Club

I like the partnership and the logo looks very nice on the jersey's, especially the road jersey. I think that this will be one of the more important steps that this club has taken as it grows.

What is important is that United was able to get a partner that will be able to assist United in its efforts to grow in two of the hardest areas for United to try and grow into, Europe and South America. The fact that Volkswagen's are huge in Latin America and that Gallardo will be one of their spokesmen, will definately help the club in its efforts down in South America.

United's efforts into Europe will benefit as well, with the announcement that Victor MacFarlane will travel to Germany later this month to visit VfL Wolfsburg, which is owned by Volkswagen to check out the Wolfsburg stadium and to see the clubs day to day operations. I cannot think of a better place for an MLS club to go to study operational proceedures that a German Football club.

I am very happy about this deal. It puts money into the club which should be able to help with the second DP slot, if the Front office and Soehn decide to use it, which at this point, a pretty crafty German winger might look good right now.

I might have ended Ben Olsen's career

Ok, so I have this unlucky knack of jinxing people.

It all started when I played Yahoo Fantasy Football a few years back. I drafted Terrel Davis of the Denver Bronco's in the first round. He was coming off of a huge season and I figured that I would get a ton of points off of him in that season. Instead, he went down in something like the second game of the season with a leg or thigh injury and retired at the end of the season.

Then a few years after that I drafted Micheal Vick in the first round, and he broke his leg in the first game of the season. I did get lucky in that Carson Palmer was my back up and he had a good season, but Vick going down was something my team, or his team would never recover from. I have since stopped playing fantasy football.

Moving to my selection of soccer jersey's, I bought my very first customized soccer jersey a few years ago, it was a DC United jersey with Dema Kovalenko. He left the club shortly after I bought it. I then bought a Manchester United jersey with Ruud van Nistelrooy's name and number on the back, and he was promptly sold to Real Madrid.

As I was having no luck with jersey's, the next two I bought (DC United & Manchester United), I went totally fan boy and put my last name on them, in hopes of not screwing a player with my jersey. That said, thinking that my luck had gotten better, I bought a DC United away jersey last year... with Christian Gomez on it and he left the club.

So that brings us to Ben Olsen. As DC United introduced new jersey's this year (which seem to be gearing up for a little VDub action) I promptly plopped my cash down for a home jersey and decided that I wanted a players name instead of mine on the back. So I thought about it and I figured that the one guy who would never be traded from United, on the current roster, was Ben Olsen. So I picked Olsen and #14 for the back and I have his jersey....

...and now Goff is reporting that Olsen's career might be over due to his ankle problems.

Ben, I am sorry that I cursed you when I bought my jersey.

My Take: DC United 1 - 2 Columbus Crew

Ok, I admit it, I stopped watching the game on ESPN2 right after the second Crew goal. I couldn't stand, er, my fiancee couldn't stand me yelling and screaming at the TV for much more and she was worried that I might throw something at the TV.

So I played a computer game instead.

In the small amount of time I did watch the match, I saw alot of things. I saw that DC United has two very large problems with it's offense. First, United retains the ball too long. What I mean is that our players try and hold the ball at their feet longer than they should and this allows for defenses to track back and get ready for any type of attack. I lost count of how many times a United player has tried to dribble the ball into the 6 yard box or make a short pass inside the box, rather than take a short on goal.

Second thing I saw was that United is scared to shoot. I lost count of how many times a United player would make a back pass or a short pass, rather than take a shot at the goal. Namoff took that long range shot in the first half and right afterwards, he was able to get inside the box and cause the own goal. United seems to think that they are only allowed to score from inside the 6 yard box.

If you add these two things together, you can see why the offense has had its problems and why the defense is getting rushed so much now. However, these two problems, IMHO, are more direct results of two outlaying problems that DC United is suffering from. They are the coaching and a player absense.

I am losing more and more confidence in Tom Soehn as the days go bye. As in all other major team sports, the fault should lay with the players, as they are the ones who aren't getting it done on the field. However, as always, the coach shoulders the blame for on the field problems. Soehn needs to get his guys up for these matches. He needs to get the right info across to his guys, mainly that they need to take more shots and stop trying to dribble through 4 defenders. he needs to adapt the game plan, or he needs to go.

The player absense is something that I brought up earlier in the season, and his name is Gomez. The absense of Christian Gomez, regardless of Gallardo's abilities, has IMHO, caused a major problem with the performance of Emillio. Last season, with an offensive midfielder moving in right behind Emillio, defenders had to give Emillio more room, because if they focused only on Emillio, Gomez could kill them, based on how he positioned himself. If they focused on Gomez, then Emillio was free, as was the case some 30 + times last season.

Now you have Gallardo, who plays a much deeper role in the attack, creating a gap in the offensive third of the field. Moreno doesn't play like Gomez had, so he doesn't fill the role, as neither does Niell or Quaranta. Fred could maybe fill the hole, but then we need another guy on the flank. Emillio is left all alone without any type of support, so we are seeing more "holes" in Emillio's play as he is having to fight for more balls with his back to goal, something he is failing at. Losing Christian Gomez, IMHO was a huge mistake and we are seeing that right now.

Gallardo is a very good player and sees a much different game than most on the field. That said, as others have said, the process of getting Gallardo and the rest of the club in the same page is taking much longer than it should, especially considering that United have now played 8 matches this season. This is the type of problem that the coach is supposed to sort out. I am starting to wonder if Soehn can bring this group together or if the FO needs to bring in another coach who can.

What a Goal!!! Manchester United vs. Arsenal: 4/13/2008

This was one wonderful goal to watch, ask the Arsenal wall, they all watched it too!

Too early for mashing the panic button?

There is always one weekend in the beginning of the MLS season where I miss one of DC United's matches. Sara has her birthday in early April, so I spent that weekend either out of town or out to dinner with her for her birthday. Last weekend was that weekend for this season and against the norm, I was actually able to catch part of United's match against RSL. I only watched 5 or so minutes of the match before I turned off the TV.

I am not going to go into what happened, as I didn't watch more than 5 or so minutes. What I did see was that Carvallo was useless in goal on the first two goals. I played goalkeeper in high school, and I have seen video of my play, so I know what useless in goal looks like. Carvallo was useless in goal on the first two goals. I am not certain why Soehn felt that an away trip to Utah to play on a carpet was a good idea for a guy's first MLS start, Steve Goff even asks the same question.

The biggest thing I have come up with is I am wondering what is going on with Ton Soehn. I am not 100% sure on what he is doing with the line-ups. Yes, I know that we have had about 5 matches in 14 days now and have yet another one this coming Thursday, giving guys a rest is something that the coach needs to be doing. I understand that, but why have your starting goalkeeper on the bench for an away match at a venue that you have utterly failed in the last two seasons? Give the backup goalkeeper the home start, on grass, in front of your supporters.

In addition to the goalkeeper issue, I am trying to figure out why Soehn refuses to use Fred in a central playmaking position, if our current central playmaker is out of the match. Rod Dyachenko is no Christian Gomez or Marcelo Gallardo, yet for some reason for the last two seasons, Soehn has felt the need to insert Rod in for both of them and ask him to fill their shoes. Rod simply cannot do the things that Gallardo does. I honestly think that if Gallardo is not going to be on the field, Fred should move from the flank to the inside and take up the role of the playmaker.

I realize that we have just started the season and in MLS, unless you go an entire month without a point, you make the playoffs, so there is really not that much to sweat about right now.

However....

Several of Tom Soehn's decisions this early season, and at the end of last season, have troubled me. Why not use the other two subs in the first match at Harbour View when your team has run out of gas? Why have Emillio and Moreno play in the final match of the 2007 season, when they risk injury, and got injured? Why try the three man defense line with players who have yet to prove that they should really be starting in a four man line?

I am not one to start a witch-hunt for Soehn to be fired. I think that he did a very good job last season with his first year in charge. However, I am starting to think that in order for DC United to be the club that everyone wants them to be, the FO, the players, the coaches, Garber & Co. and the supporters, maybe it is time that the head coach should begin to coach as if his job depended on each result? Coaches in Europe and South America play each match as if it were their last in charge, most of the time they get results because they have to. A swift kick in the butt from time to time gets results; maybe Soehn needs a swift kick in the butt.