So, I’m sitting here, waiting to hit up Bar Review, which is right up the road here in Adams Morgan, and I’m thinking to myself, “Self, you should throw some comments and links out there about DCU; you are, after all, obsessed.” Which is a very good point. I can get a little crazy about sports, and United is one of my big teams. I’m sure you’ll be able to figure out the other ones in due course.
At any rate, the Black-and-Red kicked off their 2008 campaign last night down in Kingston, Jamaica against a team you’ve never heard of called Harbour View FC. Yeah, that’s a U. At any rate, D.C. came out with a somewhat disappointing 1-1 draw, and they’ll play the second leg of the aggregate goals series Tuesday night at the District’s very own Concrete Spaceship.
At any rate, I’ll leave you to D over at the DCenters for most of the run-down, but I’ve got a couple impressions of my own – they’re after the jump.
First off, Franco Niell is very small, very fast, and very, very dangerous. There was no better display of this than a through ball the little guy received in full stride from Marcelo Gallardo shortly after coming on for Jaime Moreno. Niell beat the defender, who had to reach out and basically Roy Williams the United forward to keep him from taking the keeper 1-v-1. By the book, the foul should have put D.C. a man up, but the ref saw fit just to give a warning. Regardless, big threat created by Franco Niell’s fast feet.
Between him and Gonzalo Martinez in the back, I think we’ve got as much speed at either end of the field as we’ve had for a while. Now, granted, I’ve lived in D.C. for all of 18 months, and I’ve been following the team for a whole season now (a whole season!), but my impression from reading around the adjacent internets is that speed is something the boys have been missing for a while now. With Gonzo-Mart starting in the central defense and the Leprechaun (Can I give Niell that nickname? I think I just did.) coming off the bench up top, United look like they’ll be able to win some footraces, which hopefully will translate to more goals scored and fewer conceded.
Second point on the game…okay, no second point this time. Just go check out D’s stuff. It’s really solid; you’ll learn a lot.
Oh, one last thing – I loves me some Clyde Simms. I’m sure I’ll have a chance to develop this point more later.
The AMT
Juice