Tired of 'One Point, One Point, One Point'
Sluggish United Comes Away With Another Tie: United 1, Rapids 1
United's Christian Gomez shares the moment with Alecko Eskandarian and Freddy Adu after scoring in the 56th minute of Saturday's tie against Colorado.
(By Kevin Wolf -- Associated Press)
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Sunday, August 20, 2006
One by one, D.C. United's players tried to explain the dreary first half of the club's 1-1 tie with the Colorado Rapids yesterday at RFK Stadium -- an uninspiring deadlock that stretched United's MLS winless streak to four games.
Josh Gros said it "looked like nobody wanted to be out there."
Alecko Eskandarian told of a "sluggishness that just spread all over" and a "pretty intense" locker room during halftime.
Bobby Boswell called it "one of those days where the soccer wasn't the greatest."
Jaime Moreno said he was disappointed by the early performance and expressed concern about repeating last year's late-season slide.
Considering all that went wrong on this steamy afternoon before 18,006 restless spectators -- the poor start, the first-half deficit, more missed opportunities and the hamstring injury to playmaker Christian Gomez -- a tie did not seem like such a bad outcome.
Gomez scored the equalizer early in the second half and, for about 15 minutes, United (13-2-8) looked as if it would snap out of its mystifying funk and overtake the Rapids (9-8-5). But the end was just as quiet as the beginning, and although United remained unbeaten at home with eight wins and three ties, it had to settle for its third draw in the last four games.
"I wasn't happy, that's for sure," Coach Peter Nowak said of the first half. "I'm really tired of this one point, one point, one point, this way or another. We have to be a bit more hungry."
There were many problems. In addition to continuing its scoring slump -- United has only three goals in the last four games after averaging nearly two per outing most of the season -- D.C. did not pressure the ball with its usual intensity and had to work very hard for minimal results. The passing in the attacking third of the field was off and on several occasions, players made poor decisions with the ball.
The second half was better, but not enough.
"Maybe it's a little complacency, maybe fatigue," midfielder Ben Olsen said. "When we don't pressure the ball well, when we give other teams time, we're not good. We're good when we're on the offensive. [Yesterday] we didn't have the bite in the first half."
The Rapids, who came from behind to defeat United in May in Denver, took the lead in the 32nd minute when Kyle Beckerman's glancing header off Nicolas Hernandez's corner kick beat goalkeeper Troy Perkins to the far corner.
