Game Review: Pachuca 2 - 0 DC United

Yesterday's CONCACAF game was deja vu to any Spurs fan who suffered through the loss to Newcastle on Sunday. Both games started with a promising, engeretic flurry for the good guys, but then slowly descended lower and lower into near-complete impotence. Every United botched pass, dribble into traffic, or sorry giveaway recalled the disaster at White Hart Lane to perfection. Only if DC had been wearing road whites could the flashback have been more complete.

So yes, that was an immensely frustrating game. Not in the sense that the team has been completely abject, but in the more needling way that every flaw the current roster was intended to fix seems to have gone untouched. For a team supposedly renovated around crisp passing, there was almost none of that at Pachuca. Dribbling into several defenders, or a giveaway, seemed to be the standard procedure in the rare moments United ventured over the halfway line. Fred had another energetic and mostly positive game, but it's seeming that for all his danger, he may never discover what the outside of the field is there for. And even at the back, where performance has been largely as advertised, there was Martinez's gaping error on the second goal. All of it combined for twenty decent minutes and then a neverending cycle of goal kick/giveaway-oncoming rush-blown Pachuca chance-set piece-repeat. 2-0 was a miracle given the shape of the game after the half.

(Interlude: I will not blame Zach Wells for playing the high-percentage shot on the first goal. He got beat by a ludicrous goal, and that's that. Otherwise, I thought he had a solid game and deserved more than the 4 he got from Goff. Though, if trends continue, we will need to have a serious discussion about his distribution sometime next month.)

There are definitely excuses to be made about the altitude, but I would have found them more convincing had the same sloppiness not been evident from many players even in the first minutes. The guy I'm really thinking of here is Emilio, who is a shadow of himself right now. Really the only difference between him and Niell at present is the memory of last year. Otherwise, they had similar nights of frenzied but generally pointless running and forklift-like first touch. Gallardo was also iffy, going all over the place but still delivering more good intentions than good balls for the forwards.

It is still very early in the season, and the team is a work in progress, but to fail so meekly is still a little maddening. This team was built with CONCACAF in mind, lest we forget. And with each passing game, we inch closer the dividing line between "they haven't had time to gel" and "something is just wrong here." That line may be a lot closer if they can't summon a large amount of fight at RFK.

MOTM - Yeah, right. Honorable mention to Fred, but that's it.

Can I Admit the Following?

1. I just didn't care about last night's DC game. That is, of course, much easier to say the day before rather than the day of, when you still find yourself going to ridiculous lengths to watch the game and then fuming over score updates when you fail at the former. Such is the force of habit. But really, I care about CONCACAF right now, not our tradition season-opening loss. We will, however, leave last night's implications for said important game alone for now. There's only so much you can take in one weekend. And speaking of which...

2. I am having heretical thoughts about Juande Ramos. Already. Like, has he really done anything for the winning mentality of the players, who put up a very nice Potemkin village of resistance today? Or, has he been some lucky swings away from an Avram Grant-like substitution record instead of a tactical genius? I can't tell. Certainly he didn't put out the first team today, and it showed in spades (Michael Dawson, that will be quite enough, thanks). But it's now been two awful, embarassing home defeats since the Carling Cup, and it makes you wonder if he has in fact done those Jose-like magic tricks with the mental toughness and heart of the team. It didn't look like it today.