D.C. United vs. Marathon: Your Running Commentary

Good evening all. D.C. United is in Honduras tonight to take on CD Marathon in CONCACAF Champions League group play. D.C. will look to snap Major League Soccer's winless run in this tournament, while also snapping its own recent winless rut.

Tonight's match is set for 10pm on Fox Soccer Channel. If you will be watching the match, please feel free to share your thoughts, opinions and some play-by-play in the comments section below.

Enjoy the match.

Comments

[RSF]

no goals so far but some chances for both teams, more so for Marathon...

[Nev]

DC is outpaced so far and can't get anything going in the attacking third. Luckily, DC's height advantage in the back has prevented any real chances.

[jake]

Dc doesn't look particularly good. They are no Puerto Rico Islanders, that's for sure!

[chg]

FWIW, Montreal and Atlante played to a scoreless draw. According to Canadian aress, the Impact had more chances and could/should have emerged with three points.

[Teo]

DC's down 1 and doesn't look very sharp.

[Teo]

Could've called that one a mile away - Marathon goal.

2-0

[Friend of AR3]

DCU outplayed by Marathon. How embarrassing...

[SonicDeathMonkey]

Is it me, or whenever DC plays international teams, they look so slow. Even when they are full strength, they look so much slower than the other teams. Uggh. What a terrible performance.

[Ace]

Yet another dissappointment. I don't blame DC completely, but it would be more than fair to say that they are prolly putting forth 50% effort into this competition... which is understandable, yet very unfortunate.. These competitions are a great way to play against better competition.

DC has looked completely worn out mentally and physically.

[John]

I think DC looked slow because Marathon is so quick and fast--they're a team built for speed and counters, that's what they do. That said, DC is also a team right now that is mentally and physically pounded down. They're not healthy, they're not deep, and they're playing poor soccer, certainly not impressive on any level. They haven't been impressive since just before the SuperLiga started. I do think DC was putting out the effort. If they didn't care, they wouldn't have started the people they did--that was basically their "A" team out there when you subtract injured players like Quaranta, Moreno, Gallardo, etc. They just aren't very good right now.

I think MLS needs to sort out a range of things--get a big picture of sorts. You look at DC just as one example: they basically took a month off from MLS (for SuperLiga, USOC) and have a congested calendar after that. NE at one point at 14 possible games in 44 days. Houston could play 51 competitive matches in 2008. The league has to sort out:
--what kind of competitions does MLS participate in
--provide a roster and cap that makes that kind of participation realistic
--equalize the participation. It's a huge advantage to Red Bulls and Columbus this year that teams like Houston, NE, Chivas, and DC have had these extra competitions. Spread the wealth rather than overload a couple of teams. We can laugh at DC's misfortune right now but if our team is playing 45-48 games next season, we'll have a year of complete dreck.

Right now, MLS is like the worst days of Brazilian soccer where some clubs would schedule games and impromptu competitions or go our tour so they'd play a game every 2 days--no meaningful practice, players never get healthy, everyone gets run-down, quality of soccer suffers.

And MLS not only gets embarassed but misses an opportunity to build on the latino fan-base. This kind of performance isn't going to get Mexican or Salvador fans to start coming to MLS games.