DC United at Nashville SC 5/17/25
DC continues to play without Benteke in Music City
Game Context
Nashville entered the match not having lost in almost a month, with three MLS wins in that time plus an Open Cup win over a USL side.
DC United drew 0-0 against NYCFC midweek, but they still conceded a lot of chances that NYCFC simply couldn’t finish. Otherwise, by modern DC United standards, it’s been a good stretch, with two wins and two losses in MLS before that, plus an Open Cup win over Charleston. However the major storyline right now in the season is that DC’s best player by far, Christian Benteke, is out injured and the team is struggling to create anything offensively after making adjustments to improve the defense.
Before the game, I was looking at the Nashville subreddit. Someone mentioned it was going to be their first game, and someone else said it was a good match for a newcomer since Nashville was doing great at home and was expected to win. “Yeah, sounds about right,” I said to myself.
What I and that Nashville fan failed to reckon with is that both teams rotated out starters due to last week’s midweek MLS game and the upcoming midweek Open Cup game, so it was, in fact, a terrible introduction to MLS.
According to the MLS power rankings, this featured #9 (Nashville SC) vs. #26 (DC United).
Formation
In my preview I said if David Schnegg and Aaron Herrera were both rested, you’d know Troy Lesesne was serious about the Open Cup. Well, that didn’t quite happen, but he still rotated heavily: Aaron Herrera, Hosei Kijima, and Kye Rowles would have definitely started in a do-or-die game, and almost certainly Jared Stroud would as well. They were all on the bench, as was Boris Enow, who at least in the past has been preferred as a starter to Matti Peltola in central midfield, although he might have played himself on to the bench by now.
Besides resting usual starters, Lesesne also changed up the formation. He went back to something we haven’t seen since early in the season, a 4-4-2. Luis Barraza continued to start as goalkeeper. Lucas Bartlett and Garrison Tubbs played in central defense while David Schnegg and Conner Antley played left and right fullback respectively. Matti Peltola and Brandon Servania were playing DC’s usual double pivot, but this time they were flanked by Peglow on the left and Rida Zouhir on the right. Jacob Murrell played up top, but he was joined by Jackson Hopkins.
This didn’t seem like a bad idea to me. Murrell has been hopelessly isolated as the sole forward in the 5-4-1 look of the past few games, and last season Hopkins looked pretty good at times on offense as a central midfielder but struggles with the defensive side of the role. At least he ought to be able to help hold the ball!
The concern, though, was simply that whenever Lesesne has lined up DC with four at the back in the last year and a half, the team has been extremely vulnerable to counterattacks.
The good news was that—at least against the rotated Nashville SC lineup, one that did still include one of the league’s best creators, Hany Mukhar—they didn’t give up many chances. The bad news was that the Hopkins at second forward experiment produced one admittedly nice passing sequence and absolutely nothing else. DC didn’t have a single shot in the first half.
DC’s central midfield, no matter who is playing there, continues to be unable to reliably advance the ball through the center of the pitch. That means the only way DC United really advances the ball is down the flanks. In the 5-2-3, that means Aaron Herrera and Jared Stroud on the right side and David Schnegg and Peglow on the left. But in this 4-4-2 shape, Hopkins and Murrell were both playing pretty narrow and Peglow was much farther back, making him and Schnegg unable to get in behind the defense. And on the other side, Conner Antley and Rida Zouhir barely even trying to get forward.
In the second half, Kye Rowles came on for Jackson Hopkins and the team started playing something more like their usual 5-4-1. In a series of like-for-like substitutions, Randall Leal, Boris Enow, Aaron Herrera, and Hosei Kijima came on for Peglow, Peltola, Antley, and Zouhir. This mostly failed to jump start the attack, although nice counterpressing play from Kijima gave Murrell a stoppage time opportunity to grab what would have been a hilariously unjust victory, but alas he couldn’t convert.
Expected Goals
Nashville outshot DC United 8-3 and narrowly won the xG battle 0.49 to 0.30. In the first half Nashville had 0.25 xG on 3 shots to DC’s even 0 shots and 0 xG. They still outshot DC 5-3 in the second half, but tallied only 0.24 xG whereas DC of course got 0.30.
So the second half was clearly better for DC? Well, not so fast. DC only had three shots for the whole game, and the first two were Lucas Bartlett and Randall Leal shooting from way, way outside of the box for 0.01 and 0.02 xG respectively. In other words, Opta’s model thinks Bartlett, for example, could shoot from that position 100 times and score only once. Most players who shoot from that far out are trying to lob the keeper, whereas Bartlett was just…tired of defending, I guess? An MLS goalkeeper who isn’t recovering from some previous play will save those basically every time.
Anyway, that was it for DC until stoppage time when Jacob Murrell got his big chance for 0.26 xG. As exciting as this way, Willis reacted well and got into great position, so a 25% chance of scoring still seems generous to me, but Murrell has made much harder shots earlier this season!
Nashville’s highest xG chance was Hany Muktar’s free kick from near the top of the box, measured at 0.18 xG. He certainly can score on free kicks (you might remember him scoring a nice one against DC at Nashville last season) but this time his placement wasn’t good and Barraza saved it easily.
Player Ratings
Starters
Luis Barraza - 5 - Another clean sheet in which he made the saves he’s supposed to make and didn’t distribute the ball well. This time he had a play where he passed it directly to Hany Muktar, who was kind enough to shoot it right back at him for an easy save.
Lucas Bartlett - 4 - More trouble completing passes than usual and fortunate that the goal scored after his miscontrol early in the first half was ruled offside.
Garrison Tubbs - 5 - 90 minutes and a clean sheet in the MLS regular season. Quite a turn from how things looked for him when he was sent to Loudoun! Far from perfect, but he looks like he belongs out there.
David Schnegg - 4 - Just 14 for 24 passing on a day where he (along with Peglow, though he was just back from injury) was—on paper—the best attacking player among the starters.
Conner Antley - 5 - Very similar to Schnegg really, but I guess I grade him on a curve since he’s a backup. Couldn’t help much going forward, but did pretty well defensively.
Matti Peltola - 5 - Very tidy, 22 for 23 passing and won four fouls, but just 25 touches in the middle of the field is too low for my taste. He had a nice turn on DC’s one good possession. Maybe Nashville’s game plan was to mark him out of the game and dare anyone else to pass through press. If so, it worked pretty well.
Brandon Servania - 5 - Much more involved than Peltola in terms of touches, passing, and defense. The defense was all right, but he’s still part of a midfield that couldn’t find any way for DC to advance the ball successfully.
Rida Zouhir - 3 - The positive I’m taking from this performance is that he soaked up minutes and so won’t need to be on the field in this position on Wednesday. Always hard to be sure but I don’t think his positioning is right on defense and he sure wasn’t offering anything going forward. FBref says he was dispossessed five times, as many times as the whole rest of the team.
Peglow - 5 - Ineffective at best. Possibly still getting his confidence back after the injury, but I tend to blame the tactics for him mostly getting the ball in his own half instead of a more advanced position.
Jackson Hopkins - 4 - Eight touches in 45 minutes. I guess that’s not his fault, but man, no matter what Troy told him, could he drop back and help the midfield out some?
Jacob Murrell - 4 - Thirteen touches in 90 minutes in a truly thankless role. Again, that’s mostly not his fault, but I do blame him for his 1 for 10 passing. In the Open Cup, after a whole game of running around but not being involved, he somehow managed to find the energy and mental acuity to score a brilliant goal. No such luck this time, alas.
Substitutes
Kye Rowles - 5 - A solid outing, with most notably a really nice last ditch tackle to defuse a good Nashville opportunity.
Randall Leal - 4 - You’d think a match against his old team would bring out some fire, but I didn’t see anything to suggest he should be starting over, say, Kijima as a winger, even though (unlike Kijima) it’s supposed to be his actual position.
Boris Enow - 4 - Lost five out of seven duels and committed three fouls. Still at the bottom of my personal depth chart at central midfield, but we’ll see what Troy thinks.
Aaron Herrera - 5 - Anonymous in his twenty-six minutes. Just that kind of night for the whole team, I guess.
Hosei Kijima - 6 - Not a lot of opportunities to impact the game (seven touches) but he had a nice defensive play in stoppage time to set up Murrell’s chance.
Other
Troy Lesesne - 5 - I’ve been complaining about his inability to fix the defense, so credit where credit is due: another clean sheet, and in terms of xG allowed, this is tied for the second best game in his time at DC (Sporting Kansas City earlier this season only managed 0.4 xG, though they did score a goal). With Benteke out, if there’s ever a time to focus on defense, I guess this is it. But DC can’t draw its way into the playoffs and will have to find some way to score actual goals again.
Coming Up
DC’s next game is a Wendesday Open Cup match against Charlotte FC. Charlotte got off to a hot start with some nice wins against teams like FC Cincinnati, San Jose Earthquakes, and San Diego FC. But they’ve really cooled off and have lost five straight MLS regular season matches.
After that, DC has two more home games. There’s the return fixture against the New York Red Bulls, who obliterated the LA Galaxy since they last played DC but who otherwise haven’t been doing well. Then DC hosts the unheralded New England Revolution, who looked terrible at the start of the season but are on a six game unbeaten streak with four MLS wins and two draws.