Preseason Thoughts: DC United vs. Portland Timbers
For the first time in years, a DC preseason game was streamed in the DC area
First off, it’s a real treat to be able to watch a DC United preseason game. Too often in the past, DC’s entire preseason has been covered by a handful of tweets. It was great to actually see many of the new players on the pitch.
That said, I remember that for years, the guys on the Filibuster podcast would talk about what an unforced error it was that DC United and the league more broadly didn’t broadcast preseason games. Why would the league just pass up obvious opportunities to provide more opportunities for fans to connect with its teams?
Painful as it is to admit, I feel like this stream showed why the league is probably right to not stream these games. This game’s intensity was low, there weren’t many spectators, the stream quality was fuzzy, the commentator did his best but didn’t know DC’s players, and the production struggled to show replays. Can you imagine a casual American fan of the Premier League finally deciding to check out MLS and then turning this on?
Don’t get me wrong, I still love being able to see preseason games and so do other hardcore fans, but I can understand the league not wanting to pay to stream matches that are probably only seen by the few hundred hardcore fans and for which any more exposure than that would probably be harmful.
But enough about that stuff, let’s talk about the game.
Who Played Where?
For many years, across very different coaches, DC United has had the same approach to lineups for preseason matches: play a mix of starters and backups. I haven’t paid much attention to other teams then or now, but it sounds like they have being doing the same. I’m not sure why this broad consensus developed. It’s never made sense to me. I grew up an NFL fan and in NFL preseason games, the starters generally play together as a unit for however long the team wants them to play in a given game.
This is apparently another situation where René Weiler either isn’t aware of the American managerial consensus or (more likely, since Dave Kasper is there to clue him in) he just chooses to ignore it. He started what was pretty clearly the best eleven healthy players and then left most of them in for most of the game:
This gives us a much clearer picture of Weiler’s depth chart, but there’s still some questions due to absences. Vikas at the Capital City Soccer Show has gone well above and beyond the call of duty and flown out to cover the Coachella games in person, so thanks to him, we know that Gabriel Pirani and Aaron Herrera were at the game in street clothes, apparently due to minor knocks picked up in training. It sounded like Sean Nealis, Jared Stroud, Richie Aman, Gabe Segal, and Garrison Tubbs weren’t there at all. I don’t believe new signing Silvan Hefti has joined the team yet so naturally he wasn’t there either.
Until we hear otherwise, my guess is the non-Hefti absences are due to injuries more severe than “just a knock”. While Weiler didn’t mix up his lineup, there’s still some continuity with longstanding DC United practice, and one of the club’s long traditions is to say absolute nothing about any injuries until the first preseason game, then it’s like, “What? You were expecting that guy? He’s out for months.”
Stroud, Aman, Segal and Tubbs have appeared at least briefly in the team’s social media content, so they at least have been in camp. I probably missed something but I can’t remember seeing Nealis at all. A recent team social media post showed Gabe Segal with his right ankle in a boot, so that’s a pretty clear signal he’s going to be out for a while, but with no beat reporter to extract this kind of thing, we might have to wait until the season opener’s injury report to find out what’s going on with everyone else.
Beyond the game’s starting eleven, the substitution patterns told us a few things we might not have known for sure:
Hosei Kijima came in for Peglow, so at least amid the current injuries he’s seen as contending for one of the attacking midfield spots. Caden Clark also took Jackson Hopkins’ place and Hopkins moved back into central midfield, replacing Brandon Servania (Clark also played a few minutes at forward at the end). Because of the way Weiler played Hopkins at forward last season, I thought he might do that again this year, but if he sees Hopkins as still a big factor in central midfield, that might in part explain why the team hasn’t gone out to get more central midfielders.
Jacob Murrell and first overall draft pick Nikola Markovic came in for Tai Baribo and Lucas Bartlett, and Gavin Turner got a very short cameo playing in the right attacking spot Hopkins started in. That’s all pretty much as you’d expect, though Markovic is left-footed and Vikas said he was going to come on for Kye Rowles were it not for Bartlett having some cramping.
Jordan Farr subbed in for Sean Johnson at halftime, so at least for now he’s the #2 goalkeeper. Alex Bono was signed relatively recently so that might not last.
Did Anyone Play Well?
Overall, I’m have to say I wasn’t very encouraged by the play on the field. The team was disciplined and we didn’t see them give up the sort of jailbreaks that were common under Troy Lesesne, but I expected that based on the team’s play under Weiler last season. Jackson Hopkins and Matti Peltola each had some good moments, but nothing so good as to dispel my concerns that the team simply isn’t enough talented enough across the four midfield spots. But it’s preseason, so I’ll remain calm and see if things look different on Wednesday.
Of the new signings who started:
Tai Baribo looked fast and was the closest person on either team to scoring when he rattled the crossbar on a volley set up by a great pass from Peltola.
Louis Munteanu was totally out of sync with his teammates, but he’s arrived relatively recently so hopefully that will improve rapidly over the next few weeks.
Keisuke Kurokawa played fairly well, but he did get beaten once by MLS journeyman Ariel Lassiter. At least for now, there was less opportunity for fullback heroism than in the last year or two. The commentator, who knew very little about DC United, was surprisingly enthusiastic about Kurokawa, seemingly because of some counting stats from the J-League, and naturally soon after this Kurokawa had an opportunity to send a cross into the box loaded with DC attackers…and sent it over everyone’s heads.
Sean Johnson didn’t have much to do, mainly coming out quickly to pounce on through balls, but he looked fine (as did Farr in the second half). That’s better than at this time last year, when I was looking at the videos that teams playing DC in preseason were posting of the goals they scored and saying, “Huh, sure seems like Kim could have done better on that…”
I won’t go through every player, but a few other players of note:
Jackson Hopkins was the most creative attacker. He had a lot of freedom to move around, and he looked most dangerous playing high like a forward, so that’s yet more ammunition for my refrain that that’s his best position.
Peglow looked a bit rusty, turning the ball over cheaply more than I would have hoped. Hopefully more familiarity with the forwards will help.
Kye Rowles struggled a little bit and had to foul twice on two very similar plays in a short period of time
Tactics Corner
Tactically, the team looked a lot less like an energy drink soccer team that I guess I expected from Sogut’s comments and the kinds of players they’ve been getting. There was some situational pressing deep into Portland’s territory, but most teams do that these days. More often, the team sat back in a simple 4-4-2 defensive shape. Most importantly, after winning the ball, they usually recirculated it to safely build possession instead of playing rapid and direct.
There was a clear tactical idea that Lucas Bartlett would play the ball over the Portland press to guys like Baribo and Peglow running past the backline. Bartlett can be quite accurate with these long passes and this worked great at first, but then Portland adjusted and it stopped working. Then we got some really scintillating moments where Bartlett was standing on the ball inviting pressure while Portland sat back, letting him have the ball and daring him to make a progressive pass while their 10 field players marked the 6 DC players in front of the backline.
All things being equal, I’d much rather watch possession-based soccer, so I guess I’m happy to see that’s still on the table. The tactics we saw in this game were also much more compatible with Gabriel Pirani’s skillset than a pure Philadelphia model. The question remains whether DC has the players to succeed this way.
I know the midfield is getting to be a dead horse, but even in this ragged game, Peltola and Servania struggled to advance the ball under pressure. If the fullbacks aren’t going to be bombing forward, that’s going to put even more pressure on them to connect to the attackers. The long balls over the top are a good way to stop the opposition from pressing our defenders and midfielders, but once the opponent sits back, who is going to break them down?
I wonder if we might see Jackson Hopkins start over Brandon Servania in midfield when Pirani is available to play next to Peglow. The way I see it, that gets the best eleven players on the roster together on the field and it gets the closest thing DC has to chance creators, Hopkins and Pirani, into the midfield to try to find the forwards. The clear downside is that it seems like a lineup that would struggle defensively, and in any case Pirani or Hopkins are only good chance creators relative to the other players on DC’s roster, not relative to most of the rest of the league.
What’s Next
DC’s next game is against Minnesota United on Wednesday at 3:30pm. This is another Coachella match, so presumably this will also be streamed on Youtube. DC’s last game, Saturday against St. Louis City, isn’t part of Coachella and will be behind closed doors.
I’ll try to write about the next game in a similarly non-timely way to this article, then be back with a bit more season preview content before the start of the season.