Preview: DC United at Columbus Crew

DC United finishes its road trip in Columbus still looking for its first win since May

It’s a waiting game right now for DC United fans. DC has officially hired René Weiler as their new coach, but he can’t even hold a press conference until his work visa comes through. The visa wait is the most frustrating part of getting a new player or coach from overseas, especially during the season.

Meanwhile, the MLS secondary transfer window opens next Thursday. As usual, DC’s front office isn’t leaking anything, so we’ll have to wait and see what they do. A new DP player might be coming, but even if not, last season saw David Schnegg, Boris Enow, and Dominique Badji brought in, so other significant players could be arriving.

But all that will have to wait while DC United finishes its three game road trip in Columbus after a midweek loss to Charlotte that was close in terms of score (1-2) but not so much in expected goals (0.4 - 2.6).

Lineup

Christian Benteke is traveling with the team and seems likely to play. Obviously it would be much better for him to start. It seems like there’s a chance of it, but DC’s pattern is that players who didn’t play due to injury always are subs first.

After two straight weeks with midweek games, interim coach Kevin Flanagan mentioned the players are dealing with fatigue, but I guess the good news is there’s been rotation lately. Some was forced, like Aaron Herrera and David Schnegg missing the last game due to yellow card accumulation, but some—like Brandon Servania and Garrison Tubbs starting last game—was likely to help manage this situation.

Backup goalkeeper: Kim Joon Hong

Backup defenders: Derek Dodson, Conner Antley, Matti Peltola, Garrison Tubbs, Rida Zouhir

Backup attackers: Christian Benteke, Randall Leal, Jared Stroud

Probably still injured: Lukas MacNaughton, Jacob Murrell

The Opposition: Columbus Crew

The Crew are 4th in the East (though 5th in terms of points per game since Inter Miami has a few games in hand). That’s the sort of table position that fills DC United fans with envy, but it’s disappointing by the Crew’s recent standards.

Going into the season, the big question was how they would replace their superstar Cucho. They started the season with no replacement, and their offense clearly suffered without that top-tier talent.

The front office’s answer was to buy Dániel Gazdag from the Philadelphia Union. This seemed like a solid answer that would vault them to the top of the Shield race. Unlike a risky foreign transfer, Gazdag had proven himself in MLS. He had an absolutely monster year in 2022 with 22 goals and 6 assists, and even on last season’s much diminished Philadelphia team he still had 17 goals. Putting him into Wilfried Nancy’s system seemed like the surest of sure bets.

But this is MLS, so naturally, somehow this has completely misfired. Gazdag has zero goals and one assist in almost fourteen games worth of minutes. Columbus’ offense is still resting on the shoulders of their other DP attacker, Diego Rossi, a very good player but not one of the league’s absolute best. His 11 goals and 3 assists is pretty similar to his previous production.

DC United fans can sympathize, having seen DC spend much of this season laboring without its offensive star, but the Crew shows what it looks like to do this with a really strong foundation. Despite Cucho not playing at all this season and Gazdag not producing, plenty of other players are chipping in, from Canadian forward Jacen Russell-Rowe (7 goals, 1 assist) to American fullback Max Arfsten (4 goals, 3 assists) to midfielder Dylan Chambost (1 goal, 5 assists). All told eight players have more than two G+A for the Crew, compared to just three for DC United (Christian Benteke, Gabriel Pirani, and Peglow).

So Columbus continues to be a very solid team that is missing the star power to put them over the top. Their offense and defense are both kind of middle of the road. Their goal difference is just 7th in the East. But they’re several spots above that in the standings because they’re good at winning close games.

They’re also on the upswing. They’re 4-1-1 since the beginning of June with impressive wins over Philly, Vancouver, and FC Cincinnati, though they lost 1-3 to Nashville on Wednesday. A home game against DC United sounds like just the thing to get them back to their winning ways.

What I’m Looking For

Against teams without dominating offenses, DC usually puts up a good fight, so although on paper this seems completely hopeless, I wouldn’t be surprised for this to be a close game.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned, Columbus is very good at winning close games.

If you really want to grasp for optimism, the one thing I don’t like about Nancy is he always keeps his roster small and is reluctant to sub players out, so his team may be more tired after the midweek game than DC overall.

If Christian Benteke can play, hopefully he can continue building chemistry with Peglow and Gabriel Pirani. For whatever that’s worth. Not much, when it’s not clear whether Benteke or Pirani will be here next season.

For now, with DC United now 13 points below the playoff line, I think attention has to turn to the Wooden Spoon race. At 19 points, DC is just four points ahead of the LA Galaxy and CF Montréal, both at 15 points. St. Louis City is also in the mix with 18 points, though they have a game in hand. Can DC scrape together enough points to avoid being in last place yet again? It could be tough since, as with Rooney’s first season, the new coach won’t be worried about results since he won’t “own” the place in the standings after a short time in charge.

Many of DC’s remaining games are against strong teams, though, so snatching any kind of points from this game would be really beneficial.