Toronto FC @ DC United 2/22/25

DC's 30th season begins against another team that missed the playoffs

Shameless plug: if you haven’t seen it yet, you might be interested in my leaguewide newsletter’s matchweek review article! Especially if you’re vaguely interested in the rest of the league, but at minimum you can see how DC United and its players—one of its players this week, at least—compare with the rest of the league!

Anyway, on with our regularly scheduled DC United programming.

Game Context

Toronto FC came to DC to start a season with very low expectations. Lorenzo Insigne stayed home in Toronto, exiled by the team for the crime of not wanting to give up his very lucrative contract without a full buy out. More signings are reported to be coming for Toronto, but Toronto was mostly rolling out the same team that finished three points behind DC last year.

For its part, DC United featured several new players in the starting lineup and had more on the bench. DC was missing three likely starters, but this still felt like one of the few games in the season where DC would be a clear favorite.

Based on MLS’ preseason power rankings, this featured #24 (DC United) vs. #30 (Toronto FC). And yeah, there are only 30 teams, so Toronto was in last place.

Formation

The basic formation was a 4-2-3-1:

• Kim Joon Hong in goal

• David Schnegg was the left fullback, Kye Rowles the left centerback, Lucas Bartlett the right centerback, and Aaron Herrera was the right fullback

• Brandon Servania and Boris Enow played together in central midfield on the left and right sides respectively

• The forward line was Hosei Kijima and Jacob Murrell on the left and right wings and Gabriel Pirani in the middle behind Christian Benteke

With Jared Stroud and Peglow out and Rida Zouhir’s visa paperwork not being finished, DC started the season with the dreaded two goalkeepers on the bench.

Marc Machado has a great post up with pictures and video clips illustrating how David Schnegg was sent forward in possession. I draw some different conclusions, however, which we’ll get to later.

The first two subs were, theoretically anyway, like-for-like: Randall Leal came in for Pirani and Derek Dodson subbed in for Murrell. Then, once Dominique Badji subbed on, DC shifted to a different alignment which I’m not sure I precisely worked out but looked something like a 4-3-3 where Kijima played in central midfield as an orchestrator with Leal and Servania playing somewhat in front of him and behind the forward line of Badji-Benteke-Dodson.

Expected Goals

DC lost the expected goals battle 0.87 to 1.94, though this is flattering to Toronto since they got a penalty out of a completely unthreatening situation. Remove the penalty, though, and DC still lost 0.87 to 1.15. The first half was more even but still not in DC’s favor, 0.57 to 0.71, followed by a second half where non-penalty xG was 0.31 to 0.44.

The xG on DC’s goals was 0.35 (Enow) and then 0.14 (Benteke). Those were the two shots with the greatest xG.

Osorio earned 0.34 xG on the first goal, showing that the model doesn’t take into account the locations of opposing players since that was basically an empty net chance. That was also Toronto’s best xG shot (ignoring the penalty again), though Osorio also got 0.28 on a shot in the second half that Kim saved.

Goal Breakdowns

8’ Boris Enow 1-0

Toronto is trying to play out of the back and sends a pass forward along the sideline. Kye Rowles intercepts and plays it forward to Pirani. He sends a one-touch pass to Enow and takes off running. Enow hits a one-touch pass to try to complete the give-and-go. It’s on, but Enow’s return pass is too heavy and misses Pirani. Toronto right back Henry Wingo claims the ball and uses a heavy touch to bypass Pirani.

As Wingo tracks down his touch, Brandon Servania rushes in to pressure, so Wingo squares the ball in to the center of the field. Unfortunately for him, Boris Enow was anticipating this, stepping forward even before Wingo hits the pass. Now it’s Enow’s turn to use a heavy touch to get past an opposition player and then run into space at the top of the box.

Toronto’s centerback steps toward Enow and…I had to go look him up to see if this was a 16-year-old homegrown player or something. Nope, it’s Kevin Long, a grizzled veteran of 186 professional starts at age 34, including thirty-four Premiere League starts in his twenties. Surely he knows way more about being a centerback than I do, but…this is so weird. He steps forward, maybe thinking Enow’s touch was too heavy and he can beat him to it. He can’t, but instead of trying to challenge or at least bother Enow, he just wanders off to mark Pirani as he makes a run a little bit wider of where Enow is. Enow just touches the ball inside and then sidefoots the ball into the far corner.

Enow misplayed a pass at the start of the sequence, but after that he did very well to intercept the pass. It seems like Toronto’s centerback made a bizarre mistake to me, but let’s say instead Enow’s aggression was rewarded. He still had work to do and his finish was calm and accurate.

27’ Jonathan Osorio 1-1

Toronto has a throw-in in DC’s half and then passes the ball a few times at the top of DC’s defense. Wingo, standing relatively far upfield after throwing the ball in, makes a sudden run down the sideline. Kijima lets him go, but Wingo outruns Schnegg to a perfectly-weighted through ball. The MLS Season Pass color commentator gives him credit for looking up and finding a target, but…his pass along the ground in front of goal is terrible and should be easily cleared.

Alas, it’s not. Even though the ball was outside the six yard box, Kim lunges outward at full stretch with one arm. I guess the pass was weak enough he might have been able to hold it, but even if he gets there, I think the most likely outcome is the ball careens toward the penalty spot. As it is, Kim misses it completely and is now on the ground and completely out of the play. This still shouldn’t be a problem because Aaron Herrera has been dropping back and is right there, but his feet aren’t set right. I assume he expected Kim to touch the ball, so when it comes through he’s surprised and just deflects it gently upfield right into the feet of Jonathan Osorio.

Osorio has to be at least as surprised as Herrera that this has happened, but he kicks the ball into the open goal without an issue.

This year I want to do a running tally of goal blame, so now I’ve got to assign blame. I’m giving 3/5 to Kim. As a goalkeeper, if he decides to come out and lunge at the ball, he’s got to get it. But 2/5 go to Herrera since it was his misplay that “assisted” Osorio. I know it was a surprising thing to have happen, but players have to be ready for anything when a ball comes through the box.

At this point both Toronto and DC have made bad mistakes. “Boy, these teams are bad,” I said to myself in the stadium. Then I got home and discovered there were a bunch of goals like this scored around the league. In this particular respect, if Toronto and DC are bad, so are, say, the MLS Cup winning LA Galaxy.

35’ Christian Benteke 2-1

After some ineffectual passes around the back by Herrera and Enow, the ball goes to Lucas Bartlett. He waits for a Toronto player to rush toward him, then he hits a perfect diagonal pass way downfield to Jacob Murrell running down the sideline. Murrell has a good first touch, then looks up, feints to make sure he has enough space, then drills a hard cross past the defender.

While this was happening, Christian Benteke approached the box, first at a jog, then at a run. He’s about to dart in front of the centerback to the near post, but sees Murrell’s not ready to cross yet, so he suddenly slows down and veers toward the far post. The centerback is watching the ball and doesn’t see it. In theory Wingo, the right back, has been dropping back into the box and should contest this, but he just ignores Benteke, I guess thinking the centerback has him. But the ball comes over the centerback’s head, giving Benteke a free header that he powers past Sean Johnson and into the goal.

70’ Federico Bernardeschi 2-2 (PK)

Toronto gets the ball into Bernardeschi on the right sideline. He comes inside and then pops the ball to Laryea in the penalty area. Servania is marking him and reaches his foot up for the ball. Laryea gets there first, knocking the ball in theory toward Bernardeschi but it’s easily taken by Rowles. But Servania’s studs make contact with Laryea’s foot, causing Laryea to scream and roll around on the field. The referee immediately calls the penalty.

I’ve seen that a lot of fans feel this shouldn’t have been a penalty. It’s annoying that Laryea makes such a meal of it and it’s frustrating that Toronto gets an almost sure goal out of a completely unthreatening situation, but to me, if a player’s studs make contact with another player, it’s definitely a foul. In the moment, I saw Servania go from hands on his head in shock to acceptance without any real argument and figured it was legit, though he and Lesesne whined a little about this after the game.

On the penalty, Bernardeschi shapes his hips like he’s going right, Kim goes that way, and Bernardeschi hits it to the left. Good technique.

There’s not much a goalkeeper can do against a competent penalty without a lot of luck, so Brandon Servania gets all the blame for this one.

Player Ratings

Kim Joon Hong - 4 - He had an absolutely terrifying first 20 minutes, first having the ball go partially through his hands on a routine save and then missing the pass that led to the first goal. After being in the “1” range for the first half, he made several excellent saves on close range shots in the second half. Not sure how much luck plays into that, but he made the saves, and as a result is in the week’s top goalkeepers for shotstopping (post-shot expected goals minus goals allowed).

Lucas Bartlett - 6 - His excellent pass to Murrell on the goal sequence is partly offset by his bad giveaway early in the game. I thought it was weird that he and Kim often didn’t seem to be on the same page as to how far out Kim should be coming to help in possession.

Kye Rowles - 5 - I thought he looked pretty fast for a centerback. I’ve seen several fans say the opposite. Maybe my standards are too low after years of watching guys like Birnbaum. Rowles also had a bad giveaway early on, but afterward he seemed to settle down and I thought did pretty well.

Aaron Herrera - 5 - He definitely made a big mistake on the first goal, but Kim’s mistake is partially an excuse. Herrera was the only DC United player who seemed completely confident on the ball, though he didn’t get forward much until late in the game.

Boris Enow - 6 - He had a strong game overall and scored an excellent goal essentially by himself, but he was also lucky not to give away a penalty right in the opening moments of the game when he clattered into a Toronto player in the box.

Brandon Servania - 4 - For most of the game, I was very pleased. He played it safe on offense, but at least did so successfully with 94% pass completion. On defense, I thought he was a big upgrade over, say, 2024 Jackson Hopkins. Great depth signing! Then the penalty, which was harsh, but sorry, he’s got to be more careful in the box.

Gabriel Pirani - 4 - I’m going to have lots more to say about him later, but man, this was a bad game. He did his best to be aggressive when he got the ball, but he spent too long on the ball and had no answer for Toronto’s physicality. I’m not giving up on him, but just for the team’s sake, he needs to improve fast.

Hosei Kijima - 6 - He looked great early in the game. He has a very quick first step and reminds me a lot of Ku-Dipietro in that way, reacting faster than everyone else to whatever is happening. In the first minute he had a takeaway and then played the ball to Pirani for a shot, but didn’t have much in the way of final product afterward and seemed to slow down a bit in the second half.

Jacob Murrell - 5 - Very much like last year, I thought he looked wasted on the wing. He struggled to combine with Herrera and Enow, couldn’t get much separation from his man when he did get the ball, and was ineffective on defense. He asked for the ball a lot and rarely got it; I think when he’s on the field his teammates need to be looking for balls in behind more. One of those times he asked for it, Bartlett found him with that brilliant long pass and the play resulted in Murrell’s excellent assist. Great play, but still not a winger, sorry.

Christian Benteke - 6 - He only had two shots, though I think that’s mostly the team’s fault and not his. In the second half, there was a play where he received the ball in the box but didn’t manage to find a way to shoot. He tried a few times to come back and help with the build-up play, but with Pirani-like results. Towering header as usual for the goal.

Derek Dodson - 4 - Subbed in out of position at winger, he provided fresh legs and not much else. Tough way to get his first MLS minutes.

Randall Leal - 5 - As we’ll discuss, some fans are saying he did great. I thought Pirani left the door wide open for Leal to make the case for himself as the starter, but then he didn’t go through the door. He was vastly more ball secure than Pirani, but it looked to me like he did this by being far less aggressive at a time where we needed some aggression to push for a game-winning goal.

Dominique Badji - 4 - He looked okay at winger a few times in 2024, but not in this game. You can see the theory that having him on the field with Benteke is a good option, and I saw at least one play where Benteke stood intentionally offside on a goal kick so Badji could try to flick it on to him, but…I don’t know. Mostly this ended up with Badji trying to play in midfield and having predictably poor results.

Troy Lesesne - 4 - Though he acknowledged the result was disappointing, he struck a surprisingly positive note in the postgame press conference. I can see why he’s happy with the first goal: aggressive defense, winning the ball, scoring the goal. But I’m concerned. There were different players out there but some similar patterns to last year. Toronto was hardly Barcelona out there, but they still broke the press with their passing a number of times and set up dangerous transition moments. True, they didn’t score off any of those, but there isn’t much reason to think DC’s defensive issues are fixed. I do appreciate that Lesesne isn’t a stubborn coach who refuses to change when things aren’t working. He’s trying to find other ways to advance the ball besides leaning on Aaron Herrera and Jared Stroud, but the new plan didn’t work today. Toronto looked better coached to me, though see the next section for more on that.

What Was Wrong With the Offense?

I think even Troy Lesesne would agree that—although it did score two goals—the offense was definitely not firing on all cylinders. Toronto, a bad team playing on the road, got more shots and more expected goals.

Marc Machado’s diagnosis for what went wrong is simple: this didn’t work because Pirani is bad. The proof of it, in his view, is that things were much better once Leal was in the game. You could tell it was working better because Herrera could get forward more.

Longtime readers will know I’m a Pirani believer, so I don’t think it’s as simple as: he’s bad. He definitely played badly in this game, that much I agree with. I think there were more problems, but I also dispute the claim that the offense was working better with Leal. DC only had one shot after Leal subbed on in the 70th minute! Did you feel like they were knocking on the door in the last stages of the game? I didn’t.

So let’s run through my diagnosis.

Problem 1: Poor Cohesion

Right from the get-go, things were rough. I felt the team still looked like they were in preseason. Missed passes, “wait I thought you’d be there” confusion, pointing and debating, etc. Rowles had a terrible giveaway early in the game, and you might say, “Well, Mackay bought a bad player”, but Bartlett had a similar bad giveaway and that was not something common with him last season.

DC players seemed confused by whatever Toronto was doing. There were lots of urgent sideline conferences during stoppages in play. Take it with a grain of salt since I was focused on DC players, but I thought Toronto FC much better coordinated. Now their defense also had a terrible giveaway that led to Enow’s goal, but otherwise I thought they seemed to understand each other better.

My first instinct was to fault Troy Lesesne. He had an entire preseason with most of these players and they still don’t know where their teammates are going to be? But on reflection, I think it may be a price of the roster overhaul. Kim, Rowles, Servania, and Kijima were new to the team, while Schnegg and Enow played 121 and 302 regular season minutes last season respectively.

By contrast, Toronto FC brought back most of its roster. Their starting eleven had one totally new player, Theo Corbeanu, and one 20 year old who has been with the team for a couple seasons but this was his first MLS minutes. My offseason assessment of this was critical—they were bad last year and it’s just the same guys!—but that’s got to help with cohesion.

American Soccer Analysis had a good piece recently that showed squad cohesion seems to correlate with both offensive and defensive quality. It didn’t occur to me when writing my match preview that this was an advantage for Toronto, but if this was a big problem, the good news is cohesion almost always improves over the course of the season.

Also, maybe this shouldn’t be the standard, but since the game, I’ve been able to watch clownish highlights from around the league and that has also put me in a more forgiving mood about DC’s cohesion.

Problem 2: Aaron Herrera’s New Coworkers

Last season, DC was routinely much more effective going down the right side of the field. I dug into this using WhoScored heatmaps and came to the brilliant conclusion that the players on the right side were much better than their equivalents on the left side. Specifically, having Aaron Herrera, Mateusz Klich, and Jared Stroud playing off each other paired two of the team’s three best soccer players (Herrera and Klich) with a roleplayer whose best qualities align with what he’s asked to in this system (Stroud). The left side involved a rotating cast of characters, most often Santos/Dájome, Hopkins/Rodriguez, and Pirani/Ku-Dipietro. Just a huge step down at each position (however you think the comparison in overall talent comes out, Stroud is much better on the sideline than Ku-Dipietro or Pirani).

In that post I note that David Schnegg was supposed to be a key to fixing the talent gap on the right side. Finally available again, Schnegg rewarded Ally Mackay by playing a pretty bad game against Toronto. Still, although the WhoScored heatmap is a bit debatable, I still read it as being a bit more favorable for the left side. At least it’s not clearly right-side dominant like last season:

Toronto FC’s heatmap, for what it’s worth, is very clearly right-side dominant. This much I called out correctly in the preview: Bernandeschi favors the right side and he’s by far their best player. I’m not fond of Richie Laryea, but he’s also probably a lot better than the player on the left.

Anyway, so if you agree with me that Schnegg played badly, like I said, what about Herrera? I thought he was his usual self and looked great when he was on the ball. So what happened? The problem is the other two players in his triangle.

Boris Enow played well overall, scoring the first goal and providing a lot more defense than Klich did. When he got the ball in space, I liked his aggression pushing forward. But he’s not the passer that Klich was, so he’s a step down when it comes to working the ball up the sideline.

The biggest talent dropoff from last year, though, was Jacob Murrell playing instead of Stroud. I realize Murrell had a great assist but I’m sticking to my guns: other than that important play, I thought he struggled to effectively link up with Herrera and Enow. Notice that assist came off a long diagonal from Bartlett, not the sort of passing triangles we got used to seeing from Herrera, Klich, and Stroud last year. I like Murrell well enough, but he really doesn’t have the skillset of a winger. Most of his good moments last year came near the top of the box, not out on the sideline.

The good news here is that Stroud should be back soon, but that brings us to a related problem.

Problem 3: Winger Depth

Overall I do think that Mackay has done a good job creating a deeper and more balanced roster than last year, but talent-wise the team can’t really sustain two injuries to the same position. I’m not sure how many MLS teams can do that, but regardless, DC can’t and unfortunately entered this game missing its two starting wingers, Peglow and Stroud.

We won’t know how much of a loss Peglow was until we see him play, but Stroud we know and as discussed in the previous section, he was a big loss. Lesesne ended up having to start two guys out of position: Jacob Murrell, who I maintain is a forward, not a winger, and Hosei Kijima.

We’re still learning about Kijima, but when he arrived he was advertised as a central midfielder. He played brightly against Toronto, but I think those bright skills were better suited to the central midfield role: a quick burst to help win or even avoid duels, good close control, and some calm work in traffic. The first time he got up to a full sprint, I was like, oh, he’s pretty fast, maybe he can make runs in behind! But he didn’t do that. Maybe that was in part because of Lesesne’s Schnegg gameplan (I think part of the idea was Kijima’s speed would help him cover if Schnegg got caught forward), but I think Kijima probably just doesn’t have those instincts. In contrast, Murrell, a natural forward, is looking for those runs, but he doesn’t have Kijima’s speed and his teammates didn’t seem to look for him enough.

Matters got worse when Lesesne made substitutions. On came Derek Dodson, a fullback getting his first MLS minutes, and Dominque Badji, even more of a forward than Murrell.

It’s a major problem for the roster that even if no one is hurt, there are no true wingers available to serve as attacking subs for Stroud and Peglow. It’s possible that recently signed prospects Rida Zouhir and Gavin Turner can play there, but I’m not holding my breath.

Steven Goff still hasn’t confirmed it, but Tom Bogert continues to say that DC is bringing in Fidel Barajas on loan from Chivas. Lesesne refused to comment on this in the postgame press conference in a way that basically confirmed it’s happening. Barajas is a young winger who played some decent minutes on the wing for Real Salt Lake last year. The loan initially runs only through the summer, though it could be extended or, I assume, converted into a purchase.

Chivas paid $4 million for Barajas and will be looking to at least recover some of what they paid. I don’t think they make that loan without good prospects for playing time to both help Barajas develop and also showcase his talents. Why loan him to DC out of so many possible MLS teams? I have to think Mackay’s pitch went something like, “We play with two wingers and only have two in the roster, so don’t worry, he’s going to play.” The sooner he gets here the better.

Problem 4: Pirani

Accountability time. I rattled on and on during preseason about how Pirani was misunderstood last year because he was playing out of position on the wing, how his underlying statistics were better than FBref’s percentile comparison suggests, and why I thought he still had the potential to grow into a starting #10.

No more positional excuses: whether he was an attacking midfielder or a second forward doesn’t really matter, he was playing “the #10”. And wow, this game really, really didn’t help my argument. He failed to connect with the players around him with his passing, lost the ball when trying to dribble, got muscled off the ball when he tried to shield it. As far as dangerous chances, he got off two shots for 0.2 xG and didn’t get any xA.

Lots of people believe he won’t amount to anything and after that performance, there’s not much I can say other than he’s still 22 and maybe he’ll improve.

Something that in retrospect I think I didn’t pay enough attention to is how his strong performances in 2024 almost always came as a substitute. It’s not always this way, but sometimes the game is just easier for an attacking substitute. Defenders are tired, the game is more stretched, and since MLS teams are all pretty thin, the opponent’s subs probably aren’t nearly as good as their starters. The performance against Toronto wasn’t too different from his performance against Charlotte in the last game of the season, a game where he started and was similarly ineffective as the team lost the do-or-die game 0-3.

Maybe he should try being a supersub again, then! Unlike Marc and some fans, I also came away from the game disappointed in Leal. Yes, he completed 87% of his passes compared to Pirani’s 60%. He also got on the ball much more, attempting more passes in 20 minutes than Pirani attempted in 70. But my sense at the time anyway was that he held possession but wasn’t doing enough with it. He’d make the safe pass immediately whereas Pirani was trying to turn and either dribble or pass forward. Pirani didn’t do that successfully, mind you, but DC needs someone in attacking midfield with cutting edge, not just someone to string together the next safe pass.

Maybe Lesesne told Leal to play it safe? As mentioned under the formation section, I’m not positive he was playing the exact same position as Pirani. But since Leal was signed, I’ve been hoping for more creativity from him and still hope to see it in future games. I have to hope for it from him, because I don’t know who else is going to provide it. Until the midseason transfer, it seems like DC’s options are Pirani, Leal, and I suppose Kijima and maybe Gavin Turner.

Coming Up

Next, DC United goes on the road to the Chicago Fire, another bad team from last year that has tried to overhaul its roster. They got beaten pretty badly on the road against Columbus in their first game, but even in this post-Cucho era there’s no real shame in that. It’s a very winnable game for DC, about as winnable as they come, but Chicago will be saying the same thing to themselves about DC United coming to visit and they’ll be right.

After that, DC United’s gentle start to the season continues when they host two more teams who are expected to be bad and lost their first game: Sporting Kansas City and then CF Montréal.