Friday, June 18, 2004
We Hate DC!
Our beloved Crew's unbeaten streak, now at seven games, gets tested at our venerable House of Horrors, RFK Stadium, in tomorrow's fixture against DC United. Both teams will be missing players due to World Cup qualifying and injury, so it very well could be a battle of attrition. Game plan for the night:
* Play into space. The United midfield is a mess at the moment, and will be more so tomorrow due to the absences of Earnie Stewart and Bobby Convey for the United States' second-leg match against Grenada. In addition, Piotr Nowak's side plays a similar scheme to that of Columbus, but he attacks off the flanks and overlaps his insider midfielders, leaving plenty of space behind them and in front of the back three and defensive midfielder. This is another game where Manny Lagos teaming with Kyle Martino and Jeff Cunningham can wreak havoc on DC.
* Take advantage of transition play. Because of the lack of bodies available for DC and a four-headed monster on the front line (Moreno, Eskandarian, Cerritos, and Adu), they are not very adept at scoring. The Crew needs to move quickly out of the back through Paule to either Denton or Oughton and then onto KMart, Manny, or Jeffro into the flank space to then take on the cobbled-together defense of United with the dribble and additional runners.
* MARK UP ON SET PIECES! Despite DC being less of an aerial threat than Kansas City was last week, there are a number of dangerous players on this side. Moreno. Kovalenko. Nelsen. Olsen. Adu. Cerritos. Any or all of them can get to a free ball and put it past Busch. United scored its lone goal in the first match off a cross to an unmarked Kovalenko by Olsen, and we gave up TWO corner kick redirects last week.
* Play into space. The United midfield is a mess at the moment, and will be more so tomorrow due to the absences of Earnie Stewart and Bobby Convey for the United States' second-leg match against Grenada. In addition, Piotr Nowak's side plays a similar scheme to that of Columbus, but he attacks off the flanks and overlaps his insider midfielders, leaving plenty of space behind them and in front of the back three and defensive midfielder. This is another game where Manny Lagos teaming with Kyle Martino and Jeff Cunningham can wreak havoc on DC.
* Take advantage of transition play. Because of the lack of bodies available for DC and a four-headed monster on the front line (Moreno, Eskandarian, Cerritos, and Adu), they are not very adept at scoring. The Crew needs to move quickly out of the back through Paule to either Denton or Oughton and then onto KMart, Manny, or Jeffro into the flank space to then take on the cobbled-together defense of United with the dribble and additional runners.
* MARK UP ON SET PIECES! Despite DC being less of an aerial threat than Kansas City was last week, there are a number of dangerous players on this side. Moreno. Kovalenko. Nelsen. Olsen. Adu. Cerritos. Any or all of them can get to a free ball and put it past Busch. United scored its lone goal in the first match off a cross to an unmarked Kovalenko by Olsen, and we gave up TWO corner kick redirects last week.
Starting XI
Busch
Akwari-Fraser-Marshall
Oughton-Paule-Martino-Denton
Lagos
Barclay-Cunningham
# posted by The Armchair Pundit @ 11:20 AM 
