For the sparse crowd of United supporters who attended last night’s CONCACAF Champions League debacle against Toluca of Mexico at RFK Stadium, it would be easy to attribute the result and the team’s incredibly poor performance to fixture congestion.

But head coach Tom Soehn just isn’t buying it.

“I want to put something to bed. We keep talking about games — you know what, it’s no different than we’ve had every year,” Soehn said forcefully after the 3-1 whipping. “We have games every three days. I don’t want to hear it as an excuse. We won’t use it as an excuse. It’s reality.”

What is also reality is that United played about as poorly as a team of their talent level could, barely registering a whimper in the offensive end — save Santino Quaranta’s one nice cross which resulted in D.C.’s lone goal — and looking nothing if not disorganized on the defensive. Another big concern for the team is that this is the second consecutive game in the competition where United scrapped back to earn an equalizer in the early stages of the second half, only to allow two late goals in the last ten minutes — last week’s game against Marathon also saw United allow two goals late.

“At some point, we have to understand that we had them on their heels,” Quaranta admitted. “It always seems like it’s that one bad mistake that hurts us.”

The loss was the first for United on home soil all season, adding another bead to the team’s recent string of disappointments.