D.C. sports fans have had a lot to unpack lately. Our Capitals squeaked past the Islanders in the conference quarterfinals and are grappling with New York in the semis, the ‘Zards are squaring off against Atlanta in their own playoff series and the Nationals—well, the Nats just started their own campaign, further clouding the D.C. sports landscape.
But that fourth local sports team—the one that folks often forget to even include in “lists of local sports teams”—has quietly been putting together some respectable results of their own. After a 2-0 victory over the Columbus Crew on Saturday evening, D.C. United is off to their best start in club history.
United rode first-half goals from Fabian Espindola and Sean Franklin to the victory, the three points they earned keeping them level atop the east alongside New England. D.C. are now unbeaten in 16 games (across all competitions) at RFK, having extracted a result in every home game they’ve played since mid-June of 2014.
First off, some highlights:
The good: Chris Rolfe and Fabian Espindola
Espindola was playing only his second game since returning from a six-match ban issued to him late last year, but he hasn’t seemed to have missed a beat. His edge, his composure on the ball, his desire to just “try shit” makes him among the most entertaining players in the league, and all of those elements were on display on Saturday evening.
The Argentine forward seems to combine well with whoever he’s paired with, but lately, his interplay with midfielder Chris Rolfe has been next-level. It’s an ideal combination—Rolfe is a crafty, creative mid with foresight who knows how to draw defenders, carve out pockets of space, and find his teammates. Espindola is great at putting himself in dangerous spots, and on Saturday Rolfe seemed all too happy to find him there.
“It’s easy for me to play with Fabi,” Rolfe told DCist after the match, “in the sense that if I get the ball I just know that I need to find him, and he’ll take care of the rest. He makes it pretty easy at times, honestly. You’ve gotta give him a lot of credit for how he trained during his suspension, that couldn’t have been easy.”
“The thing with Chris is that he adapts so well wherever he’s played at,” added Espindola. “Last year they used him as a winger, sometimes as a forward, but he always did so well. Truthfully, I feel great about our relationship—today they played me up top and Chris out wide and his work rate was phenomenal, he set me up perfectly.”
The bad: Not much.
It’s hard to find many negatives in United’s match against the Crew, arguably D.C.’s best performance of the year. Despite being out-possessed handily throughout both halves, D.C. were clearly the more dangerous team—Columbus finished the first half without a single shot on target.
If anything, D.C. could’ve done better to put the game well out of reach—they had multiple opportunities to get a third goal, but seemed to have trouble converting at times.
“I thought we defended well and were tough to break down,” said United head coach Ben Olsen. “I would have liked to do better on the other end and get that third goal, because I thought it was there, but that’s coming along.”
They said it:
Fabian Espindola, on his six-game suspension, issued to him for grabbing an assistant ref late last year: “The time off was terrible. I’m happy the team has started so well but [the time off] was terrible. I was comparing suspensions that other players in this league have gotten for making contact with the ref or violent conduct in general—all I did was touch him, and instead of giving me two or three games they give me six. It was just terribly disproportionate at the end of the day.”
D.C. defender Sean Franklin, on the performance: “We talk about playing a complete game, and we did it tonight. It wasn’t perfect, but we kept the shutout which is important. We are going to look at the film and get better. I thought towards the end of the game hey were throwing numbers at us and we did a good job of holding them off. “
Head coach Ben Olsen, on what he chalks D.C.’s hot start up to: “We’re lucky; haven’t you read everything [people have written] about us? [laughs].”
The rest: D.C.’s 16-game home unbeaten run is certainly respectable, but the MLS all-time record is mind-boggling: in 2012-2013, the Houston Dynamo put together a 36-game unbeaten streak across all competitions. Their most frequent victim during that run? D.C. United … Second-string ‘keeper Andrew Dykstra missed Saturday’s match as he continues to recover from an ankle ailment … On a pleasant Saturday evening, United only managed to draw just over 13,000 fans to RFK. That new stadium can’t come soon enough … The club announced on Friday that it had reached terms on a multi-year contract extension for U.S. national team goalie and 2014 MLS goalkeeper of the year Bill Hamid. The move ensures United will collect a transfer fee should Hamid make the jump to Europe sometime in the next year or two.
