Spirit Tickets on Sale, USWNT Playing Portugal, Levien Blowing Smoke, and More: Wednesday Freedom Kicks
Heya, welcome to hump day! A lot of links today, enjoy most of them! On to the news:
It’s playoff time for the Washington Spirit — and tickets go fast– Axios
Axios ain’t wrong, time to pounce on playoff tickets while the pouncing is good. My dad is coming down from PA for the quarterfinal, so I’ll be in attendance with him for that match. Yes, Ticket Master is the devil, but if you paid for a disappointing, non-competitive DC United experience this year, time to see this team in the postseason!
Loudoun United to host North Carolina in regular-season finale Saturday– Loudoun Times
There’s another team that is headed to the postseason, but could use a boost to finish up it’s regular season campaign.
Sergino Dest seems to not so much shot himself in the foot as much as do just that before stepping on a rake with the stump. Being significantly late for a Champions League game you’ve expressed excitement about… Dest has a hole to climb out of now, and I’m not sure that’s his forte.
USMNT Player Tracker: Balogun’s timely reminder, Robinson concerns and Reyna pines for progress– The Athletic
Thankfully, other USMNT players exist, though some of them continue to be Gio Reyna.
I’m not so much prioritizing these USMNT stories as getting them out of the way, cuz this is one of those blessed weeks for the one and only USWNT! Two friendlies against Portugal are upcoming, one on Thursday night and one Sunday afternoon.
USWNT vs. Portugal, 2025 friendly: Scouting Portugal– Stars and Stripes FC
Preview for the Thursday game.
USWNT’s Alyssa Thompson on her Chelsea move: ‘I was expecting it to be more scary’– The Athletic
Alyssa Thompson had every reason to be nervous about going to one of the most prestigious and hypercompetitive clubs on earth. But then, she remembered, she’s Alyssa effing Thompson.
Lily Yohannes and Alyssa Thompson have arrived at their star turns with the USWNT– The Inquirer
Damn straight.
Tullis-Joyce’s remarkable rise to USWNT and Man United No. 1– ESPN
It’s hard not to love Phallon. Don’t believe me? Check out this interview from four months ago you might have missed Phallon Tullis-Joyce on USWNT Showdown, Breakout Man Utd Season & Hidden Marine Biology Passion– Youtube
LaLiga cancels Barcelona-Villarreal game in Miami– ESPN
Yay and haha.
Miami, CFP in clear after LaLiga stadium conflict goes away– ESPN
Was it an investigation, or was it College Football’s iron grip on America’s priorities? Maybe both. Glad this match won’t be played outside of Spain, for the sake of domestic soccer everywhere.
Back to the USWNT for a moment, this sounds fun!
If you can soldier through this drivel, you did better than I could, but it exists.
Garth Lagerwey Leave of Absence Statement– Atlanta United
Not a lot of details here, but hope Garth can recover.
Replay Ordered for Second Qualifying Round Match of U.S. Open Cup– US Soccer
Wild story of a team calling foul on the fact that a qualifying game was recently in their opponent’s B2 reserve team. The name of the team who demanded justice? Sharkopus FC. What a time to be alive.
NASA confirms Earth now has two moons until 2083– Yahoo
Thought I’d end this post with a story that might have slipped your notice, but is pretty cool. An 18 to 36 meter wide asteroid is keeping the moon company in orbit. Scientists are geeking out, and calling it a second moon, which may well stick around for the rest of most of our lifetimes.
That’s all I’ve got! One-up me in the comments, and have a great sporting day!
You know what, screw it, late addition, cuz I need others to process this vid as well
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DP5LP_5EalA/?igsh=dTM4M3lqa3Zvb2Nx
I don’t quite know how to process what I just watched.
Whoops, this is probably Sora or some other AI.
Now that I believe.
There was a bit of discourse over who had the worse season, DC or Atlanta. I think that Garth Lagerway having to step aside to deal with his cancer treatment confirms that it was a worse season for Atlanta. Get well soon, Garth! We’re all pulling for you.
In the sense that DC United had thin hopes of progress, and Atlanta had strong ambitions and expectations, yeah, I’d say they had the worse season, will be baffled that they so narrowly avoided the wooden spoon.
If you ever have Imposter Syndrome, just know that you share a world with Jason Levien, who has supreme confidence in himself despite absolutely no proof to back it up. We want to get back to the winning ways of Lucho and Rooney? Why did we get away from those days, Jason?
I guess we’re picking up Pirani’s option, which, fine. Interesting that they said nothing about Benteke though. Or a Next PRO plan either.
It feels really shitty that they used some footage of Big Rob. I doubt he’d have agreed to be in a video like that.
I got my renewal offer yesterday. They are delusional. Whatever wavering I had to not renew has easily passed. They can pound sand. I am out.
1) option for reduced ticket charge and reduced benefits in the club section (no food or drink!)
2) option for generally the same package at “no increase in cost for 2026.” Notably, only 6 exchanges are allowed. Merch at 20% off, up my 10 % reduction this year. Baffling exchange timing remains. Sorry if I got meningitis or something and didn’t predict my absence 2 weeks in advance. I would think they would give a discount to a lifer, but no. I don’t live in Oz, I expected as much, so it was just par for the course.
The video was also delusional. I’d like to acknowledge the narrative that he fell for the team at RFK and got it to Audi Field. Although I don’t doubt his sincerity about the former, and I do praise the move to Audi Field, yet this incompetent owner has demoralized a rabid fan base and is deaf, blind and mute to the real Tradition that is DC United. It boarders on cynical. He has lost significant weight and I sincerely hope he is in good health. I do think he is a nice guy, but just like his time at Swansea, it would seem that he should stick to real estate.
The video should have shown empty supporters seats while Philly was pounding us, or when two red cards were obtained in the first half at the following game. I could barely give away my tickets to former Lot 8 buddies, giving them a taste of truly excellent seats in the club section. I loved my seats. I love my dwindling friends in my section. few remain.
Yes, the club seemed to play better with Weiler, but still not good enough to dodge our FIFTH Wooden Spoon. Expansion teams routinely do better. Our new GM is Weiler’s agent. What could go wrong? I don’t want to throw him under the bus, but this seems so weird. He has never been a GM. Our entire scouting sta had been dismissed, along with lord knows who else.
The LuchoRoo magic, with fine supporting cast is no more. Discarded players feature either brilliantly or competently with other teams, and yes, some fade away and should never have been here to begin with. A one way flight to Korea for a certain goalkeeper would be a nice start.
With all training, nutrition etc, being equal, does anyone in their right mind think that DC United teams from the 90s wouldn’t pound the ever living daylights out of our miserable franchise today?
I will save $7000+ on my two Stockholm Syndrome seats and food/drinks. I will save $800 dollars on parking. I will spare my lungs the wafting vapor of cannabis on my walk to the stadium. I will invest my passion for the team (of yesteryear) with an occasional game here and there of MY choosing, and enjoy vastly ample food and drink while I watch the AppleTV MLS package on my couch. My house had a completed roof when I moved in, we should have tried that at Audi Field. (No, Mayor Rusk, I won’t insult the noble history of Buzzard Point by even using its name in association with this disaster.)
I got the seats with excitement. LuchoRoo and company didn’t disappoint. Since then, it is optimistic to say it has been slim pickings. I used to know players on a wonderfully organic level. No longer.
I’ll stick with the Commentariat here, and will actually have a lot of my weekends back to do other things. I will see you here and there at Buzzard Point, and I simply cannot root for any other MLS team. They have pulled off the impossible, but they should recognize the value off loyalty and not treat me like a sucker. It feels terrible, but strangely liberating and financially responsible. I’ll be around.
Dear soccer gods, I even bought a brick for the stadium walkway……so I guess, I will always be there in some capacity.
Apparently the team is not picking up Randall Leal’s option.
In my opinion, this was the single easiest roster decision this year, so I’m happy they didn’t stumble over that bar. Leal played a little over 500 minutes, had fewer assists than Rida Zouhir, and his option would have been for over $1 million. It was a bummer that he didn’t pan out, but Nashville was covering basically all his salary, so it was a fine lottery ticket to try. It didn’t pan out, and you don’t keep busted lottery tickets around.
Saw this yesterday as well, and yeah that was an easy decision. Did he even see the field at all after Weiler came in? I can’t say I remember him playing at all in the last like…3 months
Yes But! He was wrapped up with the Klich deal (I think) and Klich would have been way better to keep than him. I think it was a bad deal from the start and the first of many blunders.
They were separate deals. They just kind of mirrored each other in structure. We traded Klich to Atlanta for $300,000 and paid the balance of his wages and kept his DP designation. Nashville waived Leal, and then we claimed him, paying him about $100,000. Nashville was responsible for the rest of his salary, but also used one of their buyouts to get that salary off of their books for this season.
So Klich was close to a free player for Atlanta, and Leal was close to a free player for us. Neither one performed very well for their new team.
The Leal deal always looked like it wouldn’t be much of a difference maker, but was worth taking a chance on because he had had success in the past (although his 2024 was almost entirely spent injured). It was a deal that cost us essentially nothing and could have come good, but didn’t.
The Klich deal was one of the real reasons the season went as it did. Firstly, his initial contract (negotiated by Dave Kasper, who is still around, at the behest of Wayne Rooney) had a clause that triggered his 2025 option after meeting certain benchmarks in the 2023 season. Klich’s 2023 and 2024 were fine. Perhaps not at the level of a great DP, but not bad. He served a good dead ball, racked up a number of assists, but was also kind of not spectacular offensively and not quite good enough defensively. Somebody wanted him out of DC, whether that was Mackay, Lesesne, or Klich himself. It was reported that all options were on the table, just as it was also reported that teams would likely be getting a second buyout option. DC had had to use their initial 2025 buyout on Steve Birnbaum’s contract. The second buyout option was announced shortly after Klich was traded, but because the team had received compensation and the player was still in MLS, they couldn’t use the buyout on him. Speculation existed that the team should have known this buyout was coming and waited to use it on Klich, but Goff also reported that ownership wouldn’t have been likely to spend that money, despite “all options being on the table.”
Instead, they got the bad Atlanta deal, which kept about $350,000 in salary cap space wrapped up in a player on a different team, and an unusable DP slot.
(Management’s decision to be in a 3 DP/3 U22 roster formation, thus depriving the team of $2 million in extra GAM, and not filling that remaining DP slot is the other big thing that doomed the season. The Paul Pogba Plan, which likely included selling Ted Ku-DiPietro would be the third.)
You could of just said they were bafflingly incompetent!
(Nice post, Bren)
Sad news out of Africa:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/ghana-young-senegalese-goalkeeper-cheikh-124500462.html
A sad day when an 18 year old is murdered by people claiming he had a shot a trial with a professional soccer club.
That is horrific.
I’m wondering when DCU is going to put out the list of players who aren’t returning (or those who’s contract they have extended).
More likely we will see who is on the bench first day of the season, though even that has not worked well of late.
Thank you for today’s Kicks, and all the effort that you and all the District Press folks put into this.
I do have to ask, were the batteries in the universal translator running low at this part: “Sergino Dest seems to not so much shot himself in the foot as much as do just that before stepping on a rake with the stump”
? 🙂
Show me the grammatical error. It’s exactly as it sounds.
If it’s a bit convoluted, that’s for added effect.
You never disappoint fulfilling my need for absurdist humor!
:^)
That sentence has made for some amazing mental visuals!
I defer to your judgment on grammar, but “…to not so much shoot…” or “…to have not so much shot…” might be better?
In short: