DC Power lose opener, DC United draw, and more: Monday Freedom Kicks
Happy Monday, y’all. It was a very busy weekend, and it’s a busy week ahead, so let’s just dive right into it:
DC Power FC loses to Carolina Ascent in season opener (DP)
DC Power opened their sprint season against Carolina Ascent at home. Unfortunately, they were not able to get the 3 points, dropping a 1-0 decision.
DC Power FC unveil 2026 jerseys (DP)
DC Power reveiled their new jerseys late last week. What do you think of their 3 options this season?
D.C. United secures smash-and-grab 1-1 draw at CF Montreal (Green Line Soccer)
The Black-and-Red were up in Montreal, and they were able to salvage a point and bring it back across the border with a 1-1 result. They’re back at Audi Field midweek against the Revs.
Washington Spirit, Angel City FC fight to eventful 1-1 draw (Green Line Soccer)
Trin got her 10th goal this season, but Ally Sentnor had an equalizer and the Spirit split the points with Angel City. We did get Trin doing an MJ celly that was flawless tho.
We also saw the return of Ashley Hatch to the field!
Loudoun United was up in Michigan facing Detroit City over the weekend. Both teams took home the point in a scoreless draw.
Cameroon claim first Wafcon title with victory over Malawi (BBC)
Congrats to Cameroon, who won their first WAFCON title over the Chawinga sisters and Malawi. And Washington Spirit signeee Monique Ngock won the Woman of the Competition award as WAFCON’s best player! Can’t wait to get all our stars back on the field for the Spirit.
Arsenal stomps out Man City to claim the Community Shield. The defending EPL champs open the league’s season on Friday against Coventry.
Sources: Barcelona and Man City reach €76.5M deal for Rodri transfer (ESPN)
Rodri appears to be headed to the Camp Nou in a huge deal. How Barca can afford it is anyone’s guess considering they still haven’t been able to register Anthony Gordon because of financial fair play rules.
Cristiano Ronaldo says this year is ‘probably’ his last as a footballer (The Guardian)
CR7 says this will be his final season playing professional soccer. He hopes to finish it with another title for Al-Nassr.
Bayern mum on Jamal Musiala after collapse in friendly (ESPN)
Really hope Jamal Musiala is okay after he collapsed in a friendly over the weekend. There were warm temperatures in Munich, but Bayern is not publicly stating what the reason was for his collapse. He was able to walk off the field under his own power.
The thing I don’t like about the willingness of UEFA to boycott FIFA is that they’re choosing to boycott the women’s events to send a message to the organization about the men’s tournament. That’s foul and unfair to the woman and young girls who have worked so hard to qualify for their various World Cups, and they shouldn’t have to be the sacrifice for the men.
Enjoy the day!
Glad the Spirit and DCU got a point on the road.
Spirit needs to look at its defense and try to be more efficient is finishing. They can’t hope to win one goal games all the time.
DCU without Bartlett and Rowles were able to come back after a bad PK call. I thought that Kurokawa’s hands went into the air because he was knocked backwards, but can’t deny the ball hit his hands. It still looks like a bunch of new players need to learn to play together. Hope to see them improve over the next several games.
One point on the road is ok. I missed it, but where was Weiler?
Weiler was out sick. Apparently he was sick on Thursday and told Apple he may not be able to coach, and that turned out to be the case
The Black and Red now have a league leading 9 draws/ties this season.
Obviously wins would be even better, but this is so much better than what we’ve dealt with in recent years. Along with being unbeaten in 6 games, and only 1 loss in the last 12.
The question is are we going to match the record of 18 set by the 2014 Chicago Fire (6-10-18) and 2021 Nashville (8-8-18). We are halfway there with 15 games to go.
It is nice to see that we are difficult to beat. That has not been the case for a long time.
Thats essentially been my takeaway. Yeah, we could be better, but we’re generally a difficult team to beat and we’re not losing the close games that we’ve lost more times than not over the past few years. Its not flashy, but its significant improvement
If we were going down a goal, and saying, “well, that’s that,” we wouldn’t be hanging on mid table in the East.
We not only have a knack for finding an equalizer, we threaten to win comebacks fairly often.
The refs sure don’t like it.
Yep, absolutely. Going down 1-0 to even Montreal in the middle of last season would have been the end of the game. We haven’t had this fight/resolve in the team for the past couple years, and its nice to have it back again.
Even out of the 5 losses DC has this year, really only 2 were “bad”, the 3-1 Chicago game and the 4-0 Dallas game. The other three were all decided by 1 goal and were generally close.
There’s a lot of goals that are coming late in games too (sometimes against as well). It’s a team that doesn’t really give up.
One lesson is that it’s hard to keep Tai Baribo off the scoresheet — and that really gets tougher if DCU are forced to attack more late in the game.
Important to note that only Nashville, Miami, and Vancouver have lost fewer games than DC in MLS.
Missed watching the Montreal game live, but went back and watched it on replay yesterday. Seems like Nono was a pretty solid pick up by the team. Think he’s gonna need some more time to fully gel with everyone else, but he seemed to have some good defensive actions and it was nice to see him get the assist.
Wasn’t at all surprised that they threw Peltola in at CB, given that he played there in the game against Loudoun. Still think he needs to start next to Dozzel, but at least one of our best players wasn’t stuck on the bench this game.
Was also wonderful to have Lloyd Sam back calling our game on Apple. More of that, please.
It was actually jarring to hear a commentator astonished when the ref let us get mugged,
Only commented in alarm once, but good on him
Echoing what everyone is saying, it’s nice to see DCU stay in games until the 90th minute. This is progress. We add a solid DP in the offseason and get rid of some deadwood and we might just do well in the “sprint” season next spring.
Spirit are winless in 3 games BUT we’re only 6 points behind Gotham with 10 games left. We play Gotham at home and we play last place Chicago twice during the stretch as well as the shaky looking Boston Legacy. Gotham themselves are grinding out games. The Shield can still be won!
This is why I’d really like us to add another U22 this year to be integrating into the team and really ready to meaningfully contribute in 2027 and beyond when we also add an impactful third DP.
That’s the dream.
Think Subriare was the prospect they thought promising
If there was another, think we’d have seen some online smoke in the works
It would have been great to get another boost, but we don’t need any more bad or iffy contracts going into next year
ESPN and Sports Illustrated have put out their updated MLS Power Rankings
ESPN: Megan Swanick has DCU up to 18th from 19th
https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/49638809/mls-power-rankings-nashville-sc-blows-inter-miami-take-top-spot
Sports Illustrated: Ben Steiner drops DCU from 21st to 22nd (Philly jumped from 23rd to 21st)
https://www.si.com/soccer/mls-power-rankings-nashville-embarrass-inter-miami-more-matchday-20
I think these are fair rankings.
Philly are really good right now. Maybe the defense still needs to be shored up, but their attack is impressive. Not sure that they’re ready to challenge Nashville, but no one is going to be happy about having to face the Union in the playoffs.
Sean Johnson, deservedly, made the MLS Team of the Matchday this week
He single handedly kept us in that game.
sometimes he double handed as well :^)
He had a fine game.
He’s interesting. Doesn’t seem to be the most athletic these days, and his clearances are less than definitive, but he’s usually in the right place to make a save, and his hand-eye reflexes are pretty amazing. Sometimes it seems he’s just getting lucky, but at some point you have to acknowledge that it’s more than just dumb luck. He deserved MOTM against Nashville, so it’s nice that he’s getting some recognition, even if maybe a week late.