DCU Fall to the Revs, Niyongabire makes TOW, Bay FC call out Earthquakes, Fireworks in Philly, and more: Thursday Freedom Kicks
Happy Thursday everyone. Hopefully everyone has bounced back from last night’s DCU match. I won’t belabor it to much (We’ve got recaps from Donald and Jason to cover that). Let’s get to it,
Yusuf hat trick helps New England Revolution throttle DC United (DP)
The Black and Red’s six game undefeated streak came to an abrupt halt last night against the Revs. Donald’s got you covered with all the details.
For those who want even more detail or are looking to read about the match in an effort to serve some sort of penance, Jason has you ably covered there as well,
Ranking the favorites for MLS Cup and Supporters’ Shield winners (Six One Five Soccer)
The folks at Six One Five ran over 2,000 simulations to figure out who is most likely to win the MLS Cup and Supporter’s Shield. More importantly, they also looked at who would make the playoffs. DC United was sitting at a 56% chance of making the playoffs, at least before last night,
Niyongabire was named to the team bench after finishing Loudoun’s 0-0 draw with Detroit City with an 8.1 Fotmob rating. The on loan Connor Antley made the Team of the Week as a starter as well.
Week 2 is Coming Up. Will More History be Made? | Week 2 News & Notes (Gainbridge Super League)
Week 2 kicks off in the GSL tomorrow night when DC Power travels to Coney Island to face Brooklyn. More to come on that.
Messi scores for Miami in testy draw with Philadelphia Union (ESPN)
Despite what ESPN says, the real story here isn’t Messi, it’s the absolute fracas that broke out between the teams at the end. Action included Quinn Sullivan delivering a suplex to Ian Fray, Cavan Sullivan and Yannick Bright seeing red, and some saucy language from the Sons of Ben.
Bay FC statement denounces San Jose Earthquakes’ hiring of Gavin Wilkinson (USA Today)
Gavin Wilkinson was fired from his role as GM of the Timbers and Thorns in 2022 after appearing in the Yates Report for recommending coach Paul Riley to the Western New York Flash (now relocated to Carolina) despite just dismissing him for sexual coercion of multiple of his own players. He was also implicated in the failure of the Timbers to report domestic violence allegations against a player. I can see why Bay would be aghast at Wilkinson’s hiring. MLS’s silence and frankly Bruce Arena’s refusal to directly comment do not reflect well on the league and San Jose.
Senior FIFA official withdraws support from embattled Infantino (France 24)
What’s the phrase about sinking ships?
USL grants Long Island franchise setting up showdown with MLS Next Pro (Sports Business Journal)
There is a conflict coming between MLS and USL. USL continues to make moves to challenge MLS on multiple fronts. Who will emerge victorious and whether it will leave men’s soccer in the US stronger remain to be seen.
What I miss?
Reports came out this morning that Murrell could be on the move to Falkirk FC in Scotland. Given his playing time this year, and the fact that he’s not even on the bench now, can’t say I’m surprised
He’s a hard worker and came up with some spectacular goals, but has just never really put it all together for DC, or seemed to noticeably improve. A move to Scotland could be good for him, as it was for Ian Harkes.
As it stands, he’s one of DC’s better draft picks in the recent era, but is someone that probably really could have benefitted from an MLS Next Pro team. I thought that maybe Gabe Segal was the writing on the wall that Murrell was on his way out, but Segal’s been injured all year and Murrell still has barely featured.
So this makes me wonder who they are planning to develop young players into contributing players or if they are just going to bring in good young players. There could be other young players that are the chopping block. I like that they are evaluating players and are looking to improve the roster.
Caden Clark seems pretty sure to go, and I’d be a bit surprised if they bring back Garrison Tubbs or Hakim Karamoko. The team has been really poor at developing young players, to the point that the ones who do get better (like Kevin Paredes) can be reasonably assumed to have done that on their own rather than whatever the team was doing.
They’ve brought in some young players as well (Kim Joon Hong, Gabriel Pirani, Matti Peltola, Joao Peglow, Nathan Ordaz). Peltola is the only one that’s seemingly improved. Perhaps Ordaz will. Jackson Hopkins may have gotten slightly better, but not so much to brag about. We’ll see about Markovic, and possibly Richie Aman.
The team desperately needs an MLS Next Pro team, and someone who can develop young players. They’ve got four promising homegrowns on the senior roster, but outside of about 40 minutes for Gavin Turner, none of them have had any playing time. Are they just going to go to waste too?
The owners just need to start the MLS Next Pro team and rent space at a stadium like the Maryland Soccerplex, Segra, or one of the many colleges in the area that have soccer stadiums for them to play at. Instead of using the excuse of trying to get a stadium in Baltimore done.
Even B’more has the under armour stadium
Youth academy and development is another weakness in the overall club. Hard to address when the first team struggles and takes the focus for rebuild. It will also take spending money to build up youth academy and another team. Look at DC Power. I don’t see how they are able to recoup any costs. It could end up the same with a Next Pro team.
Just on Caden Clark,
The general assessment is that it was bad player evaluation
But I think Clark has plenty of ability, and would have been great for RM, providing service, creativity, and an ability to score a few if left unchecked
It’s easy to forget, but he’s shown moments, and has been pretty unlucky not to have more stats from us just with the minutes he’s played- one excellent low drive shaving the post comes to mind.
So, I don’t think it was a bad idea to bring him in.
I do think he’s maybe one of the least disciplined and motivated prospects DC has ever acquired.
Whatever mental part of his game is missing, maybe he finds it, but this player needs to hit rock bottom, and even then, I’m not sure if he gets up from it to have a pro career if he ever does find it.
He could have been foundational, but this is a weak willed and indifferent disappointment of a prospect.
Hey its 98 years later and we are in soccer war 2.0 that destroyed pro soccer in the late 1920s….wait we aren’t the American Soccer League and the US Football Association (now US Soccer)….
https://www.ussoccerhistory.org/what-was-the-soccer-war/
Apparently FIFA was trying to put together a U-15 soccer festival involving all 211 FIFA sanctioned members. And oh hey they were trying to get private investment in it….The proposal was originally put forward in December 2025. It was announced back in June that the FIFA Bureau of the Council has decided it will take place in Baku, Azerbaijan without external investment for now…and it requires approval from all 211 member nations.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7526182/2026/08/20/fifa-u15-world-cup-investment/
Matt Doyle just put out his column on Eastern Conference team needs in the remaining transfer window. He speculates that Orlando might be shopping Martin Ojeda and Marco Pasalic, and uh, I would like DC to be putting in an offer for one of them.
Both would be great pick-ups. Ojeda makes $1.78M and Pasalic makes $1.6M. I do wonder if we could get either (probably Pasalic) as a non-DP
So many posts and no comment about the DCU-Revs game. I know they are integrating several new players and it was a mid week game sandwiched between two weekend games. I hope they can bounce back.
The team played fairly well in the first half, and was arguably the better team, and just got punished for the two mistakes they made. A bit unlucky for us not to score, and NE capitalized on a couple mistakes, it happens. The second half was certainly not as good on our end, and I think that might have been from a bit of an overreaction at half time. I don’t think this will be a demoralizing defeat or anything, but Charlotte will be a tough game. They do well at home, but they are vulnerable.
I feel I was watching a different game. They got three good chances in first half almost out of nothing, and all credit to Louis for them, though he missed taking his two chances. But I thought the Revs were totally bossing the game. And, it did seem to get worse in the second half.
I have definitely not recovered from the loss last night. Maybe as I was one of maybe 3000 people at the game, I’m taking it more personally than some others.
To each their own. To my eye test they looked the better team, and it seemed like the Apple commentators at halftime and Jason Anderson both thought the same thing (I put more stock in Jason’s thoughts there, but any time Apple commentators give us credit for doing well its notable; it doesn’t happen a lot). Futi even had DC at like a 50-60% deserved win going into halftime, even with the deficit. New England absolutely dominated the second half though, after they adjusted to the 4-3-3 (which took all of like 10 minutes)
My feeling is they may be suffering from multiple new players being integrated to the team. I am concerned this will take several games to sort out.
That, and because of injuries we’ve been missing guys that have played most of the games. Rowles playing over Nealis maybe helps some of the defending. Peglow being out means Hopkins plays on the left, something he really hasn’t done at all until the last couple of games. Not saying Peglow is a world beater or anything, but he’s generally ok and Hopkins is not used to playing there. And Im sure Nono and Ordaz are still figuring out their new teammates, which is probably a bit harder for Nono given the language barrier that Im sure is there
I imagine that having someone like Kijima who is fluent in both English and Japanese is a huge help towards integrating both Nono and Kurokawa into the team.
Oh absolutely. I’m glad Kijima is here to help with that and I’m sure its helped Kurokawa get up to speed with the team as quickly as he has.
I am still puzzled by Hopkins. He has great potential. He made several great runs but doesn’t know what to do with the ball once he breaks loose. He either takes a lame shot or passes it to nowhere. He also doesn’t connect well defensively. He is a big guy so he should be better on that end.
He is young and will improve but I thought he would progress faster with all the playing time he is getting.
The team is better, but they were thoroughly outplayed by New England. NE just have better players. I have always been a fan of Gil.
I found myself daydreaming what our team might be able to do with Jack Harrison.
Toronto went down to 10 men, then fell behind 3 to 1, but rallied in the final half hour to pull out a draw. I noticed this just to say that other outcomes are possible than what we saw last night.
Also, Pirani got his first goal just before halftime for San Diego to draw even with Portland before they blew it in the second half. Either the Apple TV announcer, totally mangled the pronunciation of his name or we were all getting it wrong for years… but he rhymed it with a mountain range in Spain.