BLCKDGRD

Chivas USA 3, United 1

What if Jaime had buried that duck late in the first half, set up by Gallardo, dummied by Doe?

They'd have lost anyway. And remember, that was Chivas' B-Squad.

D says lack of toughness. Lifton says they're scared of physical contact. Shatz says out-coached and outplayed. Stoller wonders if he's waking up this morning to find Soehn's been fired. Landru says - well, just go read what Landru says.

I'm guessing four points is the minimum United must pull from the two Toronto games for Soehn to survive to be fired after the Ningland game, but Soehn will be fired - sooner or later - because it's the only option management has.

Here's Goff's player ratings:

Wells 3; Namoff 6, Mediate 5, Martinez 5, Burch 5; Quaranta 5, Simms 4, Gallardo 6, Cordeiro 4; Doe 4, Moreno 4. Subs: Emilio 4, Dyachenko 4, Niell 4.

Namoff, Martinez, Gallardo, maybe Simms - those are the only United players who would start on a half-decent MLS squad out of last night's starters. I read how United is under-performing vis-a-vis its talent, and what the fuck?

Here's who started in a 2-1 victory last May against Houston:

Perkins 7, Namoff 6, Boswell 6, Erpen 5, Gros 5, Carroll 6, Olsen 7, Fred 5, Gomez 8, Kpene 6, Emilio 6. Subs: Addlery 5, Dyachenko 5, Simms 5.

That team, coached by the same Tom Soehn, would kick this year's team's ass up down sideways. Boswell and Erpen or Mediate and Burch? I mean, jeebus, how damning is that?

Circumstances: Carroll had to be left unprotected, Olsen is hurt, Gros is retired, Fred is injured, Perkins went to Norway, Peralta's wife is on bed-rest, Emilio's mysteriously, maddeningly suckful, and if the players management brought in to replace the departed and injured and suckful are slow and unskilled and soft, how much of that is on Soehn?

Soehn brought in Zach Wells and a Peruvian midget to replace Troy Perkins?

It's entirely plausible that Soehn is doing a shitty job, but I don't think it possible, or fair, to determine with any accuracy how shitty a shitty job he's doing considering what crappy tools he has at his disposal. What if Soehn is getting all that can be gotten out of these mutts?

This is not a defense of Soehn, this is push-back against the idea that changing coaches alone will solve United's problems. Soehn's bears his share of responsibility - why is the fitness level so shockingly bad? - but this is a collective clusterfuck starting at the top.

Lots more later. Updates too when I see them.

Sgoff if you like

So Goff has become the embodiment of the "them" United's created to create an "us" to fight "them," and in victory, reinvigorate!

D.C. United's practice at Home Depot Center was closed -- something we are going to have to get used to, I'm afraid. Seems the ballclub isn't happy with my vivid descriptions of training sessions and the formation and player information being revealed. I can't blame them. I could agree to essentially an off-the-record viewing of practices. I could, but I won't. I'm not going to pretend I don't see things transpiring in front of me. So it's come to this.

AWESOME!

Seriously, Ba'al forbid Chivas get top secret tip that Doe starts Saturday night, not Niell.

   *

IMPORTANT UPDATE!

,,,,,,

Landru has twenty-four hours to copyright "Emiliano Heskey" or I will shamelessly claim that I thought of it Thursday and mentioned it to him Friday.

Faggots and Muslims and Niggers, Oh My!

The essence of rubeness is being wrong even when right in one's god-taunting.

That screaming hot, possibly violent summer I've been wishing for, yearning for, America's internal conflicts and contradictions pressuring every false seam of civility into ruptured and ugly sight, if yesterday's pig salvos against Obama are indication, might need be rescheduled. wOOt!

We might just get the indelible pig-ugliness necessary to permanently marginalize assholes like this guy:

Hah! I made a funny.

Democrats, if not such nimrods, could use the upcoming pig-spew to permanently brand the GOP as the party of assholes to the newest political generation.

If it's as ugly as I think it will be, possibly even Democrats can't fuck that up.

Hah! I made another funny.

   *

• Fag wars, coming to a ballot initiative near you.
• Pastor Gerson, in another shameless attempt to claim Martin Luther King would be a Republican if alive today, says, "And it ignores the deeper radicalism of the American experiment -- the radicalism of full citizenship and justice for every American -- that inspired King, and that will inspire others." I'm guessing he'd say that just applies to niggers, not fags. He sleeps soundly at night, the Pastor.
• A breathtakingly condescending article about the condescension toward Clorg.
• Make them make them make them make them.
• Life and life only.

  *

Before everyone celebrates Chris Matthews reincarnation as Liberal Avenger (I remember when he was the Liberal - along with Jack Germond - on the McLaughlin Group back in the early 80s), what he was attacking wasn't the assclown's political position, he was attacking the assclown's amateurish assclownery.

It wasn't a political attack, it was a professional attack, one whose motive would have made Lee Siegel's heart swell - the professional de-nutting of an uncredentialed assclown demanding equal status on Matthew's professional turf.

Ask Fleabus!

Fleabus, what if I told you that I'm the number one google hit on that quotation Bush minced out about itlerhay in the below post?

...

Holy fuck.

Sorry The Term Is misogynist

Prescott Bush:

George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.

The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.

George Bush today:

“Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,” Mr. Bush said. “We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.” We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

Why talk with Nazis when you can cut a profit with them?

I'm sorry that one of the word's connotations is misogynist, but the word that best describes George Bush is pussy.

   *

• My only consciously misogynistic attacks on Hillary Clinton was wishing that the first major woman candidate for president wasn't Hillary Clinton but a truly independent - as in, not dynastic, as in not CLINTON INC tool - woman.
• Have you told John Edwards to fuck off today, the gutless coward. (A dissenting opinion on Edwards.)
• Who's betting against a vicious war between Hezbollah and Israel in Lebanon in October to help McCain/GOP?
• Birth-right wingers.
• Fricking Gaithersblech.
• Hamster used to live off Ivy League Lane. Hmmm.
• Blogging about blogglob. Adding, I'm not trying to be snarky, I just find blog-angst a fascinating phenomenon.
• Reading for oneself, posted today in serendipitous coincidence with the above.
• Love is an object kept in an empty box.
• Art of Manliness lists 100 must-read novels for men. (h/t Fellowjeff)
• Love for Le Tigre, boyee!

UPDATES

• Sasha has a recommendation for Obama's vpotus.
• Is Joe Lieberman a colostomy bag or the bag's contents?
• Is America ready for a non-Black president?
• George Bush: Moron, or Moron.... Like a Fox?
• Bush cries alone?
• Joe Biden earns my admiration.

   *

Eno's birthday notwithstanding, this song's in my head, be in yours:

Sixty Years Ago Today

Eno IS god.

His great tetralogy is in my permanent rotation.

Fifty-Six Today (Or Landru's Daily Reminder He's Old!)

Stuck in My Head, Stuck in Yours

College Park's own Velocity Girl.

On Defending Points of Honor Using Jackson Browne Lyrics

Obama gave a speech and gave nice platypuses to Vietnam war veterans:

One of the saddest episodes in our history was the degree to which returning vets from Vietnam were shunned, demonized and neglected by some because they served in an unpopular war. Too many of those who opposed the war in Vietnam chose to blame not only the leaders who ordered the mission, but the young men who simply answered their country’s call. Four decades later, the sting of that injustice is a wound that has never fully healed, and one that should never be repeated.

Predictably, Jerilyn Merritt goes shitwhack:

In other words, Obama intends to battle the war-hero McCain by throwing us under the bus.

And get this: she quotes a Jackson Browne lyric to anchor her moral position.

Jackson Browne? Jackson Fucking Browne?

I don't know about Obama, but I'm throwing your musically-illiterate ass under the bus.

To recap, your Clorg Democrats:

...

Your kind author:

...

   *

• This is a more important constituency than aarpers.
• Snakehead concedes.
• Make them make them make them make them.
• Bayard on Wilentz on Reagan.
• Friend/Enemy Distinction.
• Jingoing to Hell.
• I had noticed Swift's hiatus but hadn't thought much of it, but Simon emails me and asks, Where's Swift?
• Also MIA is Rake.
• Old Dirty Bama is talking to YOU!
• Any excuse to write Dick Advocaat.
• On middlebrow mediocrity.
• The Great Lit War of '58.

   *

Max Boot writes, sans irony as only Max Boots can, about Ricardo Sanchez in a review of Sanchez' book:

The general's denunciations of others would be more convincing if he were prepared to admit the painful truth about himself.

Jeebus, Max Fucking Boot.

....

Strauss steps over the bodies.

Fifty-Eight Today

The best concert I ever saw was Gabriel at Warner Theater in '83 on the Security tour.

I was four rows back, center. When he fell into the crowd during Lay Your Hands on Me, I was one of those who caught him.

Rubiest Days of Their Lives

How can Clorg quit without permanently disaffecting her most ardent, without ensuring they'll never vote Democrat again without ache, which is their deepest desire?

Rubes, Clorg's rubes are invested to their moral marrow, and these are the best, most preciously intense days in their lives of rubiness, and I'm not mocking them, I'm envying them.

A new friend asked me how I separate soccer and politics, and I said, Huh?

   *

• Clorg, more annoying than Billy Mays!
• Symbolic interactionists or goffmanian chain ritualists?
• The Hillary-ization of Michelle Obama.
• Elric 7 gets drunk in Calgary, thanks you for your tax dollars.
• An appreciation of Zukofsky, who perhaps I have not spend enough time with.

UPDATES

• Blathersnooze.
• Stupid metaphors applied predictably.
• Fan of toast writes toaster maker.
• History of CLINTON INC trench-bitterness explored.
• Am I being detained?
• Surveillance state update.

   *

Fleabus, much rain lately?

..

Seventy-Eight Years Ago Today

Stanley Elkin, my favorite novelist, was born.

I've written this before, but the most beautiful moment in any novel I've read is in Magic Kingdom:

And it was wondrous in the negligible humidity how they gawked across the perfect air, how, stunned by the helices and all the parabolas of grace, they gasped, they sighed, these short-timers who even at their age could not buy insurance at any price, not even if the premiums were paid in the rare rich elements, in pearls clustered as grapes, in buckets of bullion, in trellises of diamonds, how, glad to be alive, they stared at each other and caught their breath.

Read Bad Man, read all the novellas in Searches and Seizures, read The Franchiser and Dick Gibson and George Mills and Mrs Ted Bliss, read them all if you can, but you must read Magic Kingdom, the bravest, most generously and fiercely human novel I've ever read.

Downgrade

Mike Wise's column today about Ben Olsen makes appropriately obligatory reference to Olsen's missing heart contributing to United's woes, and since I've been making the same point since game one I certainly can't dispute.

Olsen's absence hurts, but is not the root problem. Here's my abridged version:

Ownership went to management in the off-season and said crashing out of every competition but Supporter's Shield sucks, make next season AWESOME! and thank Ba'al for that. But...

Ownership/management negotiations with Gomez, whoever was at fault and in what proportion, had already soured before the Veron negotiations crumbled. After the Veron talks broke down, ownership said, buy me the splashiest name available within our working budget and that player was Gallardo, and since the relationship with Gomez was already poisoned, Gallardo's signing could be justified as replacing an already departing Gomez.

Gomez, the ten, was United's strength, not the problem. For a few extra $100K United could now have Gomez and a DP on the wing or Gomez and a DP as withdrawn forward or Gomez and a DP in midfield behind Gomez in a 3-5-2 or Gomez and the DP in hand.

Gomez and a DP or Gallardo? (And please remind me if I'm wrong: Gomez wanted more $$$ and two years, not DP money and designation, yes?)

UPDATE: Goose corrects my memory (and thank you, sincerely):

If we re-signed Gomez, we would not have had the 400k free for a DP UNLESS Jaime Moreno did not re-sign.

This doesn't really change my argument that much in that while I love Jaime and honor his service and yadda, Gomez and a DP probably still trump Gallardo and Moreno, if that's the either/or.

I've nothing against Gallardo - yet, and hopefully never - but Gomez was the last player off last year's roster that needed upgrading, especially if United hoped to run a 3-5-2 this year.

Soehn will be the scapegoat if scapegoating is necessary because management can't fire the players and won't fire itself, but management fired Gomez when it could have had Gomez plus a DP. Management decided that McTavish and Burch are MLS starters, management decided not to upgrade the wings, management brought in Franco Niell to back up Jaime Moreno.

Yes United misses Olsen and his intangibles, and yes a healthy Olsen behind Gallardo would be a vast improvement over now, but Olsen plus Gomez plus a top-flight winger or withdrawn forward?

Whether Soehn gets the most out of the talent he has is one issue. That the talent he has is mediocre, that's on management.

Livery

I read with fascination (I'm sure she'd say condescension) my favorite pro-Clinton/anti-Obama blogger because the owner is smart and talented and passionate, and was, is, and will be me, rubed and rube-cubed, someday and everyday.

My fall-back delusion is that our overlords herd us, but we herd ourselves and look for an overlord, who bet amongst themselves who can create the biggest herd of servants. The worse day of the overlords is servicing the whiny servants while the best day of the servants is when our overlords' uniform wins.

Which is precisely why I want Obama to win. Our livery kicks your livery's ass, loser.

Of course he's going to disappoint us. Which has what to do with anything?

   *

• Maybe she's not the nominee because she fucked up and then refused to acknowledge the fuck up.
• What ever happened to that gas-tax holiday dammit?
• I suppose there's nothing to be gained by Obama pointing out that it's Clorg who's calling her supporters racist, not him.
• I don't think they're freaking out at all. If McCain implants the meme that ageism = racism, then at worse Obama shuts up about McCorpse (ageism!) and at best minutely blunts the racism.
• Please shut up about right-wing preachers and John McCain, or at least talk about them without pretending amazement that the right-wing preachers don't cause the same fuss as Jeremiah Wright.
•  Quitters never win, but then, neither do bitter and divisive losers.
• Inside Hillary's bunker. (Excellent and gratuitous cheap shot!) (Adding, this would have applied equally and oppositely if uniforms reversed.)
• Crisis and hegemony.
• Just what is the pime?
• Poor Man's new comix!
• Friday hope blogging.
• Visualization and reading.
• I admire Vendler, but she is a fascist.
• George Wills hates Perlstein's Nixonland! It must be good.

   *

Fleabus, would you rather anguish over livery or play?

United 0, Chicago 2

If I could chose a starting eleven out of the twenty-two players who started last night, at least eight, probably nine, maybe ten, wore red shirts.

Some guy standing behind kept shouting at United players as if it was faulty moral character that separated United from Fire players. He especially yelled at Rod Dyachenko for not getting to balls, screaming at Dyachenko for not trying.

Maybe it's not lack of effort. Maybe the team United put on the field last night doesn't have the athleticism and soccer skills to get to most balls and do anything productive with the balls they get to.

My working theory is United doesn't have particularly good soccer players. When their best player on the field is a great-grandfather in soccer years playing out of position - and, sincerely, thank you Jaime - that makes for a collection of middling mutts.

They're not fast, they're not quick, they're not foot-skilled, they're not soccer-savvy.

After a point, screaming about effort masks what's really wrong, and what's wrong is that they're not good.

Here's Goff's player ratings:

Wells 6; Namoff 4, Peralta 4, Martinez 4; Quaranta 3, Simms 3, Dyachenko 3, Moreno 4, Burch 4; Niell 3, Emilio 3. Subs: Doe 4, Stratford no rating, Kirk no rating.

They're not dead, and in any case I said no autopsy after this game regardless of result, but they're seriously, if not critically ill, and something may soon need to be blown up for blown-up's sake.

UPDATES:

D, in his first impression's post, says:

It was that D.C. United didn't just look slow, they look frightened.  And that's a recursive function that eats its own.

I agree, and would add: there was a moment in the first half when Niell was running left on a wheel and automatically fed the ball to where his soccer lizard-brain had been trained to pass the ball, and Dyachenko, who should have received the pass but was fifteen feet away, was actually where his lizard-brain had trained him to be.

That's another reason I'm down on the talent: they aren't good enough, talented enough, imaginative enough, to exceed their academy training. Frightened robots, indeed.

Though better coaching should reduce this problem, theoretically, yes?

  *

Stoller says fire Soehn, based in part on perceived lack of effort on the players which Soehn seems incapable of fixing.

   *

Lifton concurs: United's just not very good.

   *

This will cheer you up. Or entertain you at least.

   *

OH! In the to be fair column, outside of ATM machines, which still had folks grumbling, a much better performance by management in terms of vending and parking. Thank you.