Crew midfielder Kyle Martino was the 2002 MLS Rookie of the Year and has also played for the U.S. men's national team. Each week during the 2004 MLS season, Kyle will detail the week past, giving insight into the life of a professional soccer player.
Last week against D.C. United, we had a bad start to the game. Right off the bat, they got a good chance, and we gave D.C. a lot of confidence and a lot of momentum at home, which is not the best way to go about playing them. If you give them confidence early, they really start moving the ball well and attacking really well. That's what they did, and I think everyone on the team feels the performance wasn't great. It would take a lot more to beat D.C. at their place than the performance we gave, and it's disappointing. We'll move on, and this is something that will help us regroup a little bit and get back on track.
In the D.C. game, Alecko Eskandarian had a couple of nice goals, and I think that if someone scores against you, you'd rather have them be individual efforts that are pretty impressive and that you can't really pick out many things that you did wrong about. Having a really nice goal scored against you is a little easier to take than mistakes or deflections or own goals, but a goal is a goal at the end of the day, and it's difficult just to have the result.
I definitely don't think that we should lose 3-1 to D.C. at any time. They're a strong team, and they're a good team, but I don't think that we feel that's a result that suits the way that we've been playing, especially through the streak. It's disappointing to go down 3-0 and lose 3-1.
Of course, we've got a chance to get going again with a home game this weekend against the Chicago Fire. It's always nice to play at home and play in front of our fans, and I think having our next game at home is a good opportunity to rebound and show our fans that we're going to get our streak going again and that we're going to keep winning. That last game was a hiccup along the path. This week we're definitely taking a more focused and determined attitude toward training knowing that we want to rebound from a loss with a win.
In an update on the e-Bay front, I bought my new guitar, my first e-Bay purchase ever, which is exciting and scary at the same time. It hasn't gotten here yet, but hopefully it will come in one piece. Also, we went out to see Dave Matthews Band at the Theatre Wednesday. It was a good outing for everyone to relax a little bit and have a good time before going back to training Thursday and getting ready to go again.
