An award-winning, 20-goal season gave Luciano Emilio plenty of occasions to hone his 'superhero' goal-scoring celebration last year. But when D.C. United's Brazilian striker finally broke an eight-game scoring drought with the game-winning tally against Toronto FC on Saturday night, his reaction was a distinctly spontaneous one, happily sprinting along RFK Stadium's touchline before pointing thankfully to the heavens.
It was a welcome moment of joy and success for a once-prolific finisher who's strained mightily to find the net in his sophomore campaign.
"Definitely, you can build confidence from this. I feel a lot more motivated now and I hope to continue that," Emilio said on Monday. "Personally, I put a lot of pressure on myself to do better, but I think now I feel a lot lighter now that that load is off my shoulders."
It's also one that his coach and teammates are hoping can spark a hot streak like the one he embarked on almost a year ago.
"Of course -- strikers are happy when they're scoring goals," said D.C. head coach Tom Soehn, "and getting that first one sometimes is what puts you over the hump. He's done so much better in putting himself in spots and playing harder. It comes along with it now, and hopefully that goal will get a string going for him."
Early in the year, Soehn chalked up Emilio's off-color start to insufficient offseason conditioning work and later, lack of service from the midfield. But as the frontrunner's slump deepened and United's fortunes declined as a whole, the second-year boss had to re-evaluate.
He eventually benched last year's league MVP for a May 17 match against Chivas USA -- though Emilio would be quick to point out that he was working through a quadriceps strain at the time. But a goal poacher of his style is invariably measured first and foremost by his scoring stats, and having arrived at United after supremely successful stints in the Honduran league and Mexican second division, he admits that this season has "definitely been one of the most challenging" periods of his career.
His multinational experience and mellow temperament seems to have kept him well-grounded, however.
"You always go through this when you play soccer," said Emilio, also a veteran of the German Bundesliga. "You're always going to have periods when you're not going to score. But I'm 30 years old and I know how to overcome that."
The Brazilian's coolheaded recollection of his own scoring history provides another textbook example of a striker's mentality.
"Definitely, I want to keep scoring," he said. "Last year it was a similar situation where I didn't score for five whole games and then after that I scored 17 goals in 18 games."
His performance in Saturday's 3-2 win featured more effective movement in and around the opposing penalty box, and the awareness he displayed in following up Santino Quaranta's shot from distance provided a reminder of how "Luchigol" took MLS by storm in 2007. It came just a few minutes after Emilio saw a similarly opportunistic finish of a Jaime Moreno drive disallowed for an early offside flag on D.C.'s captain.
"We always told him that it's going to come, it's going to come at the right time, he didn't have to get desperate," said Moreno afterwards. "And luckily it came tonight."
Equally important from a team perspective, Emilio's efforts encapsulated an evening of improved industriousness from United's first XI, which will be crucial to any hopes of a midseason revival in D.C.
"I don't think we've lost sight of our objective as a team, which is to qualify for the playoffs and get that title, the MLS Cup," he said. "I think people focused more on me when it was really the team that wasn't clicking so much. We weren't getting adjusted as quickly as we needed to, and I think we were all there for each other, we all supported each other and we're coming together and doing better now."
Charles Boehm is a contributor to MLSnet.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Soccer or its clubs.
