On paper, the result meant nothing.
But there was palpable concern in the D.C. United locker room after Saturday night's 2-1 setback to the New England Revolution at RFK Stadium, as United suffered their second one-goal loss in as many weeks and missed an important opportunity to establish momentum on the eve of the postseason.
"It's not good," said midfielder Freddy Adu. "We've played great soccer but we just haven't scored. We've made mental mistakes that have cost us games, and that's definitely a cause of concern. We don't want to get knocked out in the first round of the playoffs, so we've got to go into the playoffs with some momentum, some confidence, and that means winning that last game against Chicago next week."
United started well and grabbed the opening goal of a pulsating first half when Christian Gomez put the final touch to Bryan Namoff's cross in the 26th minute. The home side would go on to take twice as many shots as New England, earn 11 corner kicks and control the majority of possession.
But two defensive slips led to opportunistic goals from Clint Dempsey and Taylor Twellman on either side of halftime, handing the Revs three valuable points and dooming D.C. to only its second home loss of the season.
"Just a couple minutes where we lacked concentration and we let their guys in, and that's the story of that game," said midfielder Ben Olsen. "We have to do better with our finishing, but I can't remember a time in recent games where we've played that well offensively, with the chances and the creativeness and the overlapping. Offensively it was a good game, it's just those lapses in concentration that we need to remedy before the playoffs, because there are going to be one-goal games and we need to hold that type of lead."
D.C. was officially presented with the 2006 Supporters' Shield before kickoff, but afterwards had little opportunity to savor that hard-earned reward as they rued the breakdowns that allowed the match to slip away.
"We shouldn't be giving up goals like that," said striker Alecko Eskandarian, who came off the bench in the second half for his first appearance in more than a month. "It's always such a heartbreaking loss to know that you lost to goals that could easily have been prevented. On the other end, we create so many chances but we've got to put them away. Regardless, we're not going to win anything if we play like that."
Always unpredictable, Dempsey conjured his tally out of thin air with an inspired first touch that exposed United's back three as they moved forward to meet Andy Dorman's diagonal pass and maintain their high line.
"On the first goal, we stepped up, I felt I had a good read on it and Clint made a play on the ball," said center back Bobby Boswell. "I guess it was miscommunication. We'll look at the video and we'll see what happened -- we'll work on that."
But the Black-and-Red were caught badly unprepared on Twellman's game-winner, which resulted from a well-taken Revolution corner kick less than two minutes into the second half.
"We go to play the second half, it's a wide-open game, it's still 1-1, we have 45 minutes to score the goal -- but we let the goal in a minute and 20 seconds," said head coach Peter Nowak. "It's unacceptable. Of course, if you are in the playoffs and you do this in a game, it's going to hurt you."
United's veterans are acutely aware of the postseason's unforgiving nature.
"It's pretty clear that in the playoffs, if we make these mistakes then we'll be out," said captain Jaime Moreno. "So it's very simple. We've got to try to make less mistakes and take the opportunities that we have and put them away."
Jaime Moreno is a contributor to MLSnet.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Soccer or its clubs.
