With their season on the line and more than 20,000 raucous fans packing RFK Stadium, Sunday afternoon's showdown with the Chicago Fire was the perfect time for D.C. United to conjure up last season's postseason magic once again.
But this time the Black-and-Red reached into their bag of tricks and came up empty, surrendering a 4-0 result in the second leg of the Eastern Conference Semifinal Series that was a nightmare from start to finish.
"Congratulations to the Fire. I wish them good luck in New England," said a somber United head coach Peter Nowak afterwards. "But as the [defending] champions, we cannot show up with this kind of performance like tonight. It was a long season, there were some good things, some bad things, [but] at the end of the day, I'm sure the whole team is very disappointed."
Seemingly jinxed by the loss of central defender Facundo Erpen to a knee injury just five minutes in, United offered up one of their weakest displays all year in the first half and Chicago took full advantage, netting three goals to put D.C. in a deep hole.
"Obviously, they played a great game tonight," said United midfielder Dema Kovalenko, who took the poor result against his former team especially hard. "They came with a plan, executed it, and it happened so fast -- three goals down, it's hard to come back, even if you're Real Madrid."
That hole that only got deeper in the second stanza as Christian Gomez was sent off for spitting at C.J. Brown in the 55th minute, handing his side the nearly impossible task of scoring three goals with 10 men.
Nowak was as surprised as the rest of the stadium to see such behavior from the Argentinean, but Gomez had been constantly shadowed by multiple defenders all game and the frustration seemed to explode after a heavy challenge in the Fire penalty area.
"I don't know," said Nowak of the incident. "This is a very emotional game. I don't know what C.J. Brown told him, or why he reacted this way. We will have the time to analyze that in the offseason."
United's customary flowing style of possession was disrupted by a well-laid game plan from the Fire, who did not hesitate to commit fouls whenever the home side began to create. At the other end, striker Nate Jaqua proved an excellent target man for Chris Rolfe and Thiago to combine with.
"Yeah, it looked like they changed their formation to match up with ours," said D.C. defender Bryan Namoff, "and they played direct. Their defenders played directly into Jaqua, who's a big threat because of his size up top. He was able to flick balls in and use their counterattack to their advantage."
But team captain Jaime Moreno pointed to the most unexpected aspect of United's flat performance -- a lack of the passion that had been in plentiful supply all year.
"For all the teams that we fought all year, I think sometimes that we might come out of the game and say, 'OK, we did everything we could,'" he said.
"But I just don't think that we brought our 'A' game tonight, which is really surprising. I don't know why. I think everybody has to think about it and see what we did wrong. But like I said, it's too late now to think, because now we're out."
Charles Boehm is a contributor to MLSnet.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Soccer or its clubs.
