WOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!
Goff says DC United has been invited to the Copa Sudamericana tournament early this fall by virtue of finishing in third place in the CONCACAF Champions’ Cup. We played in this tournament last year and got bounced out by Universidad Catolica after a *very* brave showing down in Chile where we were up 2-0 at one point before falling 3-2.
Many over at BigSoccer are rueing the fixture congestion with league games, the SuperLiga tournament (with a $1,000,000 payout!!!), US Open Cup, and now this Copa Sudamericana.
And to a certain extent I agree. Two of the main cogs of our team in Jaime Moreno and Christian Gomez are well into their 30s, and are not known for their fitness. Neither is Ben Olsen who recently turned 30. If we get any National Team callups for the Gold Cup or the Copa America we could be in real deep… stuff. Candidates for US callups include Bobby Boswell, Brian Namoff, Josh Gros, and Brian Carroll. We are also almost certain to lose rookie Bryan Arquez for the FIFA U20 Championship during the summer as well. Last year with less games to play, we virtually fell apart with exhaustion by the end of the season.
So why am I not as concerned? I believe in Tommy Soehn. I think he learned from Peter Nowak’s refusal to play anyone but his First XI. True, he has made some other mistakes, but he seems willing to be flexible. We’ve got some real good young attacking talent on this team. Now I am concerned with our defensive depth, but hopefully we can add at least one more roster player before the summer is out, and we can get Devon McTavish and Jeff Carroll healed up.
With Jamil Walker’s season ending achilles injury, that gives us an open spot without much loss. Jamil (by all accounts a great guy) had fallen to at least 5th on the depth chart at forward.