After two consecutive road wins, DC United entered the final day of the season with their destiny in their hands, a win or a draw at home against Charlotte FC was enough to book their ticket to the playoffs for the first time. in five years, in front of their fans who came en masse to watch the match on Saturday afternoon, against the North Carolina club.
With more than 19,365 fans gathered at Audi Field, DC United could not achieve its goal and ended up losing to Charlotte by a final score of three to zero, thus ending playoff aspirations suddenly.
“I hate that feeling,” forward Christian Benteke said. “I felt like we had failed them: we had failed our staff, we had failed the fans, the family and the friends.”
The DC United match
DC United began looking for scoring opportunities early in the first half. Benteke thought he had opened the scoring for DC United after going one-on-one with goalkeeper Kristijan Kahlina to score his 24th goal of the season.
However, match referee Jair Marrufo declared the action invalid after marking the Belgian striker offside.
“We had a chance to build it up, but we didn’t,” DC United coach Troy Lesesne said. “That’s why we are very disappointed.”
The score remained at zero until halftime. But, it was Charlotte that broke the tie in the second half. It was the 56th minute when Charlotte caught the DC defense badly on a counterattack.
Spanish midfielder Pep Biel sent a cross ball from his own field to find Brandt Bronico who was alone on the right side.
Bronico managed to beat Mateusz Klich’s marker and launch himself into the DC United area, sending a low pass to Biel, who hit him at first glance, sending the ball into the back of the net to give the visitors the advantage.
Charlotte found the second goal of the night again via the counterattack. It was the 75th minute of the game, with DC trying to find the tying goal that would save their season. After a bad pass from Gabriel Pirani, which was intended for Aaron Herrera, United States national team defender Tim Ream managed to intercept the ball and sent a pass down the right wing to Bronico.
The Charlotte midfielder sent a low cross in the direction of Patrick Agyemang. The DC defender Christopher McVey managed to get to the ball, however, his clearance hit the Charlotte forward and ended up at the back of the goal defended by Alex Bono for the two to zero that would mark a death knell for the red-and-black season.
“I feel very sad, we were so close to fulfilling a dream. “Midfielder Martin Rodríguez said, “I think we deserved something more and in the end we left empty-handed.”
Charlotte would close out the night by scoring a third goal in the minute of stoppage time. At minute 91′.
Polish striker Karol Swiderski managed to win an aerial ball in the midfield and managed to give a pass to Liel Abada. Striker Isralei managed to evade the mark of Herrera and Mati Peltola with a cutback.
Abada managed to take a shot, which hit Bono’s body and ended up bouncing off the DC United goalkeeper and ended up kissing the net, putting definitive numbers on the scoreboard and ending DC United’s playoff dreams.
“It’s a big failure, without a doubt,” Bono said. “Especially because of the position we were in before the last day. “It’s something we all wanted, something the organization really wanted to happen.”
With this result, combined with CF Montreal’s home wins against New York City FC and Atlanta United’s away win against Orlando City FC, DC United finished in tenth place with 40 points.
Same score as Atlanta, but the club from the capital of the state of Georgia finished with a better goal difference, thus taking the last playoff spot. While Charlotte FC finished in fifth place in the Eastern Conference with 51 points.
“We wanted to face our fans despite this failure,” added Lesesne, who was hired last winter. “And that’s what it is. It’s a hard failure. But we have to say it and accept it.”
What lessons does DC take away from this season.
Despite finishing just one goal away from being in the postseason, the Lesense team was able to improve in some aspects of its game after his first season in charge of the team.
“A new coach arrives, it takes time to build a new team.” said McVey “I think even this season you can see that a lot of things have improved compared to how we started it, it’s frustrating because we are so close to making the playoffs and we knew that in the playoffs anything could happen. But we have great players on this team. We have a great coaching staff. “We just have to keep working and hopefully, hopefully, next season we can do even better.”
However, one of the things the team is looking to improve on is their home form. Despite their superb form away from home with a record of six wins, six losses and five draws, winning five away games, DC were not as strong at home, finishing with a record of four wins, eight losses and five draws. Losing six of their last twelve home games, only winning one home game to end the season.
“I think there are some components to that,” Lesense said. “I think there are some things internally that we’re going to look at about how we prepare on the day of a home game.” He also spoke about the connection of the team and its fans and said about it “We spent a lot of time. You know, I spent a lot of time with the fans this year and just trying to let them know who I am and I want to know who they are. And I think when you connect like that, it makes you want to fight even harder for the group you’re playing for. And that is why we are going to continue doing it.”
“We are going to double our efforts to invest in them because they have invested a lot in us. But I don’t think it comes down to one thing. “There are many things that go into improving performance at home and these are just a couple of them,” he concluded.
Benteke wins the golden boot
It wasn’t all bad news for DC United. Benteke took the golden boot for top scorer in MLS with 23 goals this season. Benteke becomes the first DC United player to win the league’s scoring title since Dwayne DeRosario in 2011 with 16 goals.
He also shared the club record, a record that was set by Raul Diaz Arce who scored the same number of goals as Benteke in the inaugural year of MLS in 1996.
“What’s the point of being the Golden Boot if you don’t play in the playoffs?” commented Benteke. “It’s annoying.”
In the last five seasons, only DC and the Chicago Fire failed to qualify for the playoffs after the format change from 18 to 29 teams that qualify for the postseason.
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