Pachuca! Gezunteit!

So DC United went down to Mexico, played at Pachuca and lost 2-0 to Mexico's super club.

The time for talking about moral victories for MLS teams in Mexico is long over. DC may not have even registered a single shot on frame.

With that as a backdrop, how can I have anything positive to say about the game? But actually, there was quite a bit.

1) United didn't panic. I've seen looks of terror in MLS teams' faces in the first 15 minutes, when they realize just how fast, just how controlled and just how... good Mexican club teams really are. United actually held its shape extremely well. They tried to build from the back. United made the Tuzos much less dangerous than their dominating possession deserved. The DC defenders tracked the quick diagonal movements of Pachuca's attackers. In fact, they played better team defense against a Mexican team than I've seen in a while. If there was a major weakness, it was defending runs out to or from the flanks. United protected the box well, but didn't track runners to the flanks and was powerless to stop the Pachuca players from whipping in cross after cross.

2. United didn't lose their cool. There was a time when every MLS club trip to Mexico ended in a least one expulsion. MLS fans typically attributed this to biased refereeing-- and that's probably true to a point. But MLS players didn't do themselves any favors by not realizing that tackles that are "ok" in MLS aren't necessarily ok in international play. You just can't give a CONCACAF ref a reason to call something for the home team.

Now, it seemed like Pachuca got every 50-50 call, including a number of phantom calls in dangerous positions. And the TV replays (obviously off of a Mexican feed) emphasized every challenged by a United player by lingering on the Pachuca players, even as DC was moving the ball upfield in the opposite direction. But we also have to recognize that United's players frequently were just a touch slower. How many times did a DC and Pachuca player tangle for a ball and the Pachuca player, seemingly against longer odds than Ron Paul, came up with the ball? MLS fans just need to admit that Mexican clubs are still significantly better at tight possession.

But that's beside the point here: United players took the calls without too much jawing and generally escaped further sanctions. That's a huge positive.

3. It turns out having experienced international players can help you compete in games internationally. Gallardo is able to distribute the ball in ways that we just don't see much in MLS, redirecting hip level passes to an overlapping runner with an upturned heel. And he did the same trick four or five times, convincing me that, yes, it was on purpose. Fred showed more than good footwork-- he showed an impressive workrate that helped United maintain possession. And Martinez? This is the kind of guy that the team thought they were getting with Facundo Erpen-- a defender with good feet, good instincts and the ability to play the ball forward constructively. In fact, he and Peralta looked very solid and made it more difficult for Pachuca to simply attack through the center with rotating runners (a tactic that MLS teams haven't been able to grasp before). Of course, someone in the middle may have lost their man on the second goal, but I thought it was, overall, a fairly solid performance.

Overall, I think United's got a chance (albeit a small one) to tie this up in the second leg. They were beaten soundly, but not without some constructive play of their own.

I wonder, though, if strangely, United might not be good enough for MLS. Is Gallardo going to see as wide open a field when he plays San Jose in Buckshaw, not to mention the traditional MLS defensive powerhouses?