WASHINGTON -- Lightning, thunder, torrential rains, power failures -- with one freak occurrence after another prompting a whopping three delays over three separate fixture dates, D.C. United and Houston Dynamo could be forgiven for wondering if some higher power was intent on preventing them from playing their only league match of the season at RFK Stadium.
Originally scheduled for June 4, when a driving thunderstorm prompted a postponement after just 16 minutes of play, Tuesday night's first makeup date was stymied by power outages in RFK's southeast D.C. neighborhood.
But the situation reached comical proportions when the match finally got under way 24 hours later, only to be interrupted by lightning and fierce rainfall in the 54th minute, along with several power surges that set many of the old stadium's lights flickering out again. A three-hour delay, United's second such mid-game outage in eight days after losing power during last week's SuperLiga match against Chivas de Guadalajara, tested the resolve of everyone involved.
"It felt like someone didn't want us to play this game, huh?" said D.C. goalkeeper Zach Wells afterwards. "It's kind of bizarre, you get up for a game and then to have something like that test your professionalism and test your energy level is pretty frustrating, especially three times in a week now, with Chivas last week and then the postponement yesterday and then the delay tonight."
Yet when the clash was finally settled at 12:20 a.m. on Thursday morning, the vast gap in form that currently separates the two sides was unmistakable, both before and after the weather-induced stoppage, in a 2-0 Houston victory. As in Dynamo's 3-1 SuperLiga triumph at RFK on Saturday night, a haggard-looking United had no answer for the defending MLS Cup champions' organization, work rate and defensive rigidity, and they knew it.
"They came out motivated," said head coach Tom Soehn. "We came out [for the] second half with a little bit of energy, a little bit of life, and then we came out after the rain delay like we did in the first half. We had no energy, no life. And to their credit, they did, and they punished us, over and over again."
His team's pallid display hinted at the same sort of fatigue that troubled the Black-and-Red during their fruitless SuperLiga campaign, but on this occasion, with an unexpected day off on Tuesday and more than a week before their next match, that justification held much less water.
"Just as a whole, it was bad," said Soehn. "We're going to take this time -- we've got a 10-day stretch -- and we're going to make some changes. We'll make our team stronger. We're going to get back to the basics and work our kiesters off to make sure that there's no excuses about fitness. They outworked us today, period. All over the field."
Soehn went on to make clear that United is planning a midseason roster overhaul.
"We're going to bring in some reinforcements, some people that I think are going to make us better in spots on the field that we need to get better," he explained, later adding, "I wasn't satisfied with anybody's performance tonight."
After hauling themselves back up to the .500 mark with a torrid winning streak last month, United seem to have reverted back to their miserable spring form as they enter the All-Star break, and will now have to resuscitate their campaign all over again when league play for them resumes against Kansas City on August 2.
"You know, we're frustrated," said Clyde Simms. "We can't put our finger on what it is right now, but I think the break is going to help us -- it's coming at a good time. We'll come back to work next week and try to fix things."
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