FCD 0, DCU 1

While I'm tired of sweating out 55 minutes of play with a 1-0 lead, I give all credit to DCU for winning them now rather than giving up a late goal and drawing 1-1 ties. Against the flow of play DCU counterattacks through Adu and Moreno to Gomez. The announcers - who called Ruiz on his diving; one, I think it was Garth, once said derisively something like, "Oh, Ruiz must have broken a toenail" - gave credit to Jaime for dummying the ball to Gomez, but it looked to me that Moreno was looking to dummy and turn himself and Gomez ran onto the ball and scored.

An in-form Eskandarian would have buried that late breakaway, and Dallas should have scored after 45 seconds and again a minute and a half later, and again and again and again. There are two ways to interpret games like this: good teams create good luck or karma is a bitch, and spending it in early July may leave a team in deficit in October. I believe it's the former (b/c as a fan I have to), and that DCU's strategy was to absorb and counter. Nowak gave the team three days off before yesterday in recognition of a busy schedule (including Celtic, a week from today!) and anticipation of a brutal July late afternoon in Hell, Texas: I think Nowak decided to let FCD do most of the running. Lucky that Dallas missed open shots? Yes. Burning karma? I don't think so. If you set a strategy and it works, luck may be a component but it's not the driver.

I like Simms, but it was good to see Benny back out there. He brings urgency. Simms will get his minutes, and it'll be interesting to see who starts this Saturday in Hell, Ohio. There are a lot of games (I wonder how fervently DCU will push its Cup run, due to start up in the next month), and there are minutes for everybody.