This match exhibited nothing but a lowly underperforming team working harder than a much more talented team. DC came out to a quick 2-0 lead, and apparently they thought they didn't need to do anything else for the next 70 minutes. That wasn't true.

There was also some definite bad luck for San Jose. The PK call for the first goal was questionable, although you can make a reall good case for it being a penalty. Then our second goal comes off an unlucky deflection. And it certainly didn't help the Earthquakes either that their most potent scorer got injured before the end of the first half. I was starting to worry that we may have used up all the kharma that we earned earlier in the year after all the faux penalty calls and such, but then we go and gift the Quakes a second goal with a freak handball.


1. Two easy goals from Christian Gomez. A very Morenoesque penalty kick, and a clean finish of the deflection for his second. Totally disappeared in the second half though when we needed him the most.


1. Luciano Emilio earned himself a lot of chances in this match. If he keeps up this kind of workrate, he will very quickly be back to his scoring form.

2. Also some good attacking work from Fred on both wings. He was constantly abusing our old friend Mike Zaher in the first half, and frequently found himself in dangerous spots. But every good chance the Earthquakes had in the first half came from their left. Once Fred shifted sides and Pontius moved to that wing, that was no longer the case.

3. Several very nice saves by Josh Wicks tonight, but Wallace's handball never would have occured had Wicks grabbed that cross first.


1. Marc Burch was beaten on San Jose's lone goal, and beaten a couple other times too. He did have some great service out of the back, but unfortunately there's more to playing fullback than long crosses.

2. What was Rodney Wallace's hand doing in the air?

So a pretty poor start to our toughest stretch of the season that includes 6 out of 7 regular season matches on the road, and 6 matches over the next 3 weeks, the first of which is a tough match against Firpo on Tuesday. Will be interested to see how the team does in this competition in 2009 after totally flunking out of all international competitions last year.