DC United All-Decade Team: Starting Central Defender

As an introduction to our next round of voting for the DC United All-Decade Team, I thought I'd address a couple of things that were brought up in the comments section from our last post. Commenter monk81 raised two excellent points that I totally agree with as to how the voting for this team differs slightly from the voting for the Redskins All-Decade Team over at Hogs Haven.

1. There are no automatic selections here. I want to give every fan the chance to vote for every position. Jaime Moreno may have been the most obvious automatic selection, but I think it's better for that to work itself out in the voting, as it so clearly has. For Moreno, there was really no doubt, but there might be some other players (some listed below even) that I personally might include as automatic selections, but that others might disagree with. Plus, holding a vote for every position allows me to increase my post count without too much effort!

2. We are focusing only on 2000-2009. So please don't let a player's performance prior to 2000 influence your voting. Is it a coincidence that I'm bringing this point up now specifically when one of the players listed below would have easily been voted #1 in the 1990s but only played 3 seasons for United in 2000s? Perhaps…

So with that out of the way, let's move on to the voting for the first starting center back for the DC United All-Decade Team.

Ryan Nelsen (2001-2004), 81 matches, 7 goals, 5 assists
Bobby Boswell (2005-2007), 80 matches, 4 goals, 4 assists
Devon McTavish (2006-2009), 64 matches, 1 goal, 4 assists
Mike Petke (2003-2005), 58 matches, 5 goals, 1 assist
Eddie Pope (2000-2002), 57 matches, 1 goal, 5 assists
Facundo Erpen (2005-2007), 49 matches, 4 goals, 4 assists
Judah Cooks (2000-2001), 16 matches, 2 goals, 1 assist