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D.C. United News Roundup: Kasper & Olsen staying; maybe that's a good thing; stadium opponents oppose stadium; Coffee Pot Cup 2014

On the wires today, the Post gets confirmation that Olsen and Kasper will likely be back next year, MLS Soccer tells us why that's a good thing, and we find that stadium opponents tend to oppose the new stadium.

By Adam M Taylor
Jim Urquhart-USA TODAY Sports

Lots of updates happening that don't quite warrant their own separate posts, so let's just bundle them all up together for easy consumption.

Kasper and Olsen

Last week, we heard the rumor that Dave Kasper would be around RFK for the long term, and Tuesday, the Goff-father confirmed with sources that both Kasper and Ben Olsen would be retained as the team heads into 2014. In a separate blog post, Goff goes into further detail about the ownership's probable thinking, saying that the GM and coach would be evaluated separately, not as "a package deal" and that the pair will probably (and should obviously) feel pressure to significantly upgrade the roster this offseason - y'know, since the failure to do so last offseason is almost certainly the point at which this season went off the rails, even if not all of us realized it right away.

"Olsen is United"

Charles Boehm from the league website has a commentary piece up responding to the coaching half of Goff's reporting, and he appears to be on Team Benny, in large part because of the connection to the club's glory days that Olsen represents. I'll withhold my thoughts for a separate piece and give you the key section:

Olsen is United. After investing his entire adult life in the club, the only one he's ever known (aside from a promising loan stint at England's Nottingham Forest in 2001 cut short by a serious ankle injury), the fourth-year coach and the Black-and-Red have become synonymous with one another.

This has become particularly important during a time of persistent transition at an institution where history and stability is revered perhaps more than anywhere else in American soccer.

"Tradition" is more than just a slogan at United. It's a mindset and a mantra, one that for several seasons has even been stitched into the team's jerseys. Olsen achieved almost everything while wearing that uniform, and plenty has been invested - financially and emotionally, and certainly spiritually - in his mission to do the same while prowling the technical area.

As Olsen knows, D.C. have a crowded trophy case at RFK. But with waves of turnover to the roster, front office and even the ownership group, he's one of the last living links to the salad days, and it makes him more - much more, in fact - than just the guy who runs practice and picks the lineups.

BREAKING: Stadium Opponents Oppose Stadium

Back to the Post and its business reporter, Jonothan O'Connell, who is following the efforts of the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute to keep public money away from the Buzzard Point stadium and to derail the deal agreed to by Mayor Vince Gray, City Administrator Allen Lew and D.C. United. That opposition effort, led by DCFPI executive chair Ed Lazere, has moved to the coalition-building phase, as they have launched a campaign they're calling "Winning Goal Coalition: DC Residents for a Fair Soccer Stadium Deal." Lazere claims potential support from a neighborhood group in Southwest, a labor union and an environmental group, among others. Lazere claims his group hasn't heard much support for the stadium effort and is apparently organizing a pair of forums on the subject, one at the Wilson Building (aka city hall) on Oct. 18 and another in Southwest (the area where Buzzard Point sits) the evening of Oct. 23.

[UPDATE] O'Connell just sent out the following tweet, indicating that the potential labor support for DCFPI's endeavor could be pretty weak, due to the project labor agreement the city and club have signed:

Preseason 2014

Let's end this on a happy note, via Steve Goff, who tweets that the Coffee Pot Cup will again be on the line early next spring:

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