United start hot but hit wall against Marathon

WASHINGTON -- D.C. United finally concluded their CONCACAF Champions League campaign with a 4-2 loss to CD Marathon at RFK Stadium on Wednesday night, a frustrating defeat that in many ways represented a microcosm of their entire ill-fated season.

United already had no chance of advancing to CCL's knockout rounds and their season had effectively coasted to an unhappy end over the weekend with a 1-0 league loss to Columbus that snuffed out their playoff hopes. But the Black-and-Red nonetheless hoped that a positive result against their Honduran guests would bring joy to their fans and offer some consolation on the eve of a long, soul-searching offseason.

Francis Doe's 10th-minute opener boded well for those intentions and the visitors, chasing a place in the next round, were often second-best to United in the first half. Yet just like so many of their previous CONCACAF matches this year, D.C. were once again stung by the referee's notebook as Santino Quaranta earned a startling ejection in the half's dying moments.

So often United's heart and soul during this trying season, Quaranta had begun the sequence that led to Doe's goal and was putting in a solid performance along the right flank. But when he saw Marathon defender Oscar Bonilla deliver what looked like an unpunished elbow to Doe's head just moments before he himself was whistled for a soft foul on Mario Berrios, the Baltimore native briefly lost his composure and was harshly punished by Mexican referee Benito Archundia.

"I just said it was a joke," Quaranta said afterwards. "I lost my head, I guess. But still, I didn't get a yellow card for the tackle. He gave me two yellow cards in a row and he didn't understand English, either, so I don't know. I was surprised. I was angry about the call -- I didn't touch the guy and he fell."

He also admitted to being influenced by several weeks' worth of accumulated frustration.

"Listen, it was an intense game as it was. What just happened this weekend, everybody was a little on edge," he said. "I guess it's the buildup to this whole year, man -- you go into a game like that and then the referee is calling fouls like he was. You get to a point where you just can't take it anymore, and I lost my head a little bit. The biggest thing for me is not the red card, it's letting the guys down, watching them have to play with 10 and run around because of my stupidity, you know?"

Quaranta's team surrendered the go-ahead goal less than a half-minute into the second stanza and Marathon's task was straightforward from there, as "The Green Monster" made good use of their numerical advantage to secure the three points that enable them to advance from CCL Group A.

"What we have to understand as a team is that when you have international refs, they treat things differently. I'm not sure how far Santino pushed it there," said D.C. head coach Tom Soehn. "He's got to control himself. It was a good game up until that point; we were knocking [the ball] around pretty well. Any time you go shorthanded, obviously it makes it a heck of a lot harder."

Marathon had already found plenty of holes in the United back line with both sides on level terms, and their lively strike force, prompted by Honduran international Milton Nunez, only prospered more in the final 45 minutes as the hosts tried valiantly to chase the game.

"We held a flat line and we didn't cover each other well enough, at least in the first half," said Soehn. "In the second half we went with three backs and we were just pushing to get goals back so we opened ourselves up a little bit for the [counterattack]. We just have to build an understanding of what it takes and make sure our line's even higher, or cover each other defensively so that if we do break down, everyone's got cover behind them."

The night still had one final sour note left, as Doe was ejected for his second yellow card in injury time. Their disciplinary record in league play hardly suggests that D.C. are a band of hard men, but after Wednesday night United have racked up six red cards in CCL play.

"Another CONCACAF night," said defender Devon McTavish, who saw red in his team's CCL opener against Deportivo Saprissa last month. "The way the season has gone, the way CONCACAF has gone, getting a red card in the first half again set the mood for the rest of the game, and they took advantage of it."