Recognition, Recovery, and other Wednesday news

- Dwayne De Rosario is the best kind of All-star, the inactive kind. He’ll be recognized as one of the league’s top performers, get a nice little bonus, but won’t have to miss any D.C. practices to go play an exhibition game. Which is certainly a good thing as he has only been with his current teammates for about a month now. Plus, that meeting with Hans Backe would have been a wee bit awkward.

It’s De Rosario’s sixth All-star selection, just another accolade in a MLS career full of them. De Rosario on the selection : “Getting called to the All-Star team is always an honor and I appreciate it. It has been a long year for me in terms of games, with the Gold Cup. It would be nice to play against [Manchester United], but we have another big game coming up against San Jose.” (DCUnited.com)

Glad to see he is focused on the next game. Hopefully the defense is too, I’m not sure I could sit through another Steven Lenhart goal.

More news after the jump.

- It was nice to finally get some good news on the concussion front. The current four D.C. players struggling with the aftereffects of concussions were back practicing yesterday. Devon McTavish, Brandon Barklage, Santino Quaranta, and Blake Brettschneider were all on the practice field, with Brettschneider and Barklage training without any restrictions. The news about Brettschneider is doubly exciting due to the current injury crisis up front.

I hope to see all four players on the field soon.

- D.C. United’s seniors haven’t been the only busy team over the past couple days. D.C.’s U-23 team continues to impress, beating NSPL team Chattanooga FC 2-1 in Tennessee.

In front of a crowd nearing 2,000, Head coach Jaime Moreno saw his team take a 2-0 lead before Chattanooga scored a late consolation goal. Junior Sanchez and Michael Funes were the D.C. United scorers.

(Source: ChattanoogaFC.com)

More on the U-23s’ game at DCUnited.com

– On the youth front, the Generation Adidas Cup is underway in Frisco, Texas.

The Generation Adidas Cup is actually two competitions taking place over the course of a week involving youth teams from MLS. There is U-17 competition featuring 16 MLS teams, and a U-15 program that currently features 8. D.C. is participating in both.

It was in the U-17 tournament, which United are the defending champions, that D.C. earned a memorable comeback victory over the Columbus Crew. After 10 minutes, United were down 2-0, but rallied with five goals in the second half to win 5-3. Goals came from Patrick Foss(2), Palamin Fotana, Nigel Robinson, and Collin Martin.

Worth noting that Andy Najar has two brothers currently with United in Frisco. According to Travis Clark (@travismclark), Christian and Dennis Najar are both involved with D.C.’s U-17 squad.

- At the national youth level, two D.C. United academy players are currently in Northern Ireland competing in the U-19 Milk Cup. Marcus Salandy-Defour and Jalen Robinson join Omar Salgado, Luis Gil and the rest of the U-19 national team as they try to defend last year’s tournament win. United homegrown player Conor Shanosky, who recently played a half for the Black & Red against Everton, participated in the tournament last year.

In the first of two group games, the U.S. came out 2-0 winners over Israel. Salandy-Defour came on at the half, and was on the field when both U.S. goals were scored. Omar Salgado and Jerome Kiesewetter were the scorers. Up next for U.S. is Mexico.

Category: Current Roster, DC United Team News