The stretch between the AC Milan match and the World Cup break has turned out better than planned.  Five games, four wins and a tie.  The wins were the AC Milan friendly, Chivas USA at home, Real Salt Lake Open Cup play in, and Seattle in the rainy place in corner of the map.

The only ‘blemish’ was the 0-0 tie to Real Salt Lake in MLS play last weekend. But even that game had a silver lining, as Dejan Jakovic returned to action and United earned it’s first shutout of the season.  Making the task even more difficult, two of the four starting defenders in the game left due to injury (Wallace – broken leg, Pena – strained groin).

As a result the thought process has changed from hoping to just get to the break with a little bit of positive progress to build upon during the break and attack the season anew when play restarts.  Now, United can actually start looking at progress and even up the standings as things start to fall into place.

Even more encouraging is that United won on the road, something that has been very though the last few months.

But now it’s time for the World Cup break, a first for MLS, where there will be no league games through the first round.   United will return to action in the charity game against El Salvador on the 19th and league play on the road against Columbus the following week.  In fact they don’t have a home MLS game until they take on Seattle again on July 15.

This space will flip between United and World Cup content over the next month, and over the next week I’ll have some posts detailing some World Cup content from Geneva, Switzerland, because, well…that’s where I am for work.  Geneva, is one of the cities that has set up a tournament long watching area/festival, and people from MANY different nationalities are here.  It’s not as cool as Barrett or other people’s World Cup experiences at, you know, the World Cup itself, but it’ll be a different experience.