On MLS Decision Day, D.C. United faces a familiar reality: Another season of failure

WASHINGTON — All around Major League Soccer , from Montreal to Miami and Seattle to San Diego, Saturday was Decision Day — the last act in an 8½-month production. While three playoff berths were in the balance, teams with guaranteed spots sought to improve their place. It’s a day marked by desperation, scoreboard-watching and playoff-planning. At Audi Field, however, Decision Day felt more like Derision Day. For the seventh consecutive year, D.C. United, once a showpiece of a blossoming league, has no playoff plans — a near impossibility in a league that distributes postseason passes like a guy on a New York street corner handing out flyers for discount mattresses. Only Toronto FC’s eight-year rut, starting with its 2007 expansion campaign, lasted longer. United wasn’t even in the mix on Decision Day, its fate having been decided 10 days earlier. The lowly finale was against another failed side, New York City FC, which claimed a 1-0 victory on a late goal. While 2026 was an anomaly for the New Yorkers, it was the norm in the nation’s capital. D.C. added another sad chapter to a rotten story under an ownership group, led by Jason Levien and Steve Kaplan, that has dragged the organization into irrelevance in not just the prospering league but in the local market and the ascending sport. The public-address announcer introduces the team as “your four-time MLS Cup champions,” but he’s been saying that for a long time. Given the league’s evolution, it feels even longer. United’s last title, in 2004, came in a 10-team operation — one-third the current landscape. Since then, 13 different clubs have hoisted the trophy. Less than two miles north of Audi Field, the U.S. Capitol witnessed a historic sea change Tuesday with a political wave that swept the ruling party out of office. Local soccer fans have had no such luck with those in power at Audi Field. Under the current regime … United hasn’t won a playoff game in 11 years and hasn’t advanced to the conference finals in 14. Twelve years have passed since it won at least half its 34 matches. United’s only trophy in recent memory was the 2013 U.S. Open Cup, which came amid a horrific, three-win regular season. D.C. is on its fourth head coach since Ben Olsen’s departure in late 2020 and its second head of soccer operations in four years. The current director, Erkut Sogut — an agent best known for representing former German star Mesut Özil — was hired last fall without any experience working for a team. Another goal conceded, another season to forget. Keisuke Kurokawa's frustration summed up D.C. United's latest disappointing chapter. Scott Taetsch via Getty Images United remains one of three MLS organizations without a developmental team bridging the youth academy to the first team. Efforts to build a complex in Baltimore for an MLS Next Pro operation have floundered. (Meanwhile, United’s owners have launched a pro volleyball team.) Player development has suffered: United has no representation on the current U.S. under-23, under-20 or under-17 national teams. Its training complex, in the distant Virginia suburbs, is among the smallest in MLS, and much of the spartan structure is rented to the Washington Spirit, a National Women’s Soccer League team. And in an act of brazen hubris, United is seeking $300 million in public funds to expand capacity and build a roof over the stadium, which opened, in part with public money, just eight years ago. The aim is to attract more events to the venue and has seemingly little to do with MLS ambitions. The term “Decision Day” (or, in D.C.’s case, “Days”) does apply to the organization: It has decisions to make about an uninspiring roster and journeyman coach Rene Weiler, a high-priced hire who has an 8-18-16 record since arriving in July 2025. In Weiler’s defense, injuries ravaged his roster this year. His only two Designated Players, forwards Tai Baribo and Louis Munteanu, missed nine and 13 matches, respectively. (They combined for 22 of the team’s 39 goals.) On Saturday, aside from that duo, goalkeeper Sean Johnson, center back Lucas Bartlett and several others were absent. United had six players on the bench, three short of the maximum. “It’s not that I don't believe in the quality of my squad, but it has to be deeper — more players on a very good level because it's tough to compete weekly with the other opponents, and that is something that we have to try to make better for the future,” Weiler said. Fans have decisions to make, as well, such as deciding whether to continue supporting a club that has fallen into disrepair under an ownership group that doesn’t spend enough on many facets of the business and misspends on others. It had a good thing going in 2018, when Audi Field replaced crumbling RFK Stadium and Wayne Rooney graced the pitch in the first of his two seasons. That now seems like decades ago. Since 2020, United’s place in the Supporters’ Shield race, a fancy name for the overall standings, has been: 24th, 16th, 28th, 23rd, 21st, 30th and 28th. In position to break its playoff drought this fall, United ended the season with six consecutive losses and a 1-8-1 free fall. The club had only a few true sellouts in 16 matches at Audi Field, which, with about 19,200 seats, is one of MLS’ smallest. (D.C. also claimed more than 72,000 for its home date against Inter Miami in Baltimore last spring, though most attendees were there to admire Lionel Messi.) The NWSL-contending Spirit announced six sellouts in its 15 regular-season games at Audi Field. On Saturday, United announced a sellout, though thousands of seats were unoccupied on the brisk autumn day. Levien and his partners bought United in the summer of 2012; the team finished the regular season third in the Supporters’ Shield race before being eliminated in the Eastern Conference finals by the Houston Dynamo. It was, indeed, a promising start to the group’s reign. The following year United was the worst in MLS — the first of three bottom-dwelling performances over 13 seasons. Hope was renewed when Audi Field opened, providing a revenue source that didn’t exist at ancient RFK. The Rooney signing and the assembly of an exciting roster brought buzz and success. But even Rooney failed to lift United beyond the first round of the playoffs, and after less than two years, he returned home. He resurfaced as head coach in Washington in 2022, but it felt more like United’s owners wanting to make a splash than hiring a top coach. His tenure ended in 15 months. This season showed relative promise — getting one of the conference’s nine playoff berths seemed attainable — before turning sour. Saturday’s match was a microcosm of the season: a thin roster, a decent effort, not enough quality in the attack and ultimately a 1-0 loss to complete a 7-15-12 season. NYC’s 87th-minute counterattack resulted in a three-on-two break from the midfield circle and Talles Magno’s goal. Fans began heading for the exits, too chilly or perhaps too bruised by the rash of bad seasons to express their discontent with an organization that has left them in the cold for years now. Behind the north goal, where the supporters’ groups gather, a banner lay across several seats: “We Deserve Better.” Indeed.