If it's any consolation, you're not the only one frustrated by the Sounders 3-3 draw, with victory slipping away on an own-goal by Tyrone Marshall in the closing minutes.

Coach Sigi Schmid made his frustrations known -- politely. Kasey Keller did too -- but didn't bother with the diplomacy.

"Our lack of discipline is killing us, and from multiple things," Keller said. "You don’t pick and choose when you mark a guy, you don’t pick and choose when you run with your runner, you don’t pick and choose when you decide to make a run and put pressure on the ball. You do all the hard work, 3-1 at home, you close up shop. And instead we just don’t have the discipline to do it, we don’t have the discipline to say, ‘Ok, I’m not going to go forward this time, I’m not going to try to flick a ball over somebody’s head and do something special, I’m going to do my job and make sure this stays 3-1 at the very least.’ Until that comes into our game, we’re going to throw games away.

"The game’s pretty simple, and unfortunately we want to make it extremely complicated. If I was neutral, I’d have thought, yeah, that’s a great game. But unfortunately there’s 28,000 non-neutrals in the stands today and we played like, ‘Hey, you attack, we’ll attack.’ No, it doesn’t work that way. You’re winning, so win the game. Mistakes are going to happen, that’s all part of the game, but it’s the little things that you have to just keep doing every time, every time. You don’t get to take a vacation halfway through a play, ‘No, I’m a little tired, I’m not going to run this time.’ Every time you do your job and unfortunately we’re switching off at times and it’s killing us right now. We’re paying the price for it."

Since journalists are keen observers of human nature, one of us suggested that Keller sounded frustated.

"Extremely frustrated," he said. "We score three goals at home, we could have scored 10, and we throw a game away in the 87th minute when we should have quite comfortably won this 4-1, because they should have been pushing and we should have been disciplined enough to hit them on a counter and get the fourth one instead of throwing two goals away. Simple as that, there’s no excuse. We rightfully got booed off the field at the end of the game. It’s inexcusable."

He was asked if it was the toughest result of the season.

"No, we’ve had a couple of others, but still, this is up there, because like I said, you’re 3-1 up at home, you’re creating lots of chances," Keller said. "I wouldn’t have cared if we would have not created one more chance the rest of the game, that’s the mentality. Fine if they give us something, great, if they don’t, we close up shop and it’s over. We clear the ball when it has to be cleared, we tackle when we have to tackle, I run with my guy, I bite, I scratch to get a result. No, I’m not going to run with him because if it breaks down, then I’m going to have a better chance to go forward and maybe score the fourth goal. It doesn’t work that way. You’re going to get found out, and we’ve been found out tonight.

Then Keller got to his bottom line: "Hopefully people will learn from it, and if they don’t then hopefully they’ll be gone and we’ll find somebody else who will do a disciplined job."

Schmid was little happier.

"Hats off to them, they played with a lot of energy and they kept pushing the issue," he said. "But once Montero scored to make it 3-1 I think we had three good chances … to make it 4-1. If you make it 4-1 we all close up shop and we go home happy. But we didn’t do that.

"It doesn’t feel good. This was a game that we should have won tonight, and we should have won it going away. We should have never given up the goal in the first half because they really had nothing in the first half. And then we battled back – Alonso scored an unbelievable goal – but again we had enough chances to do it. It’s very deflating when a team comes back and ties you like that."

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As the minutes click down to tonight's D.C. United-Sounders FC match at Qwest Field, the Sounders remind that kickoff is 7:30. Apparently the game had originally been scheduled for 8 p.m., but forget that: It's 7:30, 7:30, 7:30.

The game is sold out, but will be shown live on ESPN2.

Meanwhile, here's a game preview from the Washington Times. (The Washington Post also had a preview, but you must register to read it.)

And here's my game preview from this morning's paper.

My story is primarily a look at D.C. United -- which won the first MLS title and stands as the closest thing the league has to the Yankess or Lakers) -- with the primary source of president Kevin Payne. Payne said far more interesting things than I could fit into that single story. So I will dole out more of his thoughts in future stories. But meanwhile, here is a bit more of what he had to say:

On the club philosophy and style:
Right from the beginning we tried to establish a United way of doing things, both on and off the field. The hallmark of that was really authenticity. We never apologized for what we were, which was a Division I professional soccer team – in fact, we celebrated it. We emphasized that in everything we did. So we’ve always been true to the game. We also decided very early on that part of the identity of our team would be the manner in which we played, in that we would always play a skillful aggressive game, an attacking game, we try to play in the other team’s side of the field, we want to press the other team when they have the ball, we want to put numbers into the attack when we have the ball. We’ve been pretty true to that, whether it’s a championship year or even the year’s where when we’ve struggled on the field we’ve still tried to play the same way. And I think that’s paid off for us. We try to play that way on the road or at home, we try to play that way whether we’re playing an international opponent or a team from the league.

On similarities with the Sounders:
In terms of the way the Sounders have introduced their brand to the marketplace, I see similarities. It will take time to see exactly how that will develop. But we’ve been very true to our brand and the integrity of who we are. We don’t take any shortcuts. We always think about this business in the very very long term. I exhort our employees on a regular basis to think about what this organization is going to look like once they’re no longer here – maybe even after they’re dead, literally. We’re trying to think about what it’s like 20 years from now, 25-30 years from now. But certainly the Sounders are off to a great start. I know a lot of the people there and have a great deal of respect for them and admiration for the things they’ve done in the past and what they’re doing now. The Sounders have been just a wonderful addition to our league.

On the club's standing in the D.C. area:
I think that we are absolutely accepted as equal partners. In this market, the Redskins are a little bit in a place of their own – or at least they have been. So the other clubs – the Capitals, the Wizards, the Mystics, now the Freedom and the Nationals and us – are all trying to get to the kind of level that the Redskins are at, which is difficult. But we are very very well accepted. Our television ratings are very strong. Our attendance is down a little bit this year relative to last year – I think it’s mostly economy-related. But really over the last 10 years or so we have averaged a higher attendance than either the Capitals or Wizards and have compared pretty favorably even with the baseball team. We’re very much a part of the sports landscape here and have been since early in our existence.

On efforts to leave RFK Stadium for a soccer-specific stadium:
As far as the stadium is concerned, we’re having very fruitful talks behind the scenes with three different jurisdictions. I think there is a real commitment to try to get something done, and I am every confident that we will end up with the right stadium solution long-term for DC United. ... We’ll be fine whether we end up in DC, Virginia or Maryland. We just need to have the right setting for the stadium and the ability to create the right kind of stadium for the long term.

So, it turns out that Northwest soccer fans won't have to wait until Portland's 2011 entry into MLS for a renewal of the historic Sounders-Timbers rivalry.

The current MLS and USL sides will meet in the third round of the U.S. Open Cup at 7 p.m. July 1 at PGE Park in Portland.

For any of you planning to attend, here's ticket information from the Timbers. (And therefore, keep in mind that when this news release refers to "ticket package holders" it means Timbers ticket package holders):

With a 3-0 win over the Sonoma County Sol Tuesday, the Portland Timbers advance to the third round of the 2009 U.S. Open Cup and will play host to Major League Soccer’s Seattle Sounders FC on Wednesday, July 1 at PGE Park at 7 p.m.

Tickets for the Timbers’ third-round match against Sounders FC start at $12 and will go on sale to the public Thursday at 10 a.m. through the PGE Park box office, area Ticketmaster outlets, online at www.ticketmaster.com or by phone at (800) 745-3000. An exclusive pre-sale for ticket-package holders begins Wednesday.

The third-round matchup between the Timbers and Sounders FC will be the first official meeting between the Northwest rivals since Seattle joined MLS in 2009. The deep and spirited Portland-Seattle rivalry dates back to 1975 as members of the North American Soccer League. As opponents in the USL First Division, the Timbers were 11-16-5 against Seattle and squared off multiple times in postseason and U.S. Open Cup battles.

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After visiting Seattle Sounders FC on Aug. 5, FC Barcelona will go down to San Francisco to meet Chivas of Guadalajara at Candlestick Park.

Here's the information:

FC Barcelona will take on Mexican powerhouse Club Deportivo Guadalajara S.A. de C.V. (more popularly known as Chivas) as part of a doubleheader spectacular on Saturday, Aug. 8 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, Calif. (8 p.m., local time). In the first game, Major League Soccer’s San Jose Earthquakes take on the Columbus Crew in regular season action (5:30 p.m. local time) followed by UEFA Champions League winners FC Barcelona squaring off against Guadalajara. The match will mark Barça’s first visit to the Bay Area. The two teams have played twice before in the United States with Barça posting a win and a tie.

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