A hat trick from an unlikely source toppled the hottest team in Major League Soccer yesterday at RFK Stadium.
D.C. United veteran midfielder Ben Olsen, known more for his rugged midfield play and work ethic, scored three goals as United downed the New York Red Bulls 4-2 before a crowd of 18,066.
“It’s been a while since I scored that many goals,” Olsen said. “I’ll have to go back to when I was 13 years old.”
In fact, it was Olsen’s first career hat trick and helped extend United’s unbeaten streak to six games. Amazingly, two of Olsen’s goals came when United was a man down after defender Bobby Boswell was red-carded in the 60th minute.
The match clearly was United’s best of the year.
“Since the start of the season I’ve always asked the guys to give us 90 minutes, and this is the first time we got closer to pushing that bar,” United coach Tom Soehn said.
The only other time Olsen had scored more than one goal in a game was in October 2005, when he scored twice in a 4-1, also against New York.
“What do you say about Benny? He’s a warrior,” Soehn said. “We worked all week in getting the flanks involved, and he scored from flank positions, but what a performance.”
To make it even more meaningful, the 30-year-old Olsen put on the game of his life in front of Bruce Arena — his former coach at the college, club and national team level.
“He moved well in the game. He looked pretty sharp,” Arena said.
United (4-3-2, 14 points) entered the game as underdogs against Juan Pablo Angel and the Red Bulls (6-3-2, 20 points). Despite scoring in the 85th minute, the Colombian star mostly was kept in check by United defender Facundo Erpen.
United took the lead in 15th minute when Olsen beat Red Bulls defender Seth Stammler into the 6-yard box and knocked in Josh Gros’ cross with a header. Three minutes later though, former United midfielder Dema Kovalenko weaved his way to the 18-yard line and saw his shot deflect off defender Bryan Namoff to tie the game 1-1.
United looked lively after the break and took the lead again when forward Luciano Emilio collected a perfect pass from Fred and ended his six-game goal drought with a low hard shot in the 49th minute.
Eleven minutes later, Boswell — who already had been cautioned in the 12th minute — picked up his second yellow card and was ejected.
Olsen immediately shifted to the back line, and the move paid dividends. In the 72nd minute, Christian Gomez broke through the Red Bulls midfield and sprayed a pass to Brian Carroll, who passed to Olsen storming up the right flank. Olsen again left Stammler in the dust, scoring his second goal to put United up 3-2.
Olsen, though, saved his best for last with six minutes left. Receiving a pass from Jaime Moreno, he hit the ball on the bounce from just outside the 18-yard box high into the net past veteran goalie Ronald Waterreus.
Coincidentally, Olsen was asked about goal celebrations before the game.
“I was doing a Comcast piece before the game, and I said, ’I don’t know why you are picking me. I never score goals anyway,’ ” he said.
Note — The field at RFK was in bad shape. There were obvious gaps between seams of the sections of turf laid to cover the Nationals baseball diamond. Just before the game, the grounds crew attempted to fill in the seams with dirt.
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