The biggest shift around D.C. United is not glamour. It is reliability.
McCarty called Weiler’s work “really impressive,” and the praise fits the eye test. D.C. appear more organised, more practical and far less easy to play through than they were during the club’s more chaotic recent spells. If the first task was to stop the softness that had undermined them, Weiler seems to have made that his starting point.
That matters in MLS. Before a side can dream about style points, it has to become competitive every week. D.C. look closer to that version now.
There is still an interesting wrinkle, though. D.C. have not been a side built around long spells on the ball, and McCarty does not see that as a flaw by itself. But he believes this matchup asks a different question.
“They want to dominate the ball, they want to be on the ball a little bit more,” McCarty said of Montréal. “You're going to have to control the game with possession a little more than they have.”
That is why this fixture works as a benchmark. It is not just about effort or defending deep. It is about whether D.C. can impose themselves when the game demands more composure.
This is not a free hit against a drifting opponent. Montréal have shown signs of improvement and arrive with enough form to punish any drop in focus. Their recent uptick makes them useful opposition for a team trying to measure genuine progress rather than collect easy praise.
If D.C. United handle that challenge well on Saturday, the mood going into the long break will feel justified. And when MLS resumes, the next storyline will be obvious: whether Weiler’s steadier, tougher team can turn early progress into a real push up the Eastern Conference.