Just two days after the Man In Black died, the Men In Black looked like a soccer team again. As if in tribute to the deceased baritone country and western genius that was Johnny Cash, DC United - the hated, raven-shirted bogeymen of MLS who effortlessly turned themselves from the best to worst team in the league in three short but painful years — confirmed with Saturday’s 2-1 victory over San Jose that they are once more a club of conviction.

Cash was at the height of both success and popularity when he started a seven-year frenzy of amphetamines and sleeping pills that almost wrecked his life and his career. His performances were erratic and sub-standard, and there seemed nothing that his management could do to help him. His fans went through agony and despair as they watched him decline, and were left consoling themselves with the memories of past triumphs.

Does this path strike DC United supporters as familiar in any way? Okay, aside from the amphetamines (although a number of squad members since the 1999 season have looked like they were on sleeping pills). But the color black is an uncannily appropriate hue for both Cash and DCU. It’s for a talent that’s risky, a little bit on the edge, and best worn by the artistic diva that could flunk it spectacularly by failing to turn up for the play-offs (or on stage), or by reaching four successive MLS Cup finals (or releasing hit after hit). With black there are no shady grey half-measures.

It’s also the kind of a color that made it seem all the more devilishly delicious to send two teams of white-shirted Californians back to the west coast pointless in successive weeks. Hey Landon, don’t come to the satanic cauldron of RFK with your pretty boy surfing skills and expect the likes of Petke and Nelsen to stand back and applaud.

If The Men In Black appear in some measure to have rediscovered their artistry, they are also a tough, grizzled team (the Cash of the 70s and 80s). They haven’t made many friends (the Cash of the 60s), but that’s a good thing. It’s still more of a mean team than a dream team, but you love it that little bit extra because you know how everyone hates them. Yet just when you think it’s a hell-raising, leg-breaking, out-of-control beast singing songs of drunkenness, adultery and hard-fought road points in Colorado, it turns around and soothes you with a tender ballad. Or, it plays beautiful football, like some of the passing sequences that steam-rollered San Jose for the first half hour of Saturday’s game, move after move.

Now this wasn’t the best performance by any team, any time. Only, in comparison to the sporadic nuggets of titillation we’ve been handed since 1999, Saturday night was a full-on orgy. It was a deserved 2-1 win, not a fortuitous one. The three moves up to and including the first goal between the seventh and ninth minutes were exhilarating, and a reminder of the days when the home side swept towards the ‘La Norte’ end from the first whistle and you knew, just knew, that goals were going to come. Meanwhile, the immediate, almost angry strikeback after the equaliser sang of a newfound, heads-high self-belief.

The repeatedly effective combination play between midfield and attack (and Prideaux when he made runs down the left flank) suggests that this team is on the way to finding its groove. This game didn’t make you think, ‘We’re going to win MLS’. But it did make you think, for the first time in a long time, ‘We might have a chance of winning MLS!’ And unlike those fumbling, innocent spring nights when the team seemed too shy to shoot, the team now has the swagger of the boy about town who knows his moves, and doesn’t expect Saturday night to pass without a congratulatory tumble on the turf (so to speak).

Just as Cash made an astonishing comeback in the 1990s with a series of superb albums on American Recordings, our ebony-clad lads have shown that they too can redeem the sullied eagle crest and bring this club back from the dead-end position it has spent too long making its own. It’s taken a while to ink them in, but the Men In Black are Back.

Note: as this column’s own dedication to the Man In Black (and just to really stretch the point), a quick survey of the DC United locker room revealed some individual team members’ personal Johnny Cash favourites.

Galin Ivanov: ‘Long Legged Guitar Pickin’ Man’. He may seem a bit slow, but just when an opposition attacker seems to be bearing down on goal, out stretches that lanky Bulgar limb to lunge into a last-minute tackle. I bet he plays a mean dulcimer too.

Marco Etcheverry: ‘Ring Of Fire’. Or rather, rings of fire. It’s the eyes!

Dema Kovalenko: ‘The Beast In Me’. Lovely lad, lovely player. Watch your legs, though.

Brandon Prideaux: ‘Like A Soldier’. No questions asked — head down, carries out orders, never lets his comrades down.

Hristo Stoichkov: ‘Mean Eyed Cat’. Genius and all that, but you perhaps wouldn’t want to get on his wrong side, would you?

Bobby Convey: ‘I’m Leavin’ Now’. Wait wait, not so fast, son (segues into ‘Tear Stained Letter’).

Earnie Stewart: ‘I Won’t Back Down’. Quite right, Earnie. But the referee’s still not going to change his mind, is he?

Ray Hudson: ‘I Walk The Line’. Talks it too. And did you note that he did it on Saturday night all in black?

Ryan Nelsen: ‘Wanted Man’. By European scouts, surely sometime soon.

Nick Rimando: ‘Five Feet High and Rising’

The Fans: ‘Sea Of Heartbreak’; ‘Cry Cry Cry’; ‘Memories Are Made Of This’ etc.