If a player is going to have his cheek sliced open and his nose smashed to pieces, it might as well be by a future Hall of Famer.

That's what Chivas USA defender Lawson Vaughn figures, anyway. Pain aside, at least he has a story to tell.

On Saturday evening, in the ninth minute of Chivas USA's game in Texas against the defending MLS champion Houston Dynamo, Vaughn leaped to head away a cross at the same time that Houston midfielder Dwayne De Rosario attempted a bicycle kick.

De Rosario, a Canadian national team veteran and four-time MLS champion, has a kick like a mule, even when he flips over on his back and tries a trick shot as he did Saturday.

His boot caught Vaughn square in the face, opening a cut that required 32 stitches, leaving Vaughn's nose a wreck and earning De Rosario a yellow card for reckless play.

Jay W. Granzow, the doctor who repaired the damage at Little Company of Mary Hospital in Torrance on Sunday, said the only broken nose he had ever seen that was worse was on someone who literally had been kicked in the face by a horse.

Vaughn, who established himself as a starter last season, will be sidelined four to six weeks.

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Chivas USA is going through a bleak spell at the moment, having won only once in six outings in 2008, and things don't figure to get much easier Sunday, when the New England Revolution will be at the Home Depot Center.

Coach Steve Nicol is not someone who allows one bad performance to be followed by another. The fight will be back in the Revolution after last weekend's 3-0 home loss to the Chicago Fire.

Nicol was blunt in his assessment of that game.

"I thought we were consistent -- consistently bad," he said. "We were second in every department -- passing the ball, reading the game, challenging for the ball, finishing. You name it, we were second. Above the neck, we were dead. Now we have to figure out why."

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Chicago, meanwhile, will be playing again Thursday night (4:30 PDT, ESPN2, ESPN Deportes), against a wildly inconsistent D.C. United team. Not even the most astute MLS observer wants to predict the outcome.

The Fire has one of the best defenses in the league in 2008, having not yet given up more than one goal in a game while compiling a 4-1-1 record. But D.C. United has scored two four-goal victories at its RFK Stadium home, routing both Real Salt Lake and Toronto by 4-1 margins, while going 2-4-0.

Coach Tom Soehn has yet to sort out what ails the four-time league champion, but D.C. United's feeble defense and the absence of spark because of the possibly career-ending ankle problems of U.S. national team midfielder Ben Olsen are two clues.

"Right now, it's just about our form in general . . . our inability to get organized," Soehn told the Washington Post.

Those are words that should make the Fire's Cuauhtemoc Blanco sit up and take notice. Blanco relishes in cutting apart disorganized teams.

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Also coming to Carson this weekend are the New York Red Bulls, who will play the Galaxy on Saturday night.

Coach Carlos Osorio's team is just above D.C. United in the Eastern Conference cellar with a 2-1-2 record. Forwards Jozy Altidore and Juan Pablo Angel will pose a threat for what the Galaxy generously calls its defense, but it was New York's back line that was being reshaped this week.

Osorio signed free-agent defender Andrew Boyens, who had been waived by Toronto in mid-April. The former University of New Mexico player was a first-round draft pick in 2007 and has played for New Zealand's national team.

At 6 feet 4, he could be New York's answer to those high crosses that David Beckham likes to curl into the penalty area.

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At 0-2-4, Houston has the worst record in the league, and the defending champion is feeling the strain.

"There's frustration all around the locker room," Coach Dominic Kinnear said.

It's the scoring punch that Houston has lost. The team has managed only five goals in six games. Only the expansion San Jose Earthquakes, with two goals in five games, have scored fewer.

"We're on the unlucky side of things right now, playing well, beating teams but just not on the scoreboard," winger Brian Mullan told the Houston Chronicle. "We can't go on playing like this the rest of the season."

For comments or questions on soccer, e-mail grahame.jones@latimes.com