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| Presently going for foreign language Emmy for this site. |
I’m about to stomp on an enormous vat of sour grapes, but
you, you are my guest. It would be rude to talk about anything other than what
we came to talk about. Come. Come inside. Sit.
So, the Seattle Sounders did it, they beat the Colorado
Rapids over two games and in two venues, 1-0 in Colorado today and 2-1 in Seattle last…whenever that happened. The score-line speaks the truth: the
Sounders were the better team, even if just at this point in the season (wait
for it). A list of reasons unfolds below, and it’s the same list that gets at
why Seattle feels like a decent horse to back for lift MLS Cup on…December 10?
(Jesus fucking christ, Major League Soccer, is this the playoffs or tantric
sex? Can we…you know? I mean, is there some kind of award for dragging this
shit out, an Emmy for delayed gratification?)
I’m going to start with Seattle, because flow (oh, I have
plans, plans for all of you!). However you feel about it, Seattle is a
well-constructed team. Finally. In defense, Roman Torres and Chad Marshall make
for a solid, sufficiently dynamic, yet big central defensive pairing, and they
have rock-solid starting fullbacks on both sides in Tyrone Mears (who is,
quietly, one of MLS’s better right backs) and Joevin Jones (a fucking fast
defender, and a smart one). Cristian Roldan and Osvaldo Alonso have set up a
pretty sound shop in front of that back four, a shop that, as I saw it, first
contained, then pushed back against Colorado’s central pairing, one hobbled
today by the absence of its brain and body – e.g., Sam Cronin (could he have
mattered today? Mm….look where Nelson Valdez was when he released the ball to
Morris…link below).
The above list of players provides as a good foundation as
any team could want in that it absorbs all the failures that the people in
front of it make on their grasping way to goal; better still, it can also absorb and
channel 50 minutes of pressure from another team into other, more useless
gulleys, as it did in the first half today when Colorado posted 11 shots to
Seattle’s one. Did any of those shots sincerely threaten the Sounders’ goal? Nope.
One or two came close, but there’s a lot of good and bad rolled up into
shooting through (or over) traffic, but most of it bad. Bodies in the way are,
after all, bodies in the way.
Anyway, back to the foundation: when that’s around to keep things
out, your offense has the chance to try, try and try again to get a goal. I’ve
never experienced anything like that – i.e. knowing that, if/when I fuck up,
there’ll be someone there to catch me (well, not totally true; I have good
parents; won’t lie; never happened on the soccer field, tho) – and I think
that’s liberating in the best way. It helps that Jordan Morris, the rookie
sensation, came back to cover on defense plenty today – especially when
Colorado was pressing. With the wings not working for them, Colorado pinched
their attack central, and that worked like a funnel-spider’s web, so…
Morris also scored Seattle’s lone goal, and that shot commanded
(by the grace of God!) that Colorado score two goals to produce the draw,
something the Rapids have managed only…oh, 11 times this season. So, not that
rare (source). More credit to Seattle, I guess. Morris scored off a feed from Nelson
Valdez, a designated player/forward playing the end of 2016 like it was a
contract year (is it?), and Morris weathered one hell of a beating today to
boot (seriously, how’s the…is it the right knee, son?) and he deserved that
goal. His usual partner in crime, Nicolas Lodeiro, didn’t do so much, but
that’s to the point about the safety net; it lets the people above (or in front
of) them to fail time and again on the way to finding a goal. On a day when the
team needs just one goal to put the series beyond anything less than (somewhat)
mathematical reach, that’s one hell of a blessing.
With that, let’s return to the Colorado Rapids. Maybe Cronin
would have mattered, played a smarter, surer ball upfield than Dillon Powers; maybe
Dominique Badji and Marlon Hairston start over Sebastian LeToux and make things go a little faster from the get-go (or maybe not;
LeToux wasn’t bad), but not a TON separated the team Colorado fielded tonight
from what they trotted out for most of the season (right?). And that team
outplayed Seattle all night by any measure I can think of (see? (that's the boxscore, guys!)), Seattle won
only “duels won,” and narrowly), and they out-shot the Sounders by a pretty
damn insane margin (16 to 5). Wait, whoops! Seattle topped Colorado in one
other, critical measure: shots on goal, a competition they won 3-0. And that’s
probably the story.
I never underestimate the art of “getting in people’s way” –
an art that, when done well, becomes defending. Colorado excels at getting in
people’s way. That’s why, when I wrote up both MLS Conference Finals series
in the gap in between games, I spoke of Colorado as Michael Azira in team form. Their
formula isn’t so different from Seattle’s – i.e., buy time till your offense
can produce - but the difference comes with the, um, difference makers. While
Seattle’s supporting cast includes (sorry) mediocrities like Andreas Ivanschitz
or Nelson “Contract Year” Valdez (or even the absent Erik “Freebird” Friberg
(if you’ve never used that chant, Seattle, there are no excuses)), it also boasts (justified) Rookie of the Year Morris and (justified) Newcomer of the
Year Nicolas Lodeiro. Against that, Colorado offers up Shkelzen Gashi, a
one-legged, free-kick specialist, and Kevin “Three Goals” Doyle. Their
supporting cast includes Sebastian LeToux, Dominique Badji (when they start
him), Jermaine Jones (when available), Marlon Hairtson and Dillon Powers, when…look,
it’s just not the same. (And, against that, Portland put Fanendo Adi and Diego Valeri...and it did us no good.)
For all that, the “who’s that?” list of players that
Colorado put out all season finished 10 points and with a +6 advantage in thrown
in. The Rapids were good all year…well, mostly. June 22 to August 3 didn’t look
so hot, but the Rapids started and ended the year pretty goddamn well, and they
handled a tough team (the Los Angeles Galaxy) in their first playoff round.
Seattle, meanwhile, stunk up the league for months this season. Even if they
closed like fucking bosses (9-4-4 in the second half the season), they went
5-10-2 in the first half, i.e., relegation-level soccer. And even with the good
run, they finished at .500…the people we let into the club these days.
Honestly…
Commencing the sour grapes segment...
Look, all this does seem unfair, at least when you look at
it from, say, the outside of your team winning “the title.” When all (the good
parts) of Portland were celebrating the Timbers lifting MLS Cup last year, fans
across MLS were probably moaning about the thorough averageness of Portland
over the course of 2015. Look, I’ve watched a lot of sports in my life and,
while I might have forgotten a few things (scratch that, I’ve forgotten, like,
100), I’ve never seen a league that rewards mediocrity quite like Major League
Soccer. It’s slogan should be, “MLS: The Cat with 23 Lives.”
If Seattle holds on to (most of) this team for next year,
and throw in a couple upgrades, they will be very competitive in 2017. Wait, what? Will be? They should be very competitive in 2017 (because, MLS). All the same, here’s a
question: competitive how?
I just did a little research on how often the Supporters’
Shield winner picks up MLS Cup as well. It’s not as rare as you might think –
e.g., DC United won both in 1997, Sporting Kansas City in 2000, the Los Angeles
Galaxy in 2002 and 2011, and Columbus Crew in 2008 (source, source) – but when something happens
1/4(-ish) of the time, it has some value. It’s also becoming more rare (maybe;
give it time), by which I mean, 1997, 2000 and 2002 makes for a pretty tight
grouping; 2008, 2011, and ____, less so. With that in mind, will all of the MLS
competitions become more like horse racing - think winning the Preakness Stakes
versus winning Belmont, something that bedeviled everyone for decades till
American Pharaoh’s connections sorted it out in 2015 (SEE?! Everything
pre-Trump was a fucking Golden Age!)?
None of this is to take away from Seattle, in the event they
win MLS Cup this year. They figured their shit out at the right time, almost
exactly like Portland did last season (I said almost), and that is the secret
to winning MLS Cup, at least so long as you keep within touch. You could see what it meant to Osvaldo Alonso at the end of
the game and, hell no, I’m not going to begrudge him that; I mean, damn, he looked so fucking happy! Still, there’s a shift in my thinking that’s been going on
for a while and, in keeping with the general “thesis/antithesis/synthesis”
paradigm, I have overstated the idea in the past.
Anyone who cares (I don’t) can scroll down my feed and find
a poll that asked MLS fans (eh, who’m I kidding? It’s all Timbers people) if
they’d rather win MLS Cup or the Supporters’ Shield. As always happens (I
think), MLS Cup won that poll with bells on, and a huge middle finger flipped
back at the Supporters’ Shield. I think I phrased it badly back then, or,
rather, I might have reached a new conclusion at this point by thinking a
little deeper. As I said then, I’d rather win the Shield (on the logic that, in
the grand scheme, that would make for a happier season). I stand by that idea
(see parentheses), too, because it’s true: if your team wins the Shield, you go
home from regular season games happy way more often than not, because MLS. It's also the bigger accomplishment...and...definer of future...success. Shit. Shouldn't have picked that up this deep in. Don't worry...moving on. Most people will always view the team that wins MLS Cup as champion for the
given season. And that’s fine. For all that, I have a separate thought.
How did I feel for most of Portland’s 2015 campaign? In a word,
anxious. Seriously, had you asked most Timbers fans in August whether they
thought their team would make the playoffs, they would have smiled bravely for
five tics, said no, then started crying (seriously, I’m a little worried about
us). Was it a good year? No, not really. I’ve heard great things about
September through November, though, great things…
With that, it should be obvious that I’m not shitting on the
idea of Seattle winning MLS Cup. As noted above, I think they’re as good for it
as any team in MLS. What I am thinking, though, is that, next year, I will
treat all three (real) trophies available to MLS Clubs (local Cups just…really?)
as very different things, all while recognizing that any team that has all
three within their realistic grasp at any time (e.g., FC Dallas 2015) is
chasing greatness. The regular season – e.g., winning the Supporters’ Shield - will
be one thing, while winning the U.S. Open Cup and winning MLS Cup will be nothing more or less than winning a tournament (with regular consistent rules; all good).
And, assuming MLS clubs start winning the CONCACAF Champions
League, I’ll have something else to manage. Pretty sure I have time on that one…
So, yeah, Seattle won tonight. And they deserved too. Donald
Trump is president-elect, and he didn’t deserve that…
…the only thing that connects the two events above is that
they happened in the same year. Is that the Mark of the Beast? Not sure…never
seen it…
Anyway, again, next year: different focus for the regular
season. It’s all about the Shield.
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