ORANGE SOCCER BALL!!!!! “a game like this was the difference between traveling to Ohio in 2015 vs. HOSTING MLS CUP. I'm ready to get weird.”- Ben Stern, @BumpKickSpike
That tweet not only neatly finishes a thought I left
unfinished in my write-up on the Portland Timbers’ 3-1 win over the Philadelphia
Union, it contains the essentials of the point I want to make about Major
League Soccer, Week 5.5 (yeah, yeah, Week 6; no, I haven’t let it go).
Using the power of denial (vested in me, and us all, by the
President of the United States), I argued in that post that the Timbers have
always been good on the road. That wasn’t true in 2016, of course, but it holds
a full bucket of water both in the year referenced above (2015) and in 2014,
when the Timbers went 7-6-4 on the road. They also didn’t make the playoffs
that season, that due mostly to a maddening inability to put up Ws at home (so many ties; and, since I looked, 2013 was sorta freaky, too, seeing as Portland came
within a gasp of winning the Supporters’ Shield with a 3-4-10 road record; call
it a pint in a bucket).
I didn’t note it up top (in order to connect it to this point),
but Portland’s road record in 2015 was 7-8-2. To read the tea leaves he left
behind (and, please, correct the record if I’m boning this, sir), Mr.
BumpKickSpike doesn’t explicitly argue from the Timbers road record – I think
his actual example references not dropping stupid points (jesus…again, sorry
Philly; you’re an unofficial adoptee this season, I swear) – but my reference
to road records hints at the maddening webs of vagaries that define success and
failure in Our Special Little League, MLS.
Week 5.5 (or 6) reinforced that idea enough to crowd out
most thoughts of optimism I had when I sat down to write my review of Timbers’
win over Philly. A funny thing happened with this past weekend’s results in
that a lot of clubs answered the questions put to them by their circumstances
with affirmatives, sometimes decisive ones. To clarify that, see three “preview
tweets” below I posted Friday afternoon:
“#CHIvCLB Columbus coming to visit gives the Fire a helluva chance to revive the rebuild narrative…not seeing it; Crew SC feels too sorted”“#DCvNYC If DC wants to prove a turn-around, esp. in defense, NYC makes for a good contender…unless they don’t bring their road game”“#RSLvVAN A walking wounded defense spells trouble for RSL and opportunity for the ‘Caps; a clean sheet would comfort all of Utah”
This has nothing to do with celebrating my personal prescience (for I am not blessed with it), mostly because those all read like fairly obvious story lines for each
of those match-ups. Also, anyone who knows the result for Real Salt Lake v.
Vancouver Whitecaps knows that Utah got considerably more than “comfort” on
Saturday (like…what is three times of comfort?). Fundamentally, though, teams
that looked good bets for turnarounds (e.g., maybe they looked great in their last
game, but boned the final landing and – relevant - dropped dumb points; again,
god bless you, Mr. Stern, for you completed my thoughts), or teams that looked
likely to build on their momentum (in case the subtext isn’t clear, I’m talking
about Portland (turn-arounds) and the New England Revolution (building
momentum) in this sentence) followed through this weekend. On top of Portland
and the Revs, the Chicago Fire did it, New England did it, DC United did it,
and so did Real Salt Lake. It was that kind of weekend, one where everything more
or less made sense…
Or, as close watchers of Major League Soccer call them,
anomalies. God knows what any club will do in MLS next week – and, behold your
cautionary tale, Columbus. When it comes to MLS, you don’t know the league’s hottest
team is going to lay an egg this particular week, you just know they're gonna lay
that fucking egg one week or another. The point of all the above is this: MLS is lousy, as a
league, at signaling long-term trends – and we all know the stuff that goes
into that (e.g. parity, salary cap, the blackberry-tangle of roster rules, the,
er, economic situation, etc) – but, if you look at enough things hard enough and
squint fucking tight, you might see two, three weeks into the future. So let's try to do that.
OK, and surprise, another weekend, another format. Think I
have a winner here, but I always think that before I shoot the fuckers and turn
them into glue, don’t I? At any rate, I’m going to quickly recap relevant stuff
from the weekend just passed – just the important stuff (as in, you gotta
fucking earn it, Orlando; all y’all, not just Cyle Larin) – and then I’ll round
out the whole thing with 10 actually quick talking points…says the guy who
always fucks up that part. Before moving on to the interesting ones, I’ll just
line up all the results:
Los Angeles Galaxy 2-0 Montreal Impact (AGAIN, LA followed
the narrative!)
Chicago Fire 1-0 Columbus Crew SC
New England Revolution 2-0 Houston Dynamo
DC United 2-1 New York City FC
Philadelphia Union 1-3 Portland Timbers
Toronto FC 2-2 Atlanta United FC
FC Dallas 2-0 Minnesota United FC
Real Salt Lake 3-0 Vancouver Whitecaps
San Jose Earthquakes 1-1 Seattle Sounders
Orlando City SC 1-0 New York Red Bulls
Sporting Kansas City 3-1 Colorado Rapids
Before digging into…everything, I did a longer write-up on
Toronto’s (frankly maddening) draw with Atlanta. My resentment of the high
press sort of strangled that whole post so…welcome to my obsessions, they’re
aggressive? My Timbers write-up is linked to up top, so everything else I say
is, at time of writing, based on what I saw when I watched the condensed games
of everything except Orlando’s win over the Red Bulls…because I saw that one coming.
Seriously, check my time line. Onto the
rest of the games.
If there’s an antithesis to the thesis laid out above, it comes from Vancouver's side of their winter-wonderland loss to the as-of-last week moribund RSL. As of last week, Vancouver felt like the team that had just risen from a sick-bed. Nope! The only
thing getting in the way of RSL on Saturday was RSL, and they stepped over
their own challenge at least three times – again, this was the team hit with
the dreaded “nadir” tag just last week. Vancouver, on the other hand, looked poised
for…better after running up the score against LA last weekend, but their
defense looked utterly baffled on Saturday, and the broadcast teams whispered doubts about their
switch to the 3-5-2, so maybe that did it, or maybe it was that cobbled
together middle five (Marcel de Jong, Tony Tchani, Russell Teibert (high, too),
Matias Laba, and Jake Nerwinski). At any rate, the 3-0 RSL dropped on Vancouver
reads gentle next to what happened out there.
As for the rest, here’s a funny thing: RSL looked better
beating Vancouver than Dallas did beating Minnesota. For one (and to squeeze in
a point), Sam Cronin gifted Dallas a goal (by being on the receiving end of the
kind of forced, crappy pass I’ve seen Chicago feed Dax McCarty too often this
season; still, HELLO, MINNESOTA!), and that’s how 1-0 reads like a more
plausible score for that game - and Minnesota put a minimum of six quality
shots on Jesse Gonzalez’s goal, and they looked way more solid at the back than they have all season...probably
because they’re building a four-block with Francisco Calvo and Brent Kallman
behind Collen Warner and Sam Cronin. That’s a stable set, and it should take
Minnesota places, even if it's not necessarily far.
Oh, before I forget, SKC’s win over Colorado not only
generated some talking points (Seth Sinovic's first goal!), it showed a team that I
generally (but not really) hate as its best self. While that might have picked
up a solution in Gerso Fernandes (see previous link), Dom Dwyer showed what makes him such a complete player; and, by way of that, Dwyer earned all of that smart little cross-cut goal he scored.
I can go into details all night – and, I swear to god (and
this isn’t like the thing with gifs, I swear…shit, swear within a swear…is that
like a double negative?), I’ll get better about noting goals of the week and
saves of the week, because those are both cool and really easy to argue about –
but, my time for this was tight this week….went to The Dalles. The Jewel of
North West Central Oregon (I mean, it’s gotta be, right? If only by process of
elimination?)
All right all right, let’s wrap this up, with…
Talking Points
1) Careful What You Trade For
As most of you know (right? if not, please advise), the Rapids
traded away Cronin and Marc Burch to Minnesota either last week or the one
before. Part of the assumption there is that they had good replacements for
both…a position that didn’t hold up so well this past weekend. Bismark
Adjei-Boateng may yet best Cronin in midfield, but there were already questions
about Mekeil Williams before Burch left and, holy hell, did Williams die out
there Saturday. Also, consider New York without Dax McCarty…now do it in a
frame where he and Sacha Kljestan are the parents, and consider the impact. I
know Colorado will shop, but those are big losses…and Minnesota’s gains.
2) Marcos Urena, Mystery
Urena did so many things well against Seattle players…right
up until he got anywhere near goal. I mean, he almost dropped Chad Marshall with this dribble, but, face it, Urena’s heretofore limited and, for all that and until further
notice, quite possibly the man who lifts San Jose’s ceiling.
3) Sneaky Good….like Minnesota Will Be in a Better Life
Just watch Kevin Molino. He does a surprising number of small
things right, he passes well, and he has several ideas in his head every time
he gets the ball. Minnesota needs a foundation (see above). If they get one, and
they tried, they have some good pieces.
4) Ballin’, Only Not as a Forward
It was nice to see Yura Movsisyan score his second goal in
two weeks, but, holy shit, does that guy miss a lot. What Yura showed against
Vancouver – and this was before the snow (which really gummed shit up) – is his
quality as a target forward, or at least as a hub for possession on the
attacking end. This might not be a bad thing, not with Joao Plata, (hopefully)
Albert Rusnak, (hopefully) Brooks Lennon, and (hopefully) Luke Mulholland
(seriously, fucking play Mulholland), playing off him. Forwards can do things
other than score…even if they don’t wanna.
5) Is this LA’s Eleven? (Srsly, is it?)
At the top of the broadcast of LA’s much-needed win over
Montreal (wait…I didn’t get into that…shit), Cobi Jones suggested that the team
that took the field was LA’s best set minus Sebastian Lletget. So…how are we
all feeling about that?
6) “Imperious” Defined
I’d argue that he’s doing less often than he used to, but on
when he’s on, holy shit (wait, again?), is Laurent Ciman still very much on. He didn’t just
play out of trouble, he passed in a way that set up the next pass to be lethal;
on the defensive side, he tracked and cleanly snuffed a couple maneuvers away
from real breakdowns. For what it’s worth, I think “imperious” best fits
defenders. After that, you know it when you see it.
7) Montreal’s Fascinating Hope, and Blowing Comparisons
A couple weeks back (or just last week), I suggested that Ballou Jean-Yves Tabla
plays something like Kekuta Manneh. After watching a couple weeks’ worth of
footage, I know that’s shit. Watching snippets of him today, I drifted toward
comparing him to Darlington Nagbe, but that still felt dumb. I think Tabla’s
closest analogue might be Alphonso Davies. And that’s just really goddamn cool.
8) Dax McCarty: One of the best American midfield players of
his generation, or…?
I think that’s it, honestly.
9) Joao Meira: Why you shouldn’t write off people quick.
If you asked me to throw away the worst part of the Fire’s
line-up last season, I would have picked Meira, like, a lot. This year, though,
I rate him as damn close to key. I’ll be damned if he hasn’t looked like this
team’s mental anchor out there, and a damned sturdy one too.
10) Daniel Johnson, from Chicago. For Now. Srsly.
I’ve seen a long parade of physical attributes and clearly
refined skills – e.g., raw speed, a velvet touch, or that sweet spot of speed
and bulk (think Walker Zimmerman) – so, when I see what looks like a good
brain, that stands out. He’s in his early 20s, and he looked good out there.
And that’s this week. I hope to refine the context next
week, but I have a headful of hopes.
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