MLS Week 9, 10 Things, And How You Know About a Team

Went uplifting this time. See TFC? Basement trolls can be awesome!

Hello darkness, my old friend. (Also, Paul Simon and/or Art Garfunkel was a worse lyricist than you remember. Trust me.)

As advertised (I can say that now, right? I've been doing this long enough?), I’m still wrestling format to ground and feeling…just really pointless guilt about leaving things out. Can I be of service? (Please, let me be of service!) Per some number of the several pathologies that drive me, here are all the past week’s results, or the one’s I remembered to include:

Vancouver Whitecaps 2-0 Real Salt Lake

Atlanta United FC 4-1 Montreal Impact

Toronto FC 2-2 Chicago Fire

Philadelphia Union 3-2 DC United

Columbus Crew SC 2-1 San Jose Earthquakes

New England Revolution 1-0 Sporting Kansas City

Minnesota United FC 2-1 Houston Dynamo

Los Angeles Galaxy 2-3 New York Red Bulls

Colorado Rapids 1-2 Orlando City SC

New York City FC 3-1 FC Dallas

Los Angeles FC 1-0 Seattle Sounders FC

I’m going to try to take all the above loosely and dedicate the “10 things” segment to expansions, details, theories and myths, that kind of thing.

This felt like the first decently predictable Week of the 2018 season. Or, better, I can offer either a detail or a narrative that reasonably explains every result above. The same goes for the opposite result in each case, and welcome to Major League Soccer, The League of Relativity, but the results make most sense in this timeline. For example, based on most data points you’d expect NYCFC to beat FC Dallas at home, and for Atlanta to beat Montreal at home, while neither anticipating how much Dallas would contain NYCFC (by 200-250 fewer passes, roughly), nor how long it would take Atlanta to unlock Montreal (70+ minutes, and trailing most the while).

The idea it makes sense doesn't necessarily mean this shit is neither linear nor logical. For instance, the Red Bulls have been both good enough to win anywhere this season, including in LA against the Galaxy, but also erratic; Philly beating DC should surprise no one because, with how consistently they pile on pressure, the Union could be the best worst team in MLS, the walking of absence of “that little bit of quality,” etc.: finally, Sunday looked, like, signs of Seattle stirring to life (solid against LAFC), and nice little roll Orlando City SC is on, and that brings in the next thought:

What does this all mean to the Portland Timbers?

I’ll start by admitting that Portland lives on the wrong side of the table; then again, they're also only four points behind heretofore undefeated Dallas, and this league is silly, so silly. Overall, though, I’d say only a few teams look clearly good on the form/personnel level at this moment (i.e., genuinely): I put NYCFC in that category, along with Atlanta (it’s working...just really well), maybe Orlando, maybe LAFC, and almost certainly Sporting KC. These are your Supporters’ Shield contenders, your teams that will make the playoffs, and, disasters natural/scandal/or man-made notwithstanding, look like a decent bet to do all right this season.

As for actually bad teams, I have suspicions of terminal issues about just one team, DC United. There’s just not a spark of…anything over there. And that’s not just losing to those nice boys from Philadelphia, either, because that 1-4-2 record looks way too much like their level.

When it comes to MLS, the real question is any given team’s chances of becoming something by year’s end- i.e., when MLS Cup rolls ‘round. That goes double with this year’s Toronto FC showing just how hard it is to go wire-to-wire in this league (as Toronto did in 2017). And that’s a great place to start because, given its personnel, everyone expects Toronto to turn things around and…like, still contend, right? But what if they don't? It's in that way that Eastern Conference basement trolls, Toronto, offer a good opening to address the rest of the league: the standings don’t lie - they can't, because that's how the points got divvied - but they are guessing from a small sample. Everyone expects them to turn it around due to their personnel and past recent form; it's locating the inevitable inflection point we're after.

Sure, I'm covering ass and back with that talk, and giving myself an off-ramp, because I’m worried I’ll blow some or all of the above - or this next thought - but, for now, my personal short list for teams outside the 3-5 named above (NYCFC, Atlanta, SKC, with or without Orlando and LAFC), who, at time of writing, look to have real, trophy-winning potential this season, I’d include, and in something like order: New York Red Bulls, FC Dallas, New England Revolution, Houston Dynamo…and, yeah, fuck it, homer, the Portland Timbers.

If Portland feels like a stretch, c’mon! they beat New York City FC and I rated them awesome, so that’s, like, one trophy down already, right? They have not just proven quantities all over, but one player (Sebastian Blanco) playing above his last season, and that brings the mix of latent and potential to something heady....look, just let me have it, as I would let you have it. Yeah, yeah, I’m reaching.

With that...budding segment out of the way, let's move on to 10 Things (not “the 10 Things,” just “10 Things”) from MLS 2018 Week 9. Hope they’re useful and/or improve!

1) Vancouver’s Level

In spite of the fact - and it’s a fact - the ‘Caps are in the top half of MLS, they are my “anti-Toronto” - a team I won’t believe in until they change my mind. (That’s, I believe Toronto will get better till I can no longer doub…you get it, right?) RSL is erratic as hell, besides, so I'm calling this win a logical blip.

2) Atlanta’s Bid

Between Atlanta staying stable at the back and living up to the hype up top, and Kevin Kratz hitting two (that’s 2) free-kicks in one match, Atlanta looks as good as…well, NYCFC.

3) Laurent Ciman & Life

As I watched L’Impact collapse against Atlanta, and later watched Laurent Ciman knock home a (fortunate) winner to soul-suckingly boring match, I thought, related? (As in, Ciman held together Montreal just as magnificently as he holds together LAFC...jesus...imagine the league's overall drop in charisma when Ciman moves on.)

4) A Legend I’ve Seen

While there’s no denying the element of luck in his second goal (that's Goal 401), there’s also no denying Villa’s 400th (and 401st) goal(s) as a professional. That said, finally having him play in the league I watch, the thing that most strikes me about Villa is his sense of where the ball will go next. He made the goal that took the game beyond Dallas based on that quick read. Noted.

5) Houston, Philly: The Boxscore Barometer

It goes without saying that no one rates Philly this season, but, having got a sense of what they’re doing, I expected them to beat DC - again, my only current candidate for sad-sack team, and sorry about opening a stadium on that talent. All the same, Philly has consistently dictated games and they’ve created a lot of chances - sort of like Houston, who, conversely, is crazy efficient in the shots they generate on goal with, oh, 200-250 fewer passes than Philly needs. These are teams to watch, even if not closely. They've got good-to-great spoiler potential, if nothing else.

6) Turtling. New England.

After watching them earlier this season, I had a proto-read on the Revolution’s defensive set up - i.e., basically, harass the fuck out of the defenders and the deep midfield and, once that line gets broken, compact into a defensive shell. It's the press-then-bunker, and I like this defensive concept.

7) Houston Blues

“This team and this franchise are in trouble - in a lot of different areas.”

That came somewhere in a comment in the recap to Houston’s loss to Minnesota - and, fun fact, neither fan-base sounded so perky in that thread, if based, again, on a small sample. A-hem. Still, Houston’s transition over 2/3 of the field has impressed me as much as anything I’ve seen in MLS this season. That quote addresses that “2/3 reality” very potently.

8) Magical Unicorns

When I hear people freak out about MLS referees, or just refs all over the world (see comments to the Galaxy’s loss to the Red Bulls), the main thing I've started thinking is, do they see this great pool of unemployed, super-competent American referees somewhere that I’m not seeing? Also, it's a terrible job that makes everyone hate you, so tight candidate pool. Also (and somewhere else), a commenter suggested giving MLS two “referee challenges” a game, and argued that was better than the semi-random VAR regime now in place. I’m not unconvinced by that paraphrase.

9) A Study in (BWP) Goals

Even the in-house recap caught the similarities between the two goals New York’s (no, the other one) Bradley Wright-Philips set up for different Red Bull players. Loosely, it involved having BWP chase against 1-2 defenders and solve the problem of scoring from there. And he did. Is that because he’s BWP, or does LA have an exploitable problem on their hands (aka, could Dairon Asprilla cause the same problem? Maybe?).

10) Orlando contender?

MLS….the fucking site, had an article/video/thing that I avoided up that posed and begged whether Orlando City SC look like contenders this season. The fate of many universes hangs on this question - first among them, can Jason Kreis build a second team? There’s a really nice collectivity to what Orlando’s doing right now and the new guys they brought in to perform - e.g., Yoshi Yotun - have, while the long-time MLS performers (think Kljestan, but more Justin Meram) have continued to play the same level. If Kreis has his culture going again…Orlando could be fun to watch.

All right. That’s plenty. Thanks for reading. I’ll keep improving, hopefully.