In Which I Try to Restart That Thing with the U.S. Men's National Team...

The mood I'm battling.

Seeing as we may not get a 2020 Major League Soccer regular season, now seems like a good time to return to an old hook-up, aka, the U.S. Men’s National Team…

…yeah, yeah, I’d be stunned stupid if MLS let CBA negotiations scuttle a landmark season (25th anniversary’s a biggie), but these are stupid times, so buckle up, I guess?

Back to the task at hand, though, the U.S. Men start qualifying for 2022 Bizarro World Cup this year, so there’s no time like the present for all concerned to gear up, players and fans. And, honestly, I’d like to get on board, but…well, that’s gotten harder since those faraway years when, because I didn’t really have an MLS team to cheer for, the U.S. Men’s National Team was my team. Back then, half the reason I followed MLS was to learn about the player pool. 25 years later, I’m a lot, lot dumber about what the U.S. has for options and, in a particularly comic twist, following the U.S. Men reminds me of how I used to keep one eye on MLS while I tracked the Portland Timbers’ fate in the USL; that’s to say, the only time I see Christian Pulisic play comes during the rare occasions I see him play for the U.S. Men. Based on that visual diet – i.e., watching a frustrated Pulisic kick at the sub seats (and did I dream this?) after departing at the tail of another anemic performance – is it any wonder I find Pulisic something less than great shakes?

Also, don’t get me started on when and where they air the goddamn games. It’s like they want to fail.

As of today, I’m biting back all that anger and just…trying to get excited about the U.S. Men again and, hopefully, seeing them qualify for FIFA’s latest monstrosity (aka, Qatar 2022, coming that Christmas, apparently). Saturday’s friendly against Costa Rica will be the next step in that process (ESPNews, guys? Really?). The first step will be…honestly, just figuring out what they hell is going on – e.g., how are the CONCACAF teams qualifying for 2022 (or even Gold Cup 2021), and what the silly fuck was the CONCACAF Nations League?

MLS Off-Season Weeky (01 25 2020): Welcome to the Weird Season! (Plus Some Moves)

Preseason.

Ah, preseason, the heady days when teams across MLS can nurse delusions of grandeur – whether Real Salt Lake claiming they’re “not that far from competing for the title” or Dax McCarty pretending new kids Nashville SC won't do the soccer equivalent of a flex-arm hang from the playoff line in its inaugural season.

The Chicago Fire (the rebrand didn’t run off with their OG name, right?), meanwhile, stung by a lost decade, takes the sober course: “I can guarantee them that we will work hard every day.”

We will try, the city of Chicago, they say. That’s really all any team can say ahead of any given season. To flip the script, Los Angeles FC can talk about a title all they want, but no promise can stop them from another stumble in the playoffs. At any rate, what will be will be. And some teams have already taken their first steps toward their 2020 fate.

Preseason, MFs!
I’ll clock some playa moves below, as well as what’s going on with the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati, but I wanted to start things off with actual preseason play.

Does it matter that (weird) Atlanta United FC beat the (weird) New York Red Bulls 2-1 in hot MLS-on-MLS action yesterday, or that the (weird) Seattle Sounders dropped their first preseason game to Uruguayan giants, Penarol? Nah. Everyone’s knocking off the rust (no matter what the copy says about Josef Martinez) and the regulars knock off after the first 30 minutes, and a bunch of randos come on to replace them: the silly season continues, but welcome to the “weird” season. (Related: I’ll be placing “(weird)” in front of every team’s name until either real games come around or when a given team plays some version of its expected first team in the late-stage preseason.)

MLS Off-Season Weekly (01.17.2020): Dismissals, Courtships, and More

What?

Guys! They released the 2020 preseason schedule!

Yeah, yeah, 93.7% of fans think that preseason is bullshit. Personally, I think of it like Advent – i.e., a prelude to the main event, only without the Bible verses and the shitty chocolate. (I know carob when I taste it, mom; don’t you fucking insult me.) It’s when I finally get to see games (guys!), when I finally get to address (and/or wildly extrapolate) from actual player performances; I get evidence, dammit (no matter how subjective it gets once you traverse past hard numbers like goals, assists, and clean sheets). The day I can stop guessing how, say, Gadi Kinda will do in MLS versus telling you he’s either, 1) a storm-driven revelation raging through every MLS defense he encounters, or 2) that name you can’t place in this week’s traveling 18; that's my Christmas! (Which has been true since my kids grew up: so, so transactional; I’d kill that fat jolly son-of-a-bitch on sight, if I ever saw him.)

For what it’s worth, that’s a paragraph-long version of me saying, I’ll care about Chicarito coming to MLS when he makes me care, not before then. Swear to God, fucking hype-trains leave the station daily till about the 10th week of the season…

Personal shit aside, yeah, I’m just excited to see anyone connected to any MLS team kick a ball around. Bring on the shitty live feeds with Jake Zivin muttering over the silence; I’m here for every 90-minute serving of that. Truth be told, FC Cincinnati has a lot more going on this preseason – they start before January ends, in Tucson, and against…Phoenix Rising, I think (do I care? It’s January 29 regardless) – but they’re scheduled to hand in five more games before the regular season starts, and I can’t wait to see how much all the kids, new, young, old, all of ‘em, can impress me (or give me ulcers) before the season can even start. I want my barely-supported opinions and I want them now, basically.

The Portland Timbers, meanwhile, have committed to a trip to Costa Rica (which I’m fine with, even as I don’t fully understand the tradition), followed by the…hold on, Old Trapper Beef Jerky Bowl, or some shit like that. Given my rooting interests, yes, I’m more geeked up (in both senses of the word) about what the Timbers look like going into 2020, but they’re just not doing much this preseason, or much that readily translates. That happens to carry over to player movement/activity. Portland’s being really boring right now – by which I mean, there’s nothing outside the potential/expected signing of Jaroslaw Niezgoda on the Timbers’ horizon, so the roster they have is…it, right? So, yeah, let’s talk about what FC Cincy’s up to…

MLS Off-Season Weekly (01.10.2020): Of Rivalries, Rebuilds, and Those Damn Joneses

A future, not the future.

And…we’re back after another week of shenanigans, and a day early, personal shit, etc. The spotlight shined most brightly on the 2020 MLS Superdraft, which feels low-rent AF so far as shenanigans go (or does it? more later), but the work of keeping up with the Joneses, as those other Joneses try to skip away, continued apace, and, lo, the silly season stayed silly.

As opposed to talking Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati in separate sections today, similar (near) coincidental signings made sense of combining them into one discussion for this week’s edition. So I did…

(Almost) Dueling Forwards (Wrap It Up, Gavin!)
Pens keep scribbling on paper across Major League Soccer as teams rush to get players signed ahead of the onrushing 2020 regular season. As I continue to watch for gaps in the traffic in front of FC Cincinnati and looking forward and back around Portland, the dashboard lights keep flashing “DANGER, DANGER!” for both. To give one example for each team, whatever relief I’d hoped to see out of Leandro Gonzalez Pirez leaving Atlanta for Liga MX went “poof” on seeing they signed Fernando Meza from Necaxa to replace him (Liga MX taketh, Liga MX giveth). Portland, meanwhile, should be anxiously clocking rumors of “mutual interest” between the Los Angeles Galaxy and Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez – especially given what the Galaxy have already done to retool ahead of 2020.

The menacing signings keep piling up all over, whether it’s the Philadelphia Union re-siging Jamiro Monteiro, DC United signing a young Estonian phenom, or Sporting Kansas City’s insatiable thirst to drown its 2019 sorrows with still more attacking talent. Again, every team that shoves ahead of either Cincinnati or Portland pushes each of them further into The Wilds of Shame, aka, the lost lands beyond invitations to MLS’s still welcoming post-season dance. So…what are Portland and Cincy doing to keep up with their respective Joneses?

To start with the cheapest of parallels, both teams (mostly) went out and paid for a striker/forward, and, honestly, I’ve never understood the difference of cared to. Earlier this week, FC Cincinnati signed Japanese forward Yuya Kubo. He last played in Belgium (KAA Gent, a club that, I assume, tracks the standard, floating Belgian level?), and he’s dicked around in minor-league Europe (no offense) for a bit, always able to find a job, but one does get the impression of a ceiling. A guy named Brad Gough posted further details on Cincy Soccertalk (thanks!), and I’ll second-guess his detail work after I’ve watched Kubo for a few games, but one phrase stood out, and that’s “depressed asset.” I’m not knocking that, I like reclamation projects, and so on, but proof will meet pudding, and we’ll talk about the delight or mess when it comes.

MLS Off-Season Weekly (01.05.2020): On Rebuilds & Kicking the Tires on the New Chara

HAPPY AND CONTENT.

Right, time to slide back into the routine. (Who knows? Maybe it’ll help distract me from all the fucking idiots lighting the world on fire.) Welcome to the first MLS Weekly of 2020…by which time humanity should have become less stupid, not more…sorry, the routine, the routine. Deep breath…now, BIG SMILE!

This post includes with updates on the state of the two teams I follow – FC Cincinnati and the Portland Timbers – and then I’ll wrap up with some odds and ends. I’d intended to close with an unlikely attempt at rekindling the dying embers of my interest in the U.S. Men’s National Team, but then realized I don’t have anything more to say than, I’ll watch friendly against Costa Rica at the end of January camp and see what happens. Moving on to regularly scheduled programming…

FC Cincinnati
Have done nothing of interest since signing that Swedish defender, and that wasn’t all that interesting. More, please.

Portland Timbers: Faith in the People and the Process
With Timbers fans past the “Two Charas” buzz, it feels like a good time to soberly (or not) reflect on the sum of the decision to add Yimmi Chara to the roster. To start by sharing something nifty I found only yesterday, if you google “Yimmi Chara,” a list of his stats will appear on the right side of the screen and, if you hit “View All,” you can to tick through the numbers Yimmi put up in each of his past seasons. You’ll see numbers in there that would get Portland closer to the Promised Land – e.g., that 11 goal, 3 assist season with Junior F.C. in 2017, or maybe that 11 goal season with Deportes Tolima back in ’14, or even the seven assist output in 2018 – and those speak to something the Timbers need – e.g., second-banana level on-field production behind first bananas like Diego Valeri and Sebastian Blanco.

Where I’ve seen people squirm, however, comes with questions about the length and cost of Yimmi’s contract. Stumptown Footy’s(?) Chris Rifer put out a pair of tweets that sum up the argument nicely:

MLS Off-Season Weekly: New Year's Day Feelings Check

'Bout to get tripped.

I decided to start the New Year by thinking about the general road(and home)-worthiness of the two teams I follow. To remind people, that’s the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati. Both teams come from very different worlds, obviously. Even if the Timbers’ 2019 ended early, they were just one year removed from an MLS Cup final and they still have a competitive core. FC Cincy, on the other hand, get the functional equivalent of a mulligan on a disastrous-for-the-ages 2019 season. Still, so long as promotion/relegation doesn’t take hold…

…and it never will in the States, so, please, stop kidding yourself. We live in a crony capitalist/lazy rich motherfucker society, something that won’t change until we do.

Politics/society/culture aside (and they’re all to blame, and for everything), what do Portland and Cincinnati need to do in order to be competitive in 2020 - or, to get real jiggy, challenge for any kind of honors? To answer the obvious question – i.e., can FC Cincinnati even do that? – no, probably not, at least not without insane luck twice over in the transfer market – e.g., 1) finding players with the right talents, and 2) convincing them to move to Cincinnati. (Also, don’t get me wrong: Portland’s an easier sell, but it’s not LA, New York, or even Chicago or Seattle.) Still, I’m going to start with what I think Cincinnati needs to do in order to…let’s go with make the playoffs in 2020.

FC Cincinnati, Their Yellow Brick Road
As of the New Year, FC Cincinnati has an exhausting mix of new blood and old baggage. I used the word “exhausting” on the grounds that their big attacking signing – former Philadelphia Union midfielder, Haris Medunjanin – still seems to lack the kinds of players he needs to rack up his quota of assists. In other words, unless Brandon Vazquez comes good to several degrees beyond expectations or Fanendo Adi gets his groove back – and does anyone else wonder if that’s not why Cincinnati hasn’t already sold him for peanuts? – Cincy will need to call in some attacking players. I understand that players like Joseph-Claude Gyau and Kekuta Manneh remain in the mix, and that they’ll probably get similar numbers out of Allan Cruz next season, but, unless you think that Medunjanin’s passing alone will buy Cincinnati 10 more goals in 2020 than they saw in 2019, they need a couple better-than-them signings before First Kick kicks off. I understand they’re looking, but I also know that Cincy’s front office signed yet another defender, Swede Tom Pettersson...