I Love MLS Before June, How About You? Revisiting Assumptons and Echoes Thereof

Let's lean all the way in...

Shortly before First Kick 2022, I wrote a couple post in which I set expectations for every team in Major League Soccer – one in January, aka, before most teams had done shit, and another in February that talked about which teams I thought would be competitive, or had taken good steps to get there...which I'm not sure I ever posted...shit. At any rate, two weeks before America’s top-flight, male domestic league nods off for a couple of weeks (for the most part), I took what I’d internalized based on what I’d seen to that point to project where I thought those same teams would be as of…well, today, basically, a thought process that amounted to resetting expectations.

With a solid majority of teams having 14 games behind them – which, for those teams, means they have 20 games ahead – and with some time off for every team in MLS and/or time/space to recalibrate, tonight felt like a good time to run all the theories in those posts against what's happened so far. Down below, and in alphabetical order, and with (I think) no links (success!), I’m going to look back at my preseason expectations – and, here, I pulled notes from that conceivably-unposted February post where I had them, and ran with the January notes where I didn’t, and if/when you see quotes around anything, I’m pulling it directly from those posts, the rest is paraphrasing – and then revisit what I thought going into the final two-to-four games going into the June break (dated May 16, 2022, for reference), to try to see which teams are meeting expectations, which have tripped some varying miles short thereof.

That’s it for the preamble. Hey, ho, let’s go…

Atlanta United FC
Preseason Theory
“I’m going to mentally downgrade them out of spite,” but I believe I wrote that before Thiago Andrade showed up…then again, I probably read him as a like-for-like replacement for Ezequiel Barco whenever he arrived.
Pre-June Break Projection
“So…more of the same, then?” (@ NSH, v CLB)
Updated Theory
Atlanta got exactly one point from those two games and they’re two points below the playoff line in the Eastern Conference. As of now, I’d put their ceiling at one side or the other of the playoff line – i.e., a combination of needing to clean up their own backyard and needing some stumbles to come down from above.

Portland Timbers Preview: A Trip to the Pastel Kingdom

More menacing than previously...fwiw.

I don’t have any great insights into Inter Miami CF’s system, how they line up, etc. I have, however, watched them a couple times over the past couple weeks – a goal-less road draw at the Philadelphia Union and a 2-0 home win over Red Bull New York – and my main thought after both results is this: Miami probably isn’t as bad as you think, Portland Timbers fans, so I wouldn’t take three points as a given. In fact, if I had to put money on anything, it’d be a draw.

Chalk my lukewarm take on the Timbers’ chances down to Miami’s improved defensive record – i.e., after allowing 15 goals over their first six games, they’ve allowed just six since then and in sufficiently challenging settings (v ATL, @ NE, @ CLT, v DC, @ PHI, v RBNY; their record through that went WLLTTW, fwiw) to make me trust it. On the one hand, sure, it bears acknowledging that neither Red Bull nor Philly rank among the league’s attacking powerhouses, but I also doubt anyone had Miami picking up four points from those two games, and yet here we are. It also bears noting that the Timbers have scored as many goals in 2022 as the Red Bulls and two more than Philly, so that’s one more data point to run past your opinion of the Timbers attack (I know where mine is, but you do you).

Because I don’t really know what The Underlying Numbers say (and I’m not even sure where to look at this point) and I keep forgetting to look at the power rankings (eh), I don’t know whether the cognoscenti see Miami is under- or overachieving. All I have is their present record – 4-6-3 overall, with a middling 3-2-2 at home – plus those past two games to judge them. And what I saw there was a sturdy, organized defense – more significantly, one that managed both RBNY’s and Philly’s generally energetic approaches to defense. Moreover, the box score matches my eye-test for the Red Bull game: Miami looked the more rugged defensive team, something you don’t see a lot against RBNY. That Miami played through the pressure well in both games makes me lean toward discounting Portland’s chances to frazzle them.

On the brighter side, playing away should give the Timbers several chances to play in the only way their attack actually seems to function – i.e., in transition - and that’s nice, beats the alternative we’ve collectively endured in all venues and against all teams outside of Sporting KC at home, and so on…but what would surprise you more at this point: the Timbers running up the score (which, here, means three or more goals) or the Timbers not scoring at all?

FC Cincinnati Preview: Bring Your Running Shoes, the Good Ones

Lace 'em tight, stay frosty.

Club du Foot Montreal have a new crest (eh), and a solid run over the past 10 games, going 6-2-2 and against reasonably spry opposition. They lost a step on the back end of the 10, going 3-2-0; fwiw, they got home wins over Atlanta and Orlando, plus one on the road over Charlotte, but they lost away to Nashville…and then at home last weekend against Real Salt Lake. And one can make a reasonable argument that RSL outplayed them. So…what looms largest, a 6-2-2 recent record or the one oddball loss that goes against it?

I’ll start with this: Montreal doesn’t run the tightest ship at the back. They’ve allowed at least one goal in every game except that win over Charlotte. They’ve also scored above the league average (which I put at 17.5; Montreal has 24), which makes me think FC Cincinnati has another track meet on tap for this weekend. That’s not unusual for these Montreal v Cincy: they played to a 4-3 game with Cincinnati at home and on the losing end, which repeated another game in 2021, when they played the same venue (right?) with the Orange and Blue coming out at the wrong end of a 5-4 final score.

That’s the past, because a couple things have changed since even that last meeting – e.g., the arrival of Obinna Nwodobo and a fully-functioning midfield (with Junior Moreno). So, first question: can Cincinnati’s overall defensive shape/personnel keep Montreal to one or zero goals? I lean toward yes, but with some caveats and caution signs. Montreal has some sharp players working the width/channels – e.g., Djordje Mihailovic (assuming he’s not gone yet…The Mothership is behind on the availability info) and Lassi Lappalainen on their left and Alistair Johnston and Joaquin Torres on the right – and they spread the field nicely and play into the internal channels or to the far post according to the space they have. It’s a decent system, even if RSL bottled it up pretty nicely.

Against that methodology, the way Cincy plays its fullbacks – I assume Pat Noonan goes Alvas Powell and John Nelson again – looms larger than normal (also relevant: I think I say this every time). I hope they go a little conservative, at least on one side, and rely more on the fullbacks playing into Moreno and Nwobodo then out to Dominique Badji and (again, I assume) Alvaro Barreal, respectively, to work the ball up the field. I don’t mind either fullback taking chances once the ball is high, but hope they don’t hand Montreal any gifts, especially breaks behind the fullbacks inside Cincy's half. It’s not that Montreal can’t push up the gut, and Victor Wanyama does make his share of late runs to the top of the area, but he mostly seems to sit deep and coordinate, with the forward momentum happening on either side of him. That said, Montreal can change that up by calling in Kei Kamara, King of Journeymen, to act as a battering ram later in the game; that’s against Romell Quioto, who strikes me as just another guy they play into space.

Portland Timbers 0-2 Philadelphia Union: A Meditation on an Attack

Is he angry because he doesn't know where to go?

Someone else fired the Portland Timbers’ first shot on goal - I don’t remember who it was, but also, does it matter? - but Bill Tuiloma got their best one. The fact he fired it well past the 80th minute, may have even been after the 85th, says plenty, but I’m less concerned about the specific identity of the man who fired it than I am by the fact that Timbers can’t seem to generate offense without the ball coming forward at just the right angle and to an attacking player in just the right space. You?

The last 10 minutes of the Timbers' 0-2 home loss to the Philadelphia Union gave a glimpse into an alternate universe where Portland threw caution to the wind for the full 90 minutes and made Philly sweat through every one of them. Or, more likely, the Union drew the obvious conclusion from the Timbers first 20 attempts to break them down after they'd compacted the defense and figured they could ride it out. Maybe it was something the Timbers started to do, maybe it was something Philly stopped doing, and a maddening snitch’s adherence to the rules by referee Allen Chapman aside, both Union goals felt like alarms that went off ten (or five) minutes too late to get to work. It took Portland too long to get going - which, here, means all the way going - while it seemed like the Union could revive their method at will. There was no point during this game…which I joined late due to a wrinkle in a stupidly specific rule in NASCAR, one that bears a grating fucking resemblance to Allen Champman standing gape-mouthed with an index finger cocked to the earbud in his ear like he was trying to see where he hit the right note in a Double-Mint Gum jingle…ahem, when I thought Portland had a credible shot at actually winning it.

I mean, bravo on the goal that Chapman called back against both the letter and spirit of “clear and obvious error” (failing to be a prick on behalf of pricks; Chapman’s an evil wizard), but sure as I see the Timbers damn-near even on shots and one-fourth of average in shots on goal (two; they got two), the attack just plain sucks right now. Shut your ears to the siren song of the Sporting Kansas City sacrifice, ‘twas the dream of the song, etc., yeah, yeah, yeah; for the love of all the over-rehearsed weirdness I’ve watched over the past…I’m going with ten games, which includes the wins over SKC and Vancouver, Portland has completely lost track of how to get to goal. They do better in transition, obviously - that’s why I lead with Tuiloma and his chance - but I’m getting close to calling the formula for stifling the Timbers something perilously close to fool-proof.

Being a mere 20% less obvious might help. How many Timbers attacks enter the critical phase (aka, anything inside the opposition’s defensive third) with a ball into the corner? Even if I admit that me answering “all the time, like every fucking one of them” is a product of watching for something and seeing it to the exclusion of all else, that’s all I see to the point where I think Gio might have branded that useless stab at everything but the dartboard. As much as it stood out tonight (luridly), a standard Timbers attack against a compacted defense tends to look like so: the ball goes into one corner (usually with nothing happening near the goal), and then comes back out to a supporting fullback; the ball goes centrally from there, a couple flirtatious in-and-outs to the top of the 18 and back follow before the ball goes centrally again, from whence it goes to the outside channel with the most open space; after that the receiving player flails the ball at some point either toward or above the middle, and to three guys making the text book runs, one near-post, one centrally, one far post. And so on forever, until nothing at all happens. On most plays when the cross wasn’t on, I saw Timbers players come out of the middle to support the wide player. It happened without any rhyme or reason that I saw. Just people throwing money at charities and hoping it all goes away (not being righteous; I resemble that metaphor).

FC Cincinnati 2-3 New England Revolution: High from the Highest Tree-EEEE!

A little nod for all you Roger Miller fans.

“…put all that together, and it seems like the main thing Cincinnati will need to do on Saturday is keep up.”

So close, and yet so far. Hurts a little, honestly, but the sting of FC Cincinnati’s 2-3 home loss to the New England Revolution beats the holy hell out of the unholy hell of what past seasons have felt like - e.g., feeling one blow after another from a fetal position. I hate to do this, but, this one sentence from the (admittedly choppy) game thread on this game (I was cooking over the first 50 minutes), feels relevant to the discussion:

“Does #FCCincy go for broke at this point? Can they go for broke? And isn’t it nice to say that?”

To tie those two thoughts together, Cincy largely did keep up and with a visibly talented (yet still wobbly) New England team. Sure, the Revs won, but I’d put money on Tommy McNamara missing that shot nine times out of ten and not getting it at all more often still. Cincinnati’s defense dropped too deep, no question, and maybe they had run their legs out, but the Revs game-winner - all three of their goals, really - weren’t unlike rolling three straight, clean sevens in craps (and the lazy shits at MLS HQ didn't do pull-out highlights for this one, so the full four-minute reel is the only point of reference). Only they made each goal happen and credit to them. As loud as their Achilles heel screams (de-fense, de-fense), New England still moves the ball as well as any team in the league, Wilfrid Kaptoum and McNamara did well enough that they didn’t miss Matt Polster, Brandon Bye played a ridiculously effective game, etc. etc. etc.

But push a fair chunk of the credit to FC Cincy in this game for coming back into it twice - and they climbed the psychological equivalent of a mountain to do it. The broadcast booth called Sebastian Lletget’s opening goal against the run of play, but I’d call that valuing possession over effective use of it; New England had the better of the game to that point and they pulled Cincy like well-simmered pork on the goal. Good as Lletget’s movement was on that, Brandon Vazquez matched it on Cincy’s first equalizer, drifting back-post then, crucially, taking a step back allowed the other players to drift across his run and gave him a wee run-up to the ball to boot.

Portland Timbers Preview: In Need of a Little Union Busting

Something to avoid in both soccer and life.

I’ve been eyeing Sunday’s game against the Philadelphia Union as the likeliest brick-wall in what, until the Portland Timbers hacked up a lung down in San Jose, looked like a soft landing going into the June break. (And this is an international break, right?) Then again, Philly hasn’t exactly kept up expectations. Since bolting ahead in the Supporters’ Shield race early in the season, the Union haven’t won a game in weeks. Moreover, some of the points they’ve dropped - e.g., all three points away to Toronto (and that damn game sold me on TFC) plus two more at home just a couple nights ago against…fucking Miami?

I just sat through two good chunks of the Philly v Miami game - the first 30 minutes, then the 65th to…around the 80th - and, for what it’s worth, that experience doesn’t match the other spot-checks I’ve done on Philly games. They typically play vertically, even to a fault, but the Union either had an off-day, or Miami upset Plan A. They couldn’t start Julian Carranza, their second highest scorer and all-round second most effective player (four goals, three assists), due to the loan arrangement with Miami, so that’s one hole, and they started leggy, loping (yet generally competent) defender, Jack Elliott, as the defensive midfield in the absence of the regular, Jose Martinez (a player I don’t know well, btw). That might have pulled a leg out from Plan A, but, for all the forward movements that petered out or died on both sides of the center-stripe (so many), Philly still created plenty of chances, firing 20 shots, eight of them on goal. Against that, I saw most of those shots (the highlights include, well, the highlights of those), but it didn’t change the overall, real-time impression of a stymied, ambling Union attack.

To turn to some things that went well for Philly, Daniel Gazdag fired some menacing shots, and they’ve got a pair of solid shuttlers in Leon Flach and Alejandro Bedoya (who apparently speaks five languages), and they get solid overlapping options out of Kai Wagner and Nathan Harriel and/or Olivier Mbaizo (depending on who starts). Finally, to defend Philly’s…reasonably-maligned forwards, Sergio Santos and Cory Burke, both made good runs - e.g., see Santos’ run on one of Gazdag’s better shots (coulda had a tap-in) - and, even if either of them only puts away one chance in 15, the risk to Portland of allowing them 15 chances is real.

To flip in the other direction, even with a handful of other defenses in touch, the Union are the only team left standing on single digits for goals allowed. They’ve allowed just five goals over their past nine games, and three of those games came against your livelier attacking teams - e.g., Montreal, Red Bull and LAFC. Based on goals scored alone, Portland keeps up with all three of those teams, but anyone with a working memory knows that seven of the Timbers’ goals on the season came in a wheels-off blowout over Kansas City. Moreover, all those teams score steadily, whereas Portland has been shut-out three times and limited to one goal on six other occasions - i.e., a 0.67 goals-for average across most games. So, the question is, how does a putzing Timbers attack get past that, plus Andre Blake as a back-stop?

FC Cincinnnati Preview: Eyeing a Counter-Revolution

Just get in the way of it often enough.

It’s no secret that the New England Revolution dropped the Supporters’ Shield in 2022 (yeah, yeah, it's early; just roll with it). They’ve been a combination of inconsistent and fragile since First Kick, with only three wins in eleven games this season and none coming on the road. As such, FC Cincinnati isn’t facing 2021 New England tomorrow afternoon.

Because I’m between concepts on this site, I didn’t sit down to watch the Revs’ draw at Atlanta last weekend and yet another goddamn national broadcast blackout means I can't do a make-up [Ed. - Honestly, ESPN+ has a knack for blacking out games involving Cincy’s next opponents.] That said, I don’t think the book on New England has changed much since their record-setting 2021 season: they score goals with confidence and hand them out with the opposite. To finish the thought on the Revs defense, the narrative goes something like this: they give up a lot of chances and rely on Matt Turner to stop them. (And he does.)

FC Cincinnati should get chances, basically, and they look like a good bet to finish them off. They’ve got an elite chance-creator/finder in Luciano Acosta dishing key passes (if with surprisingly few primary assists; just three), plus a confident striker in Brandon Vazquez. Related, I just bumbled into something fun: Cincy is downright communitarian when it comes to assists - eight players have supplied one, three players two, then there’s Acosta’s three - and that’s a good thing; it’s harder to shut off the supply when it comes from all over.

To flip the point of view, the Revs have scored two goals in their last six games and have only been kept off the board once all season. They haven’t exactly played the cream of the league lately, thought they did get a pair of goals past a better-than-average Columbus Crew SC defense, and on the road, So, odds are they’ll score a goal or two against Cincy. That’s despite a late improvement from them - though, again, mind the opposition, e.g., Chicago, Minnesota and Toronto X 2) - but, taking in what we have so far, all signs point to keeping up with the Revs' offense as Cincinnati's prime directive for Saturday.

San Jose Earthquakes 3-2 Portland Timbers: Lost, and Never Found

Won't lie. I wanted to do better with this....

Have you ever seen one of those old movies, or even a parody of one, where a central character whispers a dozen farewells on his/her way to the beyond?

The Portland Timbers gave their best homage to that trope tonight in a slow-fade 2-3 road loss at the San Jose Earthquakes. The foreground the blunt reality, San Jose wanted it more. Their energy was better, they contested the ball faster - or, in far too many cases, at all - and they just, for lack of a better word, competed tonight in a way the Timbers only did either one player or one moment or a time and, yes, the “or” in that clause is 1,000% conscious, deliberate, not a typo, etc.

As documented in two or three places, I expected goals in this game. Moreover, I expected the game to turn on which team scored the most goals - i.e., basic logic meets basic math - and it did. And, finally, I don’t know what happened to the Timbers tonight, I really don’t. Rather than say they gave up…tempting as that is, I feel alright letting them off the hook with, they couldn’t see the path forward, so they tried to walk directly into the trees. Big ones too.

Where to begin with dissecting this one? And is there a point to the project? Hold on. I'll find one or two...

To make up for cavalierly shitting on San Jose’s defense going into this one, I hereby acknowledge that Tommy Thompson, aka, The Goal-Less Wonder, waltzed his way to one step inside the penalty spot before a there-but-for-the-width-of-Bill-Tuiloma’s-boot the Timbers would have gone down 4-2. After a certain point - here, I’m thinking rather pointedly about the ‘Quakes’ second, jail-break-perfect counterattacking goal - everything about the game rhymed with that moment. Even the laws of gravity seemed to tilt against the Timbers from that point forward and, yes, now confirmed, Portland did something less than half of shit over the course of that second half.

I, like a lot of people, have waited patiently for the Timbers to find a rhythm and start doing something with it this season and assumed they would. Even if I didn’t trust it, I hoped that Portland’s 7-2 win over Sporting Kansas City had knocked off the rust…but, no. Moreover, assuming you stick with the implicit premise of my review - i.e., that an early goal invites teams to play toward Portland, which opens up space for their counter - well, the wheels fell all the fucking way off that one tonight. Once San Jose landed on a method to stuff the Timbers transition outlets - related, does anyone think that’s some state secret by now? - the game ended as a contest. For the record, that happened somewhere around the 65th minute. Or the 70th, in the event I want to spare anyone’s blushes.

MLS Weakly, MLS Week 11: Results Round-up, the Near-Future & a Funeral

A brighter future. Without....all this.

First, yes, I have once again tinkered with the format for this week’s Weakly. And, oh my holy God, how many fucking teams have midweek games tomorrow night? 20? Yeah, this is me tapping out on these weekly reviews. And I mean it this time. If anyone sees me post another one (except in the off-season), DM me and I’ll give you my address, so’s you can come over a slap me. Now, to this week’s round-up.

With a break (for most teams) coming in the first half of June (and anyone know why they’re pausing?), I decided to shorten the horizon and focus on just the next two, three games for all the teams around Major League Soccer. A two-week break feels like enough of a reset - e.g., teams could get key players back, coaching staffs can re-examine tactics that haven’t been working, make tweaks to one that have, etc. - to make that feel like a good spot for a breather/reassessment. With that in mind, I’ve listed all the games that each team in MLS has ahead between now and the end of May and threw my two cents at them for good measure. I’ll wrap up with a summary as well.

With that, it’s time for a rundown of the results. As always (and for the last time; pour one out), I’ve embedded links to The Motherships game summary in each final score and, to add a little more “why” to all the “what” below, I pulled some quotes from Matt Doyle’s Week 11 review in places where I thought he said something interesting. Now, a look back at the races….

Houston Dynamo FC 2-0 Nashville SC
[Spot Check: 1st - 20th, 45th -75th, plus box score]
Houston’s Adam Lundqvist walked off under a red mark at the 35th minute, but I didn’t notice the advantage any more than Gary Smith. Nashville teed up multiple lines on goal (e.g., C. J. Sapong, Daniel Lovitz, and Ethan Zubak) and missed them all. Houston, on the other hand, finished the shots they created and went 1-0 through Adalberto Carrasquilla nearly 20 minutes before Lundqvist’s ejection. More importantly, they looked coordinated and competent and Fafa Picault gave Nashville’s defense enough fits all on his own (just to note it, Walker Zimmerman didn’t start). In big picture terms, this result has me re-evaluating whether I’ve overrated Nashville over the first third of the season; a good, competitive team gets a point on the road against a middling team like Houston. Going the other way, this feels like an aberration for Houston, but also noted. Oh, and Doyle offered another theory on Nashville’s struggles:

Chicago Fire FC 1-2 FC Cincinnati: We Come from the Windy City, Bearing Gifts

Chicago, shortly after equalizing.

This post won’t take long and it turns on a single question:

If someone just gives you something, did you really earn it?

Both FC Cincinnati goals came from mistakes by Chicago Fire FC - in a spin on something familiar to the sport, one of them indirect, the other direct as it gets - and those gave them their margin of victory. You can argue - as I would - that, when it came to shots fired, Cincy made up in quality what Chicago offered in quantity. And that concept carries over into the game as a whole - e.g., Cincinnati didn’t move the ball nearly as much, but did it more effectively than the home team.

Still, the timing of the second, indirect gift in Cincinnati’s 2-1 road win over Chicago bears noting. After 65-plus of running and kicking like it was the point of the game, the Fire started to apply real pressure toward the end of the game. And, almost immediately after I mocked their slurry of half-effectual corner kicks on my in-game twitter thread, Chicago tied the game at 1-1 with a glancing headed goal by Jhon Duran on a run to the near-post. For all that amounted to trying the same thing over and over until it works, it finally paid off (or just did) and the broadcast booth started talking about how much a comeback win could help get Chicago’s season back on track.

And then every neutral’s favorite goalkeeper, Gabriel Slonina, mishandled a back-pass and cut off that conversation mid-sentence. Credit to Cincy’s Luciano Acosta for making it count - and that’s after giving real, nerve-addling indications that he wouldn’t (see the "indirect" mistake above) - but after a long, blindfolded walk to nowhere, Chicago had at long last ripped off the blindfold and started walking in a good and useful direction. And then the boy-‘keeper who has the world raving commits the inevitable rookie error. And Cincy wins, Cincy wins.

Once you put all the above together, I don’t know how to get a read out of this game beyond, yep, good enough. A couple Cincinnati players stood out - e.g., Nick Hagglund won an eye-catching number of aerial duels at the heart of the defense and you love to see Junior Moreno clogging the channels inside the 18, as he did more than once - and the Orange and Blue made the result stand up collectively and with a lot of attacking options off the table (with the baseline value of those options - e.g., Brenner, Isaac Atanga, Calvin Harris - left an open question). In the broadest of terms, Cincinnati did its job as a team and cashed the checks Chicago left unsigned in their mailbox.

Portland Timbers 7-2 Sporting Kansas City: A Viking Funeral for a Dinghy at Sea

Oh, how I laughed. So, so loud.

When I went to see the live-action Speed Racer, I went in with expectations as low as I was high. I walked out on Cloud 9, wearing one of those smiles that doesn’t go away till you fall asleep and, I’m guessing, pupils big as saucers. I expected nothing, basically, and walked out feeling like a won the lottery. Then again, the same thing happened with Cats. Cats was fucking terrible, but, goddamn, did I have fun watching it…

That’s the only experience I can come up that matches what happened tonight in the Portland Timbers positively rolling 7-2 win over Sporting Kansas City. Everything thing I’d seen and read going in prepped me for SKC to compact its defense and for the Timbers to smash tiny fists against it for 90 minutes, plus stoppage time. Instead, the second half happened, and very early on.

Because drawing talking points out of a blip within a blip feels like the greatest fools errand since the invention of the snipe hunt, I won’t let the magic of seven goals scored carry me too far in either direction; I’ll neither hype the result, nor wallow in its flaws. In the biggest of pictures, the fact that SKC has sucked more than their share this season falls well short of a state secret, so I didn’t expect anything more from them than energetic resistance. And, to give a general opinion, how have they not moved on from Peter Vermes? His shit’s been baking in the sun for a year or three by now…

In my mind, the entire game turned on SKC handing Portland the first goal, and so cheaply too. The defenders parted and, lo, goal opened wide for Bill Tuiloma. Nothing about that goal made sense; all that time to organize and you let a guy shoot free from eight yards out. The game didn’t end there, of course - they had a whole damn second half of slapstick ahead - and SKC briefly threatened to get back into it. I put that period into the space between the 10th minute and the 25th, and it produced a couple shots from range, but not much more. Things loosened up a bit over final 20 minutes of the first half, but neither team did much; as recorded in one strand of the mini-multiverse of twitter threads I had in this game, I begged for someone, anyone to find inspiration around Portland in the first half, because I could not.

MLS Weakly, Week 10: The Many Best, the Few Worst, the Muddle

Eh....

To tap out on the obvious question early, I don’t follow (or care about) the U.S. Open Cup because, for all its history, you can’t really learn anything from it. The MLS teams (generally) cut all the corners they can until the very end and, in the context of figuring out who’s got what, it feels like reading the wrong material for the test.

Also, yes, I know this is late to the point of pointlessness, but I made a commitment and, no matter how many times I disavowed the same (so, so many; so many), I will walk this plank until I run out of wood.

And, naturally, I’ve tinkered with the format…speaking for myself, I’d keep reading these things for that running pratfall. Rather than lead with all the results and then pick them apart, I’m just going to walk through them one at a time. I’ll start with the games I spot-checked, wrap up on the games I ignored and slip whatever (additional) comments I have on the two teams I follow (again, FC Cincinnati and the Portland Timbers) in between the two. Also, I’m ditching the Heaven, Purgatory, Hell arrangement - which didn’t seem to, y’know, pop! - for another organizing concept: Is It Safe? That’s part homage to the famous scene from Marathon Man, and part a reference to the current standings in Major League Soccer’s Eastern and Western Conferences. The question I’ll try to answer/divine is whether the current standings in each look like they’ll hold.

I’ll get to that fool’s errand at the end of all this. Before that, let’s talk results. Briefly. I’d encourage people who want more details, more drilling down on tactics, more data to Matt Doyle’s Armchair Analyst weekly review (which I crib below; see italics), or, better to the independents writing about this stuff in your local and/or chosen soccer market. The main thing I want my notes to communicate is whether or not people should buy the result. Here goes…and, as always, links to The Mothership’s data caves are embedded in each final score.

Club du Foot Montreal 4-1 Orlando City SC (And Montreal’s rebranding again…right?)
[Based on the following segments of the game: 10th to 25th, 37th to 45th+, 45th to 55th, 66th to 72nd, 77th to 84th; also the box score.]
Oh, yeah. Montreal kicked the shit out of Orlando. They exploited them (4th goal) and broke them down (2nd); there was simply never a mount in which Montreal wasn’t the subject and Orlando the object. One thing I noted was the way Montreal defended: a combination of immediate and close whenever the ball goes into the attacking third; call it man-marking, only without the dogma and only in certain parts of the field. As for Orlando, they have this way of announcing they’ve run out of ideas like few teams in MLS (…wait, Portland?), and so it went. Getting back to Montreal, they’re on a hell of a run: 15 points from the last 21 games, and most of those results signal quality. I feel fine saying Montreal has arrived - i.e., I don’t really look at their schedule, because I can see them getting points out of any game - but I’m not convinced they’ll stay there. On the plus side, Kamal Miller has looked man of the match good in every stretch I’ve watched this season. On the downside, and this falls under speculation, I can’t get myself to see a front three of Romell Quioto, Djordje Mihailovic and Joaquin Torres carrying them through a full season, then the playoffs. They’ll be interesting to watch, regardless.

Minnesota United FC 0-1 FC Cincinnati: A Better View

It's good up here.

“It’s like watching a sunset that no one would bother to comment on.”

“And why does Geoff Cameron always looked so fevered when the camera cuts close, like he just killed somebody or something. Is that some kind of resting face?”

“The question of which Minnesota team shows up matters as much as anything, but, so long as Cincy can settle into the game and keep Minnesota generally in front of them, I feel good about them getting a point out of this one. And, unlike past seasons, they’ve improved enough at picking pockets that three points isn’t crazy (even if it remains, in my mind, crazy unlikely)…”

The first two quotes above are tweets I wrote during the second half of FC Cincinnati’s 1-0 great, because it came late, road win over Minnesota United FC. A scheduling conflict caused me to miss the first half - so maybe I wasn’t…fully invested in the game - but the game really did look like a whole lot of half-frantic nothing by that time - i.e., two teams taking chances, but not too many and none of them very big.

The third quote comes from the preview I posted for this game last Friday. I appreciate that only assholes quote themselves (“And I’m quoting myself here” is a legitimate cause for punching a fella), and the thought itself is vague enough to apply to somewhere around 86% of road games in soccer, but, I’d like to think that Brandon Vazquez’s post-90 winner slots nicely into the space in between “isn’t crazy” and “crazy unlikely.” That said, it followed from a remarkable situation, one that broke the mold of taking chances, because Cincy had committed over half the team into Minnesota’s defensive third - again, after the 90th minute. The move started down the left and the Loons defense choked off that avenue, but it took just two passes to get the ball over to Cincinnati’s right where Luciano Acosta suddenly found himself drunk with options. He went with a good one - Calvin Harris’ run around and against the depth of Minnesota’s defense - and, when Bakaye Dibassy and Oniel Fisher failed to track Vazquez’s run (and in somewhat shocking fashion, honestly), that left Cincy’s leading goal-scorer with something close to a tap-in. I, along with Michael Boxall, couldn’t believe it.

I think every FC Cincinnati fan knows they made history yesterday - i.e., three straight wins for the first time in its MLS history. That doesn’t just feel good - though it very much does - those three wins have put Cincy to within four points of their (fucking) total points for 2021, and at just one-third of the way into the 2022 season. People parsing the subtext of the preview could see I kept my guard pretty high going into this game, but I’m just gonna let myself feel good about not just yesterday’s win, but pretty much everything going on around the Orange and Blue this season.

Red Bull New York 1-1 Portland Timbers: Through Wind, Through Rain, Through Bull, etc.

It is called showing up to work. Dammit.

To offer a metaphor, the Portland Timbers road game at Harrison, New Jersey, compared to the experience of walking to the mailbox in a windstorm. It feels impossible when you first step into it, but, foot by foot, you figure out how to stand up, then you figure out how to walk, and, finally, you get the mail. Mission accomplished.

Sure, the wind still knocked you into a face-plant on the way back, but also, you got mail!

To set aside the metaphor, the Timbers poached a point from Red Bull New York, and stole two of theirs in the deal. No one wanted the 1-1 draw it ended on, but, returning to the metaphor, Portland found their feet tonight, and it was good. With few exceptions, either for players or in moments, they looked neither flustered nor too casual, and nearly every player in green grew into the game. Even if the result itself wasn’t good, it was good for morale. Die with yer boots on, if you’re gonna go down, take a good swing before the stars come out, etc.

To expand the commentary(/switch metaphors), playing Red Bull amounts to an effort in treading water - i.e., keeping your head up long enough find a safe harbor where you can get it together and get out of the situation. And, after a shaky start - and Pablo Bonilla and Marvin Loria stood out in that regard - the Timbers did that. In a nice bit of chemistry meeting in the middle, they collectively picked up the pace on the passes and provided options to make them happen. The way Red Bull plays makes it hard to get far out ahead - and, if you love the Timbers don’t look at the xG (because it wasn’t far wrong) - but Portland chose a moment to try to get something out of the game and pulled it off. I’ll have more on that later - due to some specifics I want to pull out - but, after three games after fairly uncompetitive soccer, just the idea of rising to an opponent plays like a choir of angels.

The Red Bulls got back into the game, of course. It took them about five minutes after the Timbers’ go-ahead goal (wait for it) for them to scratch back into the game, and only 10 minutes (or so) after that for Aaron Long to put back a second ball off a corner kick, but, a (heavy) flurry on the fringes of Portland’s back-line aside, the home team didn’t create a lot of opportunities. Moreover, when a great opening bounced their way, one that saw Omar Fernandez wide open and way up the field on Justin Rasmussen’s side and with young Justin on walkabout, the further he pushed up-field, the lonelier he got. That happened around the 82nd minute; the legs just weren’t there, something that has long struck me as the risk side of RBNY risk/reward system. I wouldn’t say they had an actual bad night; it’s more that when you shoot a little wild, as they do, you don’t hit a lot.

Portland Timbers Preview: On Fears of Getting Run Over

We all need a hero...

Red Bull New York has yet to win at home in the 2022 season. that’s the cheeriest thought I have to pass on about the Portland Timbers’ trip to Harrison, New Jersey this weekend.

The buzz from Yimmi Chara’s back-to-back bicycle-kick goals wore off weeks ago, leaving Portland’s fans sipping stale coffee in the hopes that, if nothing else, they can stay awake until the Timbers do. The Timbers’ goals-for number stalled just over three games ago (is it possible for that number to go down?) - think the exact number is 282 minutes plus stoppage time - and I’m imagineering like a motherfucker, but still can’t picture how that changes against a Red Bulls team that, assuming they play as they normally do, will press every passer for large stretches of this game. On the plus side, Josecarlos Van Rankin is suspended for this one.

He's the most draining culprit, of course, but not many Timbers have looked like a realist’s picture of composure for several weeks. I can see any number of Portland players making a loose pass or failing to control the same, and turnovers like that will put the Red Bulls between two and five passes from scoring. The Red Bulls have scored reliably this season - they’ve only been kept off the board twice so far (again, both games at home). Just one more note on this: as with their pressing, you don’t see the goal coming until they ball has already gone in. That’s to say, unless I’m very wrong about how this game will play out, Portland’s Aljaz Ivacic will need to come alert and limber for this one.

The only break I really see Portland catching: the theoretical possibility that they’ll be able to transition against the Red Bulls gegen-press (against v gegen?). The Red Bulls do throw numbers into their press, something that should help the Timbers get vertical; going the other way, their press has looked super well-organized in all the investigative safaris I’ve undertaken - and I’ve got a second on that perception from the broadcast both more than once. Add a couple steady backstops (e.g., Aaron Long and Sean Nealis), a pair of herding-dog maniacs in front of them (e.g., Christian Casseres, Jr. and Frank Amaya, most of the time), and you’re left waiting for Carlos Coronel to bail you out with something stupid. Bottom line, Red Bull has been for any team to play through - they’ve given up just seven goals so far (average = 0.78 goals per game) - and that doesn’t pair so good with…you know.

FC Cincinnati Preview: Looking Past the Broken Ruler, Perhaps to the Future

Depends on what you're measured against.

When FC Cincinnati lines up against Minnesota United FC, they’ll be squaring off against a (mostly) full team - unlike their last two against Toronto FC - and a better one top-to-bottom to boot. The final result won’t give a perfect measurement of how tall they stand at round about 1/3 of the way in 2022 - playing on the road against a non-conference opponent, etc. - but this should still send a clearer signal on that than the past couple of games. It may not be showtime yet, but it feels like dress rehearsals have arrived.

I looked past the eight-inch-equals-a-foot ruler (aka, Toronto) when I posted a fairly giddy write-up of their midweek win over Toronto, but Minnesota should test those bright, shining talking points and in both directions.

First, after struggling to score at the start of the season, the Loons literally doubled their goals-for total on the season in just two games - e.g., a 3-0 home win over Colorado on April 17 and a 3-0 win over Chicago a week later. I think a fair amount of this got stitched into a frame of, “as goes Reynoso, so goes Minnesota,” which isn’t crazy, but it’s also incomplete. As much as Emanuel “Bebe” Reynoso waking up has helped, Cincy will get pulled apart of they don’t keep an eye on the rest - Robin Lod, in particular, who has looked somewhere between good and great every time I’ve watched Minnesota. They have some decent supporting characters after that - e.g., Franco Fragapane, plus Kemar Lawrence bombing up the left (and Oniel Fisher just came in on the right), and that unit up top has produced a handful of moves that pulled defenses across like warm taffy. And, sure, Minnesota failed to keep that up against LAFC last weekend, but that’s LAFC. (Plus they started a couple players I don’t know, e.g., Bongokuhle Hlongwane, also Joseph Rosales over(?) Wil Trapp.)

Between feeling a lot better about Cincinnati’s defensive structure and the small sample size Minnesota’s offensive resurgence, I can picture Cincy keeping the game close; on a good day, they might even keep them off the board. What I’m having a harder time seeing is Cincinnati scoring early (as they have been), or scoring more than one goal (again). Minnesota’s attack might have taken a few weeks to come online, but the defense has been solid since First Kick - see three clean sheets and limiting everyone but the Sounders and LAFC to just one goal. That'd be swell company to keep if Cincinnati can get in the room, but Minnesota has contained its share of reasonably potent attacks - e.g., Austin FC (in Austin), Nashville SC(maybe), and Red Bull New York.

That’s pretty much it; call it a chance to show how far Cincinnati has come - and since as recently as 2021. The question of which Minnesota team shows up matters as much as anything, but, so long as Cincy can settle into the game and keep Minnesota generally in front of them, I feel good about them getting a point out of this one. And, unlike past seasons, they’ve improved enough at picking pockets that three points isn’t crazy (even if it remains, in my mind, crazy unlikely). Till they play it (or, in my case, until the morning after; damn the scheduling conflicts…).

FC Cincinnati 2-0 Toronto FC: Caveats on the Edge of Expectation

You can't talk around some things.

I can no other but start with the caveats…don’t worry, I’m not gonna bitch about how FC Cincinnati should have won this by more than two goals…

…but they should have…

…I mean, just the two chances for Brenner alone. And, yeah, I have to break a rule I only laid down last weekend, because we have to talk about Brenner. Just not quite yet. Because caveats.

Toronto rolled into town down starting center backs (Chris Mavinga and Carlos Salcedo, even if the latter didn’t cover himself in glory last Saturday), and without club mascot, Jonathan Osorio. Just five of the players who started Toronto’s eye-catching, and yet possibly deceiving loss to New York City FC way back on April 24 started tonight. You could say they had their stars - e.g., Jesus Jimenez, Alejandro Pozuelo and Michael Bradley - but both experience and name recognition falls off a cliff from there.

And then the bottom fell of what already started as non-ideal for Toronto. First, Brandon Vazquez broke their (why?) high line and sliced a cross from right to left for Calvin Harris to slot home. Like, at most, two minutes later, Osorio’s stand-in, Ralph Priso-Mbongue, lunged at Obinna Nwodobo’s leg, cleats about knee level, and off he goes. So, that’s Toronto down a man and a goal inside the first five minutes. Toronto battled on gamely from that, even punched close to level on a couple stats (but the xG speaks volumes), but I’m guessing they asked themselves why bother at that point.

All that’s to say, last night’s game ended 2-0 to Cincy on the scoreboard, but it might have ended before Toronto even caught the plane. I mean, Cincinnati scored again, a penalty kick, but...eh. There’s not much game to analyze, so I’m just going to pass on a some notes and get ready for the next one. Of which…

I Would Have Liked a Tougher Game
To be clear, I am delighted to see Cincinnati in 6th place (sixth!), and on 13 points(!; just seven points shy of 2021’s total! can you believe that shit!?), but a more whole opponent and fewer gifts would have sent them to Minnesota in a sharper frame of mind. Arguably. Call it free-floating anxiety about complacency, but Minnesota will be tougher, and in both directions, success is forged in iron, etc.

MLS Weakly, Week 9: Can I Get a 2-1? (Or a 1-2?), and the Divine Comedy Rankings

Till that gate drops, these are my takes.

I had this theory that Major League Soccer’s Week 9 churned out a bunch of surprises - most them 1-2 reversals for the home team. On checking back to the preview thread I posted…shit, Saturday morning(? things continue to run together post-COVID; turns out it was middle-age all along), things played out close enough to as expected.

In the interest of time, yours and mine, I decided to tighten the format this weekend. I’ll be keeping the Heaven, Purgatory, Hell formula to organize the teams (aka, The Divine Comedy Rankings), only Purgatory will just be Purgatory - i.e., the place in between - with no distinction between the teams rising and falling. The results helped with that, for what it’s worth.

Speaking of which, I’ve moved (most of) the commentary on the individual teams in the notes on each result and to dropped the Divine Comedy Rankings at the end. In other words, what I write about the results should speak to the placement of each team. All the results from MLS Week 9 below are bolded, but I put the ones I gave a longer look in italics, as always, I linked to The Mothership’s game summary home page in each final score. Oh, and the asterisk on the signals a result I didn’t expect. I didn’t have time to dig into any as I’d like [Ed. - I’m moving to a Thursday bowling league in three weeks, so that should help], but…I mean, I expected the result, so what was there to see?

Fine. I did some poking around. Off to it…

Houston Dynamo FC 1-2 Austin FC
This one I would have watched, but the rat bastards at ESPN have this thing about not broadcasting Austin games. It started with a terrible fuck-up/exquisite goal, but played out the way all Dynamo FC games, if only in my mind - i.e., they score force and then watch the opposition slowly draw back either one or three points. That stats point to the opposite of a free-for-all, so file that away. Ausitn is doing well, obviously, though I’ll call that goals-for stat a lie until they tie me to a chair and put an apparatus that lets mice to nibble at my face over my head. Also, this (this is from Matt Doyle’s Week 9 review, as some other things will be):

“Their highs were really high and their lows were really low. What it came down to was that against some of the poorer, less defensively disciplined teams in the league, that ability to use the ball sometimes made the Verde look like an irresistible force. Make bad teams chase, open up new gaps in the process, then hit those gaps. Rinse, repeat, win. Austin showed a good chunk of that last year.”

Also:

“But now the other shoe is about to drop, and that theory is going to get stress tested against the other half of the table. Seven of Austin’s next 10 games are on the road, and eight of those 10 are against teams that I’m pretty sure are either very good, or very talented, or both.”

My soft spot for Houston takes another blow…

Toronto FC 1-2 FC Cincinnati: I Have Seen Your Product And I'd Like to Purchase It

A visual of the game plan.

When Toronto FC started catching up to FC Cincinnati’s mildly auspicious start, I’ll confess to it: yes, I started to doubt the program again. Watching them pass through Cincy one line at a time over and over made them look likelier to take charge and, as the minutes passed, put increasing pressure of Cincinnati’s…let’s call it non-ideal center back pairing of Ian Murphy and Nick Hagglund.

And then, like a script from one of those Hollywood movies, a good one like Rudy, Hagglund and Murphy combined to put FC Cincinnati up 1-0 just before the ref’s whistle called the end of the first half.

With that in mind, you start to re-think what you watched in the second half: the palpable disappointment from Toronto’s broadcast booth gets louder - “they got to play faster,” they said, “they’re not moving Cincinnati’s defenders around enough” - and, little by little (only in the opposite direction), it dawns on you that Cincy just managed the first half of a road game, and well enough that Toronto’s attack - which had averaged 2.6 goals per game in the five games prior (said average got a bump last weekend, fwiw) - rarely got close enough to apply pressure on Murphy and Hagglund. (And then you wake up the next morning to watch the highlights, because you’re not sure if you forgot something, and that confirms the above - e.g., that Toronto only fired a couple of shots from range in that first half). And then the second half started…

Toronto’s sloppiness hurt them throughout the first half; every ball that slipped behind a smart run slowed them down and allowed Cincinnati time to get that usefully spongy defense stacked right. The problem started at their back-line, particularly in the person of Carlos Salcedo…and have I mentioned that Toronto’s Chris Mavinga limped off in the middle of the first half, because that might be relevant. At any rate and early in the second half, one of Salcedo’s stray passes rolled over the touch-line in Toronto’s defensive third. It didn’t seem like a big deal, even after Cincinnati’s Alvas Powell set up for a long throw because and, you know, how often do those work? Then, lo and behold (and who’d they pay to make it happen?), Powell’s throw-in looped over the heads of two, three Toronto defenders and falls straight to the foot of Luciano Acosta. One second and two touches later, the ball bulged the side of Alex Bono’s net. 2-0 Cincinnati.