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| How it started. Going was MLS Cup 2009! |
The post ends with a scale I came up with to measure the long-term success of every team in Major League Soccer. It does some things well (e.g., count trophies/achievements), other things less well (capture recent trends). It's called the Joint Points Scale and you can find a link that explains what it does. I was really stoned when I came up with the scale and wrote the post. Caveat lector. With that...
Thumbnail History
I’m here to tell the kids that joining MLS as an expansion team today is nothing like what it was in the mid-2000s. Back then, the incoming front office couldn’t sign even one designated player – the Designated/aka “Beckham Rule” wasn’t codified until 2007 – which left any incoming team picking through the same crappy, exhausted buffet, as every other team in the league, aka, the Superdraft and whatever scraps they could buy from overseas. That’s the league Chivas USA and Real Salt Lake stepped into in 2005 and, golly, does “stepped into” get right to it. To their (very temporary) credit, Chivas USA turned over a competitive roster within one season – notably, by signing some soon-to-be famous young Americans - but it took RSL three-plus seasons to climb that mini-Everest. They built their first, best teams around rightful MLS legends like Kyle Beckerman, Javier Morales, and long-time anchor/boogeyman/legend, Nick Rimando, but they also did some next-level work in terms of finding great complimentary players like Fabian Espindola and, to turn the backline into a wall, Jamison Olave and Nat Borchers. When it all finally came together with a couple players who understood their roles and played them well – e.g., Ned Grabavoy and Will Johnson as shuttlers in a midfield-four diamond – they became one of MLS 2.0’s most consistent – and dangerous – teams. RSL didn’t just make the 2008 playoffs, they pushed to the semifinals. Just one season later, they lifted MLS Cup 2009 by holding off a pre-peak Los Angeles Galaxy team through regulation and extra-time and giving them one of the most famous Rimando-ings in MLS history. Over the next several season, they made Rio Tinto Stadium into a fortress with a 29-home-game unbeaten streak that started in June 6, 2009 (their road form, on the other hand…), but even that triumphal time included one of the most sharply painful moments in MLS history. RSL reached the final of the 2010-2011 CONCACAF Champions’ League tournament and, after drawing Liga MX’s Monterrey 2-2 in Mexico, all they needed to become the first MLS team to hoist the revamped regional club championship trophy was a keep Monterrey off the board in the fortress they’d built. All that promise came undone when some guy named Humberto Andres Suavo Pontivo scored at the 45th minute for Monterrey and, even with their (then-)best all-time roster and flashy, yet strapping forward Alvaro Saborio on board, RSL couldn’t pull back that one goal. RSL survived the blow and, with the balance of the core still intact, they reached the semifinals again in 2011 and MLS Cup again in 2013. They ultimately lost that game, but the success head coach Jason Kreis enjoyed between 2008-2013 made him not just a hot commodity, but the subject (or is it an object?) of a campaign that tried to whisper him to the U.S. Men’s National Team hot seat. He ditched them when New York City FC showed a little leg (before they even had horses, it bears noting), but the familiar pattern set in: player by player and season by season, the members of that team either aged out or moved on. RSL never fully slipped all the way under the waves – they’ve made the last eight in the playoffs four times since 2013, including a trip to the Western Conference final in 2021 - but they have struggled with getting enough quality on the same roster in the same season to take them that vital one step further.
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| "Olympic guy pole vault balls" |
With this post, we get to the first team reviewed to reach the 2025 MLS Cup playoffs. RSL’s junk hit the bar on the way over – they only made it by winning one more game than San Jose and they had a worse goal differential – and they gave my Portland Timbers a last happy memory by losing in the play-in, but they made it all the same. The defense held up all right – led by long-timer, Justen Glad, and the “physical bite” of (2/3 of) Brayan Vera, they slipped just under the league average for goals allowed - which indicts an attack that, in a contraction, didn’t. Zavier Gozo got a little buzz (and looks promising!), but Diego Luna ate up the rest of the attention. The fact his nine goals and seven assists topped a team that barely scored one goal per game (38 goals in 34 = 1.12 goals/game) tells you what you need to know about the output from the rest. Their front office made some weird moves early – e.g., bringing in Willy Agada and, more mysteriously, Johnny Russell – but looked to make amends with late additions like DeAndre Yedlin from Cincy and Nigerian forward, Victor Olatunji. The latter arrived one game(?) before the former, but they both started seven games down the stretch – plenty of time given the margins between teams – and RSL played most opposition all right. Sadly, back-to-back 1-4 losses to LAFC gave the better read of their future. When they rolled into Providence Park/Portland for the playoff play-in on a 3-10-4 road record, small wonder the Timbers sent them packing with a 1-3 loss/3-11-4.
Long-Term Tendencies v Recent Trends
Once they crawled out of the 2005-07 dumpster fire, RSL found the most reliable path to trophies: fielding a rock-solid defense and setting competent attacking players loose in front of that wall. And yet, fun-fact about RSL’s best seasons: even with Morales for an ace and players like Espindola, Saborio and (why not throw him on?) Joao Plata running ahead of him, RSL stayed right around the MLS average for goals scored in most of the seasons between 2008 and 2014. They tipped well over average just once in that run - the 2013 MLS Cup-losing season (and just one more time since) – but RSL has a long and generally uninterrupted history of average attacking numbers. Their fortunes soured right around the same time the defenses went soft, with the squishiest points coming between 2017 and 2021. A freakin’ terrible attack killed their hopes in the crib in 2022, but, as noted above, playoff spots started to pick up around the same time the defense tightened up.
Players I Still Like/Additions So Far
Unless a handful of homegrowns (including Zach Booth, an RSL academy kid called home on loan from Excelsior Rotterdam) takes even the lower half of the West by storm, the front office hasn’t given Diego “Default Face of the Franchise” Luna much to work with. The subtractions didn’t take much away – e.g., letting go of Agada and Russell felt like further amends for dodgy gambles (click and scroll down for the rest) – but seeing them let go of Vera (to Montreal) and Braian Ojeda (to Orlando) do leave me wondering. Luna deserves his plaudits and Yedlin’s a great guy/leader to build around, and the early returns on Olatunji look good (and large); Glad gives them another solid piece, but that leaves a handful of holes to fill on around there. Call this another team with work to do before First Kick – and with a gap to close on top of that. Fortunately, I see a lot of wiggle in the West.
Historical Success(/Hysterical Failure)
Total Joy Points: 16
How They Earned Them (& How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
MLS Cup: 2009
MLS Cup Runner-Up: 2013
MLS Playoffs Semifinals: 2008, 2011, 2021
MLS Playoffs/Quarterfinals: 2010, 2012, 2014, 2018, 2019
CCL Semifinals: 2011
CCL Quarterfinals: 2016
U.S. Open Cup Runner-Up: 2013
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