MLS Week 24 Review: Wings of a Sparrow, Ass of a (Filthy) Crow

Ready...aim...

Once again, I’m totally committing to a formula of watching (nearly) every Portland Timbers and (going forward) every FC Cincinnati game and going deep on any game involving their next opponent. As the social media ground...moves...under my feet, I move with it.

As for the rest, I’ve been trying to figure out how to write my Major League Soccer weekly roundups as narratives, not just because I feel like that’s my forte (humor me), but because I believe that beats trying to extract/conjure singular...details, anecdotes, stats...just fucking things for a bunch of games and about a bunch of teams I couldn’t possibly absorb. The goal for this post is to tell four inter-related, inter-woven stories about the MLS Week that just passed – Week 24, in this case – and to leave it there. Taking it all in from a bird’s-eye view, in other words. The subject for the four stories will be self-evident from the titles, thus endeth this part of the preamble.

WHEREAS...just fucking with you. Legal assistant joke. At any rate...

The second part of this post – and, here, the sloppiest – is nothing but the raw notes I produced by watching the highlights (the little seven-minute jobbers), and looking at things like the stats pages, the line-ups when the highlights didn’t provide them, and the (holy, bless’d) Form Guide. With this edition, I only decided to include said raw notes about seven games into the process, so I didn’t type those with readers in mind. The change comes when I started typing "TRENDS" and "GAME" in the notes/summaries, but I didn't really fully commit to the concept until the Colorado/Dallas game. So, yeah, expect gibberish, but also expect the “raw” notes to read a little less raw in future reviews.

Right. On with the stories.

Notes on MLS East
I’d call Club de Foot Montreal taking another nibble out of their lifeline (i.e., their home record) and Nashville SC getting all existential about whether they’re anything without Hany Mukhtar as the biggest stories in the East for MLS Week 24. Honorable mentions abound – e.g., a deserved New England Revolution equalizer against Red Bull New York (again, what is VAR but the same bullshit delivered after a long delay?) – but they remain honorable mentions because, e.g., that equalizer wouldn’t have changed the world or any major narratives or anything.

MLS Week 22 Preview: On the Clout Maintenance Parade

Apt. And possibly copyrighted.

Gonna just kind of riff through the match-ups. Make it conversational...if in the espirit d'escalier vein.

Just to note it, I have two questions in my head when talking about any game: what is the likeliest result and how much would any other result matter?

To be clear, I mean the word “matter” in the context of Major League Soccer, a league where meaningful change occurs at geological speed. On with it...

Major League Soccer’s Week 22 kicks off smartly with the New England Revolution visiting FC Cincinnati – and no doubt scheming about how to batter or otherwise breach the walls of Fortress TQL. I imagine the U.S. Men’s pulverizing of St. Kitts & Nevis means Cincy won’t have Matt Miazga for another week, so maybe that’s the lever to finally crack Cincy’s home form. Only bad gamblers believe random events can be in any way “due,” so I’ll only say this: a Revolution win would make a good argument that they’ve pushed through their blues. Related/unrelated, FC Cincinnati has built a reputation they’re now damned to uphold until that burden falls from their shoulders.

That theme carries through a lot of the other games, or at least the good ones. I’d call...let’s go with “clout maintenance” as the primary theme of Week 22. To wit: Club de Foot Montreal will want to maintain his Cincy-esque home form – and their lifeline – by beating a limping New York City FC; the same goes double for the San Jose Earthquakes, who face the horror of waking up Sunday morning knowing that thousands observers will no longer say “yeah, but their home form,” with the same breezy confidence that people say, “yeah, but it’s a dry heat” (as you’re sweating off eight pounds just talking to them) if they hand even one point to the visiting/suffering Los Angeles Galaxy; finally, St. Louis CITY FC should expect to feel a similar heat (now, with humidity!) if they drop points to a visiting Colorado Rapids team with a straight-up shitty record of picking up any points no matter how hard the other team drops them. Another commonality in all those games: wins by any of NYC, the Galaxy or the Rapids won’t change many minds or raise low opinions.

A Casual Fan's MLS Review/Preview, Weeks 12/13: 1,000 Licks to a Disappointing Center of a Tootsie Pop

Seriously. None taken.

Recent fans of Major League Soccer should be familiar with the way a bunch of teams settle in the middle of the table and languish there for the remainder of the season, neither rising nor falling, trading wins for losses or just racking up the ties. I feel like the phenomenon has gotten worse in recent seasons, but nostalgia also has its way of fogging the mind.

At any rate, it feels like that bullshit arrived ahead of schedule this season in the form of, get this, eight (8!) teams in the Eastern Conference sitting on 15 points, along with the Portland Timbers in West. The West’s doughy middle is nowhere near as expansive – honestly, I’d locate and limit its center around Portland, Houston Dynamo FC and the Vancouver Whitecaps (both on 14 points) – and they’ve generally done a better job of producing a class of haves and have nots.

That sucks in the real world, of course – no man should collect $5 billion annually while 50,000 families struggle to get food to the table – but a professional sports league needs such a divide to create both grand clashes and epic upsets....have a mentioned that MLS Week 13 looks like a a bit of a dud yet?

In defense of all the above, the East’s big squishy middle – and even the West’s slimmer, better-distributed one – came about precisely due to unexpected losses and surprise wins (see the bless'd, holy Form Guide). For instance, the Philadelphia Union finally started to look like themselves after rattling off three straight wins, while all three of Inter Miami CF, Club de Foot Montreal and Charlotte FC rose to the East’s fatted center by way of more or less unbroken winning streaks. Other teams took the opposite path, sinking into the middle after baiting too many pundits into seeing too much glory in too many games – e.g., Columbus Crew SC – while Minnesota United has fallen straight through the West’s middle and with no bottom yet sighted.

That’s bit chintzy for a review, I get it, but this is one of those damned weeks where the league doesn’t give a man a chance to look around and...really take things in. “MLS Week 13” kicks off 4:30 tomorrow, after all, and MLS Week 14 kicks off just three days later and at the same time, fer Christ’s sakes.

The Weakly, MLS Week 3 Preview: Observations and Expectations on a Slow Bus to an Expanded Station

My money's on Pennsylvania...

Seems like it was only yesterday since I wrapped up MLS Week 2, and yet here comes MLS Week 3, barreling toward the 2023 post-season with the speed and urgency of a Greyhound milk-run puttering from Maine to Cincinnati, Ohio (which I do not recommend, btw). A couple early narratives have taken shape – and I’ve laced those into the notes on Week 3’s games below – but, as we all know, there’s plenty of road ahead and they added a new wing to Cincinnati’s bus station. [NOTE: This is not accurate, please do not rely upon. So far as I know, Cincy built its Greyhound station in the 1950s and promptly forgot it existed.] In case it's not clear, all the above is a tortured analogy for the long regular season and expanded playoffs...

I cobbled together the observations below based on what I saw last weekend (my notes on that), some glassy-eyed staring at the soon-to-be invaluable Form Guide, and some stray stuff I’ve picked up, mostly from half-reading Sam Jones’ Daily Kickoff newsletter...whoa, just realized I haven’t so much as glanced at a Matt Doyle column since First Kick...

To be clear, I don’t really do predictions. It’s more kicking around expectations and pulling for results that amuse, baffle and, on the best of days, titillate. Anyhoo, there’s plenty below, so I’ll shut up and get to it. Starting with the two teams followed in this space, and in the order they’ll play on Saturday.

FC Cincinnati v Seattle Sounders
If someone told me to kick a dent into Seattle’s reputation, I’d try the three following arguments:

1) They’ve played both games at home.

2) One of the teams they hosted, the Colorado Rapids, has a history of being their punching bag (18-7-2 all-time) and Colorado’s Lalas Abubakar played part in two of those four goals. [Ed. - Fun fact: the Sounders actually have a losing historical record against Real Salt Lake at 11-12-5.]

3) Neither Colorado nor RSL has what FC Cincinnati has in the attack...when it’s rolling.

A lot of that boils down to another way of asking, how optimistic do you feel about Cincinnati in 2023?

MLS Week 1 Weekly, The Weakliest Weekly of the Season

And it'll happen again about as often.

Major League Soccer’ 2023 season kicked off Saturday with a weather-delay and an outright cancellation – so, nothing on either LA team – but, more to the point, it came with a couple upsets, one of the worst individual performances I’ve seen in years [Ed. – after reviewing some tape, make that two], and a healthy slice of late goals. Better, one of the upsets had the other two things. Which to say, the opening week hit at least one trifecta.

This post marches through nearly all the games - some more in depth than others – with...fairly quick and general notes about MLS Week. And I’ll cap off the post with “what does it all mean” for the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati. (Anyone interested in deeper dives into either of those can dive into Portland’s C&C Match Report and/or Cincinnati’s CC& Match Report), but I really do want these posts to be about everyone else in the league Teams great, and the Chicago Fire FC. Hey...pulling for you guys.

As always, the links under each score will take you to The Motherships recap screens, which, to give them the odd “well done,” I’ve always found helpful. Wait! Are they doing the Form Guide this year?! Yep! How ‘bout that...still cuts off at 33 games. Right, let’s kick things off with..

The Conifers & Citrus Official Game of the Week
Inter Miami CF 2-0 Club de Foot Montreal
So...why this game? Put it this way: I went in with a sneaking suspicion and walked away feeling like I made the right call. Full disclosure: I watched at least three quarters of it and paid about the same amount of attention. About the game, first and foremost, Miami was better than good for that result. Neither goal was elegant – Serhii Kryvstov nudged in the first with his lap and it took substitute Shanyder Borgelin two cracks from six yards out to get the ball over the line, and even only came after Ariel Lassiter’s first shot pinged off the post straight to Borgelin’s feet – but Miami managed play in a way that somehow fails to show in the numbers. Yeah, my lying eyes call bullshit on the 78.7% passing accuracy number because Miami’s players seemed to find good open options everywhere they looked. At times, particularly in the first half, Montreal couldn’t escape their own half: Miami’s Jean Mota and Gregore hung a big ol’ “Thou Shalt Not Pass” across the middle of the field and, with help from Rodolfo Pizzaro, they directed traffic back to Montreal’s goal over and over again. Maybe all the misses came with penultimate and final passes that failed to connect because, despite the clinic in the midfield, Miami neither connected with the forwards – yes, it was Josef Martinez’s debut, and he lasted about two/thirds of the game – nor created a ton of chances...a statement that is, yes, belied by a respectable haul of 18 shots, 7 on goal. My lying fucking eyes.

MLS Weakly, Week 13: The Wild, Wild East and a Prematurely Settled West(?)

Damn good movie...

With time just…stupid-short between now and the commencement of either Week 14 & 15 or just week 14 - depends on how they count the mid-week slate, something beyond my control - I’ll have to keep things (somewhat) brief in this one.

As with every week, I posted a thread with some theories on Week 13. Here’s the hit/miss ratio on that:

Hits
I had doubts about the Los Angeles Galaxy’s (@ Vancouver Whitecaps), the Colorado Rapids’ (v San Jose Earthquakes) and the Portland Timbers’ (v FC Dallas) ability to handle game they should manage and two of them - LA and Colorado - proved me right (VAN 2-1 LAG, COL 1-1 SJ; the outlier, POR 1-0 FCD; bless you, Jeremy Ebobisse; my extended notes on the Portland’s thin win over Dallas). I dubbed other games salvage operations - i.e., a chance to disprove the theory of a slump (even a modest one) - and Week 13 saw two of those teams - the New England Revolution (@ Atlanta United FC) and the Philadelphia Union (v DC United) - argue they can play out of a slump (ATL 0-1 NE; PHI 2-1 DC; the third team, Orlando City SC, are now winless in three games and in unseemly locales (e.g., TFC 1-1 ORL). I called a couple games “credibility duels,” but only one of those gave a loud signal: Nashville SC kicked the shit ‘n’ stuffing out of a Chicago Fire FC team (NSH 5-1 CHI) that found three ways to trip over the same dick…which brings me to the “credibility duel” that went right yet weird and, the rest of the…

Misses
Club de Foot Montreal may have been FC Cincinnati, but, golly, did they turn it into a comedy; sadly, Cincy smothered whatever positives they might have taken from this by blowing two, two-goal leads in the same game, and allowing five goals besides (MTL 5-4 CIN: my extended notes on that game). I did worst on the two games I couldn’t get a read on going in - Columbus Crew SC v New York City FC and Los Angeles FC v Real Salt Lake - but I probably over-thought both of them, if one, like, A LOT more than the other. First, ignore the score-line because LAFC kicked the holy shit out of RSL (LAFC 2-1  RSL), then came back for one more. As for the other, the home team won between Columbus and NYCFC (CLB 2-1 NYC), but one part of thought on that - e.g., that only a New York win would give a clear signal about where each team was headed - came through in the stats/video. NYCFC had every chance to win the game, only to get stuffed by Eloy Room every time they didn’t get in their own way.

Club de Foot Montreal 5-4 FC Cincinnati: ................You Gotta Be Fucking Kidding Me

Another weakness: terrible box office numbers...

When I saw who Club de Foot Montreal had avaiable in defense, I had a sense they’d struggle at the back. When I saw who FC Cincinnati started in defense, the stench of trouble wafted into my nostrils.

Even with all those tells, I don’t believe a single human being who thinks and exists could have called the final 5-4(!) win for Montreal. “Hows” gave way to “whys” gave way to “what the fucks”: there’s almost no point in asking what went wrong when it’s that close to everything. Montreal gave up goals through sleepwalking nonchalance - if with an assist from Cincy’s press - but Cincinnati gave out both shots and goals like candy. For as many times as one could argue Cincinnati got robbed on this or that play - and I count three - Montreal found a shot and missed it by inches as many times. About those three times:

1) yes, play should have been stopped on Montreal’s first goal because the ref impeded Joe Gyau;

2) Montreal’s dude (think it was Victor Wanyama) fell into Yuya Kubo and that could have easily been called; and

3) it probably would have helped Kenneth Vermeer’s case that Mason Toye took a dive had he not got a cut on his forehead that clearly signaled some form of contact…and he came out too hot.

I’ll get to five thoughts on FC Cincinnati - and I’m gonna squeeze all the happiness I can out of them - but to start with Montreal.

They play soccer the same way one wears an ill-fitting sweater in general, but Montreal surprised me yesterday. The midfield spine (Wanyama and Emanuel Maciel) labored more than I thought it would against Cincy’s, but the defense…I mean, sure, Cincinnati pressed but their play was casual to the point of outright nudity back there - e.g, this should never happen anywhere outside pee-wee soccer. Going the other way, Montreal clearly have some decent pieces - new kid Joaquin Torres looks like one to watch (or Cincy’s bumbles made him so) - but, after watching them for a second full 90 minutes in 2021, my main question is....that [gestures toward Montreal] fourth in the Eastern Conference again? I get that I’m seeing them at their worst - maybe orange and blue hits them the same way the color yellow hits the Green Lantern? - but they’ve looked just as ragged every time I’ve taken 15 minutes to watch them. I’m not expecting them to stay fourth, basically.

MLS Weakly, Week 12: A Top 10 Storylines...that's right, we're using codenames.

No, look, there is a process...

So, yeah, I’m dicking with the concept again. Results rankings felt good for a while, but now they feel like a word salad with random names dropped in like tomatoes and bacon bits. In this post, I’m bumping that to the preamble - which is 85% about providing some notes on each game plus getting in links to all the Mothership’s game-data (embedded in the score, as always) - and going with a different approach:

A Top 10 Storylines from Major League Soccer Week 12. And it’s “a” instead of “the” because I don’t like being pushy. I’ll round it out with notes on every team that played last weekend. It’ll make sense by the end. Trust me. First, though, here are very short notes on all the games played between last Wednesday and last Friday, organized in the order I think they “matter.”

Los Angeles Galaxy 3-1 FC Dallas
The Galaxy’s prime directive in the here and now: keep pounding points out of punching bags. And, holy shit, did Dallas oblige. Oh, the errors.

New England Revolution 2-3 Toronto FC
There’s a (dangerous) whiff of complacency about the Revs right now; Toronto turned that into 25 minutes of mastery…which they later surrendered.

Club de Foot Montreal 2-1 New York City FC
I’ve been waiting for MLS’s mystery team to send a clear signal; this comes closest to a clear one.

Colorado Rapids 2-0 Minnesota United FC
Everything I saw said Colorado won this clean; Minnesota’s night can be summed up in Andre Shinyashiki scoring after playing a one-man give-and-go.

Red Bull New York 1-1 Philadelphia Union
Two teams that will fight you and both look like they have the quality to land a knockout blow. That's all I've got on both teams for now.

Club du Foot Montreal 1-2 FC Cincinnati: (Long-Suffering) Heroes & Off-Switches

It doesn't matter that the bar is low; it's that you clear it.

“…but what I want to see from #FCCincy this weekend is win-or-die-trying commitment. Low bar.”

That was the last sentence of the preview thread I posted Friday afternoon for FC Cincinnati’s stunning, victorious 2-1 visit to Montreal-sur-la Gulf. I have two thoughts:

1) FC Cincy responded, with one player in particular clearing the bar; and
2) the bar wasn’t all that low in the end.

Those thoughts expand on and compliment one another: Club du Foot Montreal had Cincinnati at one form of their mercy or another for, oh, the middle 50 minutes of this game - i.e., from the 20th minute to about the 70th. It was never outright dominance - Cincy’s 5-3-2 saw to that - but the Orange & Blue played a big part of this game on the wrong side of a submission hold. Key players for Montreal got on the sharp end of their attack moves - Romell Quioto, Victor Wanyama and Djordje Mihailovic stood out; having Quioto basically post-up at the top of the area over the last 20 minutes of the first half caused all kinds of trouble - building pressure to, yes, a breaking point.

After 40 minutes of giving away very little, Cincinnati lost track of who had who on their left and Montreal got one of their bread-and-butter breakaways behind a fullback (Ronald Matarrita in this case). (I think) Zachary Brault-Guillard raced down Montreal’s right with no defenders within 10 yards of him while Quioto ran just as buck-ass nude right up the middle. Brault-Guillard squared and…we all know how that ended, a catastrophic breakdown that miraculously didn’t end in catastrophe. Given the imbalance in play to that point, it didn’t look like an omen…

Montreal did score eventually and, again, the cascade of mistakes that allowed that goal should sober up any Cincy fans getting a contact high from this win - so sit through them all, like its penance. The broadcast booth talked about Rudy Camacho’s “great pass” to Mihailovic, but he only had to walk into the space Luciano Acosta opened in the 5-3-2 when he stepped forward to become the third Cincinnati player staring at Camacho. Mihailovic a wide-open lane toward goal from beginning to end, first, because no one was near him, and then again when Geoff Cameron let him free to run onto the square pass. Cincinnati made at least one more mistake that should have been fatal - I think it was Allan Cruz who straight-up passed the ball to Quioto inside Cincinnati’s penalty area - but Cameron cleaned up that fuck up, while Gustavo Vallecilla combined with ‘keeper Kenneth Vermeer to snuff out yet another occasion when Quioto got loose in the area. The point is, even in a conservative formation, Cincinnati could easily have given up three goals. Something about there but for the grace of CF Montreal…