MLS Weakly, March 2, 2022: The (Week 1) Review/Preview (Week 2), Hopes & Expectations

Welcome to the first MLS Weakly Review/Preview of the 2022 regular season. As implied by the title the first half of this post takes a look back at what happened with MLS Week 1 and the second looks ahead to MLS Week 2. I’m also going to squeeze longer notes on the next two opponents for the two teams I cover on this site, the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati, so maybe call those the first and second thirds instead. It’s possible (eh, make it probable) I’ll start posting separate previews for both teams when I’ve got more with which to work. Speaking of…

People familiar with this site and its…sure, let’s call it a methodology, know that I’ve grown increasingly obsessed with results over the past several seasons. Think of it as the “G” in “xG,” only it’s Results versus expected results.

Now, because there’s just one game in the books all ‘round…hey, just noticed no one had a bye week. Huh. Back to it, a one-game sample isn’t even 1/10th of dick, so don’t expect any sweeping conclusions below, declarations of doom or glory, etc., but, that doesn’t mean assumptions haven’t been made. I wrote a pair of posts in the second half of January 2022 - one where (after a bunch of bullshit) I effectively dismissed six teams from each conference as irrelevant, and another where I listed all the teams in the league and talked about how I see them historically. If I didn’t mention it at the time, I wrote both those posts to provide some sloppy scaffolding for interpreting the first…call it 10 or so weeks of Major League Soccer’s 2022 season. For what it’s worth, I think it takes a dozen weeks' or so worth of results before one can really establish any kind of context for expectations for what should happen one week to the next. And, yes, after that a quarter of the teams will throw those out the window by either tanking (thinking Orlando City SC and the Los Angeles Galaxy for 2021) or thriving (thinking my Portland Timbers or the Vancouver Whitecaps for 2021) down the stretch. All this? It never stops being fluid.

If you didn’t read either of the two posts linked to above, I only linked to them for the curious or very bored. You won’t actually need to make sense of this post and these will get easier to figure as time goes on. With that out of the way, let’s kick around MLS Week 1.

MLS Week 1: A Global Tour (Into Madness)

Like this, only more blood...

I really wanted to post this on Monday, or Tuesday at the latest. I won’t bore with my, uh, let’s go with domestic situation, but the Congress of Vienna has nothing on my household negotiations. Anyway, that’s what happened to Tuesday. It’s the particular methodology of these posts that knocks Monday out of the frame. So, here’s what’s going on.

As in the past, I try to watch three games every week, or at least two; and this year, as with previous years, I’ll watch the condensed games on MLS Live to get to the rest. What’s new and/or the hold-up grows from my decision to keep current on the league by reading content from one blog in each MLS market. Moreover, I want/hope to rely on a certain kind of post – e.g. analysis posts that talk about “lessons learned” or the “[X] Things We Learned about [Local Team] versus [Non-Local Team].” The trouble is, some of those don’t go up until Monday, at least on several of the SB Nation blogs (which are the ones I’m relying on for now; though, again, if you know a better local-market blog, or one that posts analysis same day, please pass it on).

Match reports go up way earlier, but those are a different animal. When all you’ve got is a frame of “this happened, then this happened, then this, and the fans went home happy/sad/confused,” you wind up spending too much time trying to cobble together a full-90 assessment of any given player. You’re also bored, more often than not.  And, finally, when I go the full 90 on any game, I’ll post a short something, about what I did for DC United v. Sporting Kansas City. (And, for the record, as I should have done for Atlanta United FC v. New York Red Bulls, but, won’t lie, got like a lot too relaxed for that one, so next week on that stuff.)

So, yeah, that’s the plan. This being Major League Soccer Week 1, the only thing we know is that every game won or lost this past weekend won’t mean shit in 10 weeks’ time. Not unless it means something, that is. Stay flexible, keep your own counsel…these are good words in these times….

Team-by-team summary below, organized alphabetically. I might switch up the order when someone tickles the other side of my fancy, but…I’m good for now.