Getting Reacquainted with the Vancouver Whitecaps, Cascadia's Afterthought

"I forgot I had to bring something."

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To begin, the Vancouver Whitecaps have never had a great season. That’s a big thing to hold in the back of your mind anytime you see a pundit push them toward the hype train before or during any given season. Over 14 MLS seasons, the ‘Caps have not once advanced past the quarterfinals in the playoffs. On the one hand, yes, they reached the CONCACAF Champions’ League semifinals in 2017 – which took beating peak, if off-season Red Bull New York (e.g., the Red Bulls won the Shield again in 2018) – on the other hand…c’mon, who gave ‘em a snowball’s chance of beating Tigres UANL or Pachuca CF to win the whole thing? A gentler scale than mine might have rewarded them for four wild card appearances (2012, 2014, 2021, and 2024), but I call them “Joy Points” for a reason - i.e., stalling at the quarterfinals the two times you make them spells “s-u-c-c-e” at most, as opposed to “success.” It’s been a slog for them, basically, and yet Vancouver has had their players. Alphonso Davies, who unwittingly auditioned for Bayern Munich by playing for Vancouver, tops the list, of course (and, lord, was he a blast to watch), but that list gets pretty damn short from there. Despite all of the promising candidates that have auditioned for the No. 10 jersey (or its equivalent role) - Camilo Sanvezzo comes to mind, Ryan Gauld can’t be avoided, of course (also don’t think he actually wears No. 10) and, um…Davide Chiumiento? - the ‘Caps have struggled more than most MLS teams with landing “impact players,” particularly on the attacking side of the pitch. Lest they be accused of not trying, Vancouver has also gone with signing battering ram forwards to increase goal production - think Eric Hassli and Lucas Cavallini – but Hassli neither did much nor lasted very long, and Cavallini’s chief talent was pissing off opposition CBs. At any rate, none of it came all the way off (see below) and the length of that short list only underscores the 'Caps' ongoing failure to get enough things right. I could walk through the same issue in the defense, name some names, and so on…but, well, what’s the point? Long story (very) short, the Whitecaps have never managed to squeeze enough of good players onto the same roster, or to hire a coach who could squeeze that little something extra out of the players that they did have available. The end, if until they finally get that new beginning.

Total Joy Points: 0 (lifted to zero by Canadian Championships, fwiw)

Getting Reacquainted with the Seattle Sounders, the Kristoffersons of MLS

It's the way they make it look easy, honestly.

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The Seattle Sounders have missed the playoffs just twice since joining MLS in 2009  – and, here, “missing the playoffs” includes falling out at any point before the last eight teams wild card slot to qualify. Their haul of trophies makes them the second-best team of the past decade on the Joy Points Scale* – only Los Angeles FC tops them over that period (though not all time…wait for it…) – and, sure, that hits closer to him as a Timbers fan, but it doesn’t make it any less true. The question is how they pulled that off. It started with smart first-season signings – think everyone from Jhon Kennedy Hurtado from Colombia, Sebastian Le Toux from the USL, and most important for me, midfield wrecker Osvaldo Alonso, from one of the many in-tournament defections from a visiting Cuban team. After throwing in a smart reclamation or two from the Expansion Draft – all-time utility-player great Brad Evans stood out – adding their first DP (Swedish midfielder Freddie Ljungberg) and putting it all under a road-tested, road-approved MLS head coach like Sigi Schmid, the Sounders had themselves a team. They made the playoffs both from the jump, then season after season. They percolated into the semifinals by their third (2012) – still not an easy thing, even in the multi-DP era – and returned again in 2014. Those first two little “blurps” into the big time followed from signing league-leading attacking pieces – e.g., DP winger/midfielder Mauro Rosales and then-USMNT-regular Eddie Johnson in 2012, then USMNT fixture Clint Dempsey and the bustling Nigerian, Obafemi Martins in 2014 – and letting them cook without a care in the world in front of one of the Sounders’ many (insanely) reliable defenses. And then came the trophies: the Supporters’ Shield in 2014, then an MLS Cup in 2016 and another, better one in 2019 (MLS Cup 2016 almost put me off soccer). The Sounders had already won three U.S. Open Cups before 2016 and they’d compete in two more MLS Cups before 2020. Whether one starts that run in 2014 or 2016, it made Seattle the fourth Shadynasty in MLS history – i.e., late 1990s DC United first, then the San Jose/Houston teams of the early-to-mid 2000s, followed by the LA Galaxy from the first half of 2010s, then Seattle – and, again, they never really came down. Mapping out the succession of talent does a good job of explaining how all this worked: for instance, only one season separates the departure of DP midfielder Mauro Morales and the arrival of (improved) DP midfielder Nicloas Lodeiro (in 2016); they only burned one season of riding Dempsey’s aging knees and a mish-mash of attacking half-solutions before calling in Raul Ruidiaz (2018) to boost the next generation of attacking players (e.g., Jordan Morris) and the next round of journeyman (e.g., Will Bruin); Kim Kee-Hee took over the defense after MLS legend/monster Chad Marshall retired (2018?) and Roman Torres couldn’t step onto the field often enough, and Yeimar cane in after him. It even applies at the coaching level - Brian Schmetzer replaced Schmid after 2016 and he’s been there every since, with very little cause to leave – and that’s what separates the Sounders from the most MLS teams: they simply have yet to fall behind, on or off the field. That’s how a team wins eight trophies in 16 seasons in MLS, including the league’s first‑ever CONCACAF Champions’ League trophy in 2022. I’ve been waiting for the collapse, believe me, but I haven’t seen it either.

Total Joy Points: 50

Getting Reacquainted with Toronto FC, the Once-Lucky Wastrels of MLS

Just reeks of the vibe, right? Especially then?

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With Toronto FC, we arrive at the first expansion team to join Major League Soccer with the Designated Player Rule in full, if budding effect – i.e., the league allowed just one per team. Toronto wouldn’t sign their first DP until 2009 and, bluntly, it took them another five seasons to get it right. As follows (in the short-term), their inaugural season roster has strong Expansion Draft vibes, plus some half-desperate swings at star players – e.g., Danny Dichio, Carl Robinson, and…I don’t know, Adam Braz? Marco Reda? Their first forays in the DP market fell (very) flat – e.g., Julian de Guzman (hard, "eh"), plus a list of one-to-two season signings that impresses in all the wrong ways – but splashing cash paved their way to Toronto’s fleeting glory seasons. All the seasons prior to that point? Trash, sometimes absolute trash (e.g., Wooden Spoon’s in 2007 and 2012): they didn’t make the playoffs in any form until 2015. When the success did come, it’s hard to say where it started – e.g., was it signing Michael Bradley (2014), Sebastian Giovinco (2015) and Jozy Altidore (2015), or did that team need Greg Vanney (who looks better after 2024) to pull them together? – but I do know that those moves built Tim Bezbatchenko’s reputation into something that still sells today (not unreasonably). As the timeline below* indicates, the investment didn’t pay off immediately, but Toronto rose meteorically once they took off. In a better universe, Toronto would have won their first MLS Cup in 2016 against the Seattle Sounders (Stefan Frei had a goddamn day in that one), but they made up for it with a clean sheet/clean win over the same team in MLS Cup 2017. This brings up one key difference between the 2016 and 2017 rosters – specifically, the arrival of the Spanish midfielder Victor Vazquez. Unlike the rest of the big names, he wasn’t a DP; Vazquez was just a smart signing that gave Toronto the fourth dimension a good team needs to become great. Blessed with one of the great, single-season teams in MLS history, and a legit talent in Giovinco, Toronto made the U.S. top flight’s third close run at winning CONCACAF Champions’ League in 2018 and, to their credit, they came as close as any of them. The overall focus(/obsession) over DPs aside, the thing that stands out most about that 2017 roster is the large number of role-playing ploggers that populate it – e.g., Eriq Zavaleta, Mark Delgado, even Jonathan Osorio and the now-forgotten Armando Cooper. For a time, one could hold up Toronto FC as proof of concept for the DP Rule, i.e., the idea that three great players in the right positions can win a title. That wasn’t their last hurrah – they fought Seattle (such a fucking thing for those several seasons) in MLS Cup 2019 with another DP, Alejandro Pozeulo, leading the way – but the manner of that loss already hinted at a waning force. The trophy case in Canada’s largest city has collected dust since and that brings up something else about Toronto – i.e., the gambler’s ambition that defines the team that remains Canada’s best in the MLS era. I haven’t seen players get blessed as the Second Coming (of what, though?) the way Lorenzo Insigne and Federico Bernardeschi did when they signed for Toronto in 2022. Both players wouldn’t arrive until the middle of the season, but the mere thought that they'd finish the season with Toronto kept the team alive for a lot of pundits against the evidence of very bad results. Toronto finished 13th in the Eastern Conference that season, 27th overall. When the Wooden Spoon slapped them the following season (2023), I’ll be damned if that wasn’t the gods punishing hubris.

Getting Reacquainted with Real Salt Lake, the Inspiring Underdogs of MLS 2.0

I can see you don't care....

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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, then exhausted buffet, as every other team in the league. That’s the MLS 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 four seasons to climb that mini-Everest. They built their first, best teams around rightful MLS legends like Kyle Beckerman, (now Miami assistant coach) Javier Morales, and long-time anchor/dream-killer, 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 raised MLS Cup 2009 by holding them off in regulation and through extra-time, until they dealt a pre-peak Los Angeles Galaxy team one of the most famous Rimando-ings in MLS history. All that success turned head coach Jason Kreis into 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 for a season or two. That team turned 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 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. Smal wonder he checked out after that season to take the reins at New York City FC (before they even had horses, it bears noting), but player by player and season by season, the members of that team either aged out or moved on. As you’ll see below, 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 playoffs 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. They have improved at finding the odd great/promising young player (e.g., Diego Luna), including on the DP market player (e.g., Cristian Arango), and they have a respectable youth system (see Justen Glad, Adrian Brody(?)), but they remain a small-ish market team in a league where that gets harder every season.

Getting Reacquainted with Houston Dynamo FC, MLS's Stubborn Workhorses

It got 'em there. Four times, in fact.

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Houston Dynamo FC, then just the Houston Dynamo, weren’t MLS’s first second-wave expansion team (i.e., the ones that came after the 2001 contraction); calling them one doesn’t quite tally either because and they never had to go through the proper expansion team exercise of building from nothing. Moreover, they got stupid fucking lucky in that the team they received had just hoisted the Supporters’ Shield the season prior in San Jose.

As noted in the previous chapter in this series, the San Jose Earthquakes franchise had caught fire in the years before their ownership group yanked out their roots and moved them to sweaty Texas. A couple players didn’t make the trip – e.g., defenders Danny Califf and long-time forward Ronald Cerritos – but they came with a handful of the most famous names in Houston Dynamo history – e.g., Dwayne DeRosario, Brian Ching, Eddie Robinson, Pat Onstad, (my man) Brad Davis, etc. etc. Between that ready-made roster and employing Dominic Kinnear, one of the best head coaches of the 2000s, they had the horses to kick off franchise history with back-to-back MLS Cups in 2006 and 2007. Some minor stumbles aside, the Dynamo wouldn’t slip far out of contending over their first seven or eight seasons in the league. That’s a bit of trip, honestly, when you review the rosters that battled to losses in the 2011 and 2012 MLS Cups (just…how did that team get there in an 18-/19-team MLS?), but it also shows how far a good foundation (and a succession of stingy defenses) can carry a team. My personal highlights from the Dynamo’s glory years included the fingernail-rending battles they played in against Mexico’s CF Pachuca in the CONCACAF Champions’ Cup/League over the 2008 and 2009 seasons; those games marked the first occasion I genuinely believed MLS teams would eventually compete with Liga MX’s best, a hard goddamn sell in those days. Still, their best days dried up and, aside from the odd hurrah here (U.S. Open Cup winners in 2018!), and the strong run outta nowhere there (2017 playoff semifinalists), Houston idled through the late 2010s and early 2020s while the rest of MLS sprinted ahead. A jarring fall, given their history, and flashes of recovery notwithstanding, the question of whether they can get back up again remains open. For all the good decisions they made going into 2023 – due to the way he fits the Dynamo’s classic controlled(/stingy) playing model, pulling Ben Olsen out of early retirement made all kinds of sense and Mexican legend, Hector Herrera, gave them someone to build around, if only for (literally) two seasons – Houston still hasn’t found the attacking ace they need to make all that thuddingly responsible build-up play payoff. Closer than they have been, in other words, but still a player or two short of dangerous. Paging MLS [#.0]’s version of Ching or DeRo…

Total Joy Points: 18

Getting Reacquainted with the San Jose Earthquakes, MLS's Great Betrayal(?)

Thanks for the fully-built expansion team!

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Extremes characterize the early history of the San Jose Earthquakes, and the rest is tragedy. They also have a real shout as MLS’s most tortured franchise, but to start at the beginning…

They started as the San Jose Clash and started poorly. After making the playoffs in the league’s inaugural season (1996), the team missed them over the next four, three as the San Jose Clash (1997-1999), then one more as the San Jose Earthquakes (2000); as if to prove that rebranding doesn’t equal rebirth, they picked up a Wooden Spoon under each name (1997 and 2000). San Jose flipped the script one thin season later - and how. It started with the hiring of MLS Frank Yallop as head coach and only got better when U.S.-wunderkind, Landon Donovan, returned to the States after a frustrated stint with Germany’s Bayer Leverkusen. With a reliable spine of Joe Cannon in goal, Jimmy Conrad in central defense and Richard Mulrooney battling in front of them, Yallop filled out the roster with young players who would dominate mid-2000s MLS – e.g., Canadian great Dwayne DeRosario and hard-nosed center back Eddie Robinson – plus wily veterans like former DC United fullback Jeff Agoos and nifty Danish import Ronnie Ekelund. With that fresh start, San Jose threw down 2000’s Wooden Spoon and grabbed MLS Cup 2001. Another strong recruitment class – e.g., future MLS stalwarts like Ryan Cochrane (defender), Brian Mullan (midfielder), and Brian Ching (forward, for both club and country) – plus some crafty poaching - e.g., long-time midfield anchor Ricardo Clark – not only carried them to their second, and last, MLS Cup in 2003, but carried them to the 2005 Supporters’ Shield, despite Landon Donovan’s (controversial) departure to the LA Galaxy and losing key players like Ekelund, Agoos. And then the team fucked off to Houston, Texas.

One more respectable moment (see below, 2010) and one great season aside, San Jose has mostly suffered since re-joining MLS. Before wallowing in misery, I want to spare a moment and a smile for the ‘Quakes fantastic, and broadly loathed, 2012 team. Lead by the two hulking “physical” (i.e., borderline violent) forwards, Alan Gordon and (especially) Steven Lenhart – aka, the Bash Brothers (this short bio on them is a masterpiece, btw) – San Jose literally battled their way to that season’s Supporters’ Shield. Backed by a banner season by Jon Busch in goal and Honduran central defender Victor Bernandez, all the ‘Quakes had to do was keep the goals out and have “Gordo” and “Lenny” knock down everyone, everything, and get the ball to MLS's all-time leading scorer, Chris Wondolowski (okay, gotta slow down on the linking; egads), who had a crazy 2012 season (27 goals, seven assists). They scored 13 more goals that season than the next nearest team and were heads and shoulders above the rest in scoring...and an appearance in the 2014 CONCACAF quarterfinals aside, that’s probably the last happy memory San Jose fans have had. They’ve either squeaked in as a wild card (three times) or missed the playoffs entirely (nine times) every season since. The Wooden Spoon spanked them twice over that same period - the first in 2018, the other in…hey, 2024 – which, when added to their 2007 Wooden Spoon, gives them five all time and the more seasons with the wrong kind of rosy cheeks than any other team in MLS. The truly wild thing? The ‘Quakes got 103 goals out Wondoloski from 2013-2021. I mean, how bad was everyone else?

Getting Reacquainted with Chicago Fire FC, MLS's Exercise in Meeting Your Unemployed Ex

He may be happy, but it's still putting lipstick on pig.

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Chicago Fire, aka, Chicago Fire FC, hold still-unbroken record of being the one and only team to win MLS Cup in its expansion season, 1998. And, as if to announce their hell, yes arrival, they won the U.S. Open Cup in the same season. The Fire remained highly-competitive nearly every season through 2009, reaching the semifinals of the playoffs or higher in eight of those twelve seasons (i.e., they reached MLS Cups in 2000 and 2003, so higher) – and winning the 2003 Supporters’ Shield, plus four U.S. Open Cups. The Fire went into their first twelve seasons in MLS looking like a contender and generally backing it up. Some of that followed from the “Marquee Player” rule still applying when Chicago joined the league in its third season (1998). When someone in Chicago’s front office went knocking around Eastern/Central Europe for talent, they found Piotr Nowak and Jerzy Podbrozny, both Polish, and a Czech sweeper named Lubos Kubik. With those three leading the way, the Fire played even with MLS’s best talent of the time and heads-and-shoulders above the rest. When those players left, and in surprisingly short order (in the order I listed them above, they left after 2002, 1999, and 2000, respectively), Chicago still had to one of the best, U.S.-based cores on an MLS roster, including Zach Thornton in goal (through 2006), (yes, that) Chris Armas in midfield (until 2007), Ante Razov banging in goals up top (in stints split between 1998-2000, and 2001-2004), and C. J. Brown keeping things steady in defense until 2010. A cast of characters rotated around those players in seasons to come – the standouts included Bulgarian legend(ary asshole) Hristo Stoichkov and Mexican great Cuauhtemoc Blanco and on-again-off-again rising attacking talents like Justin Mapp and Patrick Nyarko. Those last two players actually open the path to a distinction: Mapp, as the smooth, genuinely productive winger, who played with Chicago through the back-end of its best seasons (2003-2010), Nyarko, as a hard-to-place forward/winger hybrid, who played at the end of their best seasons and through a lot of their worst (2008-2015). Head to head, Mapp blows Nyarko out of the water in terms of raw numbers…but you have to wonder how much Mapp benefitted from playing on a better team/in a better system than Nyarko. The worst possible version of that same question has haunted the Chicago franchise with the vengeance of a curse since the 2010 season. That same season they started their existence as the searing disappointment that Chicago fans endure and most MLS fans ignore. They enjoyed their last “high-water mark” in 2017, when they finished third in the Eastern Conference (true story), but even then they face-planted out of the playoffs to to Red Bull New York in the knockout round of one of MLS’s patented bloated playoff schemes. Everything on both sides of that has been literal carnage – up to and including back-to-back Wooden Spoons in 2015 and 2016, and a whole lotta missing the playoffs. In fact, that head-fake/fuck of a 2017 season aside, the Fire have finished 20th or lower in the MLS-wide standings for every season since 2015 – a run that includes a 28th-place finish in 2024. (Spoiler. Whoops.) That brings me to the main thing that should keep fans of every other MLS team from drooping into an easy sleep: it’s not like Chicago hasn’t thrown money and effort at saving the ever-sinking ship – e.g., they had Serbian forward Nemanja Nikolic and German great, Bastian Schweinsteiger, between 2017 and 2019, and, as recently as last season, they took pretty big swings on Swiss hot-shot Xherdan Shaqiri and Belgian forward Hugo Cuypers. As evidenced by the above, all of that balanced out to a broad, “nah.” All of the stoutly average around those signings almost certainly played a role, but…all that started to feel like a gutted club/team culture years before those players arrived. The open question is the extent to which they’re a symptom (i.e., the players around them make them worse) or the cause (i.e., they just weren’t good/the right signings). Don't let the Joy Points fool you on this one, because Chicago ain't good.

Total Joy Points: 18

How They Earned Them (& How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
Supporters’ Shield: 2003
MLS Cup: 1998
MLS Cup Runner-Up: 2000, 2003
MLS Playoffs Semifinals: 2001, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009
MLS Playoffs/Quarterfinals: 1999, 2002, 2006
Wooden Spoon: 2004, 2015, 2016
U.S. Open Cup: 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006
U.S. Open Cup Runner-Up: 2004

Somehow not the solution...

Long-Term Tendencies
Much like DC United (see previous chapter), Chicago provides another unsurprising example of a team having good numbers when they're, y’know, good, and bad numbers when they're not. Entirely related, Chicago’s knack for building more good defenses than bad ones over those early seasons carried them through leaner-attacking times that characterized their latter, less successful seasons (i.e., the second half of the 2000s). While it’s not so cut-and-dry as the defenses since 2010 just plain sucking, going over the average for goals allowed (five times), or even very over that same average (also, five times), has been the Fire’s normal since the 2013 season, aka, a fucking minute for their fans. The attack has rarely been up to the task of lifting them up – in fact, they’ve gone over the league average for goals scored just four times over that same period and only well over once (in…you guessed it, 2017!) – and those combined basic, even fundamental, facts tell the story of a bad team. The Fire simply haven’t been good. Quelle surprise.

How 2024 Measured Up
In a phrase hinted it with supporting documentation above, really badly. Chicago finished 2024 dead-last in the East, 10 points out of the playoff picture and rarely looking like even their fans should bother with them by…I’m going with somewhere around June. And, in keeping with the recent trends noted above, they fell well on the wrong side of average on both sides of the goals equation (i.e., the were 13.5 below the averaged on goals scored and 8.5 goals above average on goals allowed). Being someone who tries to squeeze in as much meaningful action as I can in any given week, the Fire didn’t give me much incentive to watch them. That said, I have seen Chicago players do good and useful things on the field and on a consistent basis – e.g., Gaston Gimenez presents as a two-way midfielder with a strong bite on both sides of the ball, Bryan Gutierrez has skills to die for at age 21, even if the numbers haven’t entirely come-around, and…yeah, I guess that sums it up. Shaqiri missed most of the season and just seemed to complicate things when he showed up, and, based on what little I know and have watched, Cuypers suffered from a lack of a strong supporting cast? Maybe? This is me asking you, honestly.

Questions for Their 2025 Season
This one’s more statement than question, but here goes: Chicago has been so bad for so long that no reasonable person has any reason to believe they will improve next season. Only one theory explains the Fire’s comparatively long history of failing to get things right: they are bad at what they do. Until further notice, it’s that simple.