MLS 2018 Mid-Season (and Beyond?) Review: Yes, All 23 Teams

The mighty house I have built.

Because I couldn’t watch the replay of Atlanta v. Portland (and so many of you refused to elaborate on it), I went and did something exhaustively nutty. My pain for your pleasure, or at least your edification.

Understanding Major League Soccer as this wildly unpredictable league morphed into a kind of truism. I’d very much like to kick the legs out from under that one, at least to the extent that I can. I have the data, which only leaves how to organize into something readable. Think I’ll organize it according to the current MLS standings…hold on. I haven’t even talked about what I’ve got in terms of data or goals, have I? Backing up…

First, I reviewed the last 10 results for every team in MLS (23 = bigger league), recording how each team did over that stretch, including their record, both home and away, goals scored and allowed, and so on. From there, I cross-referenced that info against the teams they’ve played - specifically, the number of those teams currently above or below the playoff line (I label this “IN v. OUT”). And, for the final act, I take that information and project it forward to get some reasonably grounded sense of expectations for, again (and welcome to my Rain Man side), all 23 teams in Major League Soccer.

This methodology might fall several yards short of perfect - and I’d be delighted to have a robust and detailed conversation about the bugs in this system - and the only sources I used are the Form Guide and MLS's injury page. Even so, I committed only a glance’s worth of attention to injuries and potential/pending new signings, and long-time MLS fans know what a new signing can mean in the MLS 3.2 (or thereabouts) era. Also, a team’s form over the past 10 games just does not inevitably carry forward to the next 10 games, never mind through the end of the season. For instance, Toronto FC has helped teams across the league to better records throughout the 2018 season, but they still feel like a plausible bet to turn that around and go all Jekyll/Hyde and visit splitting headaches on other teams down the stretch. Or take Seattle: can one Peruvian make that solid defense finally pay off? Teams like the Philadelphia Union and Real Salt Lake, meanwhile, are currently above the playoff line, but do they really belong there? By way of answering that, details I found en route to building this massive pillow-fort of data added a little weight to vague opinions like that - say, where weaker teams have picked up their points so far this season.

You’ll find a ungodly pile of words and numbers down below, so get ready for data, y’all! To give the tldr crowd the short version, I think the Eastern Conference gets interesting after the fifth team, while the Western Conference gets interesting after the third; if there’s not more fluidity on the Best Coast than the other one, I’m reading everything very wrong. Back to it, this is in the order of the current standings. And, to note it, when I write “Record v IN teams:” below, that means against teams that are in the playoffs at time of writing, while “Record v OUT teams” means teams that are not. And, when I talk about the “IN/OUT Split” when looking at the rest of a team’s games below, that means the number of games they’ll play against teams on either side of the playoff line (again) at time of writing - e.g., Atlanta United’s IN/OUT Split is 6/11, meaning they face teams that projected for the playoffs 6 times, and teams not 11 times. And, golly, does Atlanta look to have it good. Let’s see how everyone else looks, staring with…

Toronto FC II 3-3 FC Cincinnati: It's What You Do at the Rodeo

You beat eight fucking seconds for starters...

OK, yes, it took reviewing notes from the prior two games to firm up some context (this is from the win at North Carolina, and this from the draw at home to Bethlehem Steel FC), but the handle I’ve got on FC Cincinnati’s performance feels reasonably assured…

…my grasp o the state and standards of the rest of the United Soccer Leagues, on the other hand…still working on getting the fingers where they need to go more maximum grip. For instance, I kept hearing comments on the narrow-shouldered youth of tonight’s home side, Toronto FC II - something that definitely factored into at least two of Cincy’s goals - but that same aw-shucks-ma’am gaggle of teenagers came back from two goals down to tie the gameat 3-3 (you should have highlights through that link by tomorrow morning). Moreover, TFC II kept Cincinnati wheezing under pressure for the final 20+ minutes, they generally played the United Soccer League’s Eastern Conference leaders even, and three or four of those players rather neatly stood out - that includes players who got regular shouts from the commentating booth, like Dante Campbell, Lucca Uccello, Ayo Akinola (scored one, too), and, especially, Malik Johnson - and with an assuredly desperate Greg Vanney and Tim (probably) Berbashenko (probably) in attendance. Coaches like character a little bit more than the next professional, and TFC II’s (probably) teens interviewed pretty nicely this evening.

It makes sense, obviously, to ask where TFC II sits in the USL East? Dead last, you say? The point FC Cincinnati gave them tonight pushes them to three big points on the season, one for every draw they rescued from being another of their 12 losses. That -20 goal differential sort of rounds out the picture of a game one has to think Cincinnati should have won. They didn’t. Jordan Hamilton saw to that, along with the rest of his (apparently) young team, only they didn’t do it with the same dizzying combo of power and finesse (if/when they get to the highlights, do stick around for Hamilton’s goal).

On Cincinnati’s end of things, how bad is this really? They’re still 3-0-2 in their last five (they kicked Richmond hard and true while I was away)), and, at 9-3-4, still atop the Eastern Conference, if with two teams in reach (Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC and Louisville City FC) per games in hand. (Is that English? Roughly? If not, check the USL standings). In that sense, most signs point to no. Also, consider that (again, per the broadcast), Cincy has four of their next five games at home (Nashville SC is their lone road game, and that’s with Ottawa (woo-hoo!), Tampa Bay Rowdies (um), Charlotte Independence (uh-oh), and New York Red Bulls II (um) on both sides of that). More to the point, because I started watching when I did, I don’t know the 9-3-4 team that lives on paper nearly as well as I know the 1-0-2 team I’ve watched over three games now. That team might have beat North Carolina FC, but they also suffered hot flashes throughout; the same team should have taken all three points against Bethlehem Steel FC just as surely as they should have stolen three points from TFC II today.

They didn’t, again, and now I’m interested. So, what went wrong?

U.S. Open Cup, Portland Timbers 1-0 Los Angeles Galaxy: Good is Good, And That's Good

What Portland defeated tonight, helpfully translated.

Just real quick, in a fit of enthusiasm, I want to talk about the Portland Timbers' 1-0 win over the Los Angeles Galaxy in the U.S. Open Cup. This’ll be bullet-style (will it?) and refreshingly straightforward, but also stylistically frustrating. I walk the line…

When I talk about the Timbers being “good” - even in a post like the last one, where I’m shoving a ceiling on top of the conversation - a game like tonight is exactly what I’m talking about. This Timbers team is organized, it knows what it’s doing out there, and it has reasonable flexibility on top of all that. That’s how a team wins a “Cup” tournament - and, yes, I’m talking U.S. Open and MLS, if the stars line-up right - only Giovanni Savarese and staff haven’t figured out how to weaponize that yet, into the unstoppable force that wins titles without blinking. But it’s working well enough, like, nine games in a row well enough.

More to the point, Portland plays well. The team moves the ball to where it wants it to go well enough that I can poo-poo possession like the mediocre appetizer it is. The coolest detail comes with how they came up with a smart way to play the ball forward out of the back, especially against teams that press - i.e., diagonally, and outside-in; it doesn’t just beat the first line of pressure, it means the team can switch the play, or keep it on the same side.

After that, this Timbers team gets vertical real goddamn fast.

Also, Portland is fine without Darlington Nabge. I’m still trying to figure out if it’s not better.

Back to this particular Open Cup tie, LA came into this game 3-1-1…on that, um, just checked the opposition across that time (e.g., @ MTL, v. SJ, V. FCD (this was the loss; noted), @ Portland (the draw, and one of Portland’s flattest games of the season), v. RSL), and I take back what I was about to say, LA wasn’t quite so much on a tear as a run of reasonable expectations with good fortune riding in the side-car. LA is adequate at this point, maybe even playoff-reasonable, but that 3-1-1 amounts to getting results any team with a remote chance of success should get. In other words, this is a result to celebrate for the Timbers, but not get cocky about.

For those who do want to feel cocky, on the other hand (not judging; I’m raising my hand in that tentative way people do when they only think they know the answer), think about how Portland managed the keep-away, how they passed well almost as often as they did, the fact they created - what? - 4-5 quality chances, and that’s at a minimum. The defense cleaned up what it couldn’t prevent from coming in - and hats off and thrown on the ground in gratitude for the mighty, reverse goal-line header by Mabiala to make Portland’s one goal stand up.

Just to note it, even with Liam Ridgewell out, Portland has a decent four-man deep rotation in central defense right now: Mabiala, Tuiloma, Julio Cascante, and (worst-case) Lawrence Olum.

FC Cincinnati 2-2 Bethlehem Steel FC: A Brand New Them (Dammit!)

Incredibly, I'm not first to that analogy.

This has to be quick. It’s late, I got all kinds o’ shit ahead in the next two days, etc. etc. etc. [Ed. – Disregard; I passed out in the pasta salad before I could post last night. Still I preserved most of the mess.]

Where to begin, usual caveat applies - e.g., this counts as my second, 90-minute game with FC Cincinnati - only with a twist - e.g., motherfuckers changed the whole damn line-up on me. I come from Portland, Oregon, people. Portland. It takes injury (and inexcusable) jogging to get knocked out of the Portland Timbers starting eleven. I’m used to almost pointless predictability in my line-ups, that’s all I’m getting at. Anyway, moving on…

FC Cincinnati cannot be happy with that game - i.e., the one where they broadly outplayed Bethlehem Steel FC from about the 15th minute, if with major ups and downs between that point and the end. (See here for all the stats and highlights on offer here; I'll try to find other sources going forward.) That game absolutely became Cincy’s for the taking after the 55th minute with the rather stupid sending off of Olivier Mbaizo, a Bethlehem defender(?) who tackled too hard and then couldn’t manage the slew of mini-provocations that followed.

Now, hold that thought, because a whole bunch of crazy crap happened roughly ten minutes after that sending off.

How to keep this short? OK, it took both teams a while to get rolling in the game, but FC Cincinnati generally took over when noted above, but Bethlehem still scored first, the cheeky bastards. That took a piece of raw persistence from Derrick Jones, someone Philadelphia Union fans should recognize (I think) and also definitely in the Top 3 players on the field tonight, but that also kicked the game into “give-a-shit” gear for both teams. Cagey switched to combative, to some extent. And that’s when things turned.

After Mbaizo lost too much of his shit to be ignored (he practically begged to be sent off), Cincinnati took advantage, even if it took 10 minutes to take advantage. Cincinnati’s two goals came within (roughly) one minute of the other, and they also followed from a sort of poetic justice. The guys who scored them - Russell Cicerone and Nazmi Albadawi - had been Cincy’s best players on the night, so seeing that rewarded felt good. Cicerone scored the prettier goal and he scored second, but the after-glow on that fucker got snuffed out under one minute later when Bethlehem’s theretofore invisible Fabian Herbers turned a short feed/burst of speed (relative to Cincinnati’s Jem De Wit) into Bethlehem back in the game. He leveled the score, and that’s where the game ended, 2-2, and with Cincinnati with the bigger disappointment.

North Carolina 0-2 FC Cincinnati: Mostly Groping Toward Understanding

Hell adjacent, but also a start.

First of all, I’m gonna fuck up some names. Second, I don’t really know this team, FC Cincinnati, either, because this was my first 90 minutes with them. A speed date, if you will. That said, I think I picked up a reasonable sense as to who does what on FC Cincinnati, or at least this specific version of their roster. Or against this specific opponent. Again, this is the first step to me knowing what I’m talking about, and give it a month or two.

Hold on, backing up: FC Cincinnati beat North Carolina FC 2-0 in the Containment Area for Relocated Yankees, North Carolina (that’s Cary, NC). They looked reasonable for the win, but North Carolina gave them plenty of breathing room by taking…just terrible shots, more around than on goal. And that “around” was very general. As noted in my catch-up post on FC Cincy, they have a decent knack for creating wide-open chances, and tonight was no exception. There, I’m thinking their second, more than their first: when Nazmi Albadawi found Emery Welshman in that much space on Cincy’s right, it isolated the (surprisingly nimble) forward against (I’m guessing) Carolina’s left-sided centerback, and Welshman sat him right on his can with a cut inside, fired the shot, and, boom, FC Cincinnati bags their insurance goal in the 87(-ish) minute, game very much over, and Cincinnati three points clear on top of the United Soccer League’s Eastern Conference. (Just five points behind Western Conference leaders Real Monarch SLC; also this puts Cincy level on points with Timbers 2, but with a game in hand.)

To step back still further, it’s sort of a trip starting with this team where I did - i.e., tonight - but I don’t think my personal experience differs so much from an “O.G.” Cincinnati fan. (Again) This team is two years old and counting, for fuck’s sake, and, at time of writing, I’m not sure how new or old any of these twits are to the team. For instance, Emanuel Ledesma, team points leader, came over from the New York Cosmos just this season. Russell Cicerone, the player who stood out most tonight, turns out he’s a rookie, an at least one-time MAC player of the year award, and, no, I’m not looking that up, because who cares what you did in college, kid, but damn good game tonight. You made that first goal, but, wow, didn’t Danni Konig literally wrestle that fucker home? And that was Cincinnati’s first goal. Also, when did Konig sign? Ah, just May 2017.

My point is, players can’t have deep roots with this team, because this team does not have deep roots. There is no “street cred” with this bunch. We’re all fucking newbies at this rodeo.

Now, to the game itself and what it told me about who does what, I absolutely insist on beginning with the statement that you can’t possibly know the tip of shit about a team by watching one game. There are too many variables involved - starting with the quality of the opposition (wait for it) - to allow any reasonable person to think he (or she) can make any kind of firm statement about any player, the tactics, or just anything about a team after just one viewing. With that firmly in mind, dig this…

Portland Timbers 0-0 Sporting Kansas City: Touching the Ceiling

Welcome back, guys!

“Unbeaten in Nine”

Look, I’m happy about last night - if the performance more than the result - but I’m not having that shit. I pulled that from the official Portland Timbers webpage, so I get that Pravda-esque cheering comes natural, but “Unbeaten” isn’t good enough, not when it leaves two points on the table in consecutive home games. Basically, aim low enough and you risk shooting your damn foot. OK, enough of that.

Because I said “yes” to something I should have said “no” to, this review will necessarily be a little impressionistic. It’s not all a blur: for instance, I remember seeing “No. 32” for the Portland Timbers charge up the gut and asking the people around me at the bar, “Who is that? Is that Cascante?” only to see it was Marco Farfan ranging forward (from a more natural fullback position) and nearly stabbing home a goal. I also remember the name of the dude I introduced myself to after the game - for regular readers, this is the person I conversationally ambushed about a penalty kick last week. That thing where you repeat a name over and over until it sticks really does wonders for sufferers of CRS (that’s “Can’t Remember Shit”).

Farfan’s Foray (TM) didn’t make the highlights (I mean, what the fuck’s up with that? the kid had a moment), but the rest of them rang a bell when I saw them again (for the record, I have modified CRS; my memory works just fine if prompted correctly), and all the other prompts I have in front of me now confirm the same thing: the Timbers played pretty solid soccer in last night’s 0-0 draw at home against Sporting Kansas City. The game played out about the way you’d expect from two good, defensively-stout teams. Both sides found their chances, but they definitely had to look for them, and both sides contained the other’s biggest threats…again, take a bow, Marco Farfan (and welcome to the party, Modou Jadama).

I don’t have much to add about the game itself, but was instead going to move on to chatting about Portland’s game. That said, I just read the comments to the official recap, and I’m kind of glad I did, because it runs into the teeth of those comments. Loose suggestions of a “reorganized defense” come in and out of those (along with this question, which I very much second: “Are you really not considering Valentin a starter at this point?), and I guess I don’t get the premise. “Reorganized” from what?

To back up a little, seeing Lawrence Olum set a couple pre-game butterflies fluttering. He is, without question, a down-grade from Diego Chara (no offense intended, Larry), but Olum can play a role so long as you assign him a role he can play. That is, you’ll never get Chara’s manic herding dog dynamism from Olum, but he can clog the center and manage safe-not-spectacular distribution; playing him means resigning yourself to losing a little something on the attacking side, but, when you’ve got no choice…only the team does have a choice, and his name is Eryk Williamson, and I guess I’ll just leave it there. I don’t watch Timbers2 enough (or ever, I suppose) to make a case that Williamson should start over Olum, but that’ll remain an open question in this space till we get the real-world data to resolve it.

Guys, I've Met Someone: On a New Team, Swinging, and the Solution to Everything

Just 2015? No shit?

I’ve always prayed for this day, without believing it would arrive. At long last (fucking long, guys!) the much-fabled, oft-misunderstood Soccer Gods finally smiled on one of their longer suffering Jobs. (That’s me. I am Job. Or Gob. I hear some people do that.)

At various, yet shockingly consistent, and yet also virtually never wire-to-wire…um, years, since a severely misguided internet made it possible for every asshole (again, me) to write about Major League Soccer, without editing, never mind overseers, I have written about Major League Soccer. A three-four year stretch of me writing about the Portland Timbers in the lower leagues happened…and that might have two-three years, mind you. (And I can’t prove it either. Once I sour on a blog, I delete the motherfucker like I never knew it. Seriously, I am Cronos and I eat my children.) In most of those years, I tried to cover every part of whatever league I invested in most that season. That always ended with me overwhelmed, bummed, or jaded (in all honesty, it was jaded, like, 3/4 of the time) before the first ball rolled in the playoffs. Still, I could fake keeping up until, oh, 2010. Once expansion really kicked off…forget it. I’ve been gasping by Week 15, if not before, ever since. Even for the glory years with the condensed games.

That brings me to the miracle. Its name is FC Cincinnati, aka, the answer to my prayers and the solution to my problem. Also, the team that will join Major League Soccer in 2019.

If I haven’t mentioned that I was born in, and spent the first 13 years of my life in Cincinnati, Ohio, yes, I spent the first 13 years of my life in Cincinnati, Ohio. I once heard it said that Danny DeVito collects people from New Jersey, wherever he can find them; that’s me with people from Ohio, only the shy version of it. In other words, whenever I meet people from Ohio (or, sometimes, that general area of the Midwest, if mostly north of the Ohio River…um…), I quietly, but almost automatically love them. I left Ohio, basically, but it never left me. I’ll agree that identifying with a place you almost never visit doesn’t make much sense, but I still rarely go a week without thinking about Ohio. And which one of us is crazy, because I don’t think it’s me.

Close observers might have caught the pronoun I slipped in front of “Portland Timbers” up above. Yes, that was “my.” I stand by it. I love my Portland Timbers and I moved to Portland, Oregon not once, but twice in my life. I ultimately settled here  and that was very intentional. I love Portland. And yet I still look at real estate prices in Cincinnati from time to time…shit would blow the mind of a Portlander....

Portland Timbers 1-1 Los Angeles Galaxy: The Plans to Our Personal Death Star

And, if it's been this easy all along...?

“The Timbers run unbeaten streak to seven, draw 1-1 with LA”

Ah, the pointless urge to euphemism. That's the text the Portland Timbers' website put over the Recap/Highlights for last night's home draw against the Los Angeles Galaxy. I don't bring up the euphemistic phrasing from a place of disappointment, either, because the Portland Timbers were bound to drop points at some point, and losing a game is inevitable, even at home. The educated guesswork I put into Friday’s tweet-storm preview titled me against the Los Angeles Galaxy as the team to stall Portland’s winning streak, but they did. Time, now, for the post-accident ritual of checking the vehicle for dents.

I can name one right away (warning: this is bullshit): I’d got it in my head that yesterday’s game was Portland’s the last game before Major League Soccer takes its World Cup Breather. It is not. I’m less surprised about me boning a detail than I am that people didn't take the time to point it out the error and/or ridicule me for it (which leads to deeper questions like, does anyone read this stuff? Eh, barely matters. I think of this site and others as my own Zork-level The Truman Show (a carefully crafted reality of my very own!), but, to drag this conversation back on track, the Timbers do have one more game to go (two, if you count the U.S. Open Cup, and do I count the U.S. Open Cup?), and that’s against Sporting Kansas City, in Kansas City, next Saturday, and hopefully at a more reasonable hour. [UPDATE/Correction: Calling all scientists: I've developed a really screwy reading block that causes me to read "at" where I should read versus. The game against SKC next weekend is in Portland, I have no excuse, and thanks to a guy named Justin, who reminded me that I need to correct my stupid. Corrections always appreciated, honestly, especially with such a simple fact. Please read the rest knowing I know that now.]

SKC at their place will be a tough game, and now this becomes a question about the size of a letdown. Dropping two points in the final game before the break didn’t seem like much - think stubbing a toe at the end of, say, the ski run of a lifetime. The team would have a couple, three weeks to screw their heads back into the straight position, and they’d still have six reasons for optimism in their back pocket for encouragement. What if the Timbers close out First Season 2018 (e.g., the one that ends with the World Cup break, because Apertura is taken), with just that one point taken at home, when three points looked well within reason? If you’d read this site at all, this gets back into a favorite game of “blip” versus “pattern.” Time to keep checking for dents…

Here’s my big takeaway on yesterday: the reason that Portland stumbled yesterday resides somewhere between their consistent failure to anticipate where the ball would go better than LA and, crucially, the reason for that. This showed up early - e.g., with the catch-in-yer-throat moment when LA’s Chris Pontius slipped ahead of Larrys Mabiala to toe one off the post. That about being the runner-up too often became the norm by the end of the game.. The Timbers still found their spaces on the field - and even set players loose in wide-open pastures behind the LA defense (especially down LA’s right) - but LA also had a really solid afternoon of cutting out passes to Timbers players who waited for the ball to come all the way to them. They also started gobbling up the outlet passes Portland has relied on to start the counters the team has feasted on throughout the, ahem, six game winning streak*. The question is why?