Portland Timbers 2-0 Toronto FC: Dunking on the Expected

Again, without touching it.

So…that was like the loss to Seattle Sounders FC, only with winning, right? The Portland Timbers largely outplayed an opponent, but came out 2-0 winners instead of (mildly) broken losers - because, tonight’s win, right?

To start this review off right, yes, I do love it when the opposition’s starting line-up renders everything I covered in my pre-game tweet-storm totally irrelevant (no, please, kick me again). Why didn’t Sebastian Giovinco start; if not him, why not Jonathan Osorio, or even Victor Vaszquez? On the other hand, Jozy Altidore did start, but Portland swallowed his considerable mass well enough, what with Larrys Mabiala nipping at his heels for as long as the game lasted. (Yes, I’m exaggerating…just translate that thought into the team at large.) Barring a post-game revelation (I won’t follow up), I have no idea why Toronto FC started a B-Team against Portland tonight; I also know it didn’t pan out, so file that away too. Cruise control switched on for this game immediately after Diego Chara slotted home the Timbers’ winner. Portland piling on goals never seemed on the cards any more than a Toronto comeback, but Portland added a back-breaker of a goal to reach 2-0 all the same. Again, I have no idea why Toronto, a team (still) six points out of the playoffs and (now) with only eight games left, tried to win this game on the cheap.

I say that knowing that I’ve advised the Timbers to cheat on personnel time and again. Just this past week, in fact, and against the New England Revolution this upcoming Saturday. I can’t present the evidence on that because I haven’t figured out how to embed a tweet into a Blogger post and, Jesus Christ, I am never gonna do that. (This a space for textasphiliacs, while also being open to converts. But, to get back on track…)

Like at least, oh, 20% of the Timbers fan-base at any given time, I’d decided it was time to deploy Portland with another formation tonight - something the coaching staff took only as far as putting Jorge Villafana into the starting line-up (also, is this how the team lined-up; probably not). Jorge aside (and welcome back, kid), I’m not sure Portland played another formation tonight, so much as I’m pretty damn sure Toronto played against the Timbers the worst possible way they could have - especially this specific iteration of “Portland Timbers.” The past 3-4 teams have defended deep, and that, 1) gave Samuel Armenteros nothing but no space in which to operate, and 2) forced the Timbers to try to break down a compact defense with crosses, i.e., something they can’t do. And so they didn’t. And that’s the history of the past four games…

MLS Week 26 Review: Big Shit on the Horizon (And Incorrigible. That's the Word You're Looking For)

A glance at MLS Week 27.

I can do this, gosh darn it! I can be brief. I will be brief. And, obviously, never listen to me when I say I’m gonna stop doing something.

Your Result of the Week, for Major League Soccer Week 26: Real Salt Lake’s complete and utter, 6-0 dismantling of the Colorado Rapids. I framed this game around RSL in last week’s preview tweet-storm, calling it a “vital chance [for RSL] to choke-out its road woes.” The balance of those six goals came after two ejections (so file that away, and, for the record, I’m against the rigid sacrosanctity that forbids so much as staring angrily at a player’s head; I don't want to live in a world where this is a red card), but they still kicked the Rapids absolutely dizzy (watch the highlights; the Rapids’ players looked fucking drunk after the sixth goal). I made sense to shrug at his match-up as recently as a month ago, but beating up the LA Galaxy twice a couple weeks back, and with a home win over San Jose between them, slipped the word “new-look” in front of the Rapids’ name. At any rate, big, big win for RSL, who needs road-confidence for the playoff appearance they’re looking more and more likely to nail down.

Now the rest, with random points of interest, in descending order of importance:

To squeeze in a game that barely mattered, and in service of noting something that did, Josef Martinez broke the single-season goal-scoring record last week, and with some class too. As for the game, that 2-1 score-line elides the reality that Atlanta United FC rolled over OrlandoCity SC. Then again, who didn’t expect that?

OK, back to it, the games that mattered most...

I wrote this about the San Jose Earthquakes side of their 2-3 home loss to the Vancouver Whitecaps: “If that doesn’t drive your confidence down a desert highway en route to burial, I don’t know what does.” “That” referenced going up two goals early, only to stall-out and lose – and on some near-total defensive breakdowns (see Kei Kamara’s humiliating tap-in). San Jose is fucked, but Vancouver’s brand just got a little more viable, and that’s a big deal…

…not least because that win put them even on points with a choking Portland Timbers side (but Portland stays above them, in spite of recent efforts, on goal-differential). I registered my disappointment with Portland, at length, but Seattle had little to brag about outside the quality of its defense, but it’s impossible to argue with 8-0-2 in their last 10 games, and they’re getting real wins at home (and stole three points out of Minnesota a couple games back).

Portland Timbers 0-1 Seattle Sounders: It's Time to Talk About Larry

Third image under "idiot son."

I’ll keep this short. (Now, how many of you guessed that I’ve started scores of posts with that exact same phrase, only to delete it when the proof slipped straight out of the pudding? And...failed again.)

To start with the short version, the Seattle Sounders (specifically, centerback Kim Kee-hee) pegged an own-goal off the heel (probably) of the presently-struggling Julio Cascante. They’ve built their late streak on fluky/lucky goals, Seattle has, and that one goal allowed them to smuggle all three points out of Providence Park  last night. The ending 0-1 score-line in no way represented the action on the field - see the box score and the evidence of the eyes of all witnesses to this, just, gross injustice - and, so, to wrap up the short version, those motherfuckers…

The Portland Timbers (I haven’t even named them yet? seriously?) played the better game out there tonight and were, without question, the better team. I heard talk that the Timbers withdrew into the safety of the “Christmas Tree” formation for tonight and the contours of the match bore that out: the wretched cluster-fuckedness and missed marks of the last three games gave way to a solid shape and, by the numbers alone, an improved attack. I also saw Zarek Valentin and Alvas Powell push high enough (if somewhat ineffectually) to give said Christmas tree one fat fucking middle section, so I’ll just say that the Timbers played in some way that let Sebastian Blanco and Diego Valeri get on the ball a lot, but all while keeping fairly reliable shape. And that worked well, Timbers players looked like they had a good sense of where to go, and what to do, and that’s good.

It wasn’t enough, of course, and that’s now four straight losses (can I get a “huzzah”?) Moreover, it became even less immediately after Seattle scored their shitty, slop goal. I had to check the highlights to recall the Timbers’ best chance on goal - for me, that’s Samuel Armenteros’ lightly over-heated header across the grain off a (motherfucking) moment by Zarek Valnentin.

About those highlights, they open with this absolute gift of phrasing:

“89th all-time meeting between professional soccer teams calling themselves Portland Timbers and Seattle Sounders.”

I can do nothing but applaud that man’s adherence to the strictest of accuracy.

Back to the gristly meat of the matter, there is not a lot of Portland shining in those highlights. Yeah, there’s the one shitty goal for Seattle fans to cling to (lo, it is their guns and religion), but this game otherwise played out as a futility collage, and with Portland trying more and suffering more disappointment for it. Worse, the Portland Timbers plus a slip into the permanent (frankly shameful) midnight of life outside the playoffs, and with the Sounders stepping on their shoulders to get into the light.

Tampa Bay Rowdies 1-2 FC Cincinnati: Stolen Goods, aka, We Interrupt This Coronation

It's still a gift.

It takes a game where the gap between good things for FC Cincinnati extended for over 90 minutes to return one’s focus to present concerns. Those two things were, 1) the penalty kick that FC Cincy drew in the first minute and scored in the second, and 2) the team’s first coherent approach to goal around the 94th minute. And maybe the “one” in the first sentence refers only to me, but Cincinnati bumbling, terrible outing didn’t deserved one point, never mind all three. And yet through the good graces and terrible eyesight of referee Kevin Broadley*, they left Florida with a 2-1 win over the Tampa Bay Rowdies…

…maybe those heavy rains were the Soccer Gods’ tears at the injustice of it all?

Careful readers might have noticed the two-stop time-line above skipped over Cincinnati’s second goal. I excluded it on the grounds that it was some bullshit. Ref Broadley had been unusually solicitous about the health and welfare of FC Cincy players throughout the game - he fell easily for flops by Fanendo Adi, Patrick Barrett and Emanuel Ledesma - but I can’t begin to imagine how the word “foul” came to him when replacement left back Pa Konate went down late in Tampa Bay’s penalty area. Konate lost track of the ball, ran into Pape Diakate’s feet and fell down. When Ref Broadley blew the whistle for the foul, at least two Rowdies hit the turf in unbelieving despair, as if struck low in the Biblical sense?

Can you blame them? The Rowdies had Cincinnati pinned against its (fortunately) sturdy back four for nearly the entire game. You can see all the bad calls for Cincy and all Tampa Bay’s boned shots through the Match Center (looking so at Georgi Hristov, in the event they don't show him missing two he shouldn’t have), as well as (the notably itinerant) Kwadwo Poku’s lone goal for Tampa. Short as they are, the highlights can’t possibly show each of Tampa’s steady succession of forays toward Cincinnati’s goal, and how hard players like Poku and Junior Flemmings pushed to break that steady line; Flemmings, in particular, gave Cincy’s left back, Blake Smith, more trouble than any other player I’ve seen this season. When I saw Cincinnati’s midfielders, it was Michael Lahoud and Fatai Alashe shuttling a ball to nowhere terribly useful more often than not, and from inside their defensive third. Stats don’t always work in soccer (though I am coming around on this), but sometimes they translate a game fairly well - e.g., by the time Smith got sent off for Cincinnati (62nd minute), Tampa Bay had 25 shots, with 5 on goal, to Cincy’s 4 shots, with 1 on goal.

Atlanta United 2 1-5 FC Cincinnati: The Etiquette of Mercy

Only picture Stalin.

To continue from the title, this became a real issue when FC Cincinnati took a 4-0 lead over Atlanta United Muppet Babies. Atlanta United 2. No disrespect. It just popped into my head.

Anyway, Cincinnati took a 4-0 lead over The Stripes (see, FC Cincy? a quick, catchy nickname) at the 55th minute and, that crystalized the scenario: Atlanta 2, The Prophecy (last one). OK, for real.

When Cincinnati took a 4-0 lead over Atlanta 2, two realities were clear: Atlanta 2 would never stop making just egregious mistakes in defense - the stuff of nightmares - and, if Cincinnati kept playing with the same intensity, the game would end with a score high enough to break wills, maybe even cause some of those young scamps to consider going back to school for a highly-fungible philosophy degree. Cincinnati had already killed the game, basically, but with 35 minutes left on the clock. And all those people watching.

So, what to do? How do you sell that to the fans? Since they can’t throw in the towel to end a game (think of the power of that as a motivational tool for a coach!), can professional soccer teams land on a kind of soccer/pro-wrestling hybrid that lets the right team walk out with the win, while still keeping the fans entertained?

A comeback is out of the question, obviously, and what team can’t benefit from working another muscle out there - say, playing “live-fire keep-away” (aka, keeping possession in a competitive game) to kill a game without the game even knowing it (ninja) - something FC Cincy started doing around the 76th minute (and, full disclosure, I started fast-forwarding the archived feed from that point forward). This game could only end with a scenario that played out once in my own backyard, only with Cincinnati as the cat, and Atlanta 2 as the bird she was too stupid to kill. (That brings me back to the mascot issue: FC Cincy didn’t think of biting the whole “Bearcat” thing? Just for another nickname?) So, no universe existed in which this game is competitive and, how does a team play 35 minutes of back-foot soccer without bleeding even a couple unmerited goal-differential-eating goals?

Short answer: the Orange and Blue (see? too long) managed the game by absorbing pressure when they had to and, whenever Atlanta 2 started pressing against the unspoken rules of live-fire keep-away, Cincinnati would send players forward. And, after a period when that détente seemed to get a little fuzzy for Atlanta 2, Cincinnati turned the…post-fatal screw and raised the score to its final 5-1 score line (for highlights, box scores, and more, see the match center!).

Look, the game was comically unclose. Atlanta 2 held possession with, honestly, remarkable poise and, sometimes, elegance for a team that, by the looks of them, are two years into legal drinking on average (per the Match Center, which has all the stats and video I can offer). They have some sincerely talented players out there: Jon Gallagher, Jack Metcalf, George Bello, and, personal favorite, Laurent Kissiedou. After a lot of thought - and he’s hard to place - I wound up equating him to Eddie Gaven. Regardless, Kissiedou had the entire, “make-shit-happen” minute somewhere in the early 60s, and that was genuinely impressive, even if it only threatened to reverse the tides. Also, Devon Sandoval could have dropped the ball to Kissiedou, instead of spinning and taking that shot around the 32nd minute – though, in Sandoval’s defense, that turn nearly came off (and credit to Spencer Richey for stuffing it). They’re not a terrible team, Atlanta United 2…and Shawn Nicklaw fired an absolute cruise missile to give them their lone goal.

But, Jesus Christ, if they don’t give more assists to the opposition than all the opposition’s midfielders combined? Like a change machine you only need to whistle at, I tell you…

MLS 2018, Week 25: Six Degrees of Colorado (Also, Does Anyone Want This?)

Find this movie. Hints below.

First, some quick editorial business: I won’t post “Masochist Edition” weekly reviews - yes, after just one week. It was insanely time-consuming, ftfl;dr (far too fucking long; didn’t read), and I don’t need to show the world my bad math, jesus Christ, what is wrong with me? (And, holy shit, the computer just capitalized “Christ”…shit! It did it again!)

To start with the actual soccer, the new plan is to start with the week’s games that didn’t matter, while also reducing them in the next breath. While I did the usual poking around on the Montreal Impact’s 2-1 win over the Chicago Fire, same for FC Dallas’ predictable 2-0 win over Minnesota United FC, but I didn’t even check on Toronto FC’s 1-1 road draw against the San Jose Earthquakes (literally does not matter; they should have flipped a coin and rested players (sorry, obsessed now)). To start with the Dallas win, first, rain delay, second, that Pablo Aranguiz looked both good and featured heavily in the highlights, but Michael Barrios stole the starring role. The game doesn’t really matter, though, because it plays to Family-Feud-esque expectations - e.g., we asked 100 random Atlanta-natives what they thought would happen, and, I’ll be damned if they all didn’t pick Dallas beating Minnesota. As for the Montreal win, that’s dunking on MLS’s stand-in for toddlers, next. All the same, Montreal should be thrilled to see Jon (shit!) Daniel Lovitz nail that long put-back, because they need all the weapons they can get - especially within the more hierarchical Eastern Conference. There’s no squishy softness back East, the classes don’t mingle so freely as they do in the West. That’s to say, it’s free-for-all in the late-stage Western Conference, a slug-fest with no doors. Or maybe it’s just an endurance dance of mediocrity, who knows?

Someone’s coming to crash the party regardless.

The Seattle Sounders kicking the holy shit out of the Los Angeles Galaxy (5-screaming-0; heard rumors of worse) counts as my result of the week - not least for how cleanly it fit into the big picture. Before saying another word (gasp!), LA sat a couple stars for this one - no, not just Zlatan “Turf Body” Ibrahimovic, but also Romain Alessandrini, Chris Pontius, and both dos Santoses (are all dos Santoses created equal? And do they believe it? Also, Pontius made the 18 at least). Everything I’ve watched and read tells me Seattle tore LA to shreds yesterday, but, more than that, I saw Nicolas Lodeiro all over the highlights (the best of), the battering ram might be working again, positive signs that Raul Ruidiaz is fitting in all right, and MLS’s weekly recap gave some confirmation to my thought that Osvaldo Alonso would pair pretty sharply at the “2” of a 4-2-3-1.

Seattle is cleaning every clock that comes in the shop right now - the Galaxy got spit-shined - and that’s ominous for the rest of their Western Conference. Doubly so, because no one else seems to actually want that spot in the playoffs. Take the Galaxy: even if you accept their loss in Seattle boiled down to a “JV v. V” dynamic, the Galaxy drew the Colorado Rapids in LA early in Week 24 - and that was one week after drawing Minnesota United FC in LA. And losing at Colorado the week before that. Whatever’s rotten in Carson(Elsinore), Cali(Denmark) goes deeper than one week off for the starters. On the one hand, Seattle got a bit of a patsy; on the other, they kicked all of that patsy's ass. And Seattle has the Portland Timbers next. I’m fine. I learned how to deaden most of my emotions over a decade ago.

FC Cincinnati 3-0 Charleston Battery: Wire to Wire, and Beyond

It's greased lightning!

It’s rare to see a 2-0 win as dominant as the one FC Cincinnati dropped on the visiting Charleston Battery (and, yes, I realize the game actually ended 3-0 - and FC Cincy deserved all of that third goal - but it goes against a premise, so…ssshhhh, bear with me). The orange and blue (that’s FC Cincy, who needs a snappier nickname) controlled every aspect of the game, but without looking likely to run up the score. They thoroughly contained the Battery, sometimes in their own half for soccer’s equivalent of eternity, and, with one exception (Ataulla Guerra pinging a bomb off Spencer Richey’s crossbar), Cincinnati’s defenders never gave the visitors more than a glimpse of daylight (e.g., Forrest Lasso rotating/sliding to snuff Patrick Okonwko’s and/or Charleston's best second-half chance).

Both teams came in boasting unbeaten streaks that I can’t stop visualizing as cars rumbling up for an evening of street racing (see The Fast & the Furious, Grease, and maybe Rebel Without a Cause; haven’t seen that one): 15 for Cincinnati and 11 for Charleston. The home team ended the visitor’s streak with confidence-eating finality. The Battery kept their shape by and large, and I think I’d find that distressing - i.e., falling 3-0 when you didn’t shit the proverbial bed (that’s probably not a proverb). Think failing a test when you actually prepared for the thing.

Box scores don’t always put the details in proper relief, but I’d hold up two, maybe two and a half stats (in the match center, where you’ll find highlights too) that capture what decided this game: FC Cincy’s 2-of-3 advantage in duels and their huge advantage in shooting accuracy (75% to 16.7%) - and the latter goes back to another number, e.g., the slim margin in the total number of shots. Those numbers underline two things: 1) how well the Battery held its shape for nearly the full 90*, and 2) how little that mattered, thanks to how well Cincinnati threw around its weight.

* The few honest breakdowns Charleston did suffer produced the result - more specifically, the final score. The third goal - of which, yes, it did happen - concluded the only period of pressure that saw the Battery tremble on the verge of cracking. That came late - around the 85th, and lasted till the final whistle - when Fanendo Adi and Justin Hoyte put at least three clean shots on goal, and Nazmi Albadawi played the dangerous ball that led to Skylar Thomas’ soul-bruising stoppage time own-goal. The other goal came in first-half stoppage time when Albadawi chased down a loose trap by a Charleston player (who, incidentally, had just intercepted a Cincinnati pass), and then combined with Emory Welshman, and Corben Bone, who would finish off Albadawi’s assist, to score.

Sporting Kansas City 3-0 Portland Timbers: Expectations and One (Vague) Idea

I dunno. Maybe try next time.

I had no expectations, at least not good ones. The Portland Timbers played under what expectations I had in the first half before rallying to a kind of latent respectability in the second. A pillow soft goal by Sporting Kansas City's Johnny Russell late in the game undercut the "latent" part of that whole "respectability" thought: in the end, the Timbers looked like discombobulated shit losing 0-3 at Sporting Kansas.

Still, if you ask after the state of my faith, I’d tell you it’s fine. This past week had "suck" written all over it, especially after the home loss to the Vancouver Whitecaps; neither of the week's road games looked easy in context (and, for the record, here are my thoughts on the 1-4 loss to DC United) and also, the road. Given SKC’s recent uptick - e.g., they’ve now won as many straight (3!) as Portland has lost (3?) - this loss really did have the predictability of getting lung cancer from smoking. I won’t buy a doom-spiral until Portland loses another game or two and on some track similar to giving up nine(!) goals and scoring only two. The team would inevitably drop some points this season - every team in MLS does, and usually in bunches - but the good ones recover, to where they win games like DC United away, maybe draw away to a rising SKC side.

The Timbers looked like that team I could lose all faith in tonight and, bring it in for a big group hug, and right now, I will still love that team, yes, the one that struggles. At the same time, I can’t even begin to organize tonight’s errors into some kind of useful hierarchy: the mistakes came from all over the field (no, you have to earn “pitch”), and each of the breakdowns on those three goals were whimperingly pathetic. For a team that has made defense its calling card so far this season, goals like that violate the fucking brand.

And, if you want to ask what’s wrong, this feels like the quickest answer: the Timbers have lost their way defensively and have therefore lost their way. There’s not much more to take out of giving up 3.0 goals per game over their last three (why the decimal? no idea). As for what causes it, questions proliferate until you’re tangled up in chicken-egg madness. With the loss to DC, did the disconnection between the defense and the midfield cause the problems, or should the defenders cope far, far better to…call them catastrophic breakdowns in midfield? That was easier to answer tonight with the red-carpet-welcome goals SKC scored, and that’s a new, disastrous calling card, something a team has to swap out before it kills them? Even when SKC missed, they moved through and around a stunningly stagnant Portland team with depressing ease, and all over the field. A cousin of the same bug played out on the other side of the field? Timbers players: you can’t play back to goal if you keep letting your defender step in front to receive the in-let pass. (And maybe the team is still sorting shit out post-Fanendo Adi, etc. All the same, how long had it been since Adi started/played?)

DC United 4-1 Portland Timbers: The Subtle Brilliance of Plausible Deniability

Audi Field, artist's rendering.

I’ve been whining about giving key Portland Timbers rest since, well, what was universally accepted as a flat performance against the Vancouver Whitecaps over the weekend, when the Timbers lost 1-2 at home. I’m not going to re-litigate that particular point - that said, more on that later - but, in the wake of the kind of demoralizing thrashing the Timbers haven’t seen since a head-full-of-doubts March (which lead to a sputtering April, remember), I do want to expand on a point I didn’t realize until after the final whistle blew.

To start at the beginning, the Timbers lost 1-fucking-4 to DC United tonight, aka, formerly the second-worst team in Major League Soccer (stay classy, San Jose Earthquakes!). To their credit, and in Portland’s defense (just generally, as opposed to the defense specifically), DC, 1) always had ground to make up due to a second-half slew of home games (because Audi Field), and 2) they’d added Wayne Rooney, of England international fame, into their line-up in mid-July.

Nothing about that particular set of circumstances - e.g., fatigue for the Timbers/DC upgrading and playing in happier climes - augured this kind of blowout. And, yes, it was a blow-out: take away the 10-15 minutes before and around the time Samuel Armenteros made it possible to believe everything would be all right, DC was the better team tonight (emphasis added, and intended). All the same, nothing about tonight was inevitable. And, in that precise sense, I understand the math - i.e., going with your best players against the perceived weaker team with an eye to guaranteeing at least one win on this two-game road-swing (it ends at Sporting Kansas City, and on Saturday…huzzah?), and then (serious question, then?) maybe the team rests players who’ve been bleeding for this team throughout its, in light of this loss, frankly incredible 15-game unbeaten streak. I’m not just talking Diego Valeri, even though he’s the guy I keep mentioning; I’m talking Diego Chara, Sebastian Blanco, even Larrys Mabiala and Julio Cascante. And with the way I’m seeing a lot of people shit all over the defense tonight, I can’t imagine anyone complaining about the latter - more on that later too. None of that happened, though: instead, Portland trotted out the same old team and, after a sluggish start, they survived, even willed themselves into the lead. And, just when they thought they could earn their rest, Audi Field turned into a cauldron of fucking piranhas! Auugghhh!!!

MLS 2018, Week 24 In Brief (as I Can Get It)

It's just...I put a lot of work into the other thing. Like more.

‘Twas a big week, Week 24 in Major League Soccer, full of real fucking stupid sendings off (sending offs? fuck it) red cards, a good balance of curve-ball results (but no scratched spit-balls), and one just brilliant fucking moment. You know what that is. (Spoiler: I think my fascination with crying British people somehow started with seeing Wayne Rooney turn in a sweaty lobster-red in Manaus, Brazil). Oddly, the week didn’t feature a ton of beautiful goals (my Goal of the Week selection starts here and ends here (because I'm a sucker for team goals), but perhaps an over-sampling of timely goals.

To restate the purpose behind all this: I have this other post, which I call the “Masochist Edition,” that contains an irresponsible amount of context for the post you’re reading now. If you’ve got, 30 minutes to kill, check that out. If you’ve got five, just find the teams that interest you, because there’s no narrative flow to that thing: it’s just a pile of numbers (that, Full Disclosure, I fuck up with disturbing regularity; if any numbers in there look weird or, personal favorite, the math doesn’t add up, trust, but certainly verify). This post, on the other hand, boils down to me rendering all those numbers, and all that formatting, into something closer to a story about the week just past, Week 24, in this case.

Another difference, and it’s a big one: I’ve actually watched all the highlights, did some reading, checked box scores, etc. I know more now than just the scores now, so, grab your favorite beverage, sit right down, and have a read!

For me, this weekend’s top-line result was Sporting Kansas City blanking a suddenly-stumbling Los Angeles FC in LA 2-0. LAFC’s late charge should stifle any rumors of their demise, because they had some good shots (this is one of those, "but, for" scenarios, and it stars Team Melia (but you have to find them in the full highlights). Know what’d revive those rumors? LAFC picking up anything less than (hmm) four points from this week’s games against Real Salt Lake and the Colorado Rapids, both in LA. As for SKC, they’re back on the winning side of things over their last 10 (4-4-2!), and getting Gerso Fernandes going has to be a good sign for them. Having a player like that, someone you bought and bought into, start producing gives a team that little edge, you know? Think what the Philadelphia Union could be if C. J. Sapong scored regularly. And the season would already be over if the New York Red Bulls Daniel Royer could finish…sigh.

MLS 2018 Form Guide ULTRA, Week 24: Masochist Edition

My favorite analogy below.

As noted in a (pretty fucking random) tweet last week, I wanted to switch these posts to, oh, 80% raw data. That didn't work, though, because the notes I keep here help with my CRS (Can't Remember Shit). I'll still post a purely narrative review of the week, which will be, much, much (much, much) shorter.

That said, the inferences I make below will deal with the same simple idea: whether or not any given team should, or shouldn’t have earned the result they did over the past weekend (and week before it, as the case may be). After that, I look at how things look for every MLS team for the week ahead. A thumbnail sketch of each team tops off all that (literally, it’s above the other stuff), and that’s pretty much what’s going on in the long tail down below. I haven’t done much research beyond watching MLS’s Match Day Central last night…and about an hour after my personal expiration date…and why does every show always feature dunking on Bobby Warshaw?

In case you’re not current, this is Week 24. Next, the lone, capitalized preposition of either “IN” or “OUT” signifies a team that is currently in the playoff picture - or, they were at some point. That’s something that’s always been trick and, bottom line, I’m adjusting those as I go, counting a team as IN in, say, Week 10, while counting that team as an OUT by the time Week 20 rolls around. It works better than I expected, anyway.

As always, I think I’ve got everything correct down below, but, swear to God, I see a new fuck-up every time I open the source doc. Maddening, I tell you., but I’m doing my best and aiming high, just like Tom Cruise would want me to do. As always, the teams are listed below in the order in which they appear in their respective conference standings. Enjoy!

EASTERN CONFERENCE

Atlanta United FC - 48 points, 14-4-6 (7-2-4 home, 7-2-2 away), 50 gf, 28 ga (+22), 24 GP

Last 10 Games, Results: DWDWLWDWWD (5-1-4 (2-0-3 home, 3-1-1 away), 18 gf, 10 ga)

Last 10 Games, Home/Away: AAHHAAHHAH

Record v IN Teams: 2-1-3

Record v OUT Teams: 2-0-2

Current Thumbnail Profile: Can beat anyone, but they don’t always do it. Can post a ton of shots, and won’t always win. And Josef Martinez will break the single-season scoring record this season.

Last Week: Bye week. Ah…

Next Week: They host Columbus, and that won’t be easy. They don’t like disciplined defensive teams.

4 home games remaining, 6 road games. IN/OUT Split: 4/6

They are getting into the playoffs, the only question is how loudly they’ll be roaring.

FC Cincinnati 1-0 Penn FC: Fanendo Adi's Rosetta Stone Qualities

It can also be a soft, cushioned lie.

I want to start with a question: if you’d never seen people play soccer before, how would you know that, say, Bayern Munich, or glory-days Barcelona FC were good-to-great teams? On one hand, sure, if you watched 90 minutes of a game and just followed the reaction of the crowd (even on the simplest level of hearing the elation that follows a goal), you’d understand those teams to be better than their opposition…

…but if you don’t know the quality of the opposition, all you could really say is, “that team in the blue and red vertical stripes sure looked better yesterday! Do you like your blorpduckle with a splooge of kepetzal? (That’s me doing alien cuisine, the point is I’m an alien observing a soccer…never mind.)

For as long as I’ve followed FC Cincinnati this season - and period that started with the June 9th road win against North Carolina FC, and includes everything up to tonight’s surprisingly (probably?) tight 1-0 home win over Penn FC, but not last week’s draw against Nashville FC (busy) and the friendly, because fuck friendlies, if you can prevent a player from skiing, they shouldn’t play exhibitions by the same logic, but I digress. (Also, for the curious, here’s my origin story as relates to FC Cincinnati, aka, I come by this semi-honestly.)

Over that period of time, FC Cincinnati has generally looked the better team on the field in those games (for the record, this is now my 8th game, and I’ll work on the sidebar. someday), and today was no exception. Another general trend: FC Cincy seems to take 15-20 minutes to come into a game, and today was no exception. The chances piled up in the end, until Emanuel Ledesma - always the man most likely to - ricocheted a free-kick off the back of the Lucky Mkosana (i.e., the ironically-named dreadlocked dude who posed a moderate active threat for Penn FC tonight), and into the goal. And that wasn’t even Ledesman’s best chance, because that came in the 54th minute when he made space for himself and pounded a powerful lefty off the post. Still, Ledesma scored the winner, as he has for much of Cincy’s 2018. They’ve got players like that all over the roster too, attacking players contributing steadily, whether it’s Danni Konig, Nazmi Albadawi, or even Corben Bone.

Portland Timbers 1-2 Vancouver Whitecaps: Sorrow, Joy, Perseverance

Now, if he farted right there, it changes everything...

You know that idea where something is “due,” that sort of law of averages principle that something will change, if only because it can’t go on forever? Think that’s called “the gambler’s fallacy,” but I’m not looking it up, because, yolo.

The Portland Timbers were always going to lose a game at some point - even a game at home - but, as with the gambler’s fallacy (again, assuming that’s the phrase), that doesn’t make any more sense of last night’s 1-2 loss tothe Vancouver Whitecaps than chalking it up to The Butterfly Effect. That movie was shit, but I don’t think anyone watched it last night, and that leaves fans looking for other causes.

To name mine, I couldn’t six Timbers - this is just the starters or thereabouts - who played solid games last night: Diego Chara, David Guzman, Zarek Valentin, Alvas Powell, Sebastian Blanco, and, happiest note for me, Andy Polo. In a more generous mood, I’d add Julio Cascante to that list for his several moments of top-notch, one-on-one defending, it’s also impossible to credit a back (really?) four that “team-fucked-up” once, and gave Vancouver as many clear looks as it did. I’d also argue that, for all its gaffes - even the gaffiest gaffe of gaffes by the typically gaffe-free Jeff Attinella (dude…) - those mattered less to the overall outcome than Portland’s unfocused, molasses-laced execution for most of the first half, and its jitters-ridden, yet shockingly effective, attack in the second half.

To turn, now, to the names not listed above, here’s a lot of what happened: Diego Valeri missed a bread-and-butter chance (no highlight, sadly), plus a brutally-timed miss on a penalty kick, but, most importantly, the ‘Caps feasted on picking the ball off his toe on the inlet passes to breakdown Vancouver’s defense; Samuel Armenteros couldn’t find the game and Dairon Asprilla has no game, at least not beyond sweating green-and-gold out there - which is nice and all, but instead of getting excited when the ball falls to Dairon in a good spot, I’m mostly curious as to the precise way he’s going to fuck up the shot. In light of all the above, it felt a little like surrender when Armenteros came off just after the half, but that wound up being…if not the right move, then a right move. Polo gave the team more width (his two runs from wide made the ‘Caps spreads out, if only for a while (example)), and that finally got the Timbers attack rolling.

MLS 2018, Form Guide ULTRA, Week 23: Reputations Protected, Made, and Sullied

O.G. reputation never wears out.

Again, I use the words “IN” and “OUT” to mean teams that are in and out of the playoffs, respectively, at time of writing. It's a loose metric, and a loose identifier for “good” and “bad,” basically.

First, and this is the only time and/or reason I’ll ever, but thank gods for the All-Star Game for giving me a light week in a moment of need. Also, fuck the All-Star Game, please stop doing it, even though I have few moments that don’t turn on need. As for Week 23, she was a busy girl. Some reputations held (e.g., the New York Red Bulls and the Portland Timbers), some improved (e.g., Seattle Sounders), others were rescued from perdition, if only for a time (e.g., Real Salt Lake, Sporting Kansas City and, arguably, Toronto FC), while others were not (e.g., the Houston Dynamo, and now I really hate putting “the” in front of team names, dammit). Outside that, you had a couple WTF results (e.g., FC Dallas losing to the San Jose Earthquakes anywhere), and a couple eye-raising knocks to a heretofore solid stride (e.g., the (fuck!) Los Angeles Galaxy and maybe New York City FC). And, um…Montreal? And Vancouver.

Final thought: Atlanta drew Toronto FC 2-2 at home. Based on a couple loose theories in the stuff below, that feels like the biggest result of Week 23. And, as always, I listed the teams in each conference in the order they appear in the standings, first the Eastern Conference, then the Western Conference. And all that assumes I didn’t fuck up. But I probably fucked up once or twice. Uh…enjoy!

EASTERN CONFERENCE

Atlanta United FC - 48 points, 14-4-6 (7-2-4 home, 7-2-2 away), 50 gf, 28 ga (+22), 24 GP

Last 10 Games, Results: DWDWLWDWWD (5-1-4 (2-0-3 home, 3-1-1 away), 18 gf, 10 ga)

Last 10 Games, Home/Away: AAHHAAHHAH

Record v IN Teams: 2-1-3

Record v OUT Teams: 2-0-2

Current Thumbnail Profile: Holding steady, but still dropping points - including two at home against teams (TFC and DC) they should beat, at least on paper. So long as Josef Martinez keeps scoring (again, that single-season goals record is done), they’ll get to the playoffs in pretty good shape. It’s what they’ll do when they get there at this point.

Last Week: A 2-2 draw at home against TFC, and they had more than enough chances (22 shots, 7 on target), only to get undone by a late dagger of an equalizer. Again, this team is good, but far from flawless. And if Martinez goes down…

Next Week: A week off, then they host Columbus on the 19th. More next week.

4 home games remaining, 6 road games. IN/OUT Split: 4/6

One of the softest end-runs in MLS, period. Another reason why drawing Seattle missed a chance.

Portland Timbers 3-0 Philadelphia Union: Captain, My Captain

Diego Valeri, in, like, 10 years. He'll matter that much.

This is enough days late (and I’ve piled on more work after it), this write-up of the Portland Timber’s 3-0 win over the Philadelphia Union will be brief. No, I mean it this time.

First, I’m totally lining up with the Glass Half-Fullians (i.e., the optimists) on this one. Because I was separated from my usual patterns (guys, corgi races), I didn’t catch this game live, or even until, like, five minutes ago. Immediately after giving up on the idea that I’d ever actually see it late Saturday, and after seeing that it ended 3-0, I dipped into twitter to gauge the mood of the mob I follow on line. Long story short, whatever positivity I found (e.g., the Glass Half-Fullians) mostly spoke up in response to general anxiety about Portland’s attack, thin margins, too few players in the attack, etc. Top-line details - e.g., the timing on the insurance goals (84th and 87th minute) - seemed to support that. Based on that, I figured that,  if ever had the chance to review the proverbial tape, I’d be treated to Philly laying siege to Portland’s goal, followed by the Timbers picking the Union’s pocket on their way out the door.

That did not happen.

This wasn’t even your clichéd “game of two halves.” While it took the Timbers about 30 minutes to come into the game, they never let go after they seized it. Sure, Portland survived a scare when Derrick Jones got free on the far side and hammered a shot that Jeff Attinella did very, very well to save (but Attinella generally does well), and that followed an “audacious chip” by Borek Dockal to start the second half, but both of those represented the final swings of a punched-out boxer, a horse that started strong and burned out too soon….pick or the sporting metaphor (simile?) of your choice, but the point is, the Timbers just flat-out won this game. Five minutes after Jones’ miss, Portland scored the first goal and that really did end this game as a contest. 

Against that, I just checked the box score and see how even this game was. I accept that, but still argue that doesn’t re-write the plot, because I’d put good money on a bet that most of Philly’s chances came early. So, yeah, I’m calling the box score gives a false signal and also wondering how many times I read too much into box scores.