MLS Tourist Journal, Calendar Week 1: Combine, Coaches, Players

How my people say "love."

Welcome to the first of the weekly spins I plan to take around Major League Soccer’s points of (personal) interest for calendar year 2019. Because I can go deep on only two teams (the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati), I am truly embracing “tourism” concept this season. It just feels right. As always, or at least when it doesn’t trip up the narrative flow (which ranks high for me), I’ll start with those two teams and branch out from there.

Portland Timbers, Neither Holding Nor Folding

All quiet on the Timbers front for the past week – and how one feels about that corresponds directly, no doubt, with one’s sense of the state of team (i.e., I want action, baby). Barring some draft-day monkeyshines, the Timbers aren’t likely to do much during the first “real” event on the MLS Events Calendar – e.g., Friday’s Superdraft (scare quotes = real). To note an impulse, however, when I saw Logan Gdula identified as a right back (and one with a(n alleged) 40% chance of starting five games or more (see the “senior prospects” link below), one of the voices in my head whispered “Timbers,” and that tells me where I see a need for Portland. Besides that, and thanks to this brief article (and the artist’s rendering therein), I finally seee The Master Plan for the East side of Providence Park. (What? That really could be the first artist’s rendering I’ve seen. I ride by Providence every weekday and, every time I’ve ridden by, I’ve looked at it and thought, “huh”?). Next.

FC Cincinnati's First Steps

Call the point arguable, but participating in the Superdraft makes FC Cincinnati in MLS official for me (it’s like Don Garber gave them his lettermen’s jacket and his class ring). As nearly everyone points out these days, MLS’s broad evolution means that most teams look to the Superdraft for “depth pieces” rather than starters. Or, to borrow a really efficient phrase from Matt Doyle’s mock Superdraft:

“Homegrowns, TAM signings and young DPs are investments. A drafted player is found money.”

I glanced at two more mock drafts to see what Cincy might do with its Number 1 pick – Top Drawer Soccer’s and Ives Galarcep’s – and, on evidence even of seasons where the Superdraft mattered more, the next time you’ll see a majority of those names will be on USL rosters or the name tag of a guy selling you your next hi-def TV. Before the mock drafts, I searched for hidden gems among a list of senior prospects and didn’t turn up anything obvious – and that could explain why the three mock drafts tabbed Siad Haji, a midfielder (Doyle and Top Drawer), and Tajon Buchanan, a forward, for Cincinnati’s first pick.

Haji appeals to me more, personally, on the grounds that he (reportedly) can play wide and I’d argue that current and potential signings for Cincinnati has produced a glut of midfielders who play centrally. I also wouldn’t mind seeing Cincy go for one of the more touted central defenders - e.g., Callum Montgomery or (less likely, for a couple reasons) Andrew Gutman. Maybe Hassan Ndam is better than I think, but I still want more available bodies back there. And I'd rather see more ambition on signing attackers and/or forwards.

Moving on now, to the league as a whole…

Wrapping Up the Empty Ritual

I normally take the time to watch the Combine, but I spaced it this year. I don’t mind that so much, and on the grounds that I can’t say I’ve ever gotten much out of the experience. I’m not even sure the coaches there rely on it that much: as Andrew Wiebe points out (in a usefully comprehensive “5 Questions” post), the whole thing works as a convention for America’s soccer professionals as much as anything and the bigger things happen when that cross-pollination leads to trades. I picked through just one more article on this – this one a list of the Top 12 homegrown players – and, honestly, it still feels like a bunch of names I won’t hear for or few years, or when I watch the USL, or when I sign up my kid for the local elite-club program.. I guess the things I look for in those players snippets (as well as the senior prospects list) are a history of injury, questions about speed or “athleticism,” or something like the monster (I think) senior year posted by Andre Shinyashiki for (I think) the Denver Pioneers.

As noted ad nauseum last season when tracking FC Cincinnati, it’s hard to project how even a USL player will do in MLS, which means it'll take a Rosetta Stone to translate college to MLS. Right, that’s the Superdraft/Combine, etc. Now the real shit.

Catching Up with Corporate and Middle Management

The past week produced some noise on the coaching side (aka, middle management), some of it big, some of it weird. To start with the weird, the Chicago Fire signed Veljko Paunovic to a multi-year contract extension and, unless it was this or getting a new coach for 2019, I don’t get it. The qualms go beyond his record (31-46-25). I know the injuries tripped up the Fire in 2018, but the team’s regression between 2017 and 2018 argues for a one-year extension in my mind; good coaches know how to plug holes in my mind, and the evidence doesn’t support that. The reinforcements called in so far don’t obviously strengthen Paunovic’s hand, but I guess that’s why they play the games.

I’d slip DC United’s decision to give their head coach, Ben Olsen, through 2021 between weird and big. For one, who can forget “Benny-ball”? Then again, what was that but “plugging holes,” aka, my shorthand for a good coach – and…it’s just, Olsen’s been there since 20-freakin’-10, people. All the same, I enjoyed DC down the stretch last season as much as the next guy, so…

We move closer to “big” with the Los Angeles Galaxy’s hiring of Argentine/former Columbus Crew SC legend, Guillermo Barros Schelotto. Schelotto played in MLS back when life/league circumstances had me pulling for the New England Revolution, often as not, but I always envied the Crew for having Schelotto, who hovers near the top of the list in the history of MLS’s low-key great signings (I’d put Diego Valeri and Diego Chara on that same list, fwiw). I lost track of Schelotto after he left the league, but, per the “10 things” article that followed his hiring, his coaching career has been impressive – including his last gig at Boca Juniors. Related, I wonder how much the whole Boca Jrs./River Plate fiasco (wow, Sputnik News? srsly?) nudged him back to calmer soccer culture. Who wants to put up with that shit? 

Finally, let’s close on one of the biggest feel-good stories of the 2018-2019 MLS off-season: Columbus Crew SC’s boldly ambitious rise from the ashes of its rumored relocation. It sucks when a team moves, for starters, and my tolerance for flailing teams in terrible locations has no known bottom precisely because a good redemption makes for a better story (or, you gotta suffer to feel real joy). Better still, Columbus’ new ownership group went big on the front office side (aka, corporate) by bringing in Tim Bezbatchenko from Toronto FC, and they finally get the famously fickle Caleb Porter to utter those two magic words: “I do.” No matter what happens – and I mean, even if it blows up in their faces – watching what happens in Columbus will be one of the biggest stories in MLS during 2019. In two syllables, yee-haw.

Cavalry Calls (aka, New Players)

To start with a very big personal rule: never predict success for any player in MLS, pedigree be hanged, until they’ve played in MLS. With that, these moves/rumblings piqued my interest:

Cristian Espinoza to San Jose Earthquakes

The red flag with Espinoza comes with this: “He hasn't made a senior appearance at Villarreal after signing for the club in 2016.” On the other hand, La Liga is several “ligas” above MLS, so one can safely predict that minutes will no longer be an issue for Espinoza. All the same, he addresses one of San Jose’s several areas of genuine need. Also, he fills just one of them. Those interested in looking for the other ones can see San Jose’s full roster at the bottom of the same article (keep making good choices, MLSSoccer.com!).

Dallas Looking in the Right Direction (at Bryan Acosta)

Anyone who watched how much better Mauro Diaz made Dallas over the past couple seasons (when healthy) will probably see the wisdom in this move. Even if Acosta-for-Diaz isn’t an exact like-for-like (the official read: “a box-to-box midfield tasking but has also been used in playmaking and wide roles in Spain”), just about any skill upgrade in central midfield feels like the right thing for Dallas’ shopping list. All that likely pales when weighed against the team transitioning between Oscar Pareja (the king is dead) to Luchi Gonzalez (long live the king) at head coach, not to mention the loss of Maxi Urruti and Tesho “School of Mines” Akindele. Big changes in Big D.

Holy Shit, Is That...Ambition?

The New England Revolution hasn’t made an official move more ambitious than bringing in Edgar Castillo from the Colorado Rapids, but talk of “3-4 max salary players” must feel like matching the first five numbers in Powerball and waiting on the actual Powerball to come in for long-starved Revolution fans. I still pull for this team to get things right (you never forget your…hold on…one, two…third love), and that’s why this stray line made my brain skip:

“While the team isn't exactly hurting at forward, [Tajon] Buchanan provides an up-and-coming option that can compete for minutes behind Juan Agudelo or Teal Bunbury.”

I’m looking at New England’s attacking numbers and they’re not exactly not hurting at forward either. 2018 was a freak-year for Bunbury, for one.

And, because I’m a shit, I’ll close by flagging a stray comment from Wiebe’s 5 Questions write-up, this one concerning Minnesota United FC’s signing of defensive midfielder, Jan Gregus:

“Scandinavian DPs haven’t always **clears throat** worked out that well. MNUFC just bet the house (and a whole bunch of money they were previously hesitant to spend) that the Slovakian international will fix their midfield.”

For what it’s worth, Gregus plugs what strikes me as a whole for Minnesota. Thank god he’s not Scandinavian, right?

Till next weekend. And is it March yet?