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| This far and no further till the regular season. You know the drill... |
The fresh signings keep rolling into Major League Soccer – some flashier, some smarter – and preseason has started for just about every team in the league. Shit’s gettin’ real, but I still wouldn’t mistake anything that happens today for future lived reality, yea, these are the Ponzi schemes of fandom (what?).
Only the preseason portions of the above applies to the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati – and I’m directing the late jab at the end toward FC Cincinnati – but, before getting to them, I wanted to start with a wide-lens snapshot of MLS.
Varieties of New Signings
“They're coming off a championship, so those are the things that motivated me to come. ... [The chance to move on to Europe] was a factor, too. You see players leaving [MLS] for Europe, so that played into my decision.”
So said Atlanta United FC’s Pity Martinez, but the broad idea of showing up/off in MLS as a stepping stone to fat European pay-days has gained real currency over the past couple seasons. And not all players are doing this the same way, so do read the fine print in any new arrival’s contract. For instance, it looks like Martinez signed “a long-term contract” with Atlanta, so, even if he (and even Atlanta’s FO) think he’ll be gone in a year or two, they’ll have some control when he leaves and will almost certainly get a kick-back out of it. The San Jose Earthquakes took a different approach in landing Argentine forward(? – thought he was a midfielder) Cristian Espinoza, and used new head coach Matias Almeyda as a sweetener. Espinoza’s signing is almost explicitly rehab, i.e., “[talented] young player that needs minutes moves to a team with playing time available.” The other club involved – Spain’s Villareal – tapped Almeyda to mentor Espinoza and, if things pan out, Villareal reaps the long-term benefits. That business of acting as a finishing school for bigger clubs around the world doesn’t sound like the best deal, but, on the grounds that weirder things have panned out, may as well see where it goes…
Several other eye-catching signings have come together over the past week…just real quick: rumor turned to reality when New York City FC landed their Romanian stud/Replacement David Villa, Alexandru Mitrita (they also added young American defender Keaton Parks, who called rich-people start-up NYCFC “a great club”…based on…?); sticking with defenders, the rich got richer when Atlanta added the well-pedigreed Florentin Pogba at centerback and the Los Angeles Galaxy correctly identified and filled a hole with the signing of Uruguayan centerback, Diego Polenta. Moving to the other side of the pitch, it’s good to see Real Salt Lake sign a forward, and here’s to wishing Liberian international Sam Johnson comes through for them, while further north and east, and promises to “eat people” notwithstanding, I think Toronto FC might have taken a flyer by signing injury-tinged American forward Terence Boyd.
To close with a personal, if imperfect favorite, the Philadelphia Union wrapped up the signing of Mexico’s Marco Fabian…think it was yesterday, and I just get a kick out of Philly’s ambition. Fabian had absolutely wonderful things to say about joining Philly, but I’m still worried that he won’t bring enough to cover for all that youth (and Aurelien Collin) in defense. Fortunately, none of us have long to wait till we learn how all the above and the rest of the trade machinations work out. All 24 experiments will go live soon enough. Wish it was today (getting antsy), but fans have preseason for sustenance in the meantime. Speaking of…
Not all preseason results are created equal, obviously, and the devil is in the details. It doesn’t mean a lot (or perhaps anything) when, say, the Chicago Fire edges a team in Spain’s Third Division. Going the other way, seeing Atlanta kick the shit out of the Seattle Sounders should pique enough interest to pick through who played and when; or, to take a really curious case, it’s one thing to see the ‘Quakes lose 0-3 to its junior affiliate from Reno, but something else entirely when people on twitter hint at a disturbing incapacity by San Jose to control proceedings.
With that in mind, it’s time to move on to Portland’s and Cincinnati’s preseason progress…starting with an elephant that’s squatted in my mind for the past few days.
FC Cincinnati – Don’t Get Cocky, Kid
“Have you heard lately from the people that were suggesting FC Cincinnati would lack for goals this season? Me either.”
- Pat Brennan
Because I try not to keep my assholeism to a minimum on twitter, I kept my one-word response to that tweet (“(preseason)”) to myself. Also, Brennan in watching FC Cincy play and I’m not, the live experiments (your people call them “games” or “matches”) could prove him right, and so on…but, yes, The Inevitable “But.” By that I mean, this is when you, 1) remind yourself this is preseason, when coaching/player motivations (just win, baby) aren’t as linear as they are during the regular seeason, and 2) start digging. For example, this was DC’s United’s second half line-up in the 1-1 draw down at IMG:
“Chris Seitz, Akeem Ward, Donovan Pines, Jalen Robinson, Chris Durkin, Trialist A, Trialist B, Trialist C, Trialist D, Trialist E, Trialist F (Wayne Rooney 63’)”
If your team can’t score against a line-up so contingent that you don’t give half the players names (you don’t want to get attached), you’ve got problems. You’ve also got Cincinnati coach plainly stating that DC “were a lot better” in the Wayne-Rooney-less first half, but there’s something else to note on the scoring. One write-up of that win talks about Cincinnati players who barely know each other, but that statement doesn’t apply to the players who combined for Cincinnati’s equalizer (found video, but be patient): Nazmi Albadawi and Emmanuel Ledesma. They both played on last year’s USL team, and well, so seeing those players, plus Corben Bone, work it out against “Team Trialist” should make people feel happy, maybe even a little wistful, but I wouldn’t project much of anything out of it.
All the same, I hope Brennan’s gloat holds up in every FC Cincinnati game except their home game against the Timbers. Moreover, I’d be delighted to see Ledesma, Bone and (for some reason, especially) Albadawi punch even in MLS. (I don’t know how I developed a soft spot for Nazmi, but I did; Forrest Lasso, meanwhile, is my heaviest bet for making a real name for himself in America’s top flight.) I just wouldn’t count on anything until the experiment goes live.
To digress in this space between talking about Cincinnati and Portland, I considered tracking preseason results the same way I did 2018’s regular season results (behold, the gateway to madness) before dismissing it as an absolute waste of time. Again, there are too many variables even within one team’s preseason, but, if you expand that to league-wide scenarios where you’ve got Chicago beating a team from Spain’s Third Division, other MLS teams shoving around college kids, or even the Timbers putting the hurt on (probably) grab-bag Costa Rican teams, you’re comparing apples to grapes to kiwis to bananas. There is no meaningful comparison to make, so why bother? That said, the specific teams Cincinnati has played so far draws the comparisons closer to apples to apples, and even that’s a little sobering. Neither Montreal nor Colorado made the playoffs in 2018, and both were marginal all season; DC arguably only made the playoffs by the grace of Rooney’s amazing partnership with Luciano Acosta and a massive run of home games (where they were, admittedly very good). On the one hand, I think Cincinnati made smart choices (assuming they did) by going with those teams. On the other, be aware these aren’t league heavy-weights and adjust expectations accordingly…
…also, (preseason).
Portland Timbers – Testing the Water with One Toe
I expect Timbers fans will get their first glimpse at the 2018 team when they take on the Seattle Sounders Wednesday night in Tucson – I mean, they streamed last night’s game between Seattle and Houston (which I watched; notes below), so surely someone will air Portland v. Seattle, right? With that, we’ll all finally have something more to work with than Stumptown Footy’s (by all appearances) soundly considered notes on Portland’s preseason so far. To linger on that a little…
Until new players arrive – e.g., and from Stumptown’s article, a right back and a rumored DP striker (that has the potential for “forming the head” and turning the Timbers into motherfucking Voltron, can I get an “Amen”!) - the biggest talking point from the pair of preseason wins in Costa Rica would probably be Lucas Melano coming to camp with his boots tied on right. As the record no doubt shows, I’m deeply jaded when it comes to Melano, a man who seems as freaked out by getting the ball as I did back when I did my level best to hide from everyone in the middle of a soccer field back in high school. And yet we’re getting reports of Melano dribbling through defenses on his way to scoring three goals across two games. Sheer stubbornness will keep me from declaring Melano is viable option until he puts together a steady string of starts, but it’d be one for The Happy File if he pulled it off.
There’s not much to report beyond that. Portland only really played its starters in the second game – the one against Herediano – and none of them stayed on the field for that long (e.g., a full half for Diego Valeri, less than that for Sebastian Blanco and David Guzman). The second half line-up against Saprissa was a veritable “who’s that?” for anyone who doesn’t know Timbers2 (e.g., present company). A couple other things caught my eye – 2019 draft pick Ryan Sierakowski got a long run-out against Saprissa (he’s not yet signed, apparently), and seeing Roy Miller lurking on the starter’s sheet makes you wonder if they won’t keep him around as cover until a new right back arrives – but there’s not much else to pick at until we see some games. Which, again, we should come Wednesday. Goddammit.
As mentioned above, I gave Seattle v. Houston a bleary-eyed glance last night. The Sounders wound up losing 2-3 (spoiler!), even after Houston went down to 10 players thanks to Aljaz Strunz bizarre decision to slap one of Seattle’s small children. About that, Seattle made wholesale changes to its line-up just after the 63rd minute when they decided to unleash the toddlers(! seriously, knowing even one of those names automatically makes you a Sounders super-fan). To add one cringe-worthy note to this, Houston opted to give its starters over ten minutes against the small children and they needed almost all of that time to break-through even once and they didn’t even look good doing that. Bluntly, if I was a Dynamo fan I would be…concerned. Houston scored two more after they finally put in their second shift at the 76th minute. I was thrilled (and a little jealous) to see Tommy MacNamara, formerly of NYCFC, running around for Houston, but it was ex-Rapids player Marlon Hairston who deserves credit for turning the game; he assisted on the equalizer and scored the winner on a 1-v-1. Maybe there’s hope for Houston yet, but, holy shit, were they sloppy yesterday, and for most of the match.
To close on Seattle, this take holds up pretty well. The Sounders looked sharp in the attack – including on occasions when they didn’t score – and they handled Houston fairly easily for as long as their first unit stayed on the field. That’s what whomever Giovanni Savarese plays on Wednesday will get measured against – assuming they play at the same level, at least. Personally, I’m hoping to see some of the depth pieces stand beside that ruler, and on the grounds that Portland knows what it’s got with the first team. Also, the more rest we can get players like Valeri and Diego Chara ahead of the season, the better….but I’m always stressed about that, so what’s new?
Anyway, that’s all for this week…or is it? Oh, and if they don’t air that game somewhere on Wednesday….there will be whining.
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