MLS Off-Season Weekly (12/14/19): Playa Moves, Painful Realities, and an Amendment

Amended, but neither forgotten nor invalidated.

On the theory it makes some kind of sense, I’m going to start this week’s review with the league-wide news before covering the latest on the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati…

…which also relates to the reality neither of them have made much news. And, for the same reason, this will be my last soccer post of 2019. I mean, why dry-heave out content (like this guy) when the world fails to provide? I’ll be back in 2020, like one of those plants you start to dump beer on, half hoping it’ll die, so you don’t have to deal with it. (Hat-tip to a long-time friend of mine, who once had a plant named “Worf” that, as he put it “thrived on neglect.” For the record, he did not, to my knowledge, ever water Worf with beer.) So, come along for this quick round-up of news from all ‘round Major League Soccer, starting with playa moves.

Playa Moves
As a public service, I want to start by directing people to one of The Mothership’s (aka, MLSSoccer.com) better off-season features: the one-stop transfer/needs tracker, which gives little thumbnails on every team in the league till they start kicking things again. It keeps a bird’s-eye view on comings and goings, but without reinventing the wheel every week (like some kind of dumbass). And, honestly, a good chunk of what’s happening right now aren’t really “moves” – e.g., DC United buying three more years of Bill Hamid, or even Atlanta United FC making Emerson Hyndman’s States-side return official – but they still count as both smart and good actions, even if they just reassert the Status Quo Ante First Kick 2020. That said, some are more interesting than others. For instance…

So…Michael Bradley, Huh?

Sometimes, details from a story gets stuck in your head, and it muddies something that comes later – e.g., that thing about Bradley’s option automatically renewing at $6.5 million per in the event he lead Toronto FC to victory last season. As such, when I read that TFC re-signed Bradley, my first thought was, “for $6.5 million, are you fucking stupid?” (Even my inner voice is an incredible potty-mouth.) They aren’t, of course. While full terms were (annoyingly) not disclosed, Toronto burned some TAM to keep Bradley around and freed up a DP spot in the same move – i.e., reportedly the same template the Portland Timbers will use to hold onto Diego Valeri. Full disclosure, I’m weird on Bradley, in that I see him as valuable and overrated in the same glance – to apply brute logic to the question, could Toronto find a better player for his position (my answer: yes) - but, I also believe that a team can hold a player for multiple reasons.

MLS Off-Season Weekly (12/4/19): No News Is...[For Both Teams] & (Night) Moves Around MLS

My idea of a good time. Just add bourbon.

Another week, another MLS Off-Season Weekly. As always, I’ll start this (hopefully) short little spin around MLS with the two teams I follow…in the order in which new developments have occurred. Which makes the starting point fairly obvious.

No News Is…The Soggy Status Quo
Spare me your forced analysis of the Portland Timbers defensive depth, The Mothership (and damn you!). Fans and pundits can’t know how Dario Zuparic will do, or whether Bill Tuiloma and Julio Cascante will improve, until all of them either do or don’t. Beyond adding the new guy, the state of the Timbers defense is unchanged till further notice.

That said, I got a little grist on Jorge Moreira out of that post. First, he has only six months left on his loan, but the organization is looking to extend, and for several seasons (please, please, PLEASE! More Ira is fun as ejector seats and boomerangs!). It sounds like the deal is done to add a “young right back”(Pablo Bonilla still?), but that’s it for excitement around these parts. Oh, and I will miss the “safety first” feel Zarek Valentin provided when the Timbers wanted a little less swashbuckling up the right side, but that bird’s flown to Houston (and Jordan Morris exposed that Plan B somethingawful the last time it was tried).

In substance, there is only waiting to learn what’s up with Diego Valeri. And whether the team will get another DP. (Again, please, please, please!).

No News Is…Cause for Full-Blown Panic
Another website asked me to write-up a snapshot of where FC Cincinnati stands at this point in the off-season, something I just forwarded for review. I’ll let that post speak for itself when it goes up – and I don’t want to preview too much of it here – but I will say, it’s hard to appreciate just how fucking messy Cincy’s roster really is until you delve into the mechanics.

The Short Version: FC Cincinnati has more needs than options, or at least that’s how I see it. As much as I think next season will be better than last, I expect neither greatness nor enjoyment for Cincy in 2020.

MLS Off-Season Weekly: Looming, Gaping Holes, A Smart Move (with Caveats), and, Crap, The CBA!

"What do we want? More charter flights! When do we want them? More often!"

If you thought a holiday weekend would slow down the news in the Extended Major League Soccer Universe, you have no goddamn idea how media works. The news is thick and dank, so let’s dig in – starting with one of the two teams I follow (followed by the other one, then a bunch of league-wide news/perspective/angry-uncle ramblings):

Portland Timbers: Stumbling Toward the Next Plan A
Absent any updates on the Valeri Situation, my attention wandered to other parts of the Timbers’ roster – and it turns out I wasn’t alone in that:

“The truth is Chara's probably not high-scoring enough to suit Portland's needs, but it's hard to figure what their budget will be after what happened with Brian Fernandez. There are also rumors that they're leaning in the direction of getting another center forward anyway, and pushing Jeremy Ebobisse out to the wing once again.”

Personally, I’ve had Chara on my mind lately, but in a wholly different way – i.e., less about his alleged limitations (which Timbers fans have internalized by now) than his clear and absolute gifts, and what that means both in terms of managing his minutes over the next season or two and to the impending post-Chara future. So, no, he doesn’t score often (when he does, he times it for maximal effect - like his tackles), but I’ve never seen a player with his capacity for covering ground and knack for ferreting the ball off players’ feet; I’m not sure he can be replaced like-for-like (the same goes for Valeri, with some twists, as I’ll get into below). And that’s why I brought up managing minutes in 2020 and, like, one year beyond, just as much as I pointed toward the post-Chara future. Assuming he comes back, Cristhian Paredes doesn’t play the same game as Chara, or at least not to the same effect, and neither does anyone who has partnered with him so far (and if Paredes doesn’t come back, the same will apply to whomever replaces him). As such, when Chara’s not out there – whether resting for a game or two, or in the Chara-less future - the players around the area Chara vacates will need to adjust in terms of positioning, and adjust expectations as to how and how much of the ground behind or in front of them (as applicable) gets covered. That doesn’t have to be bad, but it will be, without question, different. Next question – and I ask out non-rhetorically (because I don’t know the answer) - how much does it throw players to make those kinds of shifts from one game to the next. Moreover, is what I’m describing even a meaningful issue? I think it is, obviously, but what do I know? Anyway, just fretting about the inevitable…