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.

One thing I touched on in that post, but without really addressing it, is what to make of the Fanendo Adi debacle. I posted a poll to twitter, asking Timbers fans if they’d take back Adi. That poll is still going and, while a majority leans against it (53%, but to this specific phrasing: “No, but also maybe”), a combined 35% would take him back (21% “with bells on” and 14% “Reluctantly, yes”). Maybe Cincinnati will have a better shot at shopping Adi’s DP contract – and with last year’s…just everything for baggage – to a team that doesn’t know him(?). FC Dallas just sprang to mind (why? beats me), or maybe SKC (or any team perennially dubbed as “needing a forward”), but I don’t have a clear bead on how damaged Adi looks to the rest of MLS or what that, combined with the fact that he played last season in MLS, means to teams abroad.

Assuming he can’t go, though, I do see Haris Medunjanin as the kind of player who can hit the kinds of runs Adi likes to make. So, provided that his teammates don’t hate him (umm...), it might not be the end of the world if Adi sticks around. There’s also no guarantee that’ll improve anything…

…look, I think Cincy needs another DP to be even playoff competitive – two if Adi moves on. My question is where they need one – I mean, besides all over - and that question only gets more complicated if Adi stays. Why do I think they’ll be coping with the fallout of that signing for a couple years…?

OK, time to move on to the rest of the MLS, and the domestic soccer scene generally. In no particular order…

My Ongoing Love/Hate Relationship with the League I Love/Hate
I got back in touch with Soccer by Ives after a few years away, and it dredged up some of the regular idiocies around MLS that I’d wisely ignored. A couple talking points on some fresh hate:

- I pisses me off how readily the league fines players and coaches for stating the obvious. Marc Dos Santos got the latest (naturally) undisclosed fine for calling MLS's three-and-a-half-month break for an off-season “Mickey Mouse.” Don Garber’s comment on it – “That was an expensive comment that he made.” – just pisses me off more. What kind of pussybutt league has a “public criticism policy”?

- So…is 30 teams still the goal? I ask because people keep noting this phenomenon:

“There is excitement behind the arrivals of those two clubs, but their participation will end the long-standing MLS tradition of having every team play one another at least once over the course of the year.”

First, I did not know that (I would have bet one ball that it didn’t happen last year, and would be short one ball today as a result of that). What’s really on my mind here is, what happens when the MLS hits 30 teams? Will that end the tradition of playing conference rivals at least twice every season? I wouldn’t like that (but...revenge?!), and now I’m all freaked out about going multi-conference…or am I? What if…what if the league went to three conferences – Eastern, Western and Central - which would mean 18 games against conference rivals (and shorter travel times), which would leave…16 non-conference games, unless they expanded to a 38-game season…did I just…see into the future?

I kid. I’m sure someone worked that out in the early 2000s. Also, I’d be shocked to see them try to squeeze in 38 freakin’ games. I don’t know. I mean, did they think all this through, or…?

USMNT Real Quick (or as much as I care about it rn)
ESPN’s site tried to rescue five “breakout stars” from Gregggg Berhalter’s first year in charge of the U.S. Men, and that’s only marginally interesting (I’d argue, for instance, that a player can’t be “a star” in games/competitions where the team doesn’t get good results). There was one line, though, in a Soccer By Ives Q&A that…wait, here it is:

“I do think there was a bit of panic in the fanbase about the team’s struggles in Berhalter’s system, but I think that was less about a complete incompatibility than it was about Berhalter sacrificing some results for the sake of ingraining certain philosophies…Anyone who followed his work in Columbus knows he is capable of adapting to the opposition and making specific match-focused adjustments to try and capitalize on an opponent’s specific flaws.”

The content of that argument depends heavily on what one thinks of Berhalter – again, a guy who hasn’t won anything as a coach. I’m on-board the project of trying to improve the way the U.S. Men play, and that that project will involve a transition…I just have questions. And they do start with the coach. (And, of course, the over-arching mess over at U.S. Soccer.)

Right, getting back to the league. And with a solid, topical transition…

Coaching Carousel (The Slowest Ride on Earth)
Oscar Goes to Orlando
My first impression on hearing that Orlando City SC returned Oscar Pareja to MLS tracked my thoughts on Berhalter – i.e., Pareja doesn’t strike me as an enormously successful coach. More to the point, Orlando needs lot o’ fucking help. Going against that impulse/belief are two points: 1) Pareja does have a couple coaching honors, and 2) he did lay a good foundation with FC Dallas’ academy – and they field a competitive team annually as a result, and (I think) regularly sell young players abroad. And, from what I gather, that’s what Orlando wants out of him: a foundation. This is one to keep an eye on, even if I’d expect it to take a couple years to work out.

No Longer Temping
Real Salt Lake made Freddy Juarez its official head coach, and that makes decent sense, even if it doesn't budge the needle much. RSL looked good enough in 2019 to make sense of out not rocking the boat too hard. Just to note it, I wasn’t aware that once-Boy-Wonder Jason Kreis interviewed for the job, but I read some stray (possibly false) tweet (or something) about him coming to the interview with a list of control-freak demands and, can he pull that crap at this point? You’d think Kreis is back to square one at this point, but what do I know? Best of luck to Freddy, though, who did really well picking up what could have been a mess from Mike Petke.

Player (Night) Moves (I Promised Myself I’d Reference Bob Seger, so I Did)
Still Swaggy?
The biggest move of the week – or at least the biggest move I’m equipped to process – was Toronto FC taking Juan Agudelo in the second Re-Entry Draft. There’s no reason to expect this move to work out – I mean, none – but one blunt question captures its bizarre significance: “how many chances does this guy get?”

The Second Biggest Move
I just read an hour ago that Dallas picked up a midfielder named Thiago Santos from Brazil’s Serie A. As much as this flies in the face of The Brian Fernandez Rule, this move set my spider-sense tingling because Dallas was already hell to break down - i.e., they have some room to fail. Adding a strong (assuming he proves it)/(reportedly) flexible presence in the middle of the field to locking down centerback Matt Hedges for the foreseeable future makes it look like Dallas will be a tough out for a few more years.

The Rest
- The fact that Sporting KC allowed 21 more goals against than Dallas gets at why my spider-sense stayed silent when SKC signed (another) Croatian defender Roberto Puncec. They have the bigger work in progress.

- The rest of the moves I clocked were: Dominique Badji from Dallas to Nashville; Luis Robles from the Red Bulls to Miami; and, most intriguing of all, Brooks Lennon from RSL to Atlanta. This post wraps up all three moves (didn't read it), and here are my hot takes on each of them:

Badji: Doubt it'll hurt 'em, but...meh.
Robles: Good ‘keeper, good for him.
Lennon: I like Lennon, especially as a fullback, so I rate this move. Won’t change the world or anything, but…not bad.

Hopefully, you’ll feel the same about this wrap up. They're never short, are they? Till next week.