MLS Off-Season Weekly (01.10.2020): Of Rivalries, Rebuilds, and Those Damn Joneses

A future, not the future.

And…we’re back after another week of shenanigans, and a day early, personal shit, etc. The spotlight shined most brightly on the 2020 MLS Superdraft, which feels low-rent AF so far as shenanigans go (or does it? more later), but the work of keeping up with the Joneses, as those other Joneses try to skip away, continued apace, and, lo, the silly season stayed silly.

As opposed to talking Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati in separate sections today, similar (near) coincidental signings made sense of combining them into one discussion for this week’s edition. So I did…

(Almost) Dueling Forwards (Wrap It Up, Gavin!)
Pens keep scribbling on paper across Major League Soccer as teams rush to get players signed ahead of the onrushing 2020 regular season. As I continue to watch for gaps in the traffic in front of FC Cincinnati and looking forward and back around Portland, the dashboard lights keep flashing “DANGER, DANGER!” for both. To give one example for each team, whatever relief I’d hoped to see out of Leandro Gonzalez Pirez leaving Atlanta for Liga MX went “poof” on seeing they signed Fernando Meza from Necaxa to replace him (Liga MX taketh, Liga MX giveth). Portland, meanwhile, should be anxiously clocking rumors of “mutual interest” between the Los Angeles Galaxy and Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez – especially given what the Galaxy have already done to retool ahead of 2020.

The menacing signings keep piling up all over, whether it’s the Philadelphia Union re-siging Jamiro Monteiro, DC United signing a young Estonian phenom, or Sporting Kansas City’s insatiable thirst to drown its 2019 sorrows with still more attacking talent. Again, every team that shoves ahead of either Cincinnati or Portland pushes each of them further into The Wilds of Shame, aka, the lost lands beyond invitations to MLS’s still welcoming post-season dance. So…what are Portland and Cincy doing to keep up with their respective Joneses?

To start with the cheapest of parallels, both teams (mostly) went out and paid for a striker/forward, and, honestly, I’ve never understood the difference of cared to. Earlier this week, FC Cincinnati signed Japanese forward Yuya Kubo. He last played in Belgium (KAA Gent, a club that, I assume, tracks the standard, floating Belgian level?), and he’s dicked around in minor-league Europe (no offense) for a bit, always able to find a job, but one does get the impression of a ceiling. A guy named Brad Gough posted further details on Cincy Soccertalk (thanks!), and I’ll second-guess his detail work after I’ve watched Kubo for a few games, but one phrase stood out, and that’s “depressed asset.” I’m not knocking that, I like reclamation projects, and so on, but proof will meet pudding, and we’ll talk about the delight or mess when it comes.

(For their part, the Timbers…now that I’m reading Stumptown Footy’s report again, they’re soft-pedaling this to the point where I should wait to see what happens. On the other hand, fuck it, I’ve got a theme, and I’m rolling with it. So, on the premise that the Timbers will tempt Jaroslaw Niezgoda to Portlandia, the key phrase here is “having already cemented his third double-digit goal season in his domestic league.”Any player who can stay on the field is useful, and any player that can produce over time is golden, and with his Polish ID showing just 24 years of age, I’m perfectly happy to see Portland bid up those bastards in Bordeaux (but not past the point of madness, dammit)).

Based on all the rumors I know (if you know more, call me), Portland will stand pat if/when they get Niezgoda. Going the other way, rumors have Cincinnati linked to some kid (Uruguayan, I think) named Gaston Pereiro, currently with PSV Eindhoven – and that club, together with the mining in Belgium, makes me read all this as Ron Jans and Gerard Nijkamp tapping their European connections - and Cincinnati fans should be thankful for that pipeline. With both teams, though, my greatest comfort and/or hope for sustained interest through all of 2020 (Cincy strained the shit out of this in 2019) is seeing both teams try to get better. As both an observer and a fan, all I ask of any team I follow is that they try. Semi-competently at least. Just don’t pull the “the 5-year-plan-is-going-gloriously” shit when I can see my dead feed and livestock with my own eyes, goddammit.

One last note on MLS-wide news: seeing Keaton Parks' return to New York City FC after failing to catch on with Portugal’s Benfica would have tracked differently maybe as recently as five years ago. For most of the time I’ve watched the game, Americans shipping to Europe – even the middling clubs – meant, with increasingly rare exceptions, flopping on the edge of a European team that collects talent for fun, then getting shipped to the reserves, then getting loaned out, then coming home to…whatever impression people have of that player at the time (by which I mean, the takes aren’t monolithic (a good thing) and I trust the ones I trust). What’s different is that, Parks coming back to MLS doesn’t have the same stink of defeat that it used to – and definitely not at age 22. In my experience, the biggest change in MLS is its capacity to develop and sell players. Even if MLS has become nothing better than a selling league/talent pipeline, a la, Brazil, Argentina and/or anywhere that isn’t the massivest of European leagues, it’s in a better space than it was – again – even five years ago…

…also, what if this is the revenue stream that erases the semi-justified Ponzi-scheme knock on MLS? Before going further…

Camps, Goddammit

I saw a tweet today that suggested that all potential streaming live-action, dudes-kicking-a-ball-with-intent for Portland’s preseason will start with the preseason tournament hosted in Portland – as in, no trip to Tucson this year? How am I supposed to get attached to players from T2 and/or this year’s Superdraftee absent a tournament where they can get minutes without killing the cause?

At least FC Cincinnati came through for me in 2020…then again, Lord knows they need the practice.

The Pipeline with the Clog at the End of It

I knocked the MLS Superdraft just 16 picks in (via tweet, and I’d dig it up if it was better; most my tweets are not better). The impulse came from the reasonable space that, now more than ever, MLS teams buy success wherever they can find it. For some teams, that can mean a robust academy (mostly, FC Dallas, and the New York Red Bulls, but I’m probably dated five years behind on that…at any rate), but, for most teams – and both the teams I follow – they go, scout and buy the players they need (or think they need; always fun). In other words, it could be a local bias (twice over) that moves me to dismiss the MLS Superdraft as a waste of time, year in and year out. The question, though, is whether or not that’s accurate.

Shit on MLSsoccer.com all you like (Lord knows I do), they do stats well, and archives better (srsly, gold mines abound). Those great and good blessings allowed me to look at the past several Superdrafts to get a sense of how much they benefited teams around the league. I only went back to 2016, so, no, this will not be longitudinal (but looking for interested parties to take that on? Just me?).

First things first, the Top 10 from the 2017 Superdraft has made it impossible for me to dismiss all future Superdrafts out of hand. Here are the top 10 players taken:

Abu Danladi, Miles Robinson, Jonathan Lewis, Jeremy Ebobisse, Lalas Abubakar, Jackson Yueill, Jake Nerwinski, Julian Gressel, Niko Hansen, Joe Holland

I’d call six of those players either untrade-able, or high-value trade-able, and all of them this side of Joe Holland are very much present in the grand scheme of MLS. To put it in the rawest of numbers, the 2017 Superdraft yielded at least eight regular, reasonable starters from a total sample of 88 selections, and some of those 88 selections were teams taking a pass (though less that year than the ones around it). That’s not a bad hit-rate. It doesn’t happen every year, as demonstrated by the…let’s go with the 2018 Superdraft. Some decent names came out of that draft – e.g., Chris Mueller at No. 6 (Orlando), Mason Toye at No. 7 (Minnesota), Brandon Bye at No. 8 (New England, or Brian White at No. 16 (Red Bulls; plus honorable fucking mention to Jack Elliott, who has been a solid citizen for the Philadelphia Union after getting drafted No. 11 in the 4th round) – but, and this is key, 2017 was an outlier for the four seasons I checked.

I like 2018 as the counter-point, but that’s mostly because 2016 is so final; all those careers either dead, or adjusting expectations…makes you shiver, really. The reason why 2018 seems instructive: you’ve got players like Diego Campos, Alex Roldan or Ken Krolicki – e.g. players whose names you might have actually heard – and they’ve all had their MLS options declined ahead of 2019. That’s where the brutal (or presumed brutal, for argument’s sake) reality sets in: it’s a future in either the USL or destroying the local elite leagues with your raging disappointment while working at Home Depot from there. Even Mo Adams, a player who showed enough to get traded from Chicago to Atlanta, doesn’t do a lot better than drag out post-collegiate path in MLS. The larger point: if you click through each draft year going back to the league’s birth, you’ll see names you’re reading for the one and only time you’ll ever see them. The first step toward the dream for a few, but the last day some will ever…never mind.

With some exceptions, the No. 1 picks have come good lately. After the effective dead period that started with Danny Mwanga and ended with Andrew Wenger, I’d call the No. 1 picks going all the way back to 2006 more or less reliable and desirable long-term players in MLS. (Honorable mention to Steve Zakuani, who was pretty damn effective until that leg horrific leg break, and, while Wenger had some confused seasons, he had a lot of them). It’s actually pretty fun to go all the way back, so, for shits and giggles: Brian McBride (1996) was a star (obviously), and Matt McKeon had a long, genuinely compelling career; the next…of the next six picks (Tahj Jakins, Leo Cullen, Jason Moore, Steve Shak, Chris Carrieri, and Chris Gbandi), only Cullen made an impact, and it wasn’t a big one. After that, Alecko Eskandarian had 5-6 good seasons, but the next two picks – JFC, the next two picks: Freddy Adu in 2004 and, if memory serves, the just as young Nikolas Besagno. MLS fed those last two to the sharks… the horror, THE HORROR!

Despite appearances, I am building to a point, and that is this: broadly speaking, coaches and/or scouting networks around the league have gotten better at mining the top talent out of the college draft. If nothing else, the No. 1 players have, in general, become less far-fetched over time; against that, though, MLS has money to buy the kind of talent they could only envision in their wettest of dreams even as far back as…oh, let’s call it 2015, when Cyle Larin joined the league (and wherever is he now? I mean, besides some place just as good). Now, would you believe I did all that just to talk about Portland and Cincinnati’s 2020 draft picks?

To back-track all of one year, Frankie Amaya was 2019’s No. 1 draft pick. Unless I’m missing something, Cincinnati picked Amaya at No. 1 on the assumption that he’d bring something to the team. Expectations aside, Amaya’s 2019 ended early and with zero goals, zero assists, and a lot of things one could only get excited about by squinting and dreaming real, real hard. In that sense, Amaya is most my recent bar/barometer for what a team can get out of a draft. The short version is, not much.

To dig a little deeper, the Timbers have drafted…probably a dozen players(?) since 2016 (does it matter?), and, unless I’m missing someone (also, tell me I’m missing someone), they’ve rarely to never made the field for Portland, so…

At any rate, the 2020 Superdraft just happened and both Portland and Cincinnati picked just one player each. Those are listed below, along with the grade that some hack on The Mothership gave them. In closing, here goes:

Cincinnati: Rey Ortiz (U of Portland kid, hey!); attacking midfielder for a team that needs one badly; they gave them a B.

Portland: Aaron Molloy, Irish (by nationality, therefore an international spot? Do I care enough to check?), also called the “best defensive midfielder in the draft pool.” There, my answer is, I get the concern, but once you’ve committed to Cristhian Paredes, Renzo Zambrano, and Andres Flores – and this is all post-Diego Chara – who becomes trade fodder? Then again, to twist that question into a positive, what could a team want more than competition in the middle of the park?

And there we are. I’ve rambled as always. Good night sweet princes and princesses.