A (Loosely and Loose) Dungeons & Dragons-Inspired MLS 2020 Preview

The thing is, how you see yourself...

To carry through on a threat made late last week, below is…A Major League Soccer 2020 Season preview. Before carrying on, let me start with some hedging:

First, if you want a comprehensive preview that clocks every acquisition and covers every possible tactical look, MLSSoccer.com cobbled together such a beast and you’re better off picking through that than what’s below (or, for the smarter set, America Soccer Analysis called in independent soccer pundits from around the web to preview every team in MLS). While this post borrows liberally from those previews, I’m not even gonna try compete with that. (Historical Note: Total Coverage became an impossibility once MLS grew past 12 teams, and I could never pull it off, even back then.)

Second, while I’ve got (tentative, evolving) plans to keep an eye on the rest of MLS throughout the 2020 season, I follow just two teams closely: the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati. As such, and on the grounds that I’m not looking closely enough, you should take anything I say about any other team with a fair-sized grain of salt. (And you should keep a salt shaker handy for all commentary on Portland or Cincinnati.)

Given those limitations, this preview takes a different tack to looking forward to the 2020 season. Rather than organize each team in the league according to the sharpness of their offseason maneuvering or rank one against the rest – though I will do that below, albeit (very) loosely – I’ll measure all 26 teams in MLS on two levels:

1) whether or not I expect them to be “good” (i.e., a decent bet for the post-season); and
2) whether or not I think they’ll be interesting in 2020.

As you’ll see below, these “rankings” sound a little “Dungeons & Dragons-esque” – e.g., “Interesting Good,” or “Boring Bad” (and you can find the sign up sheet for Drow Elf cosplay in the lobby) – and the supporting arguments for each call will be, per the hedging above, necessarily loose (but that doesn’t mean I don’t care). I’m going to start this review by fitting Portland and Cincinnati into the grand scheme of things, but every team will get its moment, if in thumbnail size. I’ll add some bonus details to each thumbnail, most of which is self-explanatory, with one exception: “predictions spread.” Each individual team preview on The Mothership’s site ends with their in-house hacks guessing where they’ll finish in its respective conference; there, the bigger the spread, the harder the call, the more unpredictable the team, the more fun/chaos I expect out of them.

All right, time to get started. I’ll recap Portland and Cincinnati first, drop in thumbnails for the rest of the league and, at the (very) end (of a long, long journey), talk about what the sum of those thumbnails project for Portland and Cincinnati – at least at the start of 2020.

Portland Timbers: Boring Good

A sneaking, yet profound suspicion that I’ll be tuning into the same programming killed my interest in writing an official preview for the Portland Timbers…well, that and sorrow. Still, I summed up my thoughts on them and their chances in match reports I wrote for each of their three games in the Old Trapper Preseason Series (v Vancouver, v Minnesota, v New England). Nothing pained me quite like typing the word “boring” into their rating, but I just follow the data. The team added (at least) four players in key positions – e.g., Yimmi Chara (the long sought “winger”), Jaroslaw Niezgoda (recovering from a freakin’ heart condition), Felipe “The Invisible” Mora, and Dario “Was a Racecar Driver” Zuparic – but, for all that, they have yet to show visible improvement on either side of the ball. In fact, when faced with competitive teams – e.g., Minnesota and New England (early (dubious) comment on the ‘Caps) – they’re bleeding goals and (still) struggling to get good looks on goal. Perhaps most maddening of all, neither Yimmi nor Mora prompted any change in Portland’s attacking tactics.

On a happier note, the “good” part of that rating comes from two places. First, the Timbers have quality players at just about every position, and that should be enough to keep them competitive. The second, more hopeful/speculative supporting argument follows from the belief that all four of those new players are just starting to find their feet (Niezgoda, for his part, is presently searching for his fitness), and that their strengths will be found, the partnerships improved (especially in defense), etc. To end on a high note in the key of blind faith, just two of those players finding a useful groove could do the truly unthinkable, e.g., flip Portland to the coveted “Interesting Good” category. I’m pinning my hopes on Yimmi and figuring out how to unlock Mora for now (or just give up on that and revert to Jeremy Ebobisse)…but my actual expectations currently wallow in the Slough of Despond. I am very, very concerned that Portland’s 2020 will be a grind…

2020 Preseason Record: 4-2-0, but three of those wins came in Costa Rica and against opposition of unknown composition and/or interest. The short version: I hope they’re more right than I am.

Predictions Spread: 2nd through 8th in the West, but with the balance of it falling between 4th and 5th. I’m both more or less optimistic…

FC Cincinnati: (Highly) Interesting Bad

I gave FC Cincy a formal season preview for two main reasons: 1) American Soccer Analysis invited me to write one (thanks!), and 2) they make for a juicier subject. It bears all kinds of noting that I wrote that preview with The Ron Jans Meltdown in the background, and it’s somewhere between hard and impossible to believe that won’t impact the first half of Cincinnati’s season. They were also in the process of adding Siem de Jong, so that’s not really priced into the preview either. At same time, what are chaos and drama if not interesting? Is a house fire fun to watch? (Hell, yes!...provided it's one of those test fires and no one lost anything of importance!) That accounts for one half of Cincinnati’s rating…so, what’s with the “bad”?

The Yoann Damet Interim Coaching Era amounted to an act of running the “we want to play attractive football” cliché over a table saw: the team tried to play forward-looking possession-heavy soccer, only without the tactics and personnel to pull it off. The ensuing righteous, multi-game ass-kicking should have cured all concerned of any interest in trying ever again, but they're professional athletes precisely because they keep on going. Cincinnati called in players with an eye to curing its greatest weakness from last season – e.g., the failure to create and finish chances - but the variables abound. Whether or not they’ve fixed those turns on how effectively de Jong and Haris Medunjanin connect traffic between Cincy’s defense and their offense, and how well players like Adrien Regattin, Yuya Kubo and Jurgen Locadia put away the chances provided; the perhaps even bigger sub-question is whether whoever Damet (and a permanent head coach to be named later) lines up with de Jong and Medunjanin will provide enough cover to keep the defense from getting overrun. All that’s completely wait-and-see, and with a jaundiced eye turned toward last year.

The pisser is, had FC Cincinnati entered the season with Jans at the helm, I wouldn’t have so readily tagged them as “bad.” That said, I would have canned Jans too. The question of whether or not he's an actual racist isn't the issue; it's whether it's reasonable to ask any of those players to play under someone so goddamn thoughtless. Freakin’ dumbass.

2020 Preseason Record: 3-2-1, and with two of the three wins coming against USL opposition (bad company, Philly).

Predictions Spread: 10th to 13th in the East, but with the balance on 12th, so that’s second to last. Not good, basically. I think they’ll go higher, but I’m, like 75% homer, so…

All right, those are the short details on the two teams I follow. Now it's time to take on the rest. For everything below, I only really relied on MLS' 2020 preview, their round-up of preseason results, and my own dodgy memory. Most of it should hold up to vague scrutiny and, on the grounds that I'm an amateur and it's still preseason, I offer no apologies for the parts that don't.

Interesting Good

Atlanta United FC

The biggest questions about them are whether they can replace Julian Gressel’s production, and whether Pity Martinez and Ezequiel Barca will produce to their (short) resumes. Sub-questions include whether Fernando Meza can replace Leandro Gonzalez-Pirez and Mattheus Rossetto can replace Darlington Nagbe. An ambitions team with lots of variables in play…I mean, that’s interesting even if the whole thing collapses.

Preseason record: 3-0-2 (but against pretty rando opposition, so…)

Spread in predictions: Most see 1st or 2nd in the East, but with a stray vote at 5th. The smart money is that they’ll be good.

X Factor: Either Barco and Martinez, because, if they can come good, Atlanta will scramble most defensive schemes. From stray snippets I've seen, both have had strong preseasons.

Los Angeles Galaxy

If I never hear the name “Zlatan” again, I’ll die happy. (And it’s Malmo that agrees with me, right?). And what better way to do that than by being a better team in the season after he left? Don’t get me wrong: I enjoyed basking in the glow of Zlatan’s ego as much as the next guy – and probably more than most LA fans should have – but LA looks like a balanced team for the first time in years. And they’ve got Chicharito and a support system for him. Also, shit.

Preseason Record: Against that, 3-1-1, and it’s fairly "translatable" (which, to define it, means games against MLS and/or familiar opposition). I see some potential weaknesses in there.

Spread in predictions: 1st to 4th, and with the consensus lying on 3rd. And that seems accurate, if in a vacuum.

X Factor: Either the decidedly journeyman defense or whether the support system can actually feed Chicharito.

Sporting Kansas City

This team crazy under-performed in 2019 and just about no one thinks they’ll do that again – especially not after the shopping spree to end all shopping sprees over the current off-season, thus adding to the several league-elite players they already had (e.g., Johnny Russell). Nothing says they knew where the problem resided quite like calling in two center-backs; if they can close the back door, SKC should be something else and/or nightmarish in 2020.

Preseason Record: 1-3-1, and against opponents that translate, so there’s that. Look, if this team doesn’t make the playoffs in 2020, I’d expect Peter Vermes to (finally) be out of a job, because the investment is all the way there.

Spread in predictions: 1st through 7th in the West, and the three votes at 7th say a lot. I think they’ll turn it around, and rattle the shit out of the West, but they’ve got to actually do that, y’know?

X Factor: I’m going with Alan Pulido, Russell, Khiry Shelton and Gerso Fernandes, just anyone involved in scoring goals for this team, because I saw them create chances all over last season. I mean, if they can just keep the opposition honest, that’d be something…

Columbus Crew SC

If Columbus has any competition for the ambition for its rebuild, it’d be Sporting KC; Lucas Zelarayan probably made them better on his own. For all the questions I have about Caleb Porter (several), I get their additions and rate Columbus’ projected line-up. Whatever trouble they have is on the depth side, but I’d run that roster against just about any team in MLS. Hell looks like it’s gonna get super-real for Cincinnati…

Preseason Record: 5-0-2, and it translates. Lots of MLS teams, lots of wins (then there’s that draw against Vancouver…).

Spread in predictions: 1st to 8th, but those are the extremes. For what it’s worth, I can see a first-place finish, but not the 8th, and I expect something like between 2nd and 4th.

X Factor: I’m loving Artur and Darlington Nagbe in a central midfield…and Vito Wormgoor is the best name in MLS.

New England Revolution

Near as I can tell, they’re gambling on out-scoring everyone who comes against them. Based on their assembled personnel, it’s not a bad theory. That said, the notes in the preview about weakness up their spine tracks with what I saw despite the beating they dropped on the Timbers last Saturday.

Preseason Record: 2-2-1, which translates in a truly complex way (e.g., pounding on Colorado, then losing to Vancouver?).

Spread in predictions: 3rd to 7th, with the balance of votes falling dead center at 5th place. For what it’s worth, I think they’re one quality CB away from lethal. The question is whether they’ll get one, but they look like an out-of-control sleigh ride regardless.

X Factor: I’m going with the central defense. If that holds together (against what looks like real odds), look out….

Colorado Rapids

Yes, this is a stretch. Hear me out. If MLS has a money-ball team, it’s the Rapids, aka, frequent shoppers of MLS’s reclamation pile. They were fun in 2019, even if they missed the playoffs, but they have a good foundation and they added “a playmaker” in Younes Namli (Danish, and I know nothing about him). For what it’s worth, I see them and Dallas as the West’s biggest X Factors. But, because I’m always weird about this team (and with reason; they won an MLS Cup fer crissakes!), I’m ranking them higher than I should.

Preseason Record: 2-3-2, and it very suggestively contradicts everything written above.

Spread in predictions: 6th to 11th in the West, which says I’m not the only one having trouble placing them.

X Factor: That’s a young back line. As good as Lalas Abubakar is (I dig him), he takes risks, so the cover is crucial, and that’s next-level defending.

Boring Good

Los Angeles FC

If there’s a question about this team beyond how badly losing Walker Zimmerman will fuck them, I don’t know what it is. They’re curiously glass-jawed, but that only matters in the post-season, not when they’re skinning your team for desperately-needed points. Still very much, “Danger, Danger, Will Robinson!”

Preseason Record: A disturbingly translatable, 3-0-1. They beat real teams in that stretch (and, again, the one that tied them bears noting).

Spread in predictions: 1st and 2nd across the board, and with a lonely vote for 3rd. There’s nothing to argue against them carrying on, and what could be more boring than that?

X Factor: It’s not an X-Factor, but I can watch this midfield all day. So fucking positive…

Seattle Sounders

That Seattle will most likely compete at the highest levels, once again, constitutes one of the most painful realities of the 2020 season. Despite literally shredding the defense that back-stopped them to an MLS Cup, they’ve got enough up top – and they’ll find enough for the defense later – that expecting them to do anything but battle to the last flies in the face of almost a decade’s worth of evidence.

Preseason Record: A relatively meaningless 3-1-1, plus an away draw in the CCL to Honduras’ Olimpia. After some countless number of seasons of watching them start slow before hauling down everything in their path like a zombie chowing through a human-brains buffet, I only count Seattle out when they’re all the way down, double-tapped and disemboweled.

Spread in predictions: 1st to 4th in the West, and with 4th being the most popular vote, but, if you look at where Seattle started each of it’s (evil fucking) runs to MLS Cup (4th, 2nd, and 2nd), they’ll be just fine with anywhere in that range.

X Factor: That said, the defense…just don’t get too excited over early struggles, because the bastards have hauled three of the past four goddamn seasons to glory and beyond from the jaws of hell.

FC Dallas

Of all the teams in MLS, Dallas has nailed down consistency as few teams have - it's just the wrong kind. Perpetually caught between never bad and never league-elite, Dallas took a real swing for the fences this season by signing Thiago Santos as a mentor/d-mid and Franco Jara (“One of the most prolific scorers in Liga MX”), who will join them at mid-season…when a boost could very well come in handy. Definitely a team to watch, and yet here they are, filed under “boring.”

Preseason Record: 5-2-1, and not terribly auspicious or translatable.

Spread in predictions: 5th through 8th in the West, with the balance of the votes on the high side of that scale. That said, if there’s a dark horse in MLS, Dallas looks as likely to fit the bill as anyone.

X Factor: Michael Barrios is among the most MLS 2.0 players in the league and he's still one of the biggest pains-in-the-ass for any defense. Respect.

New York City FC

Because they didn’t add a lot – just a left back (Gudmundur Thorarisson…wow, that’s aggressively Scandinavian), and one of the several former U.S. youth wet-dreams, Gideon Zelalem – so they’re returning most of last season’s good, but not good-enough-to-win-it-all team.

Preseason Record: 1-3-0, plus a CCL win away in Costa Rica over AD San Carlos. I won’t pretend to know what beating that specific team means, because I’ve got no goddamn idea, but I do think that one competitive game in a tricky setting trumps their three preseason losses.

Spread in predictions: 1st through 6th, and with a healthy number of votes calling 1st. They probably are good for it, because this is a good team from front to back, and, if Alexandriu Mitrita and Heber settle in a little deeper, they’ll have an attack to die for.

X Factor: The coaching carousel can’t help, but I like that the man stripped to his underwear after his team avoided relegation. And in fucking Norway. Context matters.

Toronto FC

By reaching MLS Cup last season, Toronto gave a live demonstration of the value of experience and sang froid. As someone who’d written off key players like Michael Bradley and Jozy Altidore going into 2019, I’ve got little to no business telling anyone what to think heading into 2020…but they’ve got to crap out a some point, right? I mean, in much the same way Alejandro Pozuelo and his cohort of MLS-average players (e.g., Jonathan Osorio, Marky Delgado and Nick DeLeon) couldn’t make their early advantage over Seattle stand up in MLS Cup. They did, however, add one difference-maker for 2020 – Pablo Piatti – and who’s to say he won’t be sufficient?

Preseason Record: 3-2-1, and one of those Ws doesn’t count (e.g., the one over UC Irvine).

Spread in predictions: 1st through 5th in the East, and with the balance around 3rd place. Because I keep missing on TFC, I’ll just be nodding and smiling on this one…

X Factor: I noticed the projected line-up in MLS’s preview post cut out Michael Bradley. I’m not sure I see that, while also accepting its inevitability. There is a succession in this team’s near future…

DC United

Ben Olsen is the herpes of MLS, obviously. (10 years? Seriously?) I bring him up due to DC’s recent history of existing in a space between good and unsatisfying. No matter the talent available – e.g., Edison Flores and Julian Gressel this season – DC tends to maneuver toward a promising mediocrity. It’s like the culture has gone buggy or something. Still, this is another team to keep an eye on. They could do anything from drawing  their first dozen or rewrite the script by coming out of the gate flying.

Preseason Record: 3-2-1, translatable, and I’m starting to wonder whether Philly is in trouble…

Spread in predictions: 3rd to 8th, with balance going to the low end of the scale – and probably by way of experience.

X Factor: I don’t know DC’s defensive midfield very well, but think I’ve read more praise than damnation (and if it sucks, please inform). As such, I’ve got Yamil Asad on the mind, because a strong year from him could make them a legitimate league-wide nightmare. This team needs attacking excitement like few in the league and, to their credit, they tried. And yet…

Red Bull New York

“Mandela Egbo — The Englishman will look to grab the starting right back role as he battles it out with Kyle Duncan and Rece Buckmaster.”

That sentence captures it all, really, the who is that of the guys battling for a meaningful but (literally) non-central spot on the field. A couple stars aside – e.g., Kaku and Daniel Royer near the goal, plus Aaron Long and Tim Parker at the back – the Red Bulls are decidedly anonymous, and one of the major “system” teams in MLS. They live or die according to how well they replace the departures.

Preseason Record: 4-2-2, and everything this side of the blowout over the University of South Florida and the loss to Phoenix Rising translates tolerably. It looks like another season of living or dying by tight margins.

Spread in predictions: 7th through 10th, and that feels right. By all appearances, the Red Bulls seemed attached to a system that worked better five years ago than it does today.

X Factor: The forward contest, and whoever wins it, between Brian White and Tom Barlow. They’re solid enough all over the field, but they need an heir apparent to cover Bradley Wright-Phillips’ highest production seasons.

Minnesota United FC

I have to admit I was a lot cooler on Minnesota till I saw their B-team kick Portland’s B-Team’s ass. That suggested they have depth and options outside a steady, semi-conservative stable of regulars – and without the league-elite d-mid pairing of Ozzie Alonso and Jan Gregus. Steady at the back and good enough in the attack is a potent mix in MLS…

Preseason Record: 4-1-1, and with enough patsies to make one wonder where they really are. Jesus, again with Vancouver…

Spread in predictions: 3rd to 10th, but I’d call around 7th the predictive sweet-spot.

X Factor: Maybe Thomas Chacon, maybe the rest of their rising talent (e.g., Mason Toye, Robin Lod, Luis Amarilla); Minnesota will compete to extent their collective ceiling comes up. And, because pendency doesn’t translate into real-world results, Minnesota’s a pure wait-and-see from 2019 model.

Interesting Bad

Philadelphia Union

Losing Medunjanin matters, no question, but they signed Matej Oravec as an alleged replacement, so that’s one box checked, if only on paper. The open questions look to be whether he can replace him and whether their get-out-o’-jail-free card, Ilsinsho, has another year of stealing results in him. The margins are thin, hence where I placed them…

Preseason Record: 3-4-0, so, with wins over Chicago, Miami and Montreal against losses to Atlanta, Cincinnati(!), Dallas and DC, signs point to no. There’s still time to sort themselves out, but, of all the teams in MLS, the Union strike me as the one most likely to have taken a step backwards.

Spread in predictions: 2nd through 7th in the East, and with a pretty even distribution in the voting. I know preseasons aren’t often predictive, but Philly looked precarious enough last season that I’m looking at it.

X Factor: The whole damn team, near as I can tell…

Chicago Fire FC

They essentially blew up last year’s aged, disappointing roster (e.g., farewell Dax and Bastian!) and rebooted with players like Robert Beric, Ignacio Aliseda, and Luka Stojanovic. Oh, and the front office changed. Total rebuilds generally have a bad track-record, but it’s virtually impossible to find a team with a greater need for a total reset than Chicago.

Preseason Record: 3-2-1, and most of translatable (a pair of blowouts against Philly and Colorado, against a win over Toronto)

Spread in predictions: 11th to 13th in the East, so expectations ain’t high.

X Factor: Johan Kappelhof, Francisco Calvo and the extent to which they can get it done…

Vancouver Whitecaps

It’s hard to trust a team that rebuilt its rebuild, and that’s the Whitecaps in a nutshell. Still, plenty of people seem high enough on Lucas Cavallini that I can’t dismiss him, and they added Cristian Dajome and Leonard Owusu on top of last year’s (alleged) key players (e.g., Imbeon Hwang) to show a little more ambition than the handful of teams that opted to stand pat. Do I trust it? No.

Preseason Record: 3-2-1 and, because I observed enough of it directly, one hell of a counter-point. By that I mean, while Vancouver lost to the Timbers, they beat both New England and Minnesota in the same, Old Trapper sponsored preseason tournaments. That’s enough to make them a team to watch, in my books.

Spread in predictions: 9th to 13th in the West, which sends a different message than their preseason results. We’re about to find out whether the preseason matters, at least when it comes to the ‘Caps 2020 edition.

X Factor: In so many words, the tendency to underperform…

Inter Miami CF

Rather than waste anyone’s time, I’ll admit that I don’t have enough information to work with when it comes to Miami. I do, however, have two plausible knocks: 1) based on the players in it, that defense looks suspect to me; and 2) the younger the DP, the younger lower the hit-rate for success – i.e., for every Miguel Almiron, there’s a Pity Martinez, an Ezequiel Barca (both first season), or even a Lucas Melano (for...longer). When I look at the parts Miami scavenged from around MLS, I don’t see how they fit together.

Preseason Record: 1-1-0 and, in my book, unnecessarily secretive. I already don’t like this team…

Spread in predictions: 6th through 11th, aka, a pretty clear indicator that the hacks don’t know what to think.

X Factor: The young attacking DPs – e.g., Matias Pellegrini and Julian Carranza…maybe, Robbie Robertson (whoever the fuck that is). Their MLS-level talent isn’t cream of the crop, so if those guys don’t come through….

Boring Bad

Houston Dynamo

My personal interest in this team tops out with finding out whether Tab Ramos can be a good coach at the professional club level. While they’ve added some interesting/potential upgrades – e.g., Darwin Quintero (formerly of Minnesota) and Marko Maric (a rarely-played Croatian youth international, but what’s that currency worth?) – the Dynamo so far don’t look up to competing in whatever version of MLS we’re on right now – as in, if this is a big spending era, they ain’t.

Preseason Record: 3-1-1, and pretty translatable too, so long as you combine the MLS results and the USL results.

Spread in predictions: 6th to 12th in the West, and with a heavy, clear balance going toward 12th. I see this team having a hot enough stretch to make people ask, “is this their year?”, but that and failing to make it their year has been their brand since the 00s…and with good reason when you think about it. Houston was the gold standard in MLS for a few years…

X Factor: I’m going with Ramos. If they can over-perform expectations, I’m putting money on him as the likeliest cause.

San Jose Earthquakes

They’re returning largely the same team from 2019, only with an aging Wondolowski (who contributed 15 goals last season) that’s one year older. They’ve got good players up and down the roster – and if Oswaldo Alanis can shore up that back-line, they’ll have a little extra security behind them – but they kind of petered out where they did last season for 11 reasons, and I haven’t been given a compelling reason to expect 2020 will be any different beyond, "Almeyda, but more."

Preseason Record: A 2-2-1 train-wreck, and not one win coming against an MLS team, so it’s hard to translate, but also probably bad.

Spread in predictions: 5th to 11th in the West, but I think the increasingly crowded spot just outside the playoffs makes sense for a team that’s not trying nearly hard enough.

X Factor: They’ve got decent pieces all over, but, if Wondlowski can’t repeat his already improbably 2019….shit.

Real Salt Lake

They basically doubled down on last year’s model – something of a mystery given they finished on the edge of events. The fact that they replaced a sure thing like Jefferson Savarino with Jeizon Ramirez, a young, at most semi-tested kid from Venezuela, shows the faith they have in the hand they’ve got. I guess the theory is, Savarino came good, so….

Preseason Record: 0-2-1, and it translates rather badly, unfortunately. I just don’t see how this team stays competitive when everyone else is buying.

Spread in predictions: 8th through 12th in the West, and with most of the votes landing on 9th and 11th. Everywhere you don’t want to be, basically.

X Factor: Whether the attack can be anything better than it was in 2019. I expect they’ll continue both as a pain-in-the-ass and a team that doesn’t really go anywhere.

Orlando City SC

Their main upgrade was at head coach with Oscar Pareja, but his level off success tends to top off at a playoff caliber team, but not a champion. They didn’t add much on the player side from this year to the last – Antonio Carlos in central defense and Mauricio Pereyra in the attack – and, with all the teams starting ahead of them, and all teams below them showing more ambition (hell, even Chicago), it’s not hard to see Orlando get lapped again. Wishing them the best, but...

Preseason Record: 6-1-0, but I’d say the only real win they have to show for it is the 1-0 over Montreal, but that comes with its own set of caveats.

Spread in predictions: 8th to 13th in the East, but with the balance of votes centered around 9th. That feels both accurate and a little sad, because Orlando doesn’t look anything like seeing the first post-season of its existence.

Montreal Impact

Won’t lie, I haven’t entirely trusted this team all the way through the Ignacio Piatti era, what with playing over their heads like that. That said, seeing the names “Orji Okwonkwo, Lassi Lappalainen and Ballou Tabla,” and with Saphir Taider in the mix, makes me wonder whether they might have life in the post-Piatti era. That’s the attacking side, but real mystery shows in the defense.

Preseason Record: 1-4-0, and it translates. For all their exploits in the CCL (2-2 on the road at Saprissa is nothing to sniff at), they lost to the Tampa Bay Rowdies immediately prior to.

Spread in predictions: Between 9th and 13th in the East, which says people rate Montreal about where I do – e.g., between irrelevant and doomed.

X Factor: I’d argue the whole damn team has a history of being an X factor, but I wouldn’t expect it this season. Another team trying to get by on the cheap.

Nashville SC

Landing Zimmerman can’t hurt, but Hany Mukhtar can only have so much influence out there. On a deeper level, the balance of their guys have been measured against MLS standards and found wanting.

Preseason Record: 3-1-2, not bad, but when all the MLS teams you beat are generally rated awful…

Spread in predictions: They’ve got 10th as a ceiling, but the balance points toward 13th. They’ll have to over-perform to make that 10th spot come good. Wildly, even.

X Factor: I don’t think the make the playoffs absent career seasons from just about every former MLS player, so I guess that’s over-performing to lottery-esque levels.

And…yes, I think that’s everyone, and that’s plenty of content for one literal fucking day. To close on the two biggest questions of all, where do I expect Cincinnati and Portland to finish at the end of 2020 based on all the above. I’m finding a similar answer in both cases, albeit with a different, lower floor for Cincinnati. To put that in clearer terms:

For Portland:

I expect the following teams to finish higher than Portland in the West:

LAFC, LA Galaxy, Sporting KC, and Seattle Sounders.

Cases in which time will tell:

FC Dallas (no idea), Minnesota (no idea), San Jose (no idea) and RSL (I think Portland beats them).

Bottom Line: So that’s fifth place as a ceiling, and with a dogfight for 6th or 7th place in the future.

For Cincinnati:

I expect the following teams to finish higher than Cincy in the East:

Atlanta, Columbus, New England, NYCFC, TFC, and DC.

Cases in which time will tell:

Red Bulls, Philly, and Montreal…(so, yeah, I think they’ll finish higher than Miami and Chicago and I’ll feel sad if they don’t.

Bottom Line: A lot, maybe even too much for Cincy’s own good, depends on how well Philadelphia, Montreal and the Red Bulls play this season; that's three teams they're playing for just one spot, so the head-to-head doesn't really matter. To put that another way, no matter how hopeful I may be, I don’t like Cincy’s chances in 2020, better luck next year, guys!

Right. I think that’s everything. We’ll see how all this holds up in the weeks ahead.