An MLS History Project, 1999: Late Bloomers & Shrinking Margins

The theme of tonight's TED Talk...

“This was the last season which used the 35 yard line shootout rule to resolve tied games, and that of the countdown timer, with MLS Cup 1999 adopting the IFAB-standard running clock thereafter.”

Major League Soccer’s unsavory gimmicks lasted somwhere around four years. I can't name a decisive date because the league’s commissioner only decided ditch the a game-clock that counted down instead of up when MLS Cup 1999 rolled around, thereby returning to the normal…profoundly well-established tradition of the referee keeping time on the field…and having people explain to that same referee at volume, and in extraordinarily personal terms, that he is an asshole who does not know how to keep fucking time. See? Tradition.

Then and future commissioner Don Garber made that call. For what it’s worth, I think that small, obvious decision bought “The Soccer Don” a well of sympathy that he has yet to burn through, if with the older generation. I don’t like him a lot, but he seems to get the big things…look, a lifetime of voting for Democrats prepares you for certain things.

As for the season, tell me if you’ve heard this one before: DC United reached and won an MLS Cup final. Guess who they played? Yep, the Los Angeles Galaxy. Guess where they played? You’re not gonna believe this, but…Foxborough, MA, yes, the same venue where DC snuffed out the Galaxy (whoa.) in the inaugural MLS Cup just four years earlier. I’d forgotten this, but Christina Aguilera performed for the MLS Cup 1999 halftime. I dug around a bit to see if I could find the video (nope!), but I did find a NY Times blog post from 2007 that included this little snippet:

“Christina Aguilera, who at that time was still more Mickey Mouse Club than ‘dirrty’ pop-diva, performed a song from her debut album that went platinum 10 times over and won her the Best New Artist Grammy in 2000. Meanwhile, M.L.S. average attendance dropped slightly the next season.”

The headline to that piece – which was about Jimmy Eat World playing the 2007 MLS Cup halftime - was “Pop Stars Riding M.L.S. Coat-Tails.” Yeah, no. Moving on…

It sounded like a good, dramatic final (peep the highlights): DC’s Roy Lassiter knocked LA’s lynch-pin/Defender of the Year, Robin Fraser, out of the game by way of his collarbone in the 7th minute. The Galaxy went down a goal minutes later when Jaime Moreno toe-poked a loose ball home out of a set-piece scrum, and they went down one more goal when LA’s ‘keeper/Goalkeeper of the Year, Kevin Hartman (who was, honestly, very, very good) gifted l’il Benny Olsen an insurance goal. Reading Wikipedia’s account of MLS Cup 1999 (first paragraph) offered one of those “oh, yeah,” moments, when it reminded me of how DC’s Richie Williams (who reminds me of Diego Chara more than most) neutralized LA’s playmaker, Mauricio Cienfuegos. I actually remember that talking point coming up, either in the pre-game commentary or some time during the live broadcast; and it stuck – probably because it taught me something about soccer: a pawn can knot up a bishop in this sport, so long as you play the pawn right.

There are some fun details about both teams – e.g., the same Galaxy defense that allowed those two crap goals was the first team in MLS history to allow less than one goal per game – but the better, future-leaning stories unfolded in the conference finals, in the form of a pair three-game-series slugfests. The Dallas Burn scored five goals to LA’s seven over the three legs in the Western Conference semis, while Columbus scored six to DC’s (also) seven goals. Both Dallas and Columbus won their home legs (e.g., this was a best-of-three series, home-away-home in favor of the higher seed), but I also remember something about DC resting its starters for Columbus away, or I could be making it up, who knows…the point is, even with the Chicago Fire falling off of their 1998 championship-winning pace, both Columbus and Dallas stepped up. And maybe that’s to parity’s credit.

In both cases (if only some ways), that turned on having key players already on the roster step up. The two names that stand out are Jeff Cunningham for Columbus and Jason Kreis for Dallas. Kreis had a monster year – 18 goals, 15 assists, aka, a shade under (was it?) Diego Valeri's 2017 MVP numbers – but Cunningham had elevated his game as well (just not as high), and that was what Columbus needed. They had the better supporting cast - Stern John (18 goals, eight off his ’98 output, but still), and Robert Warzycha Brian Maissoneuve combining for 20 assists – while Dallas had Chad Deering (who played for Dallas with the same verve Brian McBride played for Columbus, but from a different part of the field) and…well, everyone else* (call it a kitchen full of sous chefs). My original plan for this section involved talking about the amazing, “lost” talent of Ariel Graziani, a player Dallas called up from Argentina a decade-plus before Argentina became the flavor of a couple seasons about four, five(?) years ago (hence, the investigation). As with Diego Serna in the post on the 1998 MLS season, I’m bringing up Graziani a year early: he did go on to become quite the reliable attacking performer, but his best years came in Dallas happened in 2000 and 2001, and then in 2002 with San Jose…who, yes, became the San Jose Earthquakes in 1999. Sorry to keep bringing up tricks of memory, but I think it's instructive, generally...

(* If another Dallas player who leveled up the same way Kreis did between 1998 and 1999, it was Oscar Pareja – i.e., the now-peripatetic head coach/(apparent) youth-whisperer. He was always more a box-to-box guy (if I remember right), but, like LA’s Danny Pena (see 1998 entry), he had better ideas than most about dishing helpers. Unless I’m very much mistaken, or just off by a year or two (again), Pareja and Graziani formed a good bond…if on Dallas teams with a familiar bad tendency of loitering around mid-table.)

I’d call the Columbus ’98 team better than the Dallas Burn (please stop) from top-to-bottom, and I recall both of them as alarms wailing in the distance, both signaling a then-and-future complications to DC and LA’s era of early dominance. That wound up hitting DC way fucking harder than it ever hit LA. To finish that thought, LA would reach and lose one more MLS Cup Final (wait for it) and, true story, that made them the first “Buffalo Bills” of MLS – e.g., the teams to lose the most finals. The torch has been passed to another generation (and, if read in a New-England-posh accent, you’ll know who picked up that stinky torch), because they also went on to become the most dominant, ambitious team in MLS. DC, meanwhile, fell off hard after [year not yet disclosed] (because you’ve got to call your own spoilers), and they’ve never really recovered, at least so long as this assumes “recovered” means competing in an MLS Cup. DC’s chapter isn’t finished yet, in other words, but there’s a priest prepping for “extreme unction” in the wings.

The second half of this post will deal with some teams I haven’t yet touched on – specifically, the teams that took the most time to launch after the inaugural, 1996 season, aka, the first teams you could call “shitty” without anything beyond a shrug for an objection. After discarding out a couple candidates (to name names, the Tampa Bay Mutiny and the Colorado Rapids), the New England Revolution and San Jose went well under the wrong side of the bar. I’m including a bigger stretch - the Kansas City Wizards (who I just confirmed, had ditched the “Wiz” nickname as early as the end of the 1996 season (good move, lads)) – because they reinforced the pattern I have in my head. Still, the Wiz (c'mon, for old time's sake?) don't quite fit, because they finished first in the Western Conference in 1997…then again, the Colorado Rapids crawled over them on their way to MLS Cup 1997 (read more here), so how good could they have been?

I’m bringing them in, 1) out of simple bitterness (and/or therapy), and 2) because Kansas City finished last place in the West in each of the next two seasons. Worse, MLS programming honchos put them on heavy-broadcast-rotation in ’98 at least, precisely because they’d finished first in the West in ’97 – hence the bitterness. Back to the big picture, the call was easy on New England (5th/last in ’96, 4th in ’97, 6th/last in ’98 and 5th again in ’99) and San Jose (4th in ’96, 5th/last in ’97, 5th in ’98 and 5th again in ’99). With those details in mind, I stared at some rosters and tried to figure out what held those teams back for the first four years of MLS history…with the big (hopefully) obvious caveat that I’m keying all the thoughts that follow based on my memories of a handful of names and not recalled, never mind direct, observation of player/team mechanics…c’mon, this was 20 goddamn years ago…

To take this a step further, what I’m really looking at (because it’s the only thing I can) is how these three teams responded to those persistent, on-field struggles. I’m going to start with New England (for reasons both personal and practical), but, before starting, I want to throw out the league-wide goals for and against averages for the years 1996-1999 as context:

1996: 53.9 gf/ga

1997: 52.2 gf/ga

1998: 57.1 gf/ga

1999: 45.8 gf/ga

New England Revolution

Goals for/against: 1996: 43 gf, 56 ga; 1997: 40 gf, 53 ga; 1998: 53 gf, 66 ga; 1999: 38 gf, 53 ga

Full disclosure, I effectively started a “soccer affair” with the Revs while I was living near a much better DC team – and, not coincidentally, I wound up moving to Boston by the start of the 1998 season. The Revolution remained "my MLS team,” until Portland joined MLS. But I digress…

The Revs “marquee players” (e.g., the MLS 1.0 equivalent of DPs) didn’t look bad on paper, but they got stiffed by circumstance: Joe-Max Moore was a talented, crafty forward…who spent too much time broken. They also got Alexi Lalas (and, later, Greg Lalas!) and (I think) Teddy Chronopoulos for “marquee” defenders, so nothing on paper said their defense would struggle as much as it did. And yet it still did. While I recognized all the names on the rosters (frankly, to the point of wondering how I don’t have something better to do with my time), what I didn’t recall was which players showed up when. In the big picture, though, New England tried to very hard, almost desperately, to find players to goose an attack that couldn’t kick out of second gear.

For instance, as I was hauling my belongings from DC to Boston (in just 10 boxes, btw), the Revolution mined the as-yet unexploited Dutch market to pry loose Richard Goulooze (a defender) and Edwin Gorter, who (if I remember right) they drafted as as a playmaker. Moreover, they lured Raul Diaz Arce from DC, whose time had been limited by Jaime Moreno’s arrival and/or persistent ass-kicking (and Diaz Arce did well for the Revs). The Dutch treat generated some buzz (maybe only in my head?), but it fizzled fast; both players lasted only a season and a half. On the other hand (and, Jesus!), look at those ’98 numbers (above) get on the wrong side of the league average in both directions. There’s a phrase I remember from this time or thereabouts - “a proven MLS player” – and, judging by the moves they made, New England went all-in on that (mythology?) in 1999. Among the players who joined a relatively healed Joe-Max Moore to try to lift the Revs into the playoffs for a second time in its short history: John Harkes and Mario Gori from DC, Leonel Alvarez from Dallas, Giovanni Savarese from the MetroStars (who did all right), even Dan Calichman from the Galaxy. All that activity kept them out of last place in the East, but it couldn’t get them in the post-season. Even if the shame wasn’t what it was in ’96 (when eight teams of 10 made the playoffs and/or begged all of the fucking question of why the regular season happened at all), it was…bad. It’s to their credit that the Revs kept pushing.

New England would get its turn (wait for it), but it was harder for them to see a brighter future by the time 1999 ended. That didn’t hold as much for the other two teams, starting with…

The San Jose ClashQuakes

Goals for/against: 1996: 50 gf, 50 ga; 1997: 55 gf, 59 ga; 1998: 48 gf, 60 ga; 1999: 48 gf, 49 ga

The “marquee players” may actually have been better for San Jose in 1996 – e.g., Paul Bravo, Eric Wynalda, John Doyle, Ben Iroha, etc. You do, however, see a team that under-performed (a bit) on offense and over-performed (a bit) on defense in that first season; so, how did they respond?

Long-term solutions came in – e.g., Ronald Cerritos, who became a face-of-the-franchise forward in their early years, and Eddie Lewis, a winger whose performances with the ClashQuakes would lead to time with the U.S. Men’s team – plus a couple random/forgotten stop-gaps like Lawrence Lozzano and Jeff Baicher. Only Cerritos really performed through this period, both predictably and as advertised, while the rest of that first attacking crop fell off in one way or another from 1997-1998 (e.g., Lozzano and Lewis, especially, but also Wynalda, who at least pitched assists the season prior). Still, a quick look at the numbers points to the larger issue: two seasons of under-performing defense (and badly in 1997). The beginning of the ClashQuakes’ solutions came in 1999 and with some familiar names – e.g., Jimmy Conrad, Wade Barrett and Richard Mulrooney. Add in Scott Bowers from KC, and it’s pretty clear what happened: San Jose got a spine. Lozzano left at the end of 1998, and Wynalda would leave the next season (and with some more career left in his legs), but those four defensive players would still be around when the ClashQuakes added some very big pieces (wait for it) and became a league-wide force in just a couple years' time. Anyway, you can’t walk without a spine, never mind run off with a title…

Shit…how many caps did Mulrooney get in the end? Totally forgot that guy. (Whoa.)

Kansas City Wizards

Goals for/against: 1996: 61 gf, 63 ga; 1997: 57 gf, 51 ga; 1998: 45 gf, 50 ga; 1999: 33 gf, 53 ga

As noted above, KC had these awesome rainbow uniforms (a decade-plus ahead of their time, I tell you), but also a pair of solid seasons to start the franchise. With early-era legend Preki leading Mark Chung (fwiw, the league’s first great second-banana utility forward), Digital Takawira, and Scottish legend/marquee player Mo Johnston in the attack, the Wizards scored goals with enough ease to make the Revs and the ClashQuakes jealous. The rosters from their first two seasons look balanced according to my memory: Matt McKeon was could play either at d-mid of centerback, but he also had good close control and better passing; Uche Okafor and Samuel Ekeme shored up the rest of the defense…which didn’t go so good in year one. The Wizards added another Scot, Steve Gough, to shore up the back-line in 1997, and that helped – especially in 1997, aka, the year they finished 1st in the West (also, Colorado)…and then things went very, very wrong. And 1999 was especially awful…and that’s where a lesson kicks in…

With the exception of Mo (look, no one called him “Johnston”), KC’s entire attacking core slipped in 1998 (here's 1997) – and to the extent their (barely) best-ever defense couldn’t cover for it. As the numbers relate, the attack all but collapsed in that next season (e.g., 1999). Losing Chung was part of it, but Mo barely contributed in the attack all season while Takawira all but vanished; worse, the Wizards tried to go cheap on talent, betting on players like Chris Brown (who I, uh, actually recall talking up) and Alex Bunbury (to what you're thinking, yes). The defense took a small step back in numbers, but a bigger one in context (i.e., defenses tightened up a lot league-wide between ’98 and ’99), but anything close to a 1.0 goals/game will always smell like the opposite of success (a soiled couch, perhaps?). Not even the beginning of Chris Klein’s rise to stardom** could repair or overcome the problems with the rest of the attack.

So, what happened with KC in 2000? Put it this way: I know the big, broad picture and the reasons why, I can even drop two very-relevant names, but the one thing I can’t remember is how much KC’s top-line numbers changed. I’m not gonna peak till I start work on the next one. Till then…keep washing your hands, while also probably showering less.

** Sorry, I just had to see whether Klein had more caps than Mulrooney (yep!). Players like that got cut apart whenever they made the U.S. Men's team. Until I see proof, I'll never stop asking: was the issue really that U.S. players weren't getting enough time in "tougher leagues"?