An MLS History Project, 2013: The First MLS 2.0 Final?

Pictured thinking of phrasing for me...

Due to the way my brain does and doesn’t retain things, I have two broad memories about the 2013 Portland Timbers team. The first is unconscious: I believe this team planted the deep memory in my mind that Portland has never had a bad season. 2013 was, in fact, a very good regular season for the Timbers. Even if you remember they battled for the Supporters’ Shield to the death, you may not remember how close they came: the New York Red Bulls went 6-0-2 in their last 8 games, while Portland went 5-0-3; the Timbers fell two points short. Pretty damn close.

Second, Diego Valeri, Diego Chara aside – OK, yes, and Rodney Wallace (7 goals, 6 assists) and Will Johnson (what? 9 goals, 5 assists?!) – this team relied on players who scan as mediocre in my memory. That’s particularly true in defense, where I saw Pa Modou Kah as clumsy (mostly in disposition) and Mamadou “Futty” Danso, who I’ve always read as playing over his talent – to his credit - but who I can’t bring myself to buy as an MLS defender. (That’s why it came as less of a surprise when FC Cincinnati’s Forrest Lasso didn’t cut it; I’d seen the movie; also, the word “top-flight defender” doesn’t feel right in my mouth, so I went with “MLS defender.” Back to it…)

Whatever I thought of them, Danso and Kah anchored MLS’s second best defensive team in 2013: they allowed just 33 goals in a season with a league-wide, goals for/against average of 46.7; only Sporting Kansas City allowed fewer (30), and they won MLS Cup that season. SKC also finished fairly high – and I’ll get to that – but, to finish off Portland, the other “scan(s) as mediocre” player was Ryan Johnson. I’ve seen wistful backward glances at Ryan Johnson recently as a year ago, and he did have a pretty broad tool kit as a forward, but I’ve never heard anyone say, “that’s the guy to win Portland trophies.” A complementary piece, a second banana, Johnson fits all of that, but he did have a solid season, chipping in 9 goals and 4 assists. Those aren’t great numbers in the grandest of schemes, but they weren't far off the norm for 2013, so, in context, not so bad. Honestly, it was a tough room…

…then again, Camilo Sanvezza posted 22 goals and three assists for Vancouver that season, and Marco di Viao was the Montreal Impact’s first league-wide fascination the same season (20 goals, two assists; classy, lethal player, the guy was a total gas; a worthy predecessor to Ignacio Piatti). Johnson suffers in comparison here and there – e.g., Mike Magee hitting 15 goals and 4 assists with his hometown Chicago Fire - but he was at the low end of average at worst. And that’s really how MLS’s 2013 season worked: a tight-fisted season, which ended with a tight-fisted, balls-shriveling MLS Cup (cold AF) hosted by Sporting Kansas City, and won by Sporting Kansas City, after a fascinatingly interminable penalty-kick shoot-out, because Nick Rimando and Jimmy Nielsen, and a fiver (I’ll venmo) if you can tell me his nickname (no googling!).

To pull back and give the big (no longer Portland-specific) picture, not much changed going into 2013…and that became normal without anyone really noticing. It’s been pretty much Eastern/Western Conference, teams qualify within their own division, teams play 34 games, expansion keeps happening and changing who plays who, and how often, but, at the end of every season, there’s Supporters’ Shield and MLS Cup, a U.S. Open Cup near the end, and the path to each trophy has remained close enough to the same that no one really comments on it, outside from the people who keep talking about promotion and relegation, even though that ship has sailed, caught fire, and sank to the bottom of the sea, and, yes, I did lift that from The Witcher, but I might have paraphrased it too. I just like the line.

Looking at the 2013 regular season standings, I had another thought: was 2013 the first season when a few teams – by which I mean several, aka, 3-5 teams – became the ones everyone else beat up for points, like bullies stealing lunch money? Here are the final regular season standings for 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 – and I linked to 2013 above. If you look at 2013, you see three teams – DC United (Jesus Christ and hide the kids), Chivas USA and, for newer fans, Toronto FC – with abysmally irrelevant records. DC and Chivas, especially – I mean, how do you tie for a -37 goal differential without fucking Illuminati-level coordination? – must have coughed up the good stuff after the first fake-punch to give up that many points. At any rate, Chivas finished 25 points out of a playoff position, while DC finished a “why did you even bother?” 33 points behind; Toronto came closest out of those three teams (hold that thought), but they were still 20 points out of a playoff spot. The question is how that compares with the four years before.

I had this theory that falling further below the mean keeps getting easier in MLS with every season, while catching up costs a lot more, but after reviewing the final standings for seasons going forward from 2013, nah, doesn’t hold up. Those three teams just sucked really, really bad in 2013. The teams who tried to go cheap in 2013 – for what it’s worth, I’d call Chicago, San Jose and, maybe, the Philadelphia Union on that list - didn’t make the playoffs. That made sense for San Jose and Chicago – both of whom made the 2012 playoffs, San Jose as Supporters’ Shield winners, and without a lot of turnover, to boot – but not for Philly. What’s my point? Have I mentioned that soccer is the beautiful game, with the impetuous nature of a beautiful woman? What? No, I’m not. You’re the one dodging the question...

To finally turn to the season and how it turned out, five teams from each conference qualified for the playoffs and the cut-off was pretty high – 49 points was the lowest total for making it (congrats, Montreal!) – probably due to the three terrible teams singled out above. As the 2013 Form Guide reveals, an odd little line divides the ins from the outs – e.g., Colorado shows that winning steadily was enough to make the cut (on 51 pts), even for teams that piled up losses, while Montreal showed a team could sustain even more losses if they banked enough Ws early – and getting on the right side of goal-differential rescued those teams from the early vacation that the San Jose Earthquakes and Chicago, respectively, ate instead. Vancouver’s my favorite team, though, for the way they meld the characteristics of, say, Chicago (they briefly looked promising) and Sporting KC (both teams had dips; SKC's were just smaller). Another fun detail: Montreal might have made the playoffs, but they wandered in a dead team walking, which meant they didn’t differ so much from teams that started strong only to slip out of the playoffs by the end – e.g., Philadelphia, Chicago, and (especially) FC Dallas (classic season for them; 8-3-6 in the first half; 3-9-5 in the second). Another team fell into the playoffs face first – the Seattle Sounders – who had the bad luck of playing, again, a very good Timbers team in the Western Conference semifinals.

As noted above, Portland finished the season strong, as did the Red Bulls, but they were hardly alone. Other teams who ended strong included the New England Revolution and Real Salt Lake. Moreover, along with SKC (and even the Los Angeles Galaxy, though the latter struggled a bit when it came to posting Ws, or they couldn’t force draws with Portland’s grim determination), held steady throughout the 2013 regular season; the final playoff pool looked pretty damn competitive. Four teams cleared 50 goals with room to spare, and most of them had promisingly wide, positive spreads on their goal differentials. So, let’s see how a handful of these series played out – something that’s getting easier to do as we inch closer to the present, because it’s easier to find the highlights.

In what had to be the biggest shock, the high-scoring Red Bulls team fell to the Houston Dynamo, the globally weakest team in the 2013 playoffs. Worse, Houston won the series in New Jersey, and after RBNY gifted them an egregious give-away goal (highlights!). This was one of RBNY’s more famous line-ups – e.g., Thierry Henry, Tim Cahill, Dax McCarty and even Luke Steele and Lloyd Sam. If you put that line-up against Houston’s – e.g., Will Bruin and Giles Barnes (confession; I was irrationally high on this player) running up top with MLS-average guys like Eric Brunner and Warren Creavalle helping to hold down the spine – I’m guessing you’d get quite a bit more money on the Red Bulls to win, but, nope. Houston weren’t slouches by any means; they finished off the Montreal zombie with a 3-0 win on their way to beating New York.

New England and Sporting KC played another eye-catching series. The Revs won the first game, forcing SKC to keep up with them – not that they had much trouble. The highlights from Leg 2 show Matt Reis under siege (including a pretty epic double-save at 3:25 in the video) and they tied the series early off an Aurelien Collin goal. Dmitri Imbongo answered back for the Revs with a pretty kick-ass goal, but SKC scored one more, and then again in extra-time when Reis threw a clearance straight at Benny Feilhaber. That left only Houston between SKC and MLS Cup 2013, and they cleared that hurdle a little more comfortably.

To finally turn to the funnest Conference Semifinal, Portland was the only team to swing a two-win sweep in the 2013 playoffs. Playing the Sounders gave the occasion a little shot of nitrous, no doubt, but you have to think that each team’s divergent fates played a role in the ultimate outcome. At the same time, when the Timbers’ line-up flashed on the screen at the beginning of the first leg highlights (link below), my brain seized up trying to remember how it worked as well as it did. I know every name on that roster, remember what they looked like playing, strengths and weaknesses, but I still cannot, for the life of me, figure out how that team came within two points of winning the Supporters’ Shield and one two-game series away from an MLS Cup that, I don’t know, maybe they’d have a better shot of winning than RSL…even though, point in fact, RSL did beat Portland in the Western Conference Final…whoops, that’s another sweep. For all you people who are both Timbers fans and masochists, here are the highlights for Real Salt Lake’s doubleleg-sweep against Portland. Now, back to happy memories…I’VE GOT THAT JOY, JOY! JOY!! DOWN IN MY HEART, WHERE!!!!!???? [Ed. - Repeat as many times as necessary to keep you happy and/or off the sauce.]

It was a roll from the start with Will Johnson scoring early (and easily) for Portland in Seattle (Leg 1 highlights), and then Darlington Nagbe scored the kind of goal you’d hoped he’d keep scoring over and over and over, that he’d be the player you envisioned, Lionel Messi, only American by way of Liberia. I have years’ worth of commentary on that, [Ed. – some raw copy from my notes: “start watching (the Leg 2 highlights) at 2:15 and you see what makes Nagbe so special; he’s forcing decisions with every feint, and suddenly, defense turned to offense; he’s an incredible player wrapped inside an enigma; he’s our Messi without the drive”]), but the Sounders pulled one back late and that was the extent of their resistance. That was Western Conference Final, Leg 1, to Portland, but Portland was up three goals before Seattle remembered they had a home to defend in Leg 2. If you watch the highlights, you see Captain Jack balling like a winger to draw a hand-ball in the area for Portland’s first goal. After that, you see the Timbers ladder the ball up their right (Seattle’s left) with Valeri playing off Jewsbury, then off Nagbe (or vice versa), before Valeri all but wraps up the series in a single lunge. Danso powered home one more and, sure, DeAndre Yedlin managed to pull one back for Seattle, and then provided the cross that Eddie Johnson nodded home to pull back one more (nice work, DeAndre!), they still had two goals to make up, maybe an away-goal thing to manage (didn’t look it up; not currently relevant), and just 14 minutes, plus stoppage to get there. And they didn’t.

After that, Portland lost to RSL. Covered that above, with video if you clicked it, moving on…

As for MLS Cup 2013 (highlights here), it was a better final than I remembered. There was something about RSL deserving to win it, but nothing like flaming injustice. I have no idea why Kyle Beckerman’s no-look pass dug into my memory, but I’ll never disconnect that moment from that player. Alvaro Saborio scored it, but Nielsen didn’t miss it by much. I noted that a fairly green Chris Schuler started in the final when I saw his name in the line up and, hey, who did (again) Collin beat with a header to tie the game? Have I mentioned how much I hate teams that rely on set-pieces?

The penalty kicks reversed the game: RSL pissed away their first chances – both Saborio and Ned Grabavoy missed – giving SKC a 2-0 lead thanks to Claudio Bieler and the rock-steady Paulo Nagamura. I won’t bore you with every detail (but future Timbers, Lawrence Olum, had the worst shot by a country mile), but every mistake or two was matched by another in close enough succession to reach 10 penalty kicks for each team. It only ended when Lovell Palmer failed to match (seriously, again?), Aurelien Collin’s answer to Nat Borchers’ goal in the previous round. If Collin wasn’t the MVP of SKC’s 2013 Championship run, there’s something rotten in Kansas City, and it ain’t the meat-packing plants (but also those, and especially now).

Because I have a compulsion to see every Major League Soccer season through a frame, and because the “it’s easier for teams to fall behind” frame didn’t work, I’m going to call the 2013 MLS Cup the first pure MLS 2.0 final. RSL works because they came in as an early post-contraction expansion team, while SKC comes in under a re-brand and/or general admission of original failure. Kansas City became an MLS franchise the same day they decided ditch the Wizard bullshit and leave the echoing dullness of Arrowhead stadium behind and build their team a proper home (yes, Comerica Ballpark does not count). That’s how they became MLS 2.0.

To come around full circle, I’d argue most people think about RSL and SKC the same way I think about Portland – e.g., they might have bad seasons, but they almost never become bad teams. Portland still hasn’t had more than one shit season in a row and; I think the same applies to SKC, but RSL never had to look too far back once they found their feet (I think; now watch them eat shit in, say, 2016-2017).

That’s enough narrative about the 2013 season. Time to wrap it up it with notes on every team and a thing or two about why they finished where they did; think a power ranking, only with everything ranked according to the fact of where everyone finished. The 2013 stats for each team and all the players who suited up for them are embedded in its name.

New York Red Bulls (17-9-8, 59 pts., 58gf, 41ga (+17); 1st in East, Supporters’ Shield)
2013 looked like a year of real ambition for RBNY. I dropped names above, but not the numbers: Tim Cahill, 11g, 5a; Thierry Henry, 10g, 9a; with some back up by Lloyd Sam (5g, 1a) and Jonny Steele. They even borrowed Fabian Espindola (9g, 2a) and Jamison Olave from RSL. A bit thin in the end…

Sporting Kansas City (17-10-7, 58 pts., 47gf, 30gf (+17); 2nd in East)
I’d remembered Claudio Bieler as sorta useless, but he hit Ryan Johnson-esque numbers (10g, 4a). He had decent support (e.g, Kei Kamara, 7g, 2a; Graham Zusi, 6g, 8a…um, Soony Saad, 4g, 4a; CJ Sapong, 4g, 2a; Benny Feilhaber, 3g, 4a). Just a very solid, very professional team, even if no one will ever confuse them with any of the great MLS teams.

Portland Timbers (14-5-15, 57 pts., 54gf, 33ga (+21); 1st in West)
Good God, Portland must have been fun! Valeri led them, of course (10g, 13a), and Nagbe had what must have been his best attacking season (9g, 4a), but I’m still trying to figure out how I forgot how well Kah, Danso, and even Andrew Jean-Baptiste held up. 2nd best defense in the fucking league…amazing…

Real Salt Lake (16-10-8, 56 pts., 57gf, 41ga (+16); 2nd in West)
They trusted Schuler enough to let go of Olave, so that jumps out, but Alvaro Saborio (12g, 2a) and Javier Morales (8g, 10a) had one of their better seasons and the odd-balls pitched in nicely – e.g., Robbie Findley (6g, 2a), Ned Grabavoy (5g, 5a), even Kyle Beckerman (4g, 6a). Nat Borchers held together a rotating cast in central D. Another good team. They deserved the Cup.

Los Angeles Galaxy (15-11-8, 53 pts., 53gf, 38ga (+15); 3rd in West)
Still the Keano (16g, 11a) and Lando Show (10g, 9a), and with a solid cast of characters below (e.g., Mike Magee, Gyasi Zardes, Marcelo Sarvas). The Omar Gonzalez, Sean Franklin, A.J. DeLaGarza, Leonardo defense held up really well. As good as any team near the top, from the looks of it, the just keep stalling before they got anywhere.

Seattle Sounders (15-12-7, 52 pts., 42gf, 42ga (0); 4th in West)
Dempsey didn’t show up till August, so that left Eddie Johnson (9g, 2a), Obafemi Martins (8g, 4a, Lamar Neagle (8g, 4a), and Mauro Rosales (4g, 8a – 26 starts, too) to find goals. The defense, Leo Gonzalez, Jhon Kennedy Hurtado, Zac Scott, etc. I see this is a CLASSIC Sounders line-up: a couple good players playing alongside 5-6 guys you immediately forget.

New England Revolution (14-11-9, 51 pts., 49gf, 38ga (+11); 3rd in East)
Was this the season people got excited about a Revs’ youth movement? Diego Fagundez had himself a year (13g, 7a), but so did Kelyn Rowe (7g, 8a), Juan Agudelo (7g, 1a) and Lee Nguyen (4g, 7a). Jose Goncalves anchored in D and Andrew Farrell kept playing through growing pains. Tierney killed it at wingback (1g, 5a). They’re all scattered to the wind by now…

Colorado Rapids (14-11-9, 51 pts., 45gf, 38ga (+7); 5th in West)
Mirror to New England, another good, young team – e.g., Deshorn Brown (10g, 4a), Dillon Powers (5g, 6a)…Edson Buddle, sure (5g, 3a), but their “money moves” - Gabriel Torres (3g, 1a) and Vicente Sanchez (1g, 4a) – didn’t really pay off. Oh, for anyone who wondered why I believed in Chris Klute, this was the season (0g, 7a). A solid, but unspectacular season.

Houston Dynamo (14-11-9, 51 pts., 41gf, 41ga (0); 4th in East)
Brad Davis finally slowed down (just 4g, 9a), but Barnes looked all right (9g, 4a), while Will Bruin looked something like real (8g, 7a). Altogether, though, this was an increasingly rickety version of the old method propped on Bobby Boswell’s back. I don’t think Houston ever really stepped into the DP/TAM/GAM era.

Montreal Impact (14-13-7, 49 pts., 50gf, 49ga (+1); 5th in East)
I mentioned Di Vaio, but Felipe (5g, 8a), Patrice Bernier (4g, 8a), and Justin Mapp (2g, 8a), all had decent seasons; I remember Montreal’s predilection for Italian defenders – e.g., Matteo Ferrari and Alessandro Nesta – but it wasn’t exactly lock-down.

PLAYOFFS ABOVE, PERDITION BELOW

San Jose Earthquakes (14-11-9, 51 pts., 35gf, 42ga (-7); 6th in East)
Nailed by a global slowdown in production (e.g., Wondo, 11g, 3a; Alan Gordon, 4g, 3a; Steve Lenhart, 4g, 2a), though Shea Salinas posted good numbers (2g, 8ga); Rafael Baca never panned out (and I could be forgetting where he played). They had almost zero competition for spots.

Chicago Fire (14-13-7, 49 pts., 47gf, 52ga (-5); 6th in East)
Mike Magee gave them a hometown kid season to remember, but they got a little too money-ball by grabbing guys like Joel Lindpere (though he did alright at 2g, 8a). A lot of the old names stuck around, but under-performed (Patrick Nyarko, 4g, 4a; Dilly Duka, 4g, 4a; even Chris Rolfe, 4g, 1a). Stable defense with Jalil Anibaba and Austin Berry (started all 34 games), but it wasn’t a good one.

Vancouver Whitecaps (13-12-9, 48 pts, 53gf, 45 ga (+8); 7th in West)
Big year for Camilo and he had decent support (Kenny Miller, 8g, 1a; Kekuta Manneh, 6g, 2a; Russell Teibert, 2g, 9a), but it looks like they had a fairly unstable defense from the looks (not that those numbers are terrible). Andy O’Brien, Alain Rochat, Johnny Leveron and Brad Rusin, all started less than half the games; Lee Young-Pyo was the only constant back there.

Philadelphia Union (12-12-10, 46 pts., 42gf, 44ga (-2); 7th in East)
The perils of riding a new kid (Jack McInerney, 12g, 0a), a couple veterans (Conor Casey, 10g, 5a; Sebastian LeToux, 3g, 12a), and not a whole lot else; decent defense, but the attacking depth stalled after the top three.

FC Dallas (11-12-11, 44 pts., 48gf, 52gf (-4); 8th in West)
Some good, young players in the mix (now famous ones, too, e.g., Matt Hedges, Walker Zimmerman, Kellyn Acosta), but defense was still weak, and Blas Perez (11g, 3a), Kenny Cooper (6g, 1a), David Ferreira (3g, 9a), and Michel (Garbini Pereira; 3g, 8a), couldn’t generate enough offense to match. They also looked a bit weak up the gut.

Columbus Crew (12-17-5, 41 pts., 42gf, 46 ga (-4); 8th in East)
Reasonable defense (Chad Marshall, Tyson Wahl, 2/3 of Tony Tchani, and a bunch of randos), Offensive production fell of fast outside the big guns (Dom Oduro, 13g, 4a; Federico Higuain, 11g, 9a); Bernardo Anor, Jairo Arrieta, and Aaron Schoenfeld didn’t produce much.

Toronto FC (6-17-11, 29 pts., 30gf, 47ga (-17); 9th in East)
An incredibly nowhere team – Robbie Earnshaw led with 8g, 0a, and Jonathan Osorio(!) was second with 5g, 1a – and it’s a parade of anonymity from there. Nothing more to say…

Chivas USA (6-20-8, 30gf, 67ga (-37); 9th in West)
Jesus, they’re still here? No link. I refuse to look or care.

DC United (3-24-7, 22gf, 59ga (-37); 10th in East)
You will never see good players with numbers that bad again. Ben Olsen survived this season, plus a couple other bad ones, begging the question…HOW?!

Right, that’s 2013 in the books! I’ll be back with 2014 – by Thursday, hopefully. If I can get all these typed up before the Magical World of Major League Soccer kicks off, I’ll consider the lockdown as time well spent…enough.