An MLS History Project, 2014: Of DPs and an Indifferent, Yet Angry Universe

I have my limits....

Several times in prior posts in this series, I’ve talked about Major League Soccer becoming the league it is today (e.g., 2020, only without COVID-19), with established rules and practices that carry over from year to year (I devoted a messy paragraph to this argument in my 2013 post). As I keep discovering, oh, every time I look to the next season (or five), that doesn’t hold up. There will always be the next stupid idea, another cheapening of the competitive structure that will devalue the regular season until the ice caps melt and we all drown. The circle of life, etc. Happily, we get relief from the worst ideas here and there and, the league did make one little big tweak to the rules of competition for the 2014 season and that one caught all of my eye:

“The first tiebreaker remains total wins, but the second and third tiebreakers have been swapped—goal difference is now second and goals scored is third.”

The first time I considered goal differential as (perhaps) a key tell for future success specifically in the MLS playoffs showed up in my post on the 2010 season. And, yes, this change feels like validation…which is why I assume it won’t last. All the same, when I finally wrap up 2019 season, I will create an index/summary post that links to all of this “history project” shit and tie it all together with some details that stand out. The goal differential thing will get explored, along with a number of others. There was one other tweak to the rules in 2014 – MLS decided that away goals would count a little more in the playoffs. And they would.

While some big shifts await – mostly thinking TAM and GAM, but also how the league managed the playoffs –2014 was a curious mix of old and new. On the “old” side, the Los Angeles Galaxy (again) battled the new-model New England Revolution (again) in an MLS Cup at the Galaxy’s home ground (again; 6th fucking time at that venue, people). Because the Seattle Sounders had been reliably good since joining the league in…wow, forgot already…2010(? nope, 2009), seeing them lift the 2014 Supporters’ Shield twists the “new” side of the above into another step toward Seattle’s eternally bright future…yeah, yeah, you can hate it, Portland Timbers fans, you just have to swallow the reality of it.

When Seattle won the Supporters' Shield, they pulled off their…shit, fourth or fifth trophy as an MLS team (the U.S. Open Cup ends before the playoffs, right? So, their first Shield was their 5th trophy) by running up the score all season long. The forward tandem of Obafemi Martins (17g, 13a) and Clint Dempsey (15g, 10a) did the heavy rowing to get them to 65 goals over the regular season. A couple teams kept up nicely – the Timbers among them (just four goals behind at 61), but the Los Angeles Galaxy makes the greater point of interest. They topped Seattle by four goals (69), and pulled a highly-similar trick with Robbie Keane (19g, 14a) and Landon Donovan (10g, 19a) leading the way. The difference was, those two made more players better than Dempsey and Martins: it starts with Gyasi Zardes hitting higher numbers than Lamar Neagle (16g, 2a for Zardes, 9g, 9a for Neagle), but it carried all the way down to about the 8th spot on the statistical ladder for the Galaxy. Still, in both cases, your better DPs raise all boats.

That still underscores the main topic of this post: the use and meaning of designated players (aka, DPs). I last looked closely at DPs back in the 2010 post (link above), when the league had already expanded to the 3 DP (+ luxury tax) by then (The DP rule itself dates back to 2007, and I had some fun with that in my post on that season.) They tweaked a thing or two since then – e.g., incentivizing smarter purchases with the “Young DP” rule - but even Donovan was old AF by 2014 (no, not really, but he still retired at the end of 2014). Those seven short seasons saw plenty of good-to-great DPs come and make MLS a better league – e.g., 2014 was a high-scoring season (48.6 goals average). It also saw a parade of DPs who barely proved worthy of half their inflated salary. Those bad DPs become sunk-cost nightmares almost the second they arrive, strangling your local team’s season in the crib before you even know their names.

To continue the thought experiment from those earlier posts, I returned to a resource on DPs to count all the active DPs during the 2014 season and provide a snapshot of the rule in action. Out of the 49 players total (by a loose count), I’d argue that well less than half, 20 players in all, ever made a real difference for their teams or the league. Here, “real difference” doesn’t have to mean contribute directly to winning a trophy – this is how I kept players who objectively made the league better in the mix, e.g., Ignacio Piatti and Mauro Diaz – but all but five of those players did, in fact, play on a trophy-winning team. To help you play along at home (and in case you wanna argue), here are those 49 players (with their 2014 team in parentheses), listed according to how I rate their impact. “Mattered” means they did, while “Who?” is just a facetious way of saying they didn’t:

Mattered: Federico Higuain (CLB); Mauro Diaz (FCD); Omar Gonzalez (LAG); Keane (LAG); Donovan (LAG); Marco Di Viao (MTL, look, I just liked him); Ignacio Piatti (MTL; all-time favorite?); Jermaine Jones (NE); Thierry Henry (RBNY); Diego Valeri (POR); Fanendo Adi (POR); Liam Ridgewell (POR…this call was complicated); Alvaro Saborio (RSL); Javier Morales (RSL); Chris Wondolowski (SJ); Martins (SEA), Dempsey (SEA); Osvaldo Alonso (SEA), [NULL SET]; Michael Bradley (TFC); Pedro Morales (VAN)

Who?: Federico Puppo (CHI); Juan Luis Anangono (CHI); Gabriel Torres (COL); Eddie Johnson (DC); Andres Escobar (FCD); David Texeira (FCD); Fabian Castillo (FCD); Giles Barnes (HOU); Alexander Lopez (HOU); (love ‘im to pieces, but) DaMarcus Beasley (HOU); Hernan Bernardello (MTL); Jerry Bengston (NE); Tim Cahill (it was close; I like him); Cristian Maidana (PHI); Maurice Edu (PHI); Sebastian Jaime (RSL); Matias Perez Garcia (SJ); Claudio Bieler (SKC); [NULL SET]; Jermaine Defoe (TFC); Kenny Miller (VAN); Mauro Rosales (VAN; unfair? Probably…); Matias Laba (VAN)

That’s quite the grab-bag, obviously, and, if you’re invested enough in MLS to find this post, you probably know a lot of those names (also, because it’s a recent season). And, for those reading closely, I used “NULL SET” as a place-holder for Matt Besler and Graham Zusi, who I combined into one player. A few things should stand out from the above list.

1) Count all the names you don’t remember, or even the ones you remember but can’t recall even one special thing/moment about. That tells you the most important thing: a designated player is MLS’s equivalent of a trump card; your team is a lot weaker every time your team burns one at the wrong time.

2) A half-dozen-plus of those players did something fairly unique – i.e., they built big enough reputations and/or illusions to play their way to DP status. The road wasn’t always straight – e.g., see Maurice Edu (and hold that thought), DaMarcus Beasley, and even Clint Dempsey – but the real point is, your team made you a DP on your track record in MLS. You were a proven, valuable commodity – e.g., Chris Wondolowski, Osvaldo Alonso, Omar Gonzalez, arguably, Landon Donovan – or you weren’t – e.g., Eddie Johnson (post-2013, at least), and make your own call on Besler and Zusi (for me, it’s mattered, who?, respectively), but you still did enough to convince a front office to dig into the safe.

3) The whole thing’s a crap-shoot, man, think marriage, only with slightly worse odds and less searing arguments. The second I saw Maurice Edu’s name, I wanted to contrast him with Portland’s Diego Valeri. It turns out that Edu’s teammate with the Philadelphia Union, Cristian Maidana, makes for a better contrast (types the guy who realizes he doesn’t know much about Valeri’s past). Edu did come up in MLS – he even won Rookie of the Year in 2007 – and then he went abroad to Scotland’s Rangers (and won some trophies), then to Stoke City, and maybe some other shit. Maidana, on the other hand, started in Argentina and bounced around quite a bit, a good portion of it on loan, and then he lands with a relatively new team in Philadelphia, USA. The punch-line: they both last just as long with Philly, and Maidana was probably the bigger contributor; he lead them in assists in both 2014 and 2015. If I remember right, circumstances and gaps in the roster forced Edu to move around a lot on the field throughout in 2014, so he never landed on a role. He played limited minutes in 2015 and spent his last two years as a professional trying to get healthy. The point is, there was a sense of trajectory and familiarity that made Edu look a lot closer to a sure-shot as a DP. And…nope…

That 2014 snapshot puts the success rate for a designated player signings at about two players out of every five signed – so that’s one set of (e.g.,) Anangono, Torres, Puppo, Jaime, Bengston, and even a Denilson, for every Valeri and Keane. To make one more point before turning to the 2014 season, I would like to see more patience with American players among MLS coaches. To pick on a player I actually liked, Matias Perez Garcia (“MPG”) had/has no business signing as a designated player. To make an obscure reference only a specific subset of geezers will get, I’ve seen enough Nick LaBroccas to believe that there are American players who can do what MPG did, some of them even better.

Watching MLS for as long as I have, I’ve seen American players slowly, but inexorably give way to foreign players who, with steady frequency, wind up as nothing better than the next bad guess. That’s easier to notice when a massive chunk of my MLS experience amounted to watching the best available American talent duke it out week after week. For what it’s worth, I think winning places in the first team of a top-flight league…y’know, it boosted the confidence. If nothing else, that gave those players more time on the field and with more of the guys they played against week after week…after…um, guys, I think I know what happened to the U.S. Men’s National Team…

To anyone wondering, no, this isn’t a call to restrict the influx of foreign players. To put it bluntly, I’ve watched decades of U.S. soccer and I’ve still never seen an American player with Valeri’s talent and natural ease. There are U.S. players I love to absolute pieces, but I’ve seen enough foreign players in MLS to convince me that I want to see more. Yes, at the cost of a weaker U.S. Men’s National Team. I watch MLS for weeks on end and I’m not about to put on a hair-shirt while I do it. Wait….where was I? Right, right. 2014.

First, it featured the same 19 teams competing in the same 34-game format that’d pertained since 2012 (the 34-game thing was old as 2011, fwiw). The top five teams from each conference qualified and that occasioned no great injustice – i.e., 49 points proved to be the inflection point, and it was enough to get one team into the playoffs (SKC), while another (Portland) missed out. On the other hand, SKC had to hold on for dear life – e.g., they went 2-7-1 in their last 10 games – while the Timbers enjoyed a mildly-rousing rally (5-2-3 over the same period), but that just shows the value of banking points early…albeit with the double-edged sword that swings back at the teams that back into the playoffs.

Like most seasons, teams fell to both sides of that divide in varying ways – e.g., Montreal finished dead-last in 2014 and never stopped looking like it, while Chicago signed two DPs only to set the all-time league record for ties in a single season (18; the Vancouver Whitecaps also piled up the draws in 2014). As the 2014 Form Guide reveals some teams lingered on the fringes of respectability, only to collapse halfway through – e.g., the Colorado Rapids, the San Jose Earthquakes, and The Team Who Shall Not Be Named (fine, Chivas USA). Other teams – e.g., Philadelphia – joined the Timbers in battling to recover from a bad start. Most 2014’s better teams – DC, Real Salt Lake, Seattle, the Galaxy and New England – played somewhere between well and very well throughout. Reaching the playoffs was their just reward. But, unlike in 2013, not many teams ended with a big flourish that promised big things in the post-season. In fact, most of the five teams listed above hit little wobbles on their way into the 2014 playoffs, but a couple did not. One was the New York Red Bulls, but it’s the other I’ll focus on: the New England Revolution and that returns the conversation to designated players…

The Revs did manage a little run of form early in 2014 – five straight wins in a 7-2-1 stretch from Game 3 to Game 12 – but they also dropped enough red Ls on either side of that to stall at 7-12-1 by Game 20. Now, here’s the twist: Jermaine Jones joined New England on August 24, 2014. While I don’t know exactly when he started playing, the Revs went 8-1-1 after Jones’ arrival and that momentum carried them all the way to MLS Cup. That, my friends, is a DP signing: immediate, quality impact, a world with a clear before and a clear after. But I’m getting ahead of myself…let’s watch some highlights…

First things first, the knockout rounds played out according to both design and trends – e.g., the Red Bulls knocked off a stumbling SKC side while Dallas dispatched the tie-happy Whitecaps. Those results sent Dallas into what looked like a snooze of a series against Seattle (which Seattle won), but it sent New York to battle Eastern Conference-best DC United. Leg 1 was all Red Bulls (seriously, see highlights), with Thierry Henry polishing up every smart ball Lloyd Sam sent his way, and passing it off to Bradley Wright-Phillips (New York’s first goal is silk), and it took Bill Hamid and some misses for the game to end 2-0 to New York and to keep up appearances. DC fired back in Leg 2 – including opening the scoring – and this is to their credit, but this Red Bulls team had an encyclopedia’s worth of ways to hurt teams (and they were just fun). DC had its upsides – I was a big fan of the Taylor Kemp/Chris Korb fullback thing, and they had an incredible central defense with Steve Birnbaum and Bobby Boswell (who always, always delivered) – and it was another one of those “money-ball” teams, aka, getting a crew of reliable MLS performers together for one more big score. They pushed for two trophies that season, but two better teams pushed back. If this whole history project exonerated anyone’s reputation, it was DC’s. The Red Bulls will come up again…

The other Eastern Conference semifinal pitted a rising New England team against a Columbus Crew team who followed the same rough trajectory, but with less oomph. And, man, did it show in the series. The Revs ran straight over Columbus in Leg 1, in Ohio (evidence), going up two goals (the second, a set-piece peach by Chris Tierney), before Columbus roused itself to answer back, and then doubling the lead again before Columbus answered back once at second time. The Crew threw away what was left of the series by letting Lee Nguyen (an MVP candidate) stroll into the box to finish off what should have been a broken play (i.e., the first foray broke down; also, the highlights). After that, Ethan Finlay got sent off on some weak shit, Justin Meram walked off the field later after some cheeky shit, but the Revs won the 2nd Leg 3-1, which, in case it wasn’t clear, left the series a 7-3 rout on aggregate for the Revs…who were clearly rolling by now.

Because the West looks so much less interesting, I’m going to wrap up New England’s run to MLS Cup. The series started in New Jersey and, having reviewed the highlights, I have to assume this game lives in infamy in Red Bulls circles. After scrapping together a goal in response to Teal Bunbury’s spotless opener for the Revs, New York missed chance after chance…until New England stole the first leg 2-1 late on a goal that might have been offside. The Red Bulls pushed the Revs against the wall in the return leg, tying the series by going up 2-1 with plenty of time to spare…time the Revs used to level the game at 2-2. As I watched the highlights, two things stood out. One, Charlie Davies scored the goals, but New England’s Chris Tierney served up a buffet of perfect crosses. The second looks like a bit of suggestive foreshadowing: the Revs’ defense looked seriously shaky across all these performances; that all stands out a little more when you know how things ended…

To finally turn to the West, there’s not much to say about the Galaxy’s series against RSL; they held them scoreless in Utah and, as for the return, let’s just call that 5-0 beating “Tony Beltran’s Nightmare” in honor of the many times Landon Donovan tore him a new asshole (three new assholes, at a minimum, plus a hat trick). The Sounders not only put up a much stouter fight, they also turned the series into a Battle of Heavyweight DPs: Robbie Keane and Donovan versus Dempsey and Martins. The promised fireworks didn’t come off because both teams back-stopped their stars with brick-wall defenses; as such, every goal scored looked like it could decide the series. And so it happened that LA took Leg 1 through a fluky goal by Marcelo Sarvas. The Oba/Dempsey show made a couple appearances even in that first leg and it came all the way good in Leg 2, combining in space and, as Taylor Twellman wouldn’t stop saying, “making something out of nothing.” They combined up LA’s left to set up Brad Evans’ series-tying goal, then Dempsey stepped up to clean up some chaos in LA’s area to put Seattle up 2-0. Sounders’ ‘keeper Stefan Frei slapping away one great chance after the other (that bastard is reliable), so it’s hardly surprising that the Galaxy took the series by the thinnest of margins – e.g.,: a seeing-eye shot from Juninho (his first goal of 2014) and the away goal rule. Seattle won the 2nd Leg 2-1, and tied the series at 2-2, but Juninho’s goal was a little more equal than Dempsey’s.

If MLS Cup 2014 proved anything, it’s that our indifferent, yet angry universe fucking hates the New England Revolution. First, that ramshackle defense (barely) kept the Galaxy off the board in the first half. It broke shortly after, when a moment of naivete from Bunbury saw him head the ball into the space where Stefan Ishizaki expected; the latter continued by pinging a cross off a Revs’ player’s back (think it was Bunbury), which floated to Gyasi Zardes. He’d been ice-cold on form in the weeks before (and he pissed away plenty in the playoffs), but he rifled his shot past New England’s Bobby Shuttleworth to put LA ahead 1-0. Tierney, the same player who carried them through the New York series, punched back 15-20 minutes later with a silky equalizer after a laser-beam of a pass stretched LA’s defense to the breaking point. It was all bad luck and misery from there: had Bunbury’s half-shot ducked under the crossbar, New England would have gone up 2-1 with just over five minutes (plus stoppage) left to play; had Bunbury followed up on Patrick Mullins shot in the first period of stoppage time, he could have tapped in the go-ahead goal. Against many odds, the Revs found chances against a very, very strong LA defense. I suppose it’s just fate that Keane was the player to kill the game off in the second period of extra time.

To wrap this up where I started, DPs both are and are not magical creatures. When they fall flat, you can all but write-off your season; you go in with them at the center of your plans and that means re-writing the script during the season, maybe even more than once. The ones that find their feet, meanwhile, they’ll legitimately win games and seasons for you. The Keane/Donovan partnership was hell on Earth for as long as it terrorized MLS defenses. The Oba/Deuce pairing didn’t last as long, but it won Seattle a Supporters’ Shield (I credit Frei for every other trophy). Jermaine Jones and New England was something else, though, a storybook coming together of circumstances that could have given Major League Soccer’s longest-suffering team the moment of joy they absolutely deserved. In a good and just universe, it would have.

And that’s the season. Because this one went on a bit – blame more access to more highlights – I’m loathe to close by listing all the teams’ records, where they finished, etc. But I’m gonna do it anyway. For posterity. As always, each team’s stats are linked to in their name. See you next time with the 2015 review.

Seattle Sounders (20-10-4, 64 pts., 65gf, 50ga (+15); 1st in West; Supporters’ Shield)
Covered amply above.

Los Angeles Galaxy (17-7-10, 61 pts., 69gf, 37ga (+32); 2nd in West)
I named all the stars above, but it was the defense - had Dan Gargan, Juninho, A.J. DeLaGarza , and 2/3 of Omar – plus guys like Juninho and Marcelo Sarvas (3g, 11a) who made them work. A very good, very deserving team.

DC United (17-9-8, 59 pts., 52gf, 37ga (+15); 1st in East)
Was this the most MLS money-ball team of all time? Tick through the names (and numbers): Fabian Espindola (11g, 9a); Luis Silva (11g, 4ga), Eddie Johnson (7g, 3a), Chris Rolfe (6g, 6a); Davy Arnaud (doesn’t matter), Bobby Boswell (back for one more ride…), Sean Franklin?

Real Salt Lake (15-8-11, 56 pts., 54gf, 39ga (+15); 3rd in West)
They had some stars (Joao Plata, 13g, 6a; Javi Morales, 9g, 12a; Alvaro Saborio only had half a season), but it was the foundation (Beckerman, Borchers, Schuler, Grabavoy) that made them.

New England Revolution (17-13-4, 55 pts., 51gf, 37ga (+14); 2nd in East)
Covered amply above, but Lee Nguyen (18g, 5a) had a phenomenal season and/or post-season. I still don’t think the Revs ever had a great defense…

FC Dallas (16-12-6, 54 pts., 55gf, 45ga (+10); 4th in West)
Classic Dallas line-up; talent, just not enough of it: Blas Perez, 11g, 6a; Fabian Castillo, 10g, 4a; Michel Garbini Pereira, 8g, 5a; and they only had half a Mauro Diaz (3g, 3a). They did get solid seasons out of Matt Hedges (32 starts) and Je-Vaughn Watson (29 starts).

Columbus Crew SC (14-10-10, 52 pts., 52gf, 42ga (+10); 3rd in East)
A good team, basically – e.g., Ethan Finlay (11g, 7a), Federico Higuain (11g, 7a), and Justin Meram (8g, 4a), plus a decent defense led by Michael Parkhurst, but they couldn’t keep up.

New York Red Bulls (13-10-11, 50 pts., 55gf, 50ga (+5); 4th in East)
BWP fucking killed it (27g, 2a) and Thierry Henry kicked in massively (10g, 14a), along with Lloyd Sam (4g, 9a), even Eric Alexander (2g, 9a). Defense a little suspect (actually outlier bad)…if they’d kept out just one goal, man…

Vancouver Whitecaps (12-8-14, 50 pts., 42gf , 40ga (+2); 5th in West)
Pedro Morales (10g, 12a) a lot alone (next four after him: Darren Mattocks, 6g, 3a; Erik Hurtado, 5g, 3a; Sebastian Fernandez, 5g, 0a; Kekuta Manneh, 4g, 2a). Just behind by everyone else at this point.

Sporting Kansas City (14-13-7, 49 pts., 48gf, 41ga (+7); 5th in East)
Mostly assist machinery – e.g., Graham Zusi (5g, 8a) and Benny Feilhaber (4g, 6a) – to get the ball to Dom Dwyer (22g, 1a), but it was just scraps after that. Could keep goals out, but lost production from Claudio Bieler (less than half a season), C. J. Sapong, even Aurelien Collin.

PLAYOFFS ABOVE; PERDITION BELOW

Portland Timbers (12-9-13, 49 pts., 61gf, 52ga (+9) 6th in West)
Diverse, busy attack – Diego Valeri, 11g, 14a; Maxi Urruti, 10g, 2a; Fanendo Adi, 9g, 4a; Gaston Fernandez, 7g, 2a (and Will Johnson carried on nicely at 6g, 2a; while Nagbe flagged to 1g, 7a) – but those goals-against number was suicide in the West circa 2014.

Philadelphia Union (10-12-12, 42 pts., 51gf, 51ga (0); 6th in East)
Sebastian LeToux (12g, 7a) and what’s left of Conor Casey (8g, 2a), the never-finished beginnings of Andrew Wenger (6g, 4a), PLUS assists from Maidana, but that was about it.

Toronto FC (11-15-8, 41 pts., 44gf, 54 ga (-10); 7th in East)
You cannot half-ass the defense, but they did – e.g., Nick Hagglund (as a rookie?), Doneil Henry (same?), Mark Bloom (who?). You see the glimmer of their coming ambition in Jermaine DeFoe, but, even with Michael Bradley, this is a bad, thrown-together outfit.

Houston Dynamo (11-17-6, 39 pts., 39gf, 58ga (-19); 8th in West)
They had Giles Barnes (11g, 5a); Will Bruin (10g, 1a); and Brad Davis (4g, 11a), and not much after. Losing Boswell was massive (the other side of DC’s money-ball magic).

Chicago Fire (6-10-18, 36 pts., 41gf, 51ga (-10); 9th in East)
Quincy Amarikwa was their leading scorer (8g, 5a), but it was Harry Shipp (7g, 6a), Mike Magee (7g, 4a), and Jeff Larentowicz (6g, 3a) from there. Bad DPs and too many reclamation projects...

Chivas USA (9-19-6 33 pts., 29gf, 61ga (-32); 7th in West)
Again, don’t care, but here’s a fun fact: Chivas USA owns four of the 10 worst goal differential seasons of all time.

Colorado Rapids (8-18-8, 32 pts., 43gf, 62ga (-19); 8th in West)
Their defense had to suck, obviously. There was 2/3 of Drew Moor, which left Marvell Wynne, Shane O’Neill, maybe Chris Klute and Jared Watts to hold it together, only they didn’t. They tried to go cheap after that became basically impossible.

San Jose Earthquakes (6-16-12, 30 pts., 35gf, 50ga (-15); 9th in West)
Pretty middling team all over, even allowing for Wondo having a decent season (14g, 4a). They managed no forward impetus, and this underscores my point about MPG.

Montreal Impact (6-18-10, 28 pts., 38gf, 58ga (-20); 10th in East)
Piatti came too late (just 6 games), so it was down to Di Viao (9g, 4a) Jack McInerney (7g, 1a) and Andres Romero (6g, 3a) to carry the attack not nearly far enough, and the clear, stunning lack of a sustainable defense.