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| I am, and always will be, open-minded. |
I won’t post a Weakly next week, so praise the soccer gods for giving me so much material to work with this week.
First and foremost and, as assumed last week, there will be a 2021 Major League Soccer season. The regular season won’t start until April 17 (leaving me to wonder what the hell I’ll talk about every week for two months…which perhaps points to the wisdom of not posting stuff when there’s nothing to talk about), but it looks like (most) teams will report to training as of March 1, 2021.
The very next thought: will there be, like, an actual preseason - i.e., the annual ritual of MLS teams thrashing the kids from the nearest college and USL teams? More to the point, will MLS fans get to see one of my most cherished of preseason rituals, those little February (or March) mini-tournaments in Arizona, Florida and, in recent years, Portland, OR? If not, however will they get to see their team’s players from the deepest depths of the bench and/or that year’s draft picks before they go back under or to their team’s USL affiliate for the rest of the year? How else will fans see the players who will absolutely not feature in any part of the upcoming campaign? I know I want to know...
As much as I love the things (I like like them), hosting and arranging preseason games feels like one hell of a risk under the (fast COVID) circumstances. I mean, why risk players getting The Bad Bug before points are on the line - especially if it risks losing points later (but they’ll reschedule games…right?)? Going the other way, why not get ahead on managing game-day settings before the real thing? My guess is, most teams will play and, gods willing, live-stream at least two preseason games in 2021. Even if hitting the ground running isn’t in the cards, why not hit it at a solid trot?
Even if preseason doesn’t happen, fans of four* teams - Atlanta United FC, the Philadelphia Union, Columbus Crew SC, and my Portland Timbers - and general MLS enthusiasts have the treat of hot CONACAF Champions’ League action to look forward to starting on or around the first Tuesday in April. (* If Toronto FC can beat…whatever the hell Forge FC is, MLS will send five teams to the CCL, but, c’mon, who doesn’t want to line up behind Team Forge?) Because I’ve got nothing else for Portland, I’ll do the little CCL handicapping I can in the Timbers section below. Before that, though, I wanted to spend a little time dissecting the agreement/truce that made the 2021 MLS season possible. Yessir, time to talk about…
The CBA, aka, the Cursed Bastards Arrangement
You’ll find longer and clearer analyses elsewhere (ESPN, for the cheap; The Athletic for the yuppies), so I just want to tickle a couple of the specifics. First, to name a couple things the players got that I liked: (general) stability tops the list, particularly with the guarantee* that “any current contracts for 2022 and beyond must be honored," but knowing* they won’t be forced to relitigate things like that until 2027* means having a (semi-)predictable career, at least for as long as their own performance warrants it. The steady growth of the minimum salaries and player bonuses through 2027 feels like the biggest win, if for no other reason than it gives players at the financial bottom of the player pool a better shot at building up some kind of savings…say, a cushion to carry them through the next round of CBA negotiations in 2027*. Some adjustments happened with free agency as well, but I’m still trying to sort out the extent to which that’s helped anyone in MLS at this point and, as such, will continue to take that piece under advisement.
The league got their two-year extension on the CBA, of course, and that’s on top of tiny general salary increase through 2022. They also slipped in this little clause:
“The share of incremental media revenues -- which will kick in when a new media rights deal is negotiated starting with the 2023 season -- was decreased from 25% to 12.5% in 2024.”
I’m taking “incremental media revenues” to mean that players take 12.5% off of whatever cash gets added to MLS’s current (modest) TV deal, but, it’s not my salary, so I didn’t look into it (and, for what it’s worth, I take the same interest in what I actually get paid, so…). A lot of the analysis reads like this - i.e., dollar figures and percentages with largely contingent context - but seeing this surprised me a bit:
“The force majeure remains in place as well, though with short-term limitations, and any ‘givebacks’ are far down the road toward the end of the deal.”
And:
“The players are safe from seeing the force majeure invoked again, but only until Dec. 1, 2021. At that point, the league is free to what it did last December, though if it comes to that, then that will be a reflection of how the pandemic is still dominating life in the U.S. a year on.”
I accept the reality that U.S. remains in the grips of a pandemic and, based on experience, that Americans have a special talent for making said pandemic worse. Still, letting the league hold onto that option…call that the only section of the CBA that I really want to read, if only to check the language on what can actually trigger it (e.g., if the pandemic has ended, does a certain dollar amount in losses due to the pandemic let them write off said losses as an act of God?).
At any rate, most of the people I follow, read and interact with tend toward a narrative that reads somewhere between the league has the players over a barrel, or, worse, that the players got screwed. The more thought I put into it, the more I get hung up on the question of what exactly is a “fair wage” for a soccer player plying his trade north of Mexico? To hazard a guess, the answer lands somewhere in the middle of, 1) what it takes to become competitive in wage terms with the world’s bigger leagues, 2) the true extent of labor mobility for current MLS players to access those bigger leagues, and 3) how much American owners will pay based on expected growth of the league (or the value of their own franchises), with all of that divided by 4) the state of existing revenues and what I’d call the very real likelihood that the next TV deal won’t blow anyone’s mind.
So…what does that equal? I guess the CBA answered that on the one level that matters - e.g., reality - but I’m still left wondering what more money going in could mean to more money coming in.
All right, moving on now to two teams I follow and league news generally…
Portland Timbers v. Central America
Absolutely nothing of (visible) importance happened in the Timbers camp this week (but how goes Sebastian Blanco’s healing process?), so let’s talk about the draw for the 2021 CCL. When they pulled the ping-pong balls out of the little spinny globe, they delivered the following first-round draws for MLS teams:
Forge FC/Toronto FC v Leon
Columbus Crew SC v Real Esteli
Philadelphia Union v Deportivo Saprissa
Atlanta United FC v. LD Alajuelense
Portland Timbers v CD Marathon
Here’s the short version of handicapping: Toronto/Forge are probably dead men walking, but the rest of MLS’ Campeones should have a decent shot. Now, the longer, Portland-specific version:
I somehow stumbled onto the official Champions’ League home page, which offers a little “Clubs” sub-tab. Those are…mostly useless, but they do provide CCL results histories for all the teams involved if you open each team’s page and click on Bio. While you see a fair number of “Did not qualify” after many years for many of the clubs, you also see signs of, say, semi-recent, impressive runs by Alajuelense and some consistent work by Saprissa - which is to say, both Atlanta and Philly need to show up with their shoes on the right feet and their legs under them.
Fortunately for the Timbers, Marathon’s recent history reads “Did not qualify” almost as often as Portland’s; there’s just one season between 2013 and 2021 that shows the Hondurans playing the CCL, and that was 2019, when they reached…uh, the Round of 16. (Seriously, fuck this pandemic.) The Timbers, for their part, have never progressed past the Group stage…until now, baby! If by default...
Without getting into the how’s and why’s of the structure of this year’s tournament, my broad concern about the Timbers’ chances turns on the simplest of equations - e.g., the capacity of a match-fit and, sadly, in-form Honduran team to upset a team whose attack hasn’t had time to start firing and who, last time Timbers fans saw them, reliably coughed-up goals, notably on set-pieces. Even if the best Timbers team could beat the best current version of Marathon eight times out of ten under normal circumstances [Ed. - I do not know this], Marathon could steal the series by being well-organized alone. I know nothing about Honduran soccer, at least not outside the CCL, so I won’t try to read too deeply into their numbers, but they DO show one of the better defensive records in the Honduran Apertura…so here’s to hoping most Honduran teams suck at attacking!
Moving on…
Drama in the Qveen City
To touch on two points really quickly before getting to the gossip (aka, the best!), I hereby note that 1) FC Cincinnati is officially in the hunt for former DC United creator/top-end sidekick Luciano Acosta, and 2) I fucking hate articles/posts that talk about any player’s “impact” on a team and a league before that player has kicked one fucking ball for that team. Look, I’m not claiming I know what’s going to happen with Brenner (the player alluded to in the prior sentence), but I do know that Atlanta dropped something like the same amount of cash on Pity Martinez and Ezequiel Barco and who the hell talks about either player's “impact” on Atlanta and MLS today? I wish Brenner all the luck in the world and hope he brings two seasons’ worth of happiness to a fan-base that needs and deserves a lotta happy - if nothing else, it's not like I don't watch them every damn week - but, holy shit, pump the fucking brakes, guys.
As for Acosta, that move remains pending and may not come through, but I’m fine with it conceptually. He has produced in MLS - a lot better when he had Wayne Rooney for a foil, or vice versa, obviously - but Acosta can do things and make them happen in the attacking third for other players. Unless FC Cincy has other - and crucially, live options - they could do a lot worse. Filling a position of need with something besides repeating “we need a No. 10” as an affirmational mantra seems like the wiser course.
And now…the drama…
Though simple in historical terms (e.g., read my old posts on Darlington Nagbe), I have complicated thoughts on Frankie (can I call him “Frank”?) Amaya (and, wait…do I like Frankie better?). Earlier this week, The Athletic reported that Amaya put in a request to be traded away from FC Cincinnati and on the belief that, in his words:
“I’ve given everything to Cincinnati and the fans over the last two years and I will always be grateful for their support and kindness. During this offseason I’ve realized that the club doesn’t have the same level of commitment to me, so I have asked the club to trade me as I don’t feel my goals can be achieved in Cincinnati.”
Dear Lord, where to begin?
Assuming Amaya was drafted/projected as “an attacking midfielder,” is it a case of thwarted ambition - i.e., is he thinking, “why the hell is this team looking for a No. 10, I’m right here?” Moreover, does the answer to that question even matter, given that Cincinnati’s diverse and myriad coaches have only sporadically played Amaya as an attacking player, tending instead to field him as something more like a box-to-box player, in which role, for what it’s worth, I thought he looked all right. And doesn’t the reality of how Amaya’s been played shape the conversation about how/where other teams see his value?
When a player wants to leave, my entirely non-professional instinct is to let him go - see, for instance, Kaku and the New York Red Bulls. That said, Amaya’s case feels particularly complicated. From the player’s perspective, what does he gain from a move except a new set of circumstances where he can prove himself ready? To sharpen the question, can you see any team in MLS picking up Amaya and handing him the reins? (No less significantly, is that even his goal and/or expectation?) Next, and to put a really cynical/self-serving spin on this, could shipping Amaya bring more coherence to FC Cincy’s midfield? It’s no secret that Cincinnati’s roster build was a clusterfuck from Day 1 and, since it’s not entirely clear where to play Amaya, would removing him from the equation/competition for a starting role make it easier to Cincinnati to field a coherent midfield? If I can get to "yes" on this question, I'd advocate for a trade today - and for the reason noted at the beginning of this paragraph.
At any rate, I’m just asking questions there - ideally in the right spirit (as opposed to the internet troll/Nazi version). When asked for a response, a spokesperson for FC Cincinnati presented the question more from a team success/failure angle and, if that’s what’s eating Amaya, things could work out with him still on the roster. Overall, it’s a mess and an inherited one. More than anything else, I just want 2021 to feel less like unstinting suffering than 2019 and 2020. If they could find success by signing Gus, the Kicking Mule, I’d sign that donkey in a fucking heartbeat. (Yeah, yeah, a donkey isn’t a mule.)
And that’s all that. Let’s close on the league-wide news I find important - and let’s go with ascending order of importance (and hope I used the word correctly).
1) CCL Format Change
They changed it, but I’ll worry about that when it gets here. If you find this important, so did MLSSoccer.com’sAndrew Wiebe.
2) Montreal Signs a Platoon
Montreal has made an eye-catching number of moves this off-season. I’d still put money on this panning out as a Vancouver-esque sound-and-fury-signifying-nothing, but….noted.
3) Austin FC Did It, So Why Can’t FC Cincinnati?
I know nothing of about Tomas Pochettino, so read the title to this little blurb in that light. Still, Austin can say they signed “a No. 10” or something like it and that leaves one wondering, does it not?
4) Nobody Puts Orlando in a Corner
This one’s fresh off the presses, but Orlando City SC just signed a Brazilian forward named Alexandre Pato. While I spotted a couple red flags in (what amounts to) the press release - e.g., “though he struggled with injuries” and “they've signed Brazilian forward Alexandre Pato to a one-year deal” (with an option, or…?) - I want to see something one of my teams did as “one of the biggest moves of the MLS offseason so far.” Dammit.
Right. That’s it for this week. Barring a change of heart (unlikely) or some big goddamn news involving…something (please!), I won’t post a Weakly next week. Regular service will resume thereafter per my personal state of excitement and/or the beginning of preseason play. Till then…
First and foremost and, as assumed last week, there will be a 2021 Major League Soccer season. The regular season won’t start until April 17 (leaving me to wonder what the hell I’ll talk about every week for two months…which perhaps points to the wisdom of not posting stuff when there’s nothing to talk about), but it looks like (most) teams will report to training as of March 1, 2021.
The very next thought: will there be, like, an actual preseason - i.e., the annual ritual of MLS teams thrashing the kids from the nearest college and USL teams? More to the point, will MLS fans get to see one of my most cherished of preseason rituals, those little February (or March) mini-tournaments in Arizona, Florida and, in recent years, Portland, OR? If not, however will they get to see their team’s players from the deepest depths of the bench and/or that year’s draft picks before they go back under or to their team’s USL affiliate for the rest of the year? How else will fans see the players who will absolutely not feature in any part of the upcoming campaign? I know I want to know...
As much as I love the things (I like like them), hosting and arranging preseason games feels like one hell of a risk under the (fast COVID) circumstances. I mean, why risk players getting The Bad Bug before points are on the line - especially if it risks losing points later (but they’ll reschedule games…right?)? Going the other way, why not get ahead on managing game-day settings before the real thing? My guess is, most teams will play and, gods willing, live-stream at least two preseason games in 2021. Even if hitting the ground running isn’t in the cards, why not hit it at a solid trot?
Even if preseason doesn’t happen, fans of four* teams - Atlanta United FC, the Philadelphia Union, Columbus Crew SC, and my Portland Timbers - and general MLS enthusiasts have the treat of hot CONACAF Champions’ League action to look forward to starting on or around the first Tuesday in April. (* If Toronto FC can beat…whatever the hell Forge FC is, MLS will send five teams to the CCL, but, c’mon, who doesn’t want to line up behind Team Forge?) Because I’ve got nothing else for Portland, I’ll do the little CCL handicapping I can in the Timbers section below. Before that, though, I wanted to spend a little time dissecting the agreement/truce that made the 2021 MLS season possible. Yessir, time to talk about…
The CBA, aka, the Cursed Bastards Arrangement
You’ll find longer and clearer analyses elsewhere (ESPN, for the cheap; The Athletic for the yuppies), so I just want to tickle a couple of the specifics. First, to name a couple things the players got that I liked: (general) stability tops the list, particularly with the guarantee* that “any current contracts for 2022 and beyond must be honored," but knowing* they won’t be forced to relitigate things like that until 2027* means having a (semi-)predictable career, at least for as long as their own performance warrants it. The steady growth of the minimum salaries and player bonuses through 2027 feels like the biggest win, if for no other reason than it gives players at the financial bottom of the player pool a better shot at building up some kind of savings…say, a cushion to carry them through the next round of CBA negotiations in 2027*. Some adjustments happened with free agency as well, but I’m still trying to sort out the extent to which that’s helped anyone in MLS at this point and, as such, will continue to take that piece under advisement.
The league got their two-year extension on the CBA, of course, and that’s on top of tiny general salary increase through 2022. They also slipped in this little clause:
“The share of incremental media revenues -- which will kick in when a new media rights deal is negotiated starting with the 2023 season -- was decreased from 25% to 12.5% in 2024.”
I’m taking “incremental media revenues” to mean that players take 12.5% off of whatever cash gets added to MLS’s current (modest) TV deal, but, it’s not my salary, so I didn’t look into it (and, for what it’s worth, I take the same interest in what I actually get paid, so…). A lot of the analysis reads like this - i.e., dollar figures and percentages with largely contingent context - but seeing this surprised me a bit:
“The force majeure remains in place as well, though with short-term limitations, and any ‘givebacks’ are far down the road toward the end of the deal.”
And:
“The players are safe from seeing the force majeure invoked again, but only until Dec. 1, 2021. At that point, the league is free to what it did last December, though if it comes to that, then that will be a reflection of how the pandemic is still dominating life in the U.S. a year on.”
I accept the reality that U.S. remains in the grips of a pandemic and, based on experience, that Americans have a special talent for making said pandemic worse. Still, letting the league hold onto that option…call that the only section of the CBA that I really want to read, if only to check the language on what can actually trigger it (e.g., if the pandemic has ended, does a certain dollar amount in losses due to the pandemic let them write off said losses as an act of God?).
At any rate, most of the people I follow, read and interact with tend toward a narrative that reads somewhere between the league has the players over a barrel, or, worse, that the players got screwed. The more thought I put into it, the more I get hung up on the question of what exactly is a “fair wage” for a soccer player plying his trade north of Mexico? To hazard a guess, the answer lands somewhere in the middle of, 1) what it takes to become competitive in wage terms with the world’s bigger leagues, 2) the true extent of labor mobility for current MLS players to access those bigger leagues, and 3) how much American owners will pay based on expected growth of the league (or the value of their own franchises), with all of that divided by 4) the state of existing revenues and what I’d call the very real likelihood that the next TV deal won’t blow anyone’s mind.
So…what does that equal? I guess the CBA answered that on the one level that matters - e.g., reality - but I’m still left wondering what more money going in could mean to more money coming in.
All right, moving on now to two teams I follow and league news generally…
Portland Timbers v. Central America
Absolutely nothing of (visible) importance happened in the Timbers camp this week (but how goes Sebastian Blanco’s healing process?), so let’s talk about the draw for the 2021 CCL. When they pulled the ping-pong balls out of the little spinny globe, they delivered the following first-round draws for MLS teams:
Forge FC/Toronto FC v Leon
Columbus Crew SC v Real Esteli
Philadelphia Union v Deportivo Saprissa
Atlanta United FC v. LD Alajuelense
Portland Timbers v CD Marathon
Here’s the short version of handicapping: Toronto/Forge are probably dead men walking, but the rest of MLS’ Campeones should have a decent shot. Now, the longer, Portland-specific version:
I somehow stumbled onto the official Champions’ League home page, which offers a little “Clubs” sub-tab. Those are…mostly useless, but they do provide CCL results histories for all the teams involved if you open each team’s page and click on Bio. While you see a fair number of “Did not qualify” after many years for many of the clubs, you also see signs of, say, semi-recent, impressive runs by Alajuelense and some consistent work by Saprissa - which is to say, both Atlanta and Philly need to show up with their shoes on the right feet and their legs under them.
Fortunately for the Timbers, Marathon’s recent history reads “Did not qualify” almost as often as Portland’s; there’s just one season between 2013 and 2021 that shows the Hondurans playing the CCL, and that was 2019, when they reached…uh, the Round of 16. (Seriously, fuck this pandemic.) The Timbers, for their part, have never progressed past the Group stage…until now, baby! If by default...
Without getting into the how’s and why’s of the structure of this year’s tournament, my broad concern about the Timbers’ chances turns on the simplest of equations - e.g., the capacity of a match-fit and, sadly, in-form Honduran team to upset a team whose attack hasn’t had time to start firing and who, last time Timbers fans saw them, reliably coughed-up goals, notably on set-pieces. Even if the best Timbers team could beat the best current version of Marathon eight times out of ten under normal circumstances [Ed. - I do not know this], Marathon could steal the series by being well-organized alone. I know nothing about Honduran soccer, at least not outside the CCL, so I won’t try to read too deeply into their numbers, but they DO show one of the better defensive records in the Honduran Apertura…so here’s to hoping most Honduran teams suck at attacking!
Moving on…
Drama in the Qveen City
To touch on two points really quickly before getting to the gossip (aka, the best!), I hereby note that 1) FC Cincinnati is officially in the hunt for former DC United creator/top-end sidekick Luciano Acosta, and 2) I fucking hate articles/posts that talk about any player’s “impact” on a team and a league before that player has kicked one fucking ball for that team. Look, I’m not claiming I know what’s going to happen with Brenner (the player alluded to in the prior sentence), but I do know that Atlanta dropped something like the same amount of cash on Pity Martinez and Ezequiel Barco and who the hell talks about either player's “impact” on Atlanta and MLS today? I wish Brenner all the luck in the world and hope he brings two seasons’ worth of happiness to a fan-base that needs and deserves a lotta happy - if nothing else, it's not like I don't watch them every damn week - but, holy shit, pump the fucking brakes, guys.
As for Acosta, that move remains pending and may not come through, but I’m fine with it conceptually. He has produced in MLS - a lot better when he had Wayne Rooney for a foil, or vice versa, obviously - but Acosta can do things and make them happen in the attacking third for other players. Unless FC Cincy has other - and crucially, live options - they could do a lot worse. Filling a position of need with something besides repeating “we need a No. 10” as an affirmational mantra seems like the wiser course.
And now…the drama…
Though simple in historical terms (e.g., read my old posts on Darlington Nagbe), I have complicated thoughts on Frankie (can I call him “Frank”?) Amaya (and, wait…do I like Frankie better?). Earlier this week, The Athletic reported that Amaya put in a request to be traded away from FC Cincinnati and on the belief that, in his words:
“I’ve given everything to Cincinnati and the fans over the last two years and I will always be grateful for their support and kindness. During this offseason I’ve realized that the club doesn’t have the same level of commitment to me, so I have asked the club to trade me as I don’t feel my goals can be achieved in Cincinnati.”
Dear Lord, where to begin?
Assuming Amaya was drafted/projected as “an attacking midfielder,” is it a case of thwarted ambition - i.e., is he thinking, “why the hell is this team looking for a No. 10, I’m right here?” Moreover, does the answer to that question even matter, given that Cincinnati’s diverse and myriad coaches have only sporadically played Amaya as an attacking player, tending instead to field him as something more like a box-to-box player, in which role, for what it’s worth, I thought he looked all right. And doesn’t the reality of how Amaya’s been played shape the conversation about how/where other teams see his value?
When a player wants to leave, my entirely non-professional instinct is to let him go - see, for instance, Kaku and the New York Red Bulls. That said, Amaya’s case feels particularly complicated. From the player’s perspective, what does he gain from a move except a new set of circumstances where he can prove himself ready? To sharpen the question, can you see any team in MLS picking up Amaya and handing him the reins? (No less significantly, is that even his goal and/or expectation?) Next, and to put a really cynical/self-serving spin on this, could shipping Amaya bring more coherence to FC Cincy’s midfield? It’s no secret that Cincinnati’s roster build was a clusterfuck from Day 1 and, since it’s not entirely clear where to play Amaya, would removing him from the equation/competition for a starting role make it easier to Cincinnati to field a coherent midfield? If I can get to "yes" on this question, I'd advocate for a trade today - and for the reason noted at the beginning of this paragraph.
At any rate, I’m just asking questions there - ideally in the right spirit (as opposed to the internet troll/Nazi version). When asked for a response, a spokesperson for FC Cincinnati presented the question more from a team success/failure angle and, if that’s what’s eating Amaya, things could work out with him still on the roster. Overall, it’s a mess and an inherited one. More than anything else, I just want 2021 to feel less like unstinting suffering than 2019 and 2020. If they could find success by signing Gus, the Kicking Mule, I’d sign that donkey in a fucking heartbeat. (Yeah, yeah, a donkey isn’t a mule.)
And that’s all that. Let’s close on the league-wide news I find important - and let’s go with ascending order of importance (and hope I used the word correctly).
1) CCL Format Change
They changed it, but I’ll worry about that when it gets here. If you find this important, so did MLSSoccer.com’sAndrew Wiebe.
2) Montreal Signs a Platoon
Montreal has made an eye-catching number of moves this off-season. I’d still put money on this panning out as a Vancouver-esque sound-and-fury-signifying-nothing, but….noted.
3) Austin FC Did It, So Why Can’t FC Cincinnati?
I know nothing of about Tomas Pochettino, so read the title to this little blurb in that light. Still, Austin can say they signed “a No. 10” or something like it and that leaves one wondering, does it not?
4) Nobody Puts Orlando in a Corner
This one’s fresh off the presses, but Orlando City SC just signed a Brazilian forward named Alexandre Pato. While I spotted a couple red flags in (what amounts to) the press release - e.g., “though he struggled with injuries” and “they've signed Brazilian forward Alexandre Pato to a one-year deal” (with an option, or…?) - I want to see something one of my teams did as “one of the biggest moves of the MLS offseason so far.” Dammit.
Right. That’s it for this week. Barring a change of heart (unlikely) or some big goddamn news involving…something (please!), I won’t post a Weakly next week. Regular service will resume thereafter per my personal state of excitement and/or the beginning of preseason play. Till then…
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