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| A statement on World Cup 2022 |
Let’s get the downer out of the way first. Both U.S. National Teams (that is Men and Women) announced their schedules for 2021 ($ site), and probably did a bunch of other shit I don’t really care about. (Related: does U.S. Soccer run the U.S. Open Cup; asking due to that tournament’s long, continuing strides toward irrelevance: I mean…who blessed this mess?) I rarely tune in for USWNT games, but that’s from lack of context, but it’s getting damned hard to get excited about USMNT games due to the sharp stench wafting over from Qatar.
Look, I understand that FIFA is crooked as 20 broken penises, but reports of 6,500 deaths associated with the construction of stadiums in a country that, frankly, should never have been awarded a World Cup pushes them several miles past vanilla corruption and into open criminality. I can’t, in good conscience watch an event built on top of so many dead, which will make 2022 the first World Cup I’ve ever skipped and the first I've missed any part of since 1982. If I commit to that (frailty being a thing), is there any point to watching World Cup qualifying when it starts later this year?
Despite everything above, I’ll likely tune in for friendlies, Nations Cup and this summer’s Gold Cup, and that entails some falling from the moral high ground because I assume FIFA gets a cut of all of that. I acknowledge the several rationalizations needed to make that leap - the way the body (qualifying tournaments) support the head (the World Cup Finals) chief among them - but I’d still love to see the Qatar tournament fall flat on its hideous face and sincerely hope it comes to pass. I’ll keep telling myself that failure of the marquee event would give FIFA the darkest possible black eye.
FIFA will always be corrupt, near as I can tell, so the only real moral choice is to stop watching international soccer altogether. I can’t see doing that. At any rate, I’m stepping away for a shower and 2,000 Hail Mary’s, and then I’ll move on the Major League Soccer.
And…we’re back. The 2021 MLS season has finally, officially started with a handful of teams reporting to camp. I’ll do the usual thing, i.e., talk about the two teams I follow (FC Cincinnati and the Portland Timbers) and then wrap up with some league-wide notes. And so, to start with the team that has…
Portland Timbers, Assemble!
The Timbers reported for training camp…sometime last week. The Timbers website dishes the usual porn - photos from training (nice to see the new kids!), interviews with players and coaches, etc. - but, of course, the real news turns on who showed up and who can’t. Josecarlos Van Rankin and Claudio Bravo had their first session(s) with the full team, which is nice to hear - the more reps, the better - and it’s good to hear chatter about Sebastian Blanco training in any capacity, even if it’s “apart from the larger group.”
That’s all expected, but two passages from the first report from preseason caught my eye. First:
“…but after a season where conceding late goals became a regret, returning the defense’s key parts is a bet on management’s part. The quality of Zuparic, central-defense partner Larrys Mabiala and goalkeeper Steve Clark will win out, the team’s roster management argues. Continuity, it implies, could be a solution.”
My only comment there is simple: I still want another center back, dammit, and it’s unlikely I’ll relax until they sign one. The second passage points back to that in a slightly unexpected way:
“We won MLS Is Back. We hit a really good stride toward the end of the regular season. And then obviously, a little bit of a disappointing result against FC Dallas.”
- Jeremy Ebobisse
That quote triggered a realization: had Portland won the Dallas game, I would have felt really good about the 2020 season, great even. A trophy and one more round: that’s how thin the margin was. And that bring the discussion current to the 2021 season.
The Timbers’ whole damn 2021 season is a bet, and a global one. It’s not an irrational one by any means - e.g., the ExtraTime Radio crew listed the Timbers among the five strongest teams in the league as of late February - but it is, without question, a series of inter-locking wagers made not just on the defense, but on players returning whole from injury and aging legs all over the starting XI holding up through a long season. As such, yeah, I want another center back, dammit.
Cincinnati and Unnecessary Dunking Thereon
If you told people that FC Cincinnati has endured two brutal seasons in MLS, I don’t think you’d get any push-back. They’ve endured enough, in other words, a reality that puts some questions to the goddamn sociopaths at The Athletic, who decided to run a long-form, “well, actually” about Cincinnati’s signing of Brazilian forward, and hopefully sensation, Brenner. The thrust of the piece asked whether Cincy truly beat other, bigger suitors on the way to signing him ($ site), a question that only came up due to how the club announced the signing on social media - i.e., it was implied, etc. etc. etc. My short response: Jesus Christ, who gives a shit?
The only thing that matters is how Brenner does when he shows up. If he succeeds, Cincinnati wins twice over, once for the work he puts in during his time at the Queen City, and again when they pocket money for moving on to one of those other, bigger suitors. If he fails, well…Cincy fans have experience managing these emotions, if nothing else, and ample experience arguably. As such, the strongest (and most worrisome) parts of the article talk about Brenner’s struggles prior to 2020, and how he managed those (in a few words, not so good). At any rate, I have an outsized personal problem with the way too many people talk about new players before they’ve played even one game for their new team, but it’s clearly not going anywhere, but let's let Brenner’s play do the talking, goddammit.
Related thereto, The Mothership ran an opinion piece that named the seven MLS coaches who face the tallest challenges in 2021. How Jaap Stam failed to make that list is well fucking beyond me. It’s not all nonsense - e.g., I think Gerhard Struber has one hell of a challenge with the Red Bull New York, as does Greg Vanney with the Los Angeles Galaxy and Gabriel Heinze at Atlanta United FC - but they all came into a different situation - i.e., fans have cause to expect success. For my money, Chris Armas has the tallest challenge of them all, not only with keeping an aging Toronto FC side successful, but of having to prove that he’s actually a good coach and not the primary driver that sent the Red Bulls’ skid into the ditch over the past couple seasons. I’d rank Stam’s challenge somewhere between Armas’ and Struber’s and here’s why:
Josh Wolff, Austin FC’s first coach, has the cover of an expansion season; anything better than steaming shit looks good enough. Unless DC United’s front office has lost too much perspective, DC has fallen far enough down in recent years that Hernan Losada should get at least two of the same to turn them in the right direction before they give up on him. Of all the coaches listed, only Phil Neville’s situation strikes me as similar to Stam’s, but I’d still say the latter has more work cut out. Sure, Miami didn’t light up the league last season, but they made them damn playoffs; Cincinnati, on the other hand, has never been anything but the worst team in MLS. Worse, they only enjoyed a passing acquaintance with competence - that was during MLS Got Back last season - and they’ve rarely even achieved coherence. The shorter version: FC Cincinnati needs improvement not now, but right now. Their track record gives them and Stam as thin a margin as any team in MLS. God forbid, but if they miss the 2021 MLS Playoffs, the margin had better be thin enough that it can’t be seen with the naked eye.
And, finally, Cincy hasn’t officially signed Luciano Acosta yet and, based on some internet chatter, it's possible they never will. The above makes a strong case that either that, or some form of Plan B, cannot fail. I’m not sure how many miracles Acosta has in him, but signing him (or someone like him) will do two things at once: 1) get them a playmaker, any playmaker, and 2) bring coherence to the midfield. The sub-text for that: I’ve officially become obsessed with keeping Haris Medunjanin out of the starting XI…
And Now…the Rest of It. In Ascending Order
1) The Enry Era Ends
Thierry Henry checked out as Club de Foot Montreal’s head coach, citing family reasons. I get why this is a big deal - it’s Thierry Henry, for crissakes - and I don’t: Henry wasn’t at the helm for long and it’s not like he guided them anywhere north of mediocrity…where they still reside. The Mothership posted one of those silly handful of hypothetical columns naming “nine potential replacements.” Yes, the personal problem strikes again. Call me when Montreal hires their new guy and we’ve got real things to kick around.
2) Sacramento: a Market Closes
“Burkle purchased Neverland Ranch, the former home of Michael Jackson, for a reported $22 million in December.”
That’s my favorite nugget to come out of Ron Burkle’s decision to back out of bringing an MLS team to Sacramento; you have $22 million to burn on that, and…
For what it’s worth, I’ve always liked Sacramento as a potential market, certainly better than places like Tampa Bay/Ft. Lauderdale (ew, Florida teams), San Diego (it’d make California bottom-heavy), Detroit (different kind of revitalization needed), or even Las Vegas (then again, think of the away games). Sacramento’s mayor vowed to push on, but The Athletic’s write-up ($ site) is strongest when talking about the stuff around the collapse. Apparently, Burkle got antsy about where COVID will go from here and rising costs of stadium construction in Sacramento - and that’s on top of the sector where Burkle makes his money, e.g., hospitality, of which, again, Neverland Ranch, fucking rich people, etc. He reportedly never paid any of the expansion fees, never mind formally signed the agreement to join MLS, which makes you wonder why Don Garber talked about the deal the way they did, but that’s just corporate weirdness near as I can tell.
After that, I counted two points of practical interest. First, MLS quoted Burkle a $200 million expansion fee (which, again, he didn’t pay), clearly lower than the $300 million Charlotte paid to join this particular rich assholes club. The article speculates that the current expansion fee could be high as $325 million and I’ll be curious to see whether that holds up post-pandemic. The second point of interest - and it’s one I’ve slept on - there are three (3) MLS teams currently available for purchase: Real Salt Lake I knew about, but not Orlando and Houston; and, as the article points out, all three have the infrastructure in place. Now that I know those vacancies exist, I’d say those are more worth watching than anything that happens with Sacramento.
3) Transfer Update/Interpretation
To start with a general thought, I try not to get too far over my skis on any trade or signing, not unless I know the player in question pretty well (e.g., see, Ring, Alex), but some signings have the virtue of just looking right. This week provided an example when Miami signed a defensive midfielder out of Brazil named Gregore. He checks a lot of particular boxes - e.g., he’s not a DP (affordable!), he drew comparisons to the Seattle Sounders’ Joao Paulo (who I like), and, more than anything else, he addresses the one area of need I kept hearing about in connection with Miami. Again, I know nothing about Gregore, but seeing them sign him is enough to convince me they’ll be better next season.
In the specific context of FC Cincinnati, that’s bad, because, again, they have a whole goddamn league to catch up to. Until we’ve got some games to kick around (take me, I’m yours!), this is how I’ll be thinking about what I’m seeing on the ol’ transfer tracker that some MLS scribe another updates weekly - how they’ll effect Cincinnati or Portland.
Glancing at the final 2020 Eastern Conference standings, I still assume that every team from New England to the top will be better than Cincy in 2021, with the exception alluded to above: Toronto (due to Armas and aging). I also strongly suspect that Atlanta will return to the playoffs, which takes away the spot Toronto may or may not leave open. In other words, I’m counting the following Eastern Conference teams as potential weak spots for Cincinnati to exploit: Montreal, Toronto, DC, Miami, and Chicago Fire FC. The math just gets uglier from there - e.g., it feels dumb to bet against Toronto, DC should improve, and something has me thinking Chicago will improve as well. All that’s the context for Miami signing a what looks like a good player in a position of need, because suddenly, that leaves only a headless and full-o’-holes Montreal team as Cincinnati’s best shot at getting out of the goddamn cellar. Real improvement is needed, in other words, quite possibly massive.
Fans won’t know whether or how much Cincinnati has improved until they start playing (and no need to wait on that, fellas; again, take me, I'm ready to go to the drive-in and prove it, etc.), but it’s becoming vividly clear that real improvement is needed, if not massive improvement.
Things look better for the Timbers, obviously, in that I can list several teams that I can’t see ending higher than Portland - e.g., both RSL and Houston look like they’re in real trouble and Vancouver Whitecaps FC still needs something desperately before anyone has any cause to take them seriously. Moving up the table, I think the San Jose Earthquakes have probably improved and Colorado remains solid, but I’d still be shocked to the point of (figurative) tears to see either of them finish above the Timbers. I can’t quite get a read on the Galaxy, but Vanney & Co. have enough work still to do that I don’t see a big enough turn-around from them to see them as more than a sporadic worry for 2021. Finally, I don’t see Austin as part of that conversation, not unless they just tear it up out of the gate (at which point, let the "all right, all right, all right" begin).
And so that leaves the following teams as direct competition: Seattle, Sporting Kansas City, Minnesota United FC, FC Dallas and Los Angeles FC. SKC has reloaded enough to leave me legitimately worried about them, and, even without Kevin Molino, I buy the argument that Minnesota is just one quality forward away from contender status. Dallas remains my personal sleeper pick for 2021 and the general chatter has taught me to fear LAFC once again. I’m hoping for a relapse out of Seattle, but, what’s new, I hope for that every season. The Timbers are somewhere in that mix and, again, we can’t know where till everyone starts playing…
…loathe as I am to handicap anything this early and with so little information, I’ll just confess I’ll be surprised to see them finish inside the top 3 of the Western Conference.
And…that’s everything. Till the next one.
Look, I understand that FIFA is crooked as 20 broken penises, but reports of 6,500 deaths associated with the construction of stadiums in a country that, frankly, should never have been awarded a World Cup pushes them several miles past vanilla corruption and into open criminality. I can’t, in good conscience watch an event built on top of so many dead, which will make 2022 the first World Cup I’ve ever skipped and the first I've missed any part of since 1982. If I commit to that (frailty being a thing), is there any point to watching World Cup qualifying when it starts later this year?
Despite everything above, I’ll likely tune in for friendlies, Nations Cup and this summer’s Gold Cup, and that entails some falling from the moral high ground because I assume FIFA gets a cut of all of that. I acknowledge the several rationalizations needed to make that leap - the way the body (qualifying tournaments) support the head (the World Cup Finals) chief among them - but I’d still love to see the Qatar tournament fall flat on its hideous face and sincerely hope it comes to pass. I’ll keep telling myself that failure of the marquee event would give FIFA the darkest possible black eye.
FIFA will always be corrupt, near as I can tell, so the only real moral choice is to stop watching international soccer altogether. I can’t see doing that. At any rate, I’m stepping away for a shower and 2,000 Hail Mary’s, and then I’ll move on the Major League Soccer.
And…we’re back. The 2021 MLS season has finally, officially started with a handful of teams reporting to camp. I’ll do the usual thing, i.e., talk about the two teams I follow (FC Cincinnati and the Portland Timbers) and then wrap up with some league-wide notes. And so, to start with the team that has…
Portland Timbers, Assemble!
The Timbers reported for training camp…sometime last week. The Timbers website dishes the usual porn - photos from training (nice to see the new kids!), interviews with players and coaches, etc. - but, of course, the real news turns on who showed up and who can’t. Josecarlos Van Rankin and Claudio Bravo had their first session(s) with the full team, which is nice to hear - the more reps, the better - and it’s good to hear chatter about Sebastian Blanco training in any capacity, even if it’s “apart from the larger group.”
That’s all expected, but two passages from the first report from preseason caught my eye. First:
“…but after a season where conceding late goals became a regret, returning the defense’s key parts is a bet on management’s part. The quality of Zuparic, central-defense partner Larrys Mabiala and goalkeeper Steve Clark will win out, the team’s roster management argues. Continuity, it implies, could be a solution.”
My only comment there is simple: I still want another center back, dammit, and it’s unlikely I’ll relax until they sign one. The second passage points back to that in a slightly unexpected way:
“We won MLS Is Back. We hit a really good stride toward the end of the regular season. And then obviously, a little bit of a disappointing result against FC Dallas.”
- Jeremy Ebobisse
That quote triggered a realization: had Portland won the Dallas game, I would have felt really good about the 2020 season, great even. A trophy and one more round: that’s how thin the margin was. And that bring the discussion current to the 2021 season.
The Timbers’ whole damn 2021 season is a bet, and a global one. It’s not an irrational one by any means - e.g., the ExtraTime Radio crew listed the Timbers among the five strongest teams in the league as of late February - but it is, without question, a series of inter-locking wagers made not just on the defense, but on players returning whole from injury and aging legs all over the starting XI holding up through a long season. As such, yeah, I want another center back, dammit.
Cincinnati and Unnecessary Dunking Thereon
If you told people that FC Cincinnati has endured two brutal seasons in MLS, I don’t think you’d get any push-back. They’ve endured enough, in other words, a reality that puts some questions to the goddamn sociopaths at The Athletic, who decided to run a long-form, “well, actually” about Cincinnati’s signing of Brazilian forward, and hopefully sensation, Brenner. The thrust of the piece asked whether Cincy truly beat other, bigger suitors on the way to signing him ($ site), a question that only came up due to how the club announced the signing on social media - i.e., it was implied, etc. etc. etc. My short response: Jesus Christ, who gives a shit?
The only thing that matters is how Brenner does when he shows up. If he succeeds, Cincinnati wins twice over, once for the work he puts in during his time at the Queen City, and again when they pocket money for moving on to one of those other, bigger suitors. If he fails, well…Cincy fans have experience managing these emotions, if nothing else, and ample experience arguably. As such, the strongest (and most worrisome) parts of the article talk about Brenner’s struggles prior to 2020, and how he managed those (in a few words, not so good). At any rate, I have an outsized personal problem with the way too many people talk about new players before they’ve played even one game for their new team, but it’s clearly not going anywhere, but let's let Brenner’s play do the talking, goddammit.
Related thereto, The Mothership ran an opinion piece that named the seven MLS coaches who face the tallest challenges in 2021. How Jaap Stam failed to make that list is well fucking beyond me. It’s not all nonsense - e.g., I think Gerhard Struber has one hell of a challenge with the Red Bull New York, as does Greg Vanney with the Los Angeles Galaxy and Gabriel Heinze at Atlanta United FC - but they all came into a different situation - i.e., fans have cause to expect success. For my money, Chris Armas has the tallest challenge of them all, not only with keeping an aging Toronto FC side successful, but of having to prove that he’s actually a good coach and not the primary driver that sent the Red Bulls’ skid into the ditch over the past couple seasons. I’d rank Stam’s challenge somewhere between Armas’ and Struber’s and here’s why:
Josh Wolff, Austin FC’s first coach, has the cover of an expansion season; anything better than steaming shit looks good enough. Unless DC United’s front office has lost too much perspective, DC has fallen far enough down in recent years that Hernan Losada should get at least two of the same to turn them in the right direction before they give up on him. Of all the coaches listed, only Phil Neville’s situation strikes me as similar to Stam’s, but I’d still say the latter has more work cut out. Sure, Miami didn’t light up the league last season, but they made them damn playoffs; Cincinnati, on the other hand, has never been anything but the worst team in MLS. Worse, they only enjoyed a passing acquaintance with competence - that was during MLS Got Back last season - and they’ve rarely even achieved coherence. The shorter version: FC Cincinnati needs improvement not now, but right now. Their track record gives them and Stam as thin a margin as any team in MLS. God forbid, but if they miss the 2021 MLS Playoffs, the margin had better be thin enough that it can’t be seen with the naked eye.
And, finally, Cincy hasn’t officially signed Luciano Acosta yet and, based on some internet chatter, it's possible they never will. The above makes a strong case that either that, or some form of Plan B, cannot fail. I’m not sure how many miracles Acosta has in him, but signing him (or someone like him) will do two things at once: 1) get them a playmaker, any playmaker, and 2) bring coherence to the midfield. The sub-text for that: I’ve officially become obsessed with keeping Haris Medunjanin out of the starting XI…
And Now…the Rest of It. In Ascending Order
1) The Enry Era Ends
Thierry Henry checked out as Club de Foot Montreal’s head coach, citing family reasons. I get why this is a big deal - it’s Thierry Henry, for crissakes - and I don’t: Henry wasn’t at the helm for long and it’s not like he guided them anywhere north of mediocrity…where they still reside. The Mothership posted one of those silly handful of hypothetical columns naming “nine potential replacements.” Yes, the personal problem strikes again. Call me when Montreal hires their new guy and we’ve got real things to kick around.
2) Sacramento: a Market Closes
“Burkle purchased Neverland Ranch, the former home of Michael Jackson, for a reported $22 million in December.”
That’s my favorite nugget to come out of Ron Burkle’s decision to back out of bringing an MLS team to Sacramento; you have $22 million to burn on that, and…
For what it’s worth, I’ve always liked Sacramento as a potential market, certainly better than places like Tampa Bay/Ft. Lauderdale (ew, Florida teams), San Diego (it’d make California bottom-heavy), Detroit (different kind of revitalization needed), or even Las Vegas (then again, think of the away games). Sacramento’s mayor vowed to push on, but The Athletic’s write-up ($ site) is strongest when talking about the stuff around the collapse. Apparently, Burkle got antsy about where COVID will go from here and rising costs of stadium construction in Sacramento - and that’s on top of the sector where Burkle makes his money, e.g., hospitality, of which, again, Neverland Ranch, fucking rich people, etc. He reportedly never paid any of the expansion fees, never mind formally signed the agreement to join MLS, which makes you wonder why Don Garber talked about the deal the way they did, but that’s just corporate weirdness near as I can tell.
After that, I counted two points of practical interest. First, MLS quoted Burkle a $200 million expansion fee (which, again, he didn’t pay), clearly lower than the $300 million Charlotte paid to join this particular rich assholes club. The article speculates that the current expansion fee could be high as $325 million and I’ll be curious to see whether that holds up post-pandemic. The second point of interest - and it’s one I’ve slept on - there are three (3) MLS teams currently available for purchase: Real Salt Lake I knew about, but not Orlando and Houston; and, as the article points out, all three have the infrastructure in place. Now that I know those vacancies exist, I’d say those are more worth watching than anything that happens with Sacramento.
3) Transfer Update/Interpretation
To start with a general thought, I try not to get too far over my skis on any trade or signing, not unless I know the player in question pretty well (e.g., see, Ring, Alex), but some signings have the virtue of just looking right. This week provided an example when Miami signed a defensive midfielder out of Brazil named Gregore. He checks a lot of particular boxes - e.g., he’s not a DP (affordable!), he drew comparisons to the Seattle Sounders’ Joao Paulo (who I like), and, more than anything else, he addresses the one area of need I kept hearing about in connection with Miami. Again, I know nothing about Gregore, but seeing them sign him is enough to convince me they’ll be better next season.
In the specific context of FC Cincinnati, that’s bad, because, again, they have a whole goddamn league to catch up to. Until we’ve got some games to kick around (take me, I’m yours!), this is how I’ll be thinking about what I’m seeing on the ol’ transfer tracker that some MLS scribe another updates weekly - how they’ll effect Cincinnati or Portland.
Glancing at the final 2020 Eastern Conference standings, I still assume that every team from New England to the top will be better than Cincy in 2021, with the exception alluded to above: Toronto (due to Armas and aging). I also strongly suspect that Atlanta will return to the playoffs, which takes away the spot Toronto may or may not leave open. In other words, I’m counting the following Eastern Conference teams as potential weak spots for Cincinnati to exploit: Montreal, Toronto, DC, Miami, and Chicago Fire FC. The math just gets uglier from there - e.g., it feels dumb to bet against Toronto, DC should improve, and something has me thinking Chicago will improve as well. All that’s the context for Miami signing a what looks like a good player in a position of need, because suddenly, that leaves only a headless and full-o’-holes Montreal team as Cincinnati’s best shot at getting out of the goddamn cellar. Real improvement is needed, in other words, quite possibly massive.
Fans won’t know whether or how much Cincinnati has improved until they start playing (and no need to wait on that, fellas; again, take me, I'm ready to go to the drive-in and prove it, etc.), but it’s becoming vividly clear that real improvement is needed, if not massive improvement.
Things look better for the Timbers, obviously, in that I can list several teams that I can’t see ending higher than Portland - e.g., both RSL and Houston look like they’re in real trouble and Vancouver Whitecaps FC still needs something desperately before anyone has any cause to take them seriously. Moving up the table, I think the San Jose Earthquakes have probably improved and Colorado remains solid, but I’d still be shocked to the point of (figurative) tears to see either of them finish above the Timbers. I can’t quite get a read on the Galaxy, but Vanney & Co. have enough work still to do that I don’t see a big enough turn-around from them to see them as more than a sporadic worry for 2021. Finally, I don’t see Austin as part of that conversation, not unless they just tear it up out of the gate (at which point, let the "all right, all right, all right" begin).
And so that leaves the following teams as direct competition: Seattle, Sporting Kansas City, Minnesota United FC, FC Dallas and Los Angeles FC. SKC has reloaded enough to leave me legitimately worried about them, and, even without Kevin Molino, I buy the argument that Minnesota is just one quality forward away from contender status. Dallas remains my personal sleeper pick for 2021 and the general chatter has taught me to fear LAFC once again. I’m hoping for a relapse out of Seattle, but, what’s new, I hope for that every season. The Timbers are somewhere in that mix and, again, we can’t know where till everyone starts playing…
…loathe as I am to handicap anything this early and with so little information, I’ll just confess I’ll be surprised to see them finish inside the top 3 of the Western Conference.
And…that’s everything. Till the next one.
One confounding factor with Burke, aside from the Epstein connection which MLS ownership already has in spades, is that his 27 year old son died suddenly last January, and one cannot in good conscience neglect what that does to one's ambition and interests. I do not begrudge him a change of mind in that regards.
ReplyDelete"I still want another centerback" Agreed! I know we added two full-backs but I didn't think they were the biggest weakness so I don't think the defensive issue has truly been addressed yet. Mabiala may have to rest here and there (hopefully not injured) and it didn't seem like Tuiloma and Zuparic had very good chemistry together.
ReplyDelete