MLS Weakly, Week 7: Results Rankings & an April March State of Mind

She sees all...

Well, that’s the 7th week of hot, Major League Soccer action in the books. As I did last week, I listed the results in the order they either surprised me or struck me as somehow significant in the long, rambling saga that is the MLS regular season; the higher the result, the bigger it seems, etc. Of the 13 games played, I counted seven that felt noteworthy, i.e., the first seven results listed below - sometimes due more to the magnitude of the result than the result itself. To tip the hand a little, that last observation puts my Portland Timbers in the same boat as Inter Miami CF, which, here, means a shitty little dinghy with holes in it.

At any rate, here are the results with some notes on each. There’s a link to the MLSSoccer.com data center stuff embedded in each score, plus some stray links to things I’d call worth seeing. I’ll wrap up the post with some stock-up/stock-down stuff after the results. Again, I based most observations on what I saw in the MLS in 15 videos and the box score, aka, that's the Silver Service Review. The games with asterisks after them received the equivalent of a glance.

Los Angeles FC 1-2 New York City FC
Call it the kind of game you’d expect - e.g., few chances going either way, and everything a couple steps heightened - but a final score you wouldn’t. And it took LAFC really fucking up on defending the winner; seriously, you just can’t leave the back-post that sleepwalking wide-open without giving up something. That said, NYCFC looked worthy of the points and, missed gift from Sean Johnson that Carlos Vela should have buried aside, LAFC wasn’t really missing anything, up to and including Vela. Over and above that, they got first cute, then buried on the first goal they gave up, which makes it a day of errors. More than anything else, NYCFC backed up my theories about their defense (i.e., it’s good), while continuing to show they’ve got enough weapons to cover the spread in the event any of those same weapons aren’t firing. This looked like a great win and a good game for Les Pigeons, but, no less significantly, more of the stagnant same from an LAFC team that can neither let go of Plan A, nor make it work. From a long-view perspective, I’m not sure whether I should be more impressed by NYCFC, or more guarded about LAFC.

Red Bull New York 2-1 Orlando City SC
The Red Bulls looked like their old ravenous selves in this one - forever rolling forward whether by pass, run or pressure until they run over the opposition. Curiously, they put the game away during a pause - that was a helluva free-kick by Cristian Casseres, Jr., fwiw - but they worked the familiar formula of gegen-pressing to suffocation and forcing Orlando to cough up looks until they broke through. Orlando, for their part, did not look prepared for it - something I didn’t expect from a possession team (by reputation), and something that should give future opponents ideas. It looks like Orlando got their foot on the ride around the 70th minute, but they never looked like salvaging the points. That made for a really unexpected way for Orlando to pick up their first loss of 2021. Doesn’t have me questioning them yet; just filing it away. As for the Red Bulls…maybe they do have life in them. And, to flag some players: Pedro Gallese continues to strike me as one hell of a ‘keeper, and both Patryck Klimala and Fabio looked promising for the Red Bulls…who just became interesting for me.

Philadelphia Union 3-0 Portland Timbers: Bury It Where They Can't Find the Bodies...

Do the work. Walk away. That's the code. Or a code.

I’ll commit to putting the same amount of effort into this post that the Portland Timbers put into today’s game. Well, maybe a little more. Going the other way, I can’t fuck up the set pieces…or can I?

I’m going to start with some guesses on the stats - and, pinky promise, I’m not cheating. I’m guessing the Timbers passing accuracy dipped below…70%, that they lost the duels count handily, that they had fewer than…8 shots total, and their xG never exceeded…1.2. Right, let’s see how I did.

Shit. Wrong on literally all counts…and in what other-dimensional hell did Portland get four shots on goal? Ah, a review of the highlights dug up Valeri’s free-kick and Jeremy Ebobisse with that near-put-back in the 78th; as for the other two, they’ll go missing on account of the search party losing interest. On the one hand, I got all that wrong, so never listen to anything I say. On the other, that speaks both directly and bluntly to what I thought of Portland’s afternoon. How the Philadelphia Union won the game only 3-0, I’ll never know.

Broadly, everybody wearing blue looked tired, nobody looked good, you don’t want to hand any player man of the match honors from fear 1) of how he’d take it, or 2) that he’d pass on the offer. And why in the name of humanity would you review the video? Call it a bad trip, leave it wherever Merritt Paulson buries the bodies and come back on June 19 like it never happened - ideally with revived personnel.

Is it even worth breaking down this game? I saw at least a dozen people joke that the Timbers should practice set pieces, but the here-and-now answers to that issue strike me as fairly obvious: 1) never have Felipe Mora mark Kacper Przybylko (first goal, and hold this thought*), and 2) don’t play Philadelphia any time soon. Portland addressed the marking assignments almost immediately, but Jeremy Ebobisse didn’t do any better against Big Kacper, sadly, leaving Sergio Santos with nothing more to do than muscle through and power a point-blank shot past…shit, was that Mora standing dumbly in the middle of the goal? In the specific sense of giants versus boys, the game played out like one of those preseason warm-ups when an MLS team plays the kids from the college catchment area. It didn’t matter that Philly couldn’t craft elegant break-throughs in the run of play, because they had a one-man match-up advantage on set pieces that Portland couldn't solve. Like kids two years out of high school playing grown-up adults playing angrily on commission, Portland as a whole looked smaller on set-pieces. And, with Larrys Mabiala missing, maybe they were.

FC Cincinnati 0-1 New England Revolution: Inching Toward Competitive?

There was ample room for improvement, and yet...

If a game can feel busy and uneventful at the same time, I think I just watched it. All kinds of things happened - not least FC Cincinnati and the New England Revolution combined for nearly 40 shots, some of them quite good - but both ‘keepers spent most of the game looking unbeatable and both teams a step or two away from that defining moment when it all comes together and the crowd goes wild. Maybe it’s apt that the only goal came off a sleeper of a set-piece that didn’t feel any more dangerous than the rest of them.

That came in the 70th minute, when Cincy’s Ken Vermeer could only paw Adam Buksa’s header into the side netting (more later). With that, the Revs won a deceptively close game 1-0, leaving the universe feeling right and better at the same time.

My biggest takeaway is pretty straightforward: FC Cincinnati played a team that most people can see winning a trophy this season without squinting too hard and looked more or less competitive throughout. They got on the wrong side of dominated more often than any Cincy fan would like to see - an impression the xG numbers back up - but they also made more and better shots than they have all season, they had a shift of dominance of their own (about the 20th to the 25th minute), and after the Revs ended the first half strong, the defense adjusted and improved: if memory serves, New England ended the first half with 21 shots or thereabouts; they ended the game with just 26. (Related: if you watch the MLS in 15 highlights, the first half takes up at least 10 minutes of the run time.)

Now, to pick through the details…

Cincinnati seems to like the 5-3-2/3-5-2 they’ve used for the last couple games, even if they still struggle with getting the former to flip to the latter (that’s to say, neither Joe Gyau nor Ronald Matarrita impacted the game that much). They set a tone of “ain’t backin’ down” - see Caleb Stanko’s heavy lunge at Arnor Traustason and the fairly visible shove Jurgen Locadia used to throw off Henry Kessler to set up his first (pretty damn solid) shot - and I think that set a bar that referee David Gantar struggled to interpret consistently toward the end (and with no small part of that hovering in Kessler’s general vicinity). I can excuse all that on the grounds that it was the right tone to set - especially when playing in a new home Cincinnati both wants and needs to make into a fortress.

MLS Weakly, Week 6: Introducing Results Rankings (TM!) & Games that Don't Count

If you can see where I'm going, I've got it.

You won’t believe this, but I've come up with a concept! It’s pretty damn hack, but it’s also completely consistent with what still strikes me as the best way to get the best possible pulse on trends in MLS. Ladies, gentlemen, boys and girls: I give you:

Results Rankings (yes, the rare, all-the font adjustment effects)

Imperfect as every other ranking system, but with one foot at least on something as final and intangible as a final score: how do you beat that...I mean, without watching...just so much fucking soccer? I drop in notes on…sigh, literally every game (plz. halp) below and organize them according to how significant or important they seem to me. Full disclosure, I only watch two games every week, but I sit through as many condensed games as I care about and look at stats and highlights on the rest; for branding purposes, I call the condensed game/stats review the “Silver Service Review.” Only three didn’t get a Silver Service Review this week - e.g., the ones at the very end (call it the copper review, and don’t capitalize that garbage) - and for the reason above: they don’t feel important, so why get too hung-up on what happened or why? At this point in the season, that making that call turns on two things:

1) was the result more or less entirely expected; and
2) it involved two more or less irrelevant teams.

There might be other kinds of nothing games out there - who knows? - but those are the only two that come to me right now. Also, I expect the Type 2 games (please excuse the phrasing) to make it easier to skip more games as the season goes on, but, when you’re compulsive, you’re compulsive. At any rate, here’s how I saw the results from Week 6 stack up in order of importance. Oh, and I'll link to the odd important video or detail, but, when I don't, I expect people who feel like they need more to click the link under each score and sort out what I missed on his/her own. Moving on:

New York City FC 1-2 Columbus Crew SC
On the one hand, don’t read too much into this result: by everything I saw and stared at, NYCFC should have gone up 2-0 in the first half. Valentin Castellanos looked active and stressful and did good things, including set up the first goal. Despite finding good openings, Les Pigeons looked a little hasty out there tonight (they forced shit too much). On the other hand, how well does a team need to play if Lucas Zelarayan can hit a free-kick so unstoppably sweetly? (Related/unrelated, the knuckling on his first goal must have been vicious.). I called this “a statement game” for NYCFC in my preview thread and, for as well as they played, they failed to finish the thought. Columbus isn’t out of the hole by any means, but three big points against the competition always rates.

Club du Foot Montreal 1-2 FC Cincinnati: (Long-Suffering) Heroes & Off-Switches

It doesn't matter that the bar is low; it's that you clear it.

“…but what I want to see from #FCCincy this weekend is win-or-die-trying commitment. Low bar.”

That was the last sentence of the preview thread I posted Friday afternoon for FC Cincinnati’s stunning, victorious 2-1 visit to Montreal-sur-la Gulf. I have two thoughts:

1) FC Cincy responded, with one player in particular clearing the bar; and
2) the bar wasn’t all that low in the end.

Those thoughts expand on and compliment one another: Club du Foot Montreal had Cincinnati at one form of their mercy or another for, oh, the middle 50 minutes of this game - i.e., from the 20th minute to about the 70th. It was never outright dominance - Cincy’s 5-3-2 saw to that - but the Orange & Blue played a big part of this game on the wrong side of a submission hold. Key players for Montreal got on the sharp end of their attack moves - Romell Quioto, Victor Wanyama and Djordje Mihailovic stood out; having Quioto basically post-up at the top of the area over the last 20 minutes of the first half caused all kinds of trouble - building pressure to, yes, a breaking point.

After 40 minutes of giving away very little, Cincinnati lost track of who had who on their left and Montreal got one of their bread-and-butter breakaways behind a fullback (Ronald Matarrita in this case). (I think) Zachary Brault-Guillard raced down Montreal’s right with no defenders within 10 yards of him while Quioto ran just as buck-ass nude right up the middle. Brault-Guillard squared and…we all know how that ended, a catastrophic breakdown that miraculously didn’t end in catastrophe. Given the imbalance in play to that point, it didn’t look like an omen…

Montreal did score eventually and, again, the cascade of mistakes that allowed that goal should sober up any Cincy fans getting a contact high from this win - so sit through them all, like its penance. The broadcast booth talked about Rudy Camacho’s “great pass” to Mihailovic, but he only had to walk into the space Luciano Acosta opened in the 5-3-2 when he stepped forward to become the third Cincinnati player staring at Camacho. Mihailovic a wide-open lane toward goal from beginning to end, first, because no one was near him, and then again when Geoff Cameron let him free to run onto the square pass. Cincinnati made at least one more mistake that should have been fatal - I think it was Allan Cruz who straight-up passed the ball to Quioto inside Cincinnati’s penalty area - but Cameron cleaned up that fuck up, while Gustavo Vallecilla combined with ‘keeper Kenneth Vermeer to snuff out yet another occasion when Quioto got loose in the area. The point is, even in a conservative formation, Cincinnati could easily have given up three goals. Something about there but for the grace of CF Montreal…

Portland Timbers 3-0 Los Angeles Galaxy: Struggle. Horror. Stroll.

It only looks innocent.

Huh, maybe I should title all these things in three word descriptions. Beats repeating cliches like, “a tale of two halves,” right?

The game started cagey, it took a moment of horror - and, arguably, a substitution - to change it, but, once the ball got rolling, gravity did its thing and Portland Timbers coasted to a 3-0 win over the Los Angeles Galaxy at home.

LA’s Derrick Williams brought the horror, and by way of what might have been a drunken-headed tackle a couple minutes before half-time that knocked Portland’s Andy Polo out of the game and off the field for gods know how long. It left LA and everyone associated with them blushing instead of complaining - a rarity in soccer - and Williams got a straight, justified red for it; fines and a couple more missed games should be coming as well. Regardless of whether Williams had a concussion at the time, that kind of tackle all but obliges you to make amends. Visit Polo to apologize, buy him a box of chocolates (the good stuff; not that See’s bullshit), maybe gift card to Dave & Buster’s with $200 on it, and that’s at a minimum. Williams’ tackle was the house-guest equivalent of shitting in the middle of someone’s kitchen; mens rea doesn’t even come into it.

That came just before the end of the first half, and the Wheels of Justice turned quickly from there. Less than two minutes after the second half whistle, Josecarlos Van Rankin dropped a dime into an arm’s length gap between LA’s Daniel Steres and (maybe) Julian Araujo for Felipe Mora to nod into the goal - and the Timbers…well, they didn’t quite never look back, but they took care of the game in one of the weirdest and most passive ways I’ve seen in a while. Allow me to explain…

Looking at the summary, I see that just 13 minutes passed between Mora’s first goal and his second - a head-on-a-swivel-alert put-back on a nice bit of collective lock-picking by Portland, in which a strong shot by Claudio Bravo set up Mora’s put-back - but something truly peculiar made that dozen-plus minutes pass slowly. For one, the Timbers did something familiar after going ahead: they let up. That could have followed from a conscious choice to drop back, stay compact and absorb, but it had the effect of giving the Galaxy, not just possession, but time to pick at the edges of the Timbers’ defensive third. While I don’t recall anything super dangerous during that time - related, I just confirmed that Logan Ketterer didn’t make a lot of saves, but that’s still three more than I remembered - LA had the ball in an area where control becomes chaos in the blink of an eye.

MLS Weakly, Week 5: A Report on the Double-Headers & Other Points of Interest

Twice the patriotism, twice the fun!

Major League Soccer wrapped up a busy Week 5 about an hour ago (whoops, that's four now), so here I am picking through some low-hanging observations, light, yet broad video review and a quick general staring at of things. Throw that in the mixer, have a couple…things, stick a finger or two down your throat and out it comes. Welcome to the MLS Weakly…

First things first, I think people should spend some time each week looking at the crudest and bluntest measure of success and failure in sports - e.g., the standings. I can give one reason why in a game I know nothing about apart from the final score: the Seattle Sounders’ 2-0 win over Los Angeles FC. Given both teams’ trajectories thereto - e.g., all but flawless for Seattle versus visibly sputtering for LAFC - and with the Sounders at home, I’m not sure what else one would expect. But here’s where staring at context-less numbers in the standings comes in: Seattle has a league-leading +11 goal differential, and they’ve given up just two goals in six games. That’s the kind of game you note, no further observation needed. Also, just to mention, New York City FC has the second best goal differential at +6, Orlando City SC follows them up at +4 and then - real point of interest - it’s +2 or worse from there on out.

And look where those teams are, Seattle, NYCFC and Orlando: 1st in the West, 2nd and 3rd in the East. Of which, bravo to the New England Revolution for its thin claim on first place in the East after Week 5; I say “thin” because Orlando, NYCFC and their superior goal differentials have a game in hand on the Revs. Speaking of games in hand, that segues nicely into the big story of MLS Week 5: all the team that played two games during it and how they survived them. Once again, here is the bluntest possible measure:

Teams that took all six points: Seattle and Minnesota United FC
Teams that took four: Toronto FC, Philadelphia Union, New England
Teams that took three: Club du Foot Montreal, Houston Dynamo FC, Sporting Kansas City, DC United, Inter Miami CF
Teams that took zero points: Columbus Crew SC, San Jose Earthquakes, Vancouver Whitecaps

FC Cincinnati 2-3 Inter Miami CF: The One Pressing Question

Everything else I wrote...but also this.

What do you make of FC Cincinnati losing its most complete game of 2021 at a great, big all they threw for themselves (and it considerable expense)? Sub-question: how does the argument that they lost to what sure as hell looks like a bad team to me make you feel?

Now the real question: can FC Cincy get better with the roster they have?

I’m not going to spend much time on what happened when - here goes (or just watch): Inter Miami CF scored early on (no way!) a succession of defensive errors by Cincinnati’s defense (Joe Gyau) and midfield (Calvin Harris); a little momentum followed in the other direction…and then Miami scored again, and on a worse breakdown; a great big mix of running and nothing happened from there, very specific complaints came down from the broadcast booth, etc., then Ronald Mataritta found Alvaro Barreal behind Miami’s defense (their turn!), putting Cincinnati one goal closer to a comeback; some smartly-channeled aggression followed that didn’t look like it’d go anywhere then Nick Hagglund powered home an equalizer from a corner kick, the crowd went wild, the Fox network got some excitement for the TV, and so on…then, one minute later, Hagglund misplays a pass out of the back and Gonzalo Higuain finishes a counter he started, game over at 3-2 to Miami - because the specifics don’t really matter here. Or, more accurately, some long-term realities swallow up those specifics and return the conversation to one immovable question: can FC Cincy get better with the roster they have?

If your answer is no, my best advice is to step watching Cincinnati for another year, but probably two. Nah, make it three years. Probably safer.

Personally, I think they have the pieces for a decent functioning team in the current roster. There’s no question Cincinnati has some dead wood on the payroll, but I think I see some pieces that I’d stick with for a while and build around to best of your ability.

That said, pardon me while I address the dead body on the floor and the relevant co-morbidities. Miami looked like crap in their mid-week loss to Montreal (Full disclosure: I only watched the condensed game) and they looked…well, a lot like crap against Cincy today. Three or four sharp movements in the first half aside - which lead to the first goal, but not the second - they didn’t look much better moving the ball than the home team, their tackling kinda sucked (related, I am powerfully underwhelmed by Gregore), and nothing I saw today, very much including Cincinnati’s comeback, would lead me to echo talk of “a strong response” to Montreal loss that came from the broadcast booth. Nothing makes me doubt my….let’s call it contingently assured belief that Cincinnati finally has a functioning roster than my fairly clear sense that Miami can best be described as Cincinnati, but with more coherent talent.

San Jose Earthquakes 0-2 Portland Timbers: No Dirt on Them Sheets!

Pristine, at long last.

I barely talk about it below, but, just for the record, the last time the Portland Timbers kept their sheets clean happened the beginning of last November against the then- (and still-)boring AF Vancouver Whitecaps. At any rate, I put that in the title because the first clean sheet in league play is a moment that deserves a spotlight.

As for the breakdown, I want to begin by doing something I almost never do: declare a man of the match. I resist the idea for a number of reasons - e.g., it’s neither always obvious or fair, see the bias toward attacking players, it takes a village, etc. - but I also see a flaw in the assumption behind the concept. More often than not, the choice comes down to highlight factors like, who scored the winning goal or who scored two goals (or bagged two assists…wait for it), or maybe goalkeeper who saved a penalty kick, as the Timbers new borrowed ‘keeper, Logan Ketterer (wait for it), did tonight. As I see it, those metrics miss the point - especially when you can name the player who revealed the tone and quality of the game like it could stand up and stare into a mirror.

Tonight, in the Timbers 2-0 road win over the San Jose Earthquakes, that player was Marvin Loria. Let me explain…

As is his wont, Loria drove me fucking crazy tonight - like more than a couple Timbers players did too (more later). His decision-making is glacial and he rates his dribbling technique a step south of delusional, both of which cause him to loose possession and nip promising plays in the bud. And yet, when he arrived at a moment that required a good, decisive decision, Loria made it; when the Timbers recylced a 75th minute counter-attack to the right, and to a wide-open Eryk Williamson, Loria cheated to the back-post and, thanks to that run, he had nothing between him and San Jose's goal but a flailing James Marcinkowski. Loria buried the header, thereby giving the Timbers a two-goal lead that San Jose never even looked like denting.

And the game as a whole looked something like that. Like a drunk telling a great story, it only really got to the point here and there, while still telling the right story. And this is a story that took 90 minutes to tell. Bare, and frequently interrupted competence, best characterizes just about every single Timbers’ contribution tonight - too many players lingered on the ball to no better effect than getting caught in possession or making a shit pass (credit where it’s due, Yimmi Chara showed a real talent for using his body to keep possession and get the ball forward); on the other hand, the defensive organization/rotation was solid - but they managed to run through the ‘Quakes defense on the first goal (pretty one, Yimmi Chara!) and to literally play it like an accordion on the second. Who knew that taking all three points tonight would require as little as bare competence and a couple of moments?

MLS Weakly, MLS Week 4: Results Round-Up & Some Loose Theories (and Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, I Know)

Showed up under "schneid," so...

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I said I wasn’t going to post these anymore. Look, I didn’t lie. I just changed my mind.

This will not be long, this will not be detailed. Per the title’s promise, what follows are nothing but loose thoughts on the general state of the 27 teams across Major League Soccer and a sense of their general direction. Here goes…

It was a weekend of eye-catching results, from the San Jose Earthquakes pinching three points against Real Salt Lake in Utah through Nashville SC getting off their early-season schneid - and against the New England Revolution to boot - to Minnesota United FC staying very, puzzlingly attached to what can only be called “The Doom Schneid” and all the way down to the Vancouver Whitecaps getting fitted for the “Kings of Canada” crown - even if they’re as likely to get a brief regency over a full reign.

To pick at those in no particular order, both San Jose and RSL present as capable teams at the moment, with the ‘Quakes seemingly greater efficiency duly noted. Minnesota’s almost tangible lack of belief makes it hard to get a read on the team what beat ‘em (2-3), the Colorado Rapids, but it is worth pointing out that this was Colorado’s second win…the former of which came against none other than Vancouver. As for the whole “Kings of Canada” thing, that’s less about Vancouver - but hold that thought - than what looks like Club du Foot du Montreal bumping against their ceiling in a 0-2 road loss to the 'Caps and Toronto FC doing what it can to satisfy my doubts about both them and Chris Armas. To close out Vancouver, they present as a team that defends well enough and scores just enough - i.e., a formula that brings a middling, yet respectable level of success.

Nashville feels like a harder read for two reasons that point in opposite directions: 1) the way they’ve created chances signaled this result was coming; 2) their current (or present?) strike-force feature Dominic Badji and C. J. Sapong, neither of whom have a great history as high-return strikers. That doesn’t make their 2-0 win over a Revs team most people rate (and still rate, I imagine) any less impressive; it just keeps expectations reasonable.

Portland Timbers 1-2 Seattle Sounders: Spurning Gifts

FUCK YOU! (A metaphor)

A handful of metaphors come to mind for this one - including a decent painting ruined by someone dragging a smudge of ink across it - but that one feels right for telling the story of that confounding damn thing we all watched a few hours ago.

I’m seeing a light split in opinion online, mostly around the question of whether or not the Portland Timbers controlled a game they ultimately lost 1-2, and in more ways than one. On the latter, Jeff Attinella’s (at time of writing) freak injury around the 70th minute, which left the Timbers in goalkeeper purgatory, i.e., a space where you factually have a goalkeeper, but do you? - no offense to Hunter Sulte, but you’re not really supposed to go that far down the depth chart to find a guy to push between the sticks, at least not outside a feel-good movie with that right outcome, but here we are. There was also Diego Valeri getting stuffed on a penalty kick by Stefan Frei, then getting handed a second chance on the penalty, only to shank that one off the post, then knock back his own rebound. (I’ll just go ahead and admit I forgot that’s a no-no.) My frustration with this game comes from/with that moment. I’ll get to that…

I hereby note the box score, mostly on the grounds it shows an even game (but do give that passing map a gander), but also because it shows something I wouldn’t have guessed, i.e., Portland firing as many shots as Seattle. A few only come back to me because I wrote them in my notes - a pair by Marvin Loria (more later), in particular - but my primary recollection of this match sees Timbers’ players giving-and-going all around the 18, sometimes poking through the odd ball, but mostly moving around a lot to get an obstructed view of a goal, only from a different angle. The thicket of Seattle defenders never left the front of the goal and Portland’s attackers seemed bound by some silent agreement that they’d bash through that or lose trying. When I tweeted, “shoot the ball, please,” it didn’t come from nowhere.

Still, between that set of factsd and what Sounders head coach Brian Schmetzer said at the half, I’d call that a kind of control: Portland won most of the 50/50s, I don’t think Seattle wanted to lose the ball where they did, or as often, and Portland didn’t have much trouble advancing the ball. In my book, that’s control. All that delivered some chances - e.g., a cut-back from Valeri that Jeremy Ebobisse will bury when he’s match-fit - but it mostly applied pressure on Seattle’s defense and kept them on the back-foot. And, when a team plays from the back foot, they sometimes make mistakes - e.g., Seattle’s Shane O’Neill to roll forward a lazy pass that Eryk Williamson stepped into and fed to Ebobisse, leading to a Timbers’ penalty and a chance to take the lead. Which, given the Timbers’ struggles with getting a clean look, counts as a gift.

Club America 3-1 Portland Timbers: A Gordian Knot of Failure

If only it was that heroic. And simple.

I have a couple starting points for this one, but both point to the same broad idea.

The CONCACAF Champions League (CCL) is a strange annual ritual, a sacrifice where misplaced hope dies at the feet of at least two undeniable realities. One, Liga MX teams have bigger, better-compensated rosters and hail from a country with a stronger, longer tradition with the game. Two, the tournament is scheduled when most Major League Soccer clubs will be at their weakest and least prepared. They face a two-fold disadvantage going in every time, in other words, and…I just don’t get that. Trouble is, I can’t think of a better point in any given calendar year that doesn’t pose a problem - e.g., drop it in the late-to-mid summer and you level the playing field for MLS teams, but who wants a cheapened tournament of any kind? It’s a classic Gordian Knot, only in the form of an international club soccer tournament.

Due to when the respective leagues’ seasons happen, it’s possible there is no good way to optimize this tournament…but that doesn’t that beg the question of why it happens at all? I mean, is there a point to walking through a foregone conclusion? Fuck it. I type all that as someone who loves this tournament like one of my kids, unconditionally, even when it starts experimenting with hard drugs, and so on. Next point…

I saw people tweeting all kinds of grief at Claudio Bravo tonight, and there’s no question he struggled out there tonight. I’d throw Juancarlos Van Rankin under the same bus; both fullbacks struggled - not that I’d really fault Van Rankin for the cross that lead to Club America’s first goal, because two dudes v one dude - but even that begs a very sharp question: does it really matter whether or not Portland’s fullbacks struggle against a team they won’t face again until they return to the CCL, and maybe not even then?

The short answer is, no. The only thing that matters going forward is whether both fullbacks are good enough for MLS regular season play. If they hold up there…honestly, why give a shit about what happened tonight?

Allow me to elaborate…and how have I not mentioned that Club America won leg this 3-1 yet?

MLS Weakly, Week 3: A Pair of Surprises & CCL Fatigue

Is your team suffering from CCL Fatigue?

Going into Major League Soccer’s Week 3, I decided to talk about what I expected to happen less in terms of predictions (e.g., this team should beat that one), than in terms of what I’d find striking, remarkable, or in some other way impressive in each week's results. With that in mind, here are the handwritten notes I jotted down beside each match up going into the weekend:

Red Bull New York v Chicago - wouldn’t bet against Chicago
Real Salt Lake v Sporting Kansas City - an RSL win would impress me
Club du Foot Montreal v Columbus Crew SC - Montreal won’t be able to blitz ‘em
Houston Dynamo FC v Los Angeles FC - we all know what we expect
New England Revolution v Atlanta United FC - key clash*
Orlando City SC v FC Cincinnati - Sad face
Philadelphia Union v New York City FC - open, chance for NYC win
FC Dallas v Portland Timbers - FCD needs W, Timbers vulnerable?
Minnesota United FC v Austin FC - Must-win for Loons, gravy for ATX
San Jose Earthquakes v DC United - Test for SJ attack
Nashville SC v Inter Miami CF - Nashville defense versus Miami self-belief
Seattle Sounders v Los Angeles Galaxy - Seattle win
Vancouver Whitecaps v Colorado Rapids - risk for Colorado, proving ground for ‘Caps

Broadly and loosely, the substance of most of those calls worked out. I’d only call LAFC drawing in Houston and Nashville continuing to sputter as “things I didn’t see coming” (that said, LAFC has clearly lost its game-suffocating edge little by little over starting in 2020).  As noted on twitter (@JeffBull5, for those who like a cluttered follow), I’ve decided to move away from breaking down individual games and to focus instead, and almost exclusively, on narratives. That doesn’t mean I won’t dig into some details from any given game, but that various trends, and their apparent strength, weaknesses and blind-spots, will be the larger focus of this and upcoming Weakly reviews.

Also, and before digging in, a disclosure and a notice. The two teams I follow aside, I’m still only committing to giving “deep massage reviews” (that is, full MLS in 15 clips plus a little spelunking in the box scores) to only so many games every week. Some weeks - and this week, especially (I mean, how often does your mom turn 80?) - I simply won’t have time to get to everything. On the notice side, the current plan is to shift to posting these weekly reviews on Monday nights. I have several reasons, but one of them is the fact that I’m typing this preamble while the Sunday night games are playing. Talking about the "biggest results of the week" doesn't work so good when all the results aren't in, so, Monday night it is. With that, let’s review MLS Week 3.

Orlando City SC 3-0 FC Cincinnati: Training Wheels Forever

Sometimes it takes a while...

I watched as much of FC Cincinnati’s latest loss as felt worthwhile - a little more than I should have, honestly, and, yes, “latest loss” is the phrasing I’m going with. Orlando City SC only beat them 3-0 in the end, a final score that felt like mercy after Cincy went down by two goals inside the first 20 minutes.

I’m not going to spend much time to picking through the entrails of this one, and on the grounds that, 1) the beast is well-dead and there’s not much mystery as to the cause of death, and 2) I don’t think it has much to tell Cincinnati fans about the future that they don’t already know. I do, however, have one thought to impart to a justifiable restless fan-base: what about this match up would make you expect anything but the result that happened? To put that another way, why would you expect a team that has most of its shit together - that’s Orlando - give away anything at home to a team that has yet to figure out even some of its shit?

Look, Orlando is a well-coached team with good players - e.g., Nani (who had time to thoroughly embarrass Yuya Kubo when scoring Orlando’s second goal), Mauricio Pereyra, Chris Mueller, Junior Urso, Pedro Gallese, Ruan, and, mind, that list is incomplete - that is both strong at home (heard some stat about one loss at home in their last 11 from the broadcast booth) and damned hard to score against (one goal allowed in three games this season and, again, I heard something about less than 1.0 goals per game allowed during the Oscar Pareja era). There’s nothing wrong with feeling (constant, borderline existential) disappointment with a result, or even rage, but there is something very unhealthy about, to torture an example, expecting to get a unicorn pony for Christmas when absolutely nothing in your prior experience points to ever getting one. Basically, keep a little perspective as you watch Cincinnati struggle out of the quicksand.

Given all the above, yeah, the game probably was over by the 35th second, when a clumsy back-pass by Nick Hagglund teed up the game-winner for Orlando’s Tesho Akindele. Cincinnati tried to settle down after and recover, naturally, but anyone who saw this game saw what I saw - a lot of tentative passes forward chased backwards by a middling Orlando press, a lot of kicking the ball around Cincinnati’s back-line, a lot of errant passes upfield, a number of desperate dribbles, and far too many instances of Orlando catching a Cincinnati player in possession (Kubo, often as not) and rushing a counter toward Pzremyslaw Tyton’s goal…and why the hell doesn’t MLSSoccer.com show saves as a stat anymore?