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| Is your team suffering from CCL Fatigue? |
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.
The Big Picture Big Stuff
If I had to choose a result of the week, I’d go with RSL’s 3-1 punch-back win in Sandy over Sporting KC. My statement of the week goes to San Jose’s surface-level 4-1 thrashing of DC United and the big undercard for Week 3 is the same story that’s bubbled under the first few weeks of the 2021 season - i.e., CCL Fatigue. Before digging into this, and I can't emphasize this enough, this not a place for expert analysis. That's the big picture, but let’s drill down a bit.
Neither RSL’s nor San Jose’s (mostly) impressive wins followed from statistical blowouts (see? and see?), but both followed from the best and most important thing any soccer team can strive for: higher efficiency. For now, I rate RSL’s fightin’ win over SKC higher than I rate San Jose’s skinning of DC United due almost entirely to the opposition - a thought explained by the question, would you rather your team play SKC or DC next weekend?
With all the chaos surrounding RSL, hardly anyone tapped them for a strong start. And yet here they are, atop the Western Conference with…is that San Jose? RSL hardly set the sky alight against SKC - the visitors scored first, for one, and (based on a 1/6 ratio viewing) generally looked better over the opening 35 minutes or so. RSL never looked out of it, though, and they pulled themselves up and over with Damir Kreilach and new-kid Rubio Rubin leading the way. SKC will kick themselves over the defending on that third goal (assuming Peter Vermes doesn’t kick them first), but here’s the big take-away: Real Salt Lake got six points out of two games where most people would expect them to take maybe one point - again, Minnesota on the road and SKC at home - and they’ve got a +3 goal differential besides. The second or third iteration of RSL came up as an underdog team (this was after many years of just straight sucking) with an over-abundance of self-belief and became perennial contenders for the next five years. I’m just saying it’s happened…if in a different era.
As for San Jose, had they put the hurt on any team but DC, the praise and opportunistic musings would have cheered the heavens, but DC haven’t been themselves or anyone worth minding for quite a while now. Going the other way, the ‘Quakes looked strapped up or in, or whatever the kids use for a follow-up preposition these days. They’ve got fun, young players all over, whether Paul Marie, who looks like a dynamite fullback, or Cade Cowell bagging a very impressive and speedy goal, or helping Jackson Yueill on his way to a brace. I wouldn't write off DC yet; they played San Jose closer than that final score says. There’s also no use denying who got the better shots and flashed the better talent in this one.
The biggest take-away blinks brightly in the bottom corner of the Western Conference Leader Board: don’t sleep on either RSL and San Jose, for one, but, when it comes to the ‘Quakes make damn sure you’re ready to run anytime you face them.
Moving on to the CONCACAF Champions’ League bug, it bit the teams competing in it bloody in Week 3. The only team to survive with a point was Columbus Crew SC, but the few things I’m looking at say they showed up looking to avoid a loss…which they did. Going the other way, Montreal pretty clearly out-played what looks like a Columbus team resting starters - which will be a theme in this section - but, a point is a point is a point.
I walk on softer ground when it comes to calling the starting line-ups for either Atlanta or Philadelphia, but both teams dropped three points to actual Conference rivals. To give Atlanta their due, they looked both aggressive and good in their 1-2 loss to a pretty damn slick New England attack. To linger on the Revolution a little, they have some of the league’s more intriguing players in their respective positions right now - e.g., Carles Gil, of course, but also Tajon Buchanan, Matt Polster, and just look at this run by Brandon Bye - and that back-line keeps holding up against expectations. Going the other way, Adam Buksa is back on my watch-list, and for all the wrong reasons (he pissed away a great chance trying to find his right foot), but this win against either a reserve-heavy or leggy Atlanta team looked right - i.e., easy as you’d want it to be, and without the opposition rolling over panting…
…which brings me to Philadelphia’s shut-out home loss to NYCFC. Playing with 10-men from the 17th minute aside (Jose Martinez got a deserved red), Les Pigeons looked like the better team before that, all the way down to pulling apart the Union for one hell of a team goal. Anton Tinnerholm (who gave a perfect assist on said team goal) and Maxi Moralez lead a team that tore deeper into the Union's ass after they went down a man. Valentin Castellanos’ reverse dunk on NYC’s second goal frames the win about right; it was a little too fun and a little too easy for the visitors.
The Timbers are the last victim on the list and, yes, they got more of their collective asses handed to them than any of the teams above, given the 1-4 loss at Dallas. The difference is, I know who goes where between the A and B team on the Timbers roster better than I know any batch of lovable clowns in MLS. Near as I can tell, said B-Team got utterly destroyed over the opening 45 minutes, going down 0-3 and without a ray of sunshine touching down - and was that Octavio Zambrano fanning on the ball that played over for Dallas’ Jader Obrian? It’s here where I admit that just about CCL-involved team in MLS has some scribbler, whether professional or amateur, looking at the roster they started in Week 3 and arguing they just had to write this one off to keep up in the CCL, regular season points be damned. And there’s a lot of truth to that. That said, I have two thoughts on that:
1) The team that just died on the field is your team’s depth, the people who show up in case of emergency (or injury). And you just got a glimpse of how well you can expect them to hold up against a motivated first team in MLS. Not good, Bob.
2) If your team (in this case, either Atlanta or Columbus) perked up after you sprinkled some regulars into the line-up - this is a choose-your-own kind of thing, but, for the Timbers, this was Eryk Williamson, Diego Valeri (who combined for this slick goal), Juancarlos Van Rankin and Dairon Asprilla - and they immediately made your team look better (or appear to based on 1/6 of the video), think what this (probably) means for the season after the CCL and, 2a) your starters getting a little more time to achieve match-fitness this early in the season, and with advacing in the CCL on the line, can only be a good thing. Barring injury, of course.
I don’t know what any of the above means - e.g., I’m not about to go to Vegas and bet on either San Jose or RSL to score any silverware in 2021 - nor am I going to write-off Portland, Philly or Atlanta for the rest of 2021, even if that’s 75% based on all the juggling the Timbers are having to do to hang with a chance in the CCL. That said, I do think it’s worth thinking about what this means for, say, the functioning quality of Portland’s depth or, to finally make a point, to ask whether it’s time to start wondering about SKC…DC seems obvious enough…
Moving on…
The Less Remarkable Results
I sure as hell don’t want to give the impression that the only mysteries reside amongst the featured results. I mean, of course, Austin’s 1-0 win at Minnesota goes against early expectations - and, based on the stats, did they ever look anything less than equal or better than the hosts? - but it also carries over from Minnesota’s early struggles and Austin’s surprising early success (which is no doubt galling for a team* still tangled up in an eternal roster-build). Related, I’d taken enough of a wait-and-see approach on the outcome of the Red Bulls versus Chicago that I pulled up the MLS in 15 video. What I saw there was a sloppy game, a New York team that looks like a rebirthed Frankenstein of itself (i.e., decent strength, but the lack of coordination and ideation is visible), and an overwhelmed Chicago team. Overall, that made me worried about Chicago’s long-term viability. As for Minnesota…something’s clearly wrong in the upper Midwest….
I’d drop Nashville into the same column, especially when you consider, 1) the fairly weak opposition they’ve so far played, and all at home (e.g., Cincinnati, Montreal and Miami) and 2) their still consistent incapacity to turn late chances into goals and/or wins. Another draw in a long line of unreasonble futility generally points somewhere a body doesn't want to go.
Moving on, at last, to the predictable results, for all that the Galaxy have started better than anyone expected (two wins! six points!), it appears Seattle rolled them over without a care for recent history. Raul Ruidiaz lead the line tonight, but this team has familiarity, momentum, history, that bouncy-ball home-field advantage, but, more than anything else, they’ve just got it figured out. And that brings me to the last two games of the night (please end…).
The Vancouver/Colorado game presented as a test of where those teams really fit - particularly after Vancouver (arguably) over-performed out of the gate, while Colorado (arguably) did the opposite. I think Colorado’s 1-0 win over the ‘Caps at the latter’s oldest-established, permanently floated home ground (aka, Sandy, Utah) gave a fair representation of rank between those two teams in the real-world hierarchy - an opinion that would have been altered, by the way, had Vancouver won (not that they looked like they would).
Finally, and I’m burying it because I’ve heard that repression is the best way to deal with pain, but who seriously didn’t think FC Cincinnati would lose to Orlando? While that was the theme of my vague, exhausted write-up on the game, it gets harder to see a path forward for FC Cincy with each passing week. The optics suck only a little less than the team...
All in all, MLS Week 3 was an odd week complicated by odd circumstances. For instance, while the CCL bug matters, looking past all the other signals it sends (e.g., the state of your depth) doesn't make any damn sense either. Overall, though, most of what happened makes enough sense despite the wrinkles, it's just the long-term projections that get a little hazy. Till the next one...
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