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With time just…stupid-short between now and the commencement of either Week 14 & 15 or just week 14 - depends on how they count the mid-week slate, something beyond my control - I’ll have to keep things (somewhat) brief in this one.
As with every week, I posted a thread with some theories on Week 13. Here’s the hit/miss ratio on that:
Hits
I had doubts about the Los Angeles Galaxy’s (@ Vancouver Whitecaps), the Colorado Rapids’ (v San Jose Earthquakes) and the Portland Timbers’ (v FC Dallas) ability to handle game they should manage and two of them - LA and Colorado - proved me right (VAN 2-1 LAG, COL 1-1 SJ; the outlier, POR 1-0 FCD; bless you, Jeremy Ebobisse; my extended notes on the Portland’s thin win over Dallas). I dubbed other games salvage operations - i.e., a chance to disprove the theory of a slump (even a modest one) - and Week 13 saw two of those teams - the New England Revolution (@ Atlanta United FC) and the Philadelphia Union (v DC United) - argue they can play out of a slump (ATL 0-1 NE; PHI 2-1 DC; the third team, Orlando City SC, are now winless in three games and in unseemly locales (e.g., TFC 1-1 ORL). I called a couple games “credibility duels,” but only one of those gave a loud signal: Nashville SC kicked the shit ‘n’ stuffing out of a Chicago Fire FC team (NSH 5-1 CHI) that found three ways to trip over the same dick…which brings me to the “credibility duel” that went right yet weird and, the rest of the…
Misses
Club de Foot Montreal may have been FC Cincinnati, but, golly, did they turn it into a comedy; sadly, Cincy smothered whatever positives they might have taken from this by blowing two, two-goal leads in the same game, and allowing five goals besides (MTL 5-4 CIN: my extended notes on that game). I did worst on the two games I couldn’t get a read on going in - Columbus Crew SC v New York City FC and Los Angeles FC v Real Salt Lake - but I probably over-thought both of them, if one, like, A LOT more than the other. First, ignore the score-line because LAFC kicked the holy shit out of RSL (LAFC 2-1 RSL), then came back for one more. As for the other, the home team won between Columbus and NYCFC (CLB 2-1 NYC), but one part of thought on that - e.g., that only a New York win would give a clear signal about where each team was headed - came through in the stats/video. NYCFC had every chance to win the game, only to get stuffed by Eloy Room every time they didn’t get in their own way.
Yeah, yeah, that’s a bunch of random crap thrown into a pair of paragraph, light on specifics, and I apologize for stuffing the links to the Mothership's game summary pages into those two paragraphs because, gods know how that kills the flow. I blame the Major League Soccer and (what the hell?) society for the cramped timeline.
Moving on, here are my Top 10 Storylines for MLS Week 13, in no particular order. Full disclosure, I only had time for two full games and Silver Service Reviews (e.g., MLS in 15 plus a dive into the box scores) for five games; the other four (ATL v NE, TFC v ORL, COL v SJ, and SEA v MIN) I’m judging by results alone. Oh, speaking of, I forgot to even mention Seattle Sounders v Minnesota United FC in my preview thread (SEA 0-1 MIN). That was a big one to miss, not least because…
Top 10 Storylines
1) Seattle Becomes Mortal
I don’t know much about how Minnesota beat Seattle - though the xG suggests they earned (much like Minnesota earned it against Portland three weeks ago) - but there goes the latest shot at the first perfect season in MLS. Seattle’s recent soft-patch (e.g., draws v VAN and @ COL) foreshadowed it, but Seattle’s still fine - they remain the sole owners of the points-per-game metric at 2.07 (with New England and Sporting KC close behind) - and they’ll get better as players come back. Related, Minnesota scored the Cascadia hattie with the win (as in they beat all the Cascadia teams in 2021, two of ‘em (Seattle and Portland) on the road).
2) My Biggest Week 13 Surprise
Vancouver beating the Galaxy. It appeared to play out per the tale-of-two-halves cliché, but with the ‘Caps playing LA close to even and firing in two quality goals, this didn’t look like a fluke. On the flip-side of the above, the Galaxy hold the opposite side of the stick when it comes to Cascadia teams: they’ve lost to all of them, all of them away and Seattle twice. The Galaxy had only lost to “big” teams so far in 2021 (Portland had a better rep early), which is good enough for third in the West and with a gap behind them, but dropping all three to a limping Vancouver team hints at another soft spots in the plan.
3) Meanwhile, in LA…
As noted above, LAFC climbed all over RSL, firing 29 shots to their 3 (or thereabouts) and forcing three shifts’ worth of saves out of RSL’s David Ochoa. Capping a 4-1-0 run over your past five games (against soft-ish opposition, but with three games on the road) with a performance this dominant warns of a potential scrambling in the Western Conference hierarchy - especially with Colorado and the Galaxy above them…that said, the seven teams in the West’s top seven spots are the seven I expect to see in there when the playoffs start, if in different order (perhaps, perhaps, perhaps). And I feel like that should be a storyline as well…
4) A Prematurely Settled West?
I went into 2021 expecting a season-long free-for-all in the Western Conference, but, when I look at the current standings, not one team among RSL, Houston Dynamo FC, Austin FC, San Jose, Vancouver or Dallas has made a loud argument for breaking into the 2021 playoff picture. Honestly, I have to squint till I’m blind to see one or two of them bobbling over the playoff line before season’s end, even as I’m fairly sure one or three of ‘em will do it, but, between talent/resource gap and the Rapids just sorta having their shit together, I can’t see any of them joining the proverbial elect.
Meanwhile, in the Eastern Conference…
5) Atlanta, Moving on the Next Crisis
I don’t know much about how safely the Revs got all three points out of Atlanta, but I do know Atlanta wrapped up a meltdown on Sunday with the firing of first-year coach Gabriel Heinze (and, holy shit, the things/human rights abuses you read about in the Heinze era). That leaves them still “going through some things,” something wisdom and experience suggests they’ll continue doing through the end of 2021 (though likely with improved hydration). With four points already between them and the playoff line and with probable chaos ahead, that should be one less team chasing for playoff spots in the East.
6) Ah, There’s the Ceiling
Recent, bracing surges by Chicago and Cincinnati fizzled in disheartening ways in Week 13. Between the few teams they’ve beaten and the way they lost against Montreal, Cincinnati probably has more to worry about between the two; I mean, sure, they shit enough for three beds against Nashville, but Chicago had taken 7 points out of 9 hosting Philly, Atlanta and Orlando and with a nine goals scored to four allowed differential over those three games. All the same, so long as Chicago remains capable of positively drunken levels of defensive dereliction, I don’t see them gaining enough ground on the 11 teams above them. Hell, I’m not even sure they’ll top Cincinnati…but, absent anything less than a sharp turnaround, this looks like two less teams chasing in the East.
7) The Floor Will Fall
In their defense, I’ve only seen them at their worst - Cincinnati has their number, true story - but nothing about Montreal says “playoff material” to me. Their defense has been better all season than it was against Cincy - e.g., they’re barely north of a goal per game and hadn’t allowed more than one goal over their prior five games (@ CHI, v DC, @ NSH, v MIA v NYC, i.e., respectable, but hardly The Gauntlet) - so maybe treat the Cincy game as a violent aberration at the office; for perspective, however, they gave Cincinnati 1/4 of their goalscoring output in 2021 in that one game. While I expect them to grind out the odd result - and Joaquin Torres looked pretty damn nifty against Cincinnati - I see too much quality in at least five teams below them to believe they’ll do any better than bob around the playoff line. Opportunity beckons…
8) And, Yet, It’s Complicated
Why haven’t either Columbus or NYCFC launched in 2021 - i.e., how are they two and five points below Montreal, respectively? As implied above, NYCFC had every chance to win against Columbus, but they didn’t…but doesn’t that also imply that Columbus was lucky to beat NYCFC at home (answer: yes, yes, they were). Given the bones that hold them up, I’d be stunned to see either Columbus or NYCFC miss the playoffs - seems impossible, really - but…there they are, tripping before they rise higher than 6th and 7th place. And what to make of Orlando? Not only have they not landed a big win in 2021 - only that 5-0 demolition of San Jose qualifies as an “oh shit” result - they’ve started dropping games a team with aspirations shouldn’t - see their last three, a home loss to Red Bull, a road loss to Chicago and a road draw to Toronto. My money stays on Red Bull to make it - and they would almost certainly leapfrogged NYCFC had they played Inter Miami CF this weekend (rained out or something) - but, outside New England and Philly, the rest of the East is a lot of questions…if only down to a certain point.
9) An Early, Vague Wager on Who the Wooden Spoon Hits
I’m guessing Toronto will rebound from the Chris Armas era (also, I’ve never seen a head coach more in need of a redemption montage), which narrows down the candidate list for the teams most likely to feel the stinging, reddened shame of a paddling with the wooden spoon. Also, I have a strong feeling that the East takes up most of said candidates list…and no small amount of anxiety about that - i.e., did I say it wouldn’t hit Cincinnati’s already tender bottoms because I believe it, or because I want to? Good gods, why do I look this closely? Wait, I know!
10) Reading the Subtitles
Hany Mukhtar got (and largely deserved) top billing for Nashville’s thoroughgoing whuppin’ of Chicago with his hat-trick, but C. J. Sapong made two of those chances - one of them a gift - and added a goal of his own later in the game. Basically, Sapong was as influential as Mukhtar, or close to it. Also, when you’re looking to answer how Vancouver put two (good) goals past the Galaxy, Brian White gives a pretty good answer. I’ve seen enough of Sapong playing for Nashville to believe they know how to get something out of him; add (an improved) Mukhtar and it gets you somewhere - specifically, the higher climes of the league in goals for. By the same token, if White can give Vancouver the hold-up forward they need, maybe they can get going. Somewhere. Within limits. See notes above about the Western Conference (e.g., Storyline No. 4). At any rate, it's always a good thing when players whose names don't show on the marquee make big contributions, so that's something worth clocking.
That’s all for this edition. With everything that’s going on between here and next Sunday, I’ve decided to throw notes on the midweek (Week 14) and the weekend’s games (Week 15) into one post and make it like the “Super Standings” post I wrote after Week 10. It’ll be results, strength of schedule and the-last-10-games heavy for analysis, but 15 games and a crazy-busy week feels like a good time for that.
Till next…thinking it’ll be next Wednesday before I post the next league-wide post, but we’ll see.
As with every week, I posted a thread with some theories on Week 13. Here’s the hit/miss ratio on that:
Hits
I had doubts about the Los Angeles Galaxy’s (@ Vancouver Whitecaps), the Colorado Rapids’ (v San Jose Earthquakes) and the Portland Timbers’ (v FC Dallas) ability to handle game they should manage and two of them - LA and Colorado - proved me right (VAN 2-1 LAG, COL 1-1 SJ; the outlier, POR 1-0 FCD; bless you, Jeremy Ebobisse; my extended notes on the Portland’s thin win over Dallas). I dubbed other games salvage operations - i.e., a chance to disprove the theory of a slump (even a modest one) - and Week 13 saw two of those teams - the New England Revolution (@ Atlanta United FC) and the Philadelphia Union (v DC United) - argue they can play out of a slump (ATL 0-1 NE; PHI 2-1 DC; the third team, Orlando City SC, are now winless in three games and in unseemly locales (e.g., TFC 1-1 ORL). I called a couple games “credibility duels,” but only one of those gave a loud signal: Nashville SC kicked the shit ‘n’ stuffing out of a Chicago Fire FC team (NSH 5-1 CHI) that found three ways to trip over the same dick…which brings me to the “credibility duel” that went right yet weird and, the rest of the…
Misses
Club de Foot Montreal may have been FC Cincinnati, but, golly, did they turn it into a comedy; sadly, Cincy smothered whatever positives they might have taken from this by blowing two, two-goal leads in the same game, and allowing five goals besides (MTL 5-4 CIN: my extended notes on that game). I did worst on the two games I couldn’t get a read on going in - Columbus Crew SC v New York City FC and Los Angeles FC v Real Salt Lake - but I probably over-thought both of them, if one, like, A LOT more than the other. First, ignore the score-line because LAFC kicked the holy shit out of RSL (LAFC 2-1 RSL), then came back for one more. As for the other, the home team won between Columbus and NYCFC (CLB 2-1 NYC), but one part of thought on that - e.g., that only a New York win would give a clear signal about where each team was headed - came through in the stats/video. NYCFC had every chance to win the game, only to get stuffed by Eloy Room every time they didn’t get in their own way.
Yeah, yeah, that’s a bunch of random crap thrown into a pair of paragraph, light on specifics, and I apologize for stuffing the links to the Mothership's game summary pages into those two paragraphs because, gods know how that kills the flow. I blame the Major League Soccer and (what the hell?) society for the cramped timeline.
Moving on, here are my Top 10 Storylines for MLS Week 13, in no particular order. Full disclosure, I only had time for two full games and Silver Service Reviews (e.g., MLS in 15 plus a dive into the box scores) for five games; the other four (ATL v NE, TFC v ORL, COL v SJ, and SEA v MIN) I’m judging by results alone. Oh, speaking of, I forgot to even mention Seattle Sounders v Minnesota United FC in my preview thread (SEA 0-1 MIN). That was a big one to miss, not least because…
Top 10 Storylines
1) Seattle Becomes Mortal
I don’t know much about how Minnesota beat Seattle - though the xG suggests they earned (much like Minnesota earned it against Portland three weeks ago) - but there goes the latest shot at the first perfect season in MLS. Seattle’s recent soft-patch (e.g., draws v VAN and @ COL) foreshadowed it, but Seattle’s still fine - they remain the sole owners of the points-per-game metric at 2.07 (with New England and Sporting KC close behind) - and they’ll get better as players come back. Related, Minnesota scored the Cascadia hattie with the win (as in they beat all the Cascadia teams in 2021, two of ‘em (Seattle and Portland) on the road).
2) My Biggest Week 13 Surprise
Vancouver beating the Galaxy. It appeared to play out per the tale-of-two-halves cliché, but with the ‘Caps playing LA close to even and firing in two quality goals, this didn’t look like a fluke. On the flip-side of the above, the Galaxy hold the opposite side of the stick when it comes to Cascadia teams: they’ve lost to all of them, all of them away and Seattle twice. The Galaxy had only lost to “big” teams so far in 2021 (Portland had a better rep early), which is good enough for third in the West and with a gap behind them, but dropping all three to a limping Vancouver team hints at another soft spots in the plan.
3) Meanwhile, in LA…
As noted above, LAFC climbed all over RSL, firing 29 shots to their 3 (or thereabouts) and forcing three shifts’ worth of saves out of RSL’s David Ochoa. Capping a 4-1-0 run over your past five games (against soft-ish opposition, but with three games on the road) with a performance this dominant warns of a potential scrambling in the Western Conference hierarchy - especially with Colorado and the Galaxy above them…that said, the seven teams in the West’s top seven spots are the seven I expect to see in there when the playoffs start, if in different order (perhaps, perhaps, perhaps). And I feel like that should be a storyline as well…
4) A Prematurely Settled West?
I went into 2021 expecting a season-long free-for-all in the Western Conference, but, when I look at the current standings, not one team among RSL, Houston Dynamo FC, Austin FC, San Jose, Vancouver or Dallas has made a loud argument for breaking into the 2021 playoff picture. Honestly, I have to squint till I’m blind to see one or two of them bobbling over the playoff line before season’s end, even as I’m fairly sure one or three of ‘em will do it, but, between talent/resource gap and the Rapids just sorta having their shit together, I can’t see any of them joining the proverbial elect.
Meanwhile, in the Eastern Conference…
5) Atlanta, Moving on the Next Crisis
I don’t know much about how safely the Revs got all three points out of Atlanta, but I do know Atlanta wrapped up a meltdown on Sunday with the firing of first-year coach Gabriel Heinze (and, holy shit, the things/human rights abuses you read about in the Heinze era). That leaves them still “going through some things,” something wisdom and experience suggests they’ll continue doing through the end of 2021 (though likely with improved hydration). With four points already between them and the playoff line and with probable chaos ahead, that should be one less team chasing for playoff spots in the East.
6) Ah, There’s the Ceiling
Recent, bracing surges by Chicago and Cincinnati fizzled in disheartening ways in Week 13. Between the few teams they’ve beaten and the way they lost against Montreal, Cincinnati probably has more to worry about between the two; I mean, sure, they shit enough for three beds against Nashville, but Chicago had taken 7 points out of 9 hosting Philly, Atlanta and Orlando and with a nine goals scored to four allowed differential over those three games. All the same, so long as Chicago remains capable of positively drunken levels of defensive dereliction, I don’t see them gaining enough ground on the 11 teams above them. Hell, I’m not even sure they’ll top Cincinnati…but, absent anything less than a sharp turnaround, this looks like two less teams chasing in the East.
7) The Floor Will Fall
In their defense, I’ve only seen them at their worst - Cincinnati has their number, true story - but nothing about Montreal says “playoff material” to me. Their defense has been better all season than it was against Cincy - e.g., they’re barely north of a goal per game and hadn’t allowed more than one goal over their prior five games (@ CHI, v DC, @ NSH, v MIA v NYC, i.e., respectable, but hardly The Gauntlet) - so maybe treat the Cincy game as a violent aberration at the office; for perspective, however, they gave Cincinnati 1/4 of their goalscoring output in 2021 in that one game. While I expect them to grind out the odd result - and Joaquin Torres looked pretty damn nifty against Cincinnati - I see too much quality in at least five teams below them to believe they’ll do any better than bob around the playoff line. Opportunity beckons…
8) And, Yet, It’s Complicated
Why haven’t either Columbus or NYCFC launched in 2021 - i.e., how are they two and five points below Montreal, respectively? As implied above, NYCFC had every chance to win against Columbus, but they didn’t…but doesn’t that also imply that Columbus was lucky to beat NYCFC at home (answer: yes, yes, they were). Given the bones that hold them up, I’d be stunned to see either Columbus or NYCFC miss the playoffs - seems impossible, really - but…there they are, tripping before they rise higher than 6th and 7th place. And what to make of Orlando? Not only have they not landed a big win in 2021 - only that 5-0 demolition of San Jose qualifies as an “oh shit” result - they’ve started dropping games a team with aspirations shouldn’t - see their last three, a home loss to Red Bull, a road loss to Chicago and a road draw to Toronto. My money stays on Red Bull to make it - and they would almost certainly leapfrogged NYCFC had they played Inter Miami CF this weekend (rained out or something) - but, outside New England and Philly, the rest of the East is a lot of questions…if only down to a certain point.
9) An Early, Vague Wager on Who the Wooden Spoon Hits
I’m guessing Toronto will rebound from the Chris Armas era (also, I’ve never seen a head coach more in need of a redemption montage), which narrows down the candidate list for the teams most likely to feel the stinging, reddened shame of a paddling with the wooden spoon. Also, I have a strong feeling that the East takes up most of said candidates list…and no small amount of anxiety about that - i.e., did I say it wouldn’t hit Cincinnati’s already tender bottoms because I believe it, or because I want to? Good gods, why do I look this closely? Wait, I know!
10) Reading the Subtitles
Hany Mukhtar got (and largely deserved) top billing for Nashville’s thoroughgoing whuppin’ of Chicago with his hat-trick, but C. J. Sapong made two of those chances - one of them a gift - and added a goal of his own later in the game. Basically, Sapong was as influential as Mukhtar, or close to it. Also, when you’re looking to answer how Vancouver put two (good) goals past the Galaxy, Brian White gives a pretty good answer. I’ve seen enough of Sapong playing for Nashville to believe they know how to get something out of him; add (an improved) Mukhtar and it gets you somewhere - specifically, the higher climes of the league in goals for. By the same token, if White can give Vancouver the hold-up forward they need, maybe they can get going. Somewhere. Within limits. See notes above about the Western Conference (e.g., Storyline No. 4). At any rate, it's always a good thing when players whose names don't show on the marquee make big contributions, so that's something worth clocking.
That’s all for this edition. With everything that’s going on between here and next Sunday, I’ve decided to throw notes on the midweek (Week 14) and the weekend’s games (Week 15) into one post and make it like the “Super Standings” post I wrote after Week 10. It’ll be results, strength of schedule and the-last-10-games heavy for analysis, but 15 games and a crazy-busy week feels like a good time for that.
Till next…thinking it’ll be next Wednesday before I post the next league-wide post, but we’ll see.
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