MLS End-Run Preview: More (or Less) Static than You Think

Wait for it...

Seeing just one (1!)MLS in 15 video from the past week makes me question the entire concept of global, amateur punditry when it comes to Major League Soccer as a whole. I’d say throw me a fucking bone, but I’m not naïve, I know who I’m dealing with here. [Ed. - That said, I’m struggling to post down this congested stretch and would absolutely understand had the MLS interns who compile those videos went on strike two months ago, by which I mean, I get it.] As such, the end-run preview below relies on equal parts big-picture trends - i.e., results - and recency bias.

As for the frame, I look 10 games back before looking forward to what all the teams with something to either gain or lose will face over the final two or three games of the MLS regular season. To clear out some clutter (see above), I focused on teams operating in, by either numbers or circumstances, plausibly fluid situations - i.e., studiously ignoring all the teams already eliminated - which includes the all-but mathematically-eliminated, e.g., Inter Miami CF - but also the teams that don’t strike me as at risk. So, there goes the New England Revolution - who’ve already clinched top seed in the Eastern Conference, the Supporters’ Shield and the single-season record for points (thrilling for a guy who suffered with them through the aughts) - but also the Philadelphia Union who, because they host FC Cincinnati should escape the tussle ‘n’ tumult below them. Barring a curse, they'll stay in the Top 4 in the East, which means a hosting-at-home-in-Round-1 in the playoffs cream of the Eastern Conference playoffs. I’m pretty sure Nashville will wind up there, but my doubts also persuaded me to look at their end-run to be sure.

When it comes to the Western Conference, that meant pulling Sporting Kansas City, the Seattle Sounders and the Colorado Rapids out of the mix. I don't think a scenario exists where they won't be the Top 3 and I also don’t give a shit about seeding beyond that or which one of them wins the West. And yet, all three are deeply involved when it comes to where all the team below them finish. That’s to say, due to quirks in fate and scheduling, the West ends better than the East.

From here, I list wee data blocks for all the teams competing for either seeding or playoff spots, and organized them according to where I see them finishing the regular season. Also included, the last 10 results for each team, the number of points they’ve taken from that stretch, related notes on strength of schedule, the location and opposition for their final two (or three) games, and, based on that, some notes on their chances at making the playoffs or something better.

For what it's worth, I don’t see a lot of teams hitting the post-season hot. To hazard a sloppy, basically-unobserved guess, I’d give Atlanta, (maybe) DC, Portland, Real Salt Lake, LAFC and (maybe) Vancouver as the teams as the best bets for hitting the playoffs at a run. I can also see literally all of them cocking it up. Related, if the Sounders can't stop tripping over their own toes, maybe that's a global theme for 2021. Maybe we're all tired...

Portland Timbers 2-0 San Jose Earthquakes: Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz & Other Thoughts

Celebrate. The demon-child allowed it.

Delightful. Absolutely delightful.

Blown away as I am by Dairon Asprilla’s career-year-capping, wunder-goal, the bigger, better take-away is this: think where the Portland Timbers would be today with Asprilla’s TEN (10) goals in 2021. On numbers alone, they’d be where the San Jose Earthquakes find themselves after tonight’s 2-0 loss at Providence Park: about 10 goals on the wrong side of good and mathematically out of the 2021 Major League Soccer playoffs.

The Timbers haven't stepped into the Promised Land yet - which, here, means the good bits, way past where Moses got - but they’ve bought themselves a fuck-up, maybe even a fuck-up-and-a-half, down the stretch. And I’m starting there for a reason, because a single sentence from Liam Ridgewell, tonight, from the broadcast booth, gave me the words for a concept tonight, maybe even a thesis:

Once one team breaks another, everything else goes out the window. Just put the game on ignore and enjoy it…so long as your team is one the right side of it.

Ridgewell kept going back to the idea of a game-plan, the importance of sticking with it, even to the point of eschewing tempting opportunities for heroism - i.e., know your role, operate within it, trust your teammates will do you the same, block out all the signs and voices bellowing “[YOUR COACH’S NAME HERE] OUT,” and stick with it till the plan comes together and everyone wearing the same shirt as you gets the big win. Sometimes it doesn’t work, sometimes it does and it becomes a team’s “identity,” but,  at the end of it all, it’s just a set of assumptions a team plays under in order to make decisions and/or plays happen a little faster. Right?

As follows from, one team breaks another when they make the assumptions by which they operate fall apart. And, yeah, Asprilla’s goal was spectator-sports ecstasy, but the bigger, better thing framing for tonight’s game was, “there but for the left hand of J. T. Marcinkowski, San Jose would have eaten bowls full of shit.” From the time the ref blew the opening whistle for the second half to the end of the game, the game didn’t look like anything else but a Timbers win. And…confirmed: San Jose’s xG flat-lined after the 45th; it didn’t really do much from the 10th minute, honestly. Which gets back to what I’m saying about breaking a team…

Colorado Rapids 2-0 Portland Timbers: A Disturbing Glimpse into the Future (and Present)?

Pleasant? God, no. Accurate. Umm....

Bad game, bad result, bad entertainment and, most damning of all, the Portland Timbers played its third “low-energy game” in a row. The only thing saving Portland from a richly-deserved drop to sixth place is the rolling shit-show churning below them. And, so, with a hearty thanks to Real Salt Lake, Minnesota United FC, and, so far, the Los Angeles Galaxy, let’s stare at this turd only for as long as it takes to confirm its shape and composition (don’t worry; won’t use that for the image), and move on.

As the numbers show, that sucked. Aside from losing 2-0 to a half-awake Colorado Rapids team, Portland lost every statistical category besides possession, total passes and passing accuracy - and who gives a shit about those? - and the standard, sharper markers of persistent struggle and failure, clearances, fouls, yellow cards. The Timbers looked good for a draw, at best, up to the point where Colorado scored, but it was a slow bleed to nowhere but another Rapids goal from there…and it’s worth asking, did any Timbers defender have the foggiest fucking idea where any running Rapid was on Colorado’s insurance goal?

There’s nothing to analyze from that loss, honestly, no positives, no promising leads, no what ifs. Reading the cold, hard math, the Timbers will either get the six points of nine that they should get from their final three games (v San Jose, at RSL, v Austin), or they won’t - and let the flood wash over them if they fail.

I don’t have a lot of notes on this one, but, here goes.

The End of an Era…and All That Means
I’ve worried about how Diego Valeri’s career would end earlier than I should have - which is to say, I was wrong and he had a great 2020 - but I’ll be damned if tonight didn’t confirm that the end is nigh, if not already here. One strong shot off a practice-pitch corner aside, I wouldn’t have even known Valeri was on the field tonight. And yet he was, and for 76 minutes.

A Major League Soccer Week 31, Part II (Dammit!) Forecast: Progress in the West, Choking in the East

A view of the playoff line in East and West.

Gods willing, I’ll figure out a more elegant to clock the weekly comings and goings in Major League Soccer at some point. Next year looks a hell of lot better than this one, obviously…

The crush of games at mid-week dropped enough weight on the timeline to make a glance the most an amateur can give when it comes to analysis (say…that sounds like a good brand). The biggest-picture takeaway of MLS Week 31, Part I goes something like this:

Progress in the West, Choking in the East

I’d call the Portland Timbers’ (painful, leggy, stupid) loss at home to the Vancouver Whitecaps the only actual miss in my mid-week forecast, the Nashville’s record-chasing draw get undeserved honorable mention. I gave myself enough wiggle room everywhere else (ah, the blush-sparing beauty of “on one hand, but on the other” phrasing). Looked at from the other side, however, Vancouver’s win tracked with a broad trend in the West - i.e., the teams that needed wins to stay viable - e.g., Vancouver, Los Angeles FC, the Los Angeles Galaxy, and even Minnesota United - all got them. Hence, “Progress in the West.” Their results came either against teams already out of the running (e.g., FC Dallas, Houston Dynamo FC) or a team from another conference (the Philadelphia Union, all listed respectively), meaning they didn’t draw blood from any of the teams above them. Portland drew their own blood (thank you very much), while the Colorado Rapids and Seattle Sounders nicked one another in their 1-1 draw up in the Rockies.

Over in the Eastern Conference, the theme switches (or reverts) to a mass, collective stalemate among all the competitive teams (as in, not including except the New England Revolution, so nothing new there). The two biggest surprises in that regard were Atlanta United FC (who hosted the typically road-stoned New York City FC) and Nashville SC (who hosted Columbus Crew SC, who have…not been good). The former had a shot at climbing to the mid-40s for points, while the latter could dipped over 50 points. Both of those games ended up knotted at 1-1 - as did Orlando City SC v Club du Foot Montreal - all of which combined to keep the spread between fifth (Atlanta) and tenth (Columbus) in the East at five slim points.

FC Cincinnati: Requiem for a Team

I couldn’t watch FC Cincinnati’s latest debacle last night, and The Mothership spared me from the temptation of pissing away another 15 minutes of my life by not posting an MLS in 15 highlight reel. I did, however, take in the highlights, which means I saw Luka Stojanovic kick a rare happy ending into submission. Nine times out of ten, any player skies that shot miles above the bar, but, when you're born under a bad sign...

What I did see of this game immediately reminded me of the road game in back in July, the one in Montreal where Cincy blew two two-point leads in the same afternoon. When they jumped out to the early lead, fans could day-dream a little, maybe even think 2021 would be different. It was early enough in the season for that, honest. That might have been the high water-mark for optimism.

It just occurred to me all three of FC Cincinnati’s seasons in MLS have unfolded the same way. They start out all right - remember flirting with the strongest start for an expansion team in 2019? the playoff-like game against the Portland Timbers in 2020’s MLS Got Back tournament? - and then spend the rest of the season stepping on rakes.

As some point, you’d think all involved would ask themselves who is making decisions for the team and tell (beg?) them to stop. I’ve heard rumors Ken(?) Berding sticks his nose into shit, which makes some sense, given the rich asshole habit of confusing wealth with having useful contributions to make on any subject. They hired Chris Albright, so here’s to hoping the author(s) of the team’s construction and woe steps back, shuts up and gives him room to try to right a ship that starts sinking about ten games into every season.

I put in the time to read Matt Doyle’s wrap on FC Cincy’s 2021, and that’s far more words that anyone needs to put another bad season to bed. What’s wrong with this team?

Everything. Literally everything.

Portland Timbers 2-3 Vancouver Whitecaps: Proportionate Angst

They say it's a marathon, not a sprint...

After going up 2-0 in a game they controlled, but without playing all that well, the Portland Timbers fell apart one goal at a time to hand the Vancouver Whitecaps a 3-2 win at Providence Park. Portland didn’t look sharp all night, so, when the ‘Caps raised their energy…pfft.

The broadcast booth talked up Brian White coming on for Lucas Cavallini as the turning point, but I caught a whiff of something different fairly early in the game. To paraphrase a tweet:

“I can’t read the Timbers’ mood. Is it [calm] or complacency?”

The original word for the one between the brackets was “confidence,” but this performance never looked confident…hold on, is misplaced confidence a long form version of complacency? At any rate, it didn’t feel so unreasonable to believe the way the Timbers could hold its shit together after Deiber Caicedo pulled one back for Vancouver on a hero goal off a sprint up the gut; again, they controlled the first half. That doesn’t mean the patterns were actually encouraging - they weren’t - but, you know, shake off the cobwebs, step up the pace, etc.

I just realized that only 13 minutes passed between Caicedo’s goal and the equalizer. When Brian White saw the cross coming before Juancarlos Van Rankin and scored, he didn’t do anything that every other player in dark blue hadn’t done since the second half whistle blew: Whitecaps players beat Timbers to the ball all over the field, as if they got a pep-talk at the half (or their asses chewed to pieces) and Gio lined up a round of double shots of Goldschlager instead.

Yeah, yeah, the penalty kick. The Timbers would have been lucky to get one point by that time, and they wound up with zero as a result. And I don’t want to spare anyone from blame. I saw Dairon Asprilla go less than his usual all-in on at least two 50/50s in Vancouver’s defensive third. That shit’s contagious and, by the end of the first half, it bit every player on the field sporting a smart white shirt and snazzy green shorts. If only their play matched…

A Major League Soccer Week 31 (probably) Forecast: Binding and Separation

The opposite of a visual for MLS Week 30.

If I had to give myself a grade for prognostication for my last Major League Soccer preview, I’d give myself a C – plus or minus, your call on the math. From the highest of altitudes (generally where I operate on this stuff), I’d call six of the results unexpected, or maybe just noteworthy, though not wildly so. On the competitive side, it’s probably more significant to note that most of the teams who needed results got them. There, I’d include Orlando City SC beating FC Cincinnati*, Atlanta United beating Toronto FC*, and Minnesota beating Austin FC, all on the road, while Real Salt Lake beat the Colorado Rapids and the Vancouver Whitecaps beat Sporting Kansas City, both of those at home.

(* For the record, these wins were both reasonable and largely expected. The ones with asterisk also made enough sense.)

None of those results flipped the furniture or anything – I’d call the big wins for Los Angeles FC and Columbus Crew SC (over the San Jose Earthquakes and Inter Miami CF, respectively), as well as the Philadelphia Union holding serve at Club du Foot Montreal the more meaningful results from the weekend – but they did some fun things to the narrative. Going the other way, two of the weekend’s most eye-popping surprises – the Houston Dynamo beating the Seattle Sounders (anywhere, really, but that one happened in Houston) and Chicago Fire FC (of all teams) forcing the New England Revolution to a draw in New England – don’t add up to much more than blushes for the better teams. Now, about those wee narrative shifts…

Atlanta’s win finally completed their long trek over the playoff line – something that seemed inevitable given their recent form (7-3-0 in their last 10) – which probably counts as the biggest story in the Eastern Conference. [Ed. – If this wasn’t Atlanta’s first week over the playoff line, I barely regret the error, because the narrative still works.] Elsewhere, Orlando, who haven’t been great lately, gave themselves some space over the playoff line – space that looks good to hold up, fwiw – while both Nashville and Philly maintained their breathing room over DC United and Montreal, respectively. Red Bull New York drew level with New York City FC, but the bigger story (maybe) could be Columbus getting within three points of both of them.

Los Angeles Galaxy 2-1 Portland Timbers: Shit Happens & Mapping a Future

All I want to know: will I like the ending?

Give a team two pillow-soft chances, you give up two goals. Give a pig a pancake and….honestly, I have no idea, I’ve only seen the cover of that book.

Obviously, that was not ideal, but, for me, the whole thing had the feel of the Los Angeles Galaxy was due to win, the Portland Timbers were due a loss. As the kids say, shit happens, and the Galaxy wins at home 2-0. The Timbers had some points to burn, they’re not gonna catch the Seattle Sounders, the road ahead is pretty favorable, and so on. Pick, move on, and, for fuck’s sake, play Diego Valeri earlier if you’re gonna play him at all. Maybe try attacking defending with seven while attacking with three skilled players pushed way the fuck up for counters toward the end of a game. I don’t know. I only manage teams online and they do awesome. On toddler mode. And I digress.

Full disclosure, I only watched half that game, stared at some stats (where I saw what I wanted: fairly even for shots on goal and winning the duels), so take all notes below with due caution, etc. At the same time, these are mostly general thoughts about Portland’s stretch run - which, for the record, conncludes with: v Vancouver, at Colorado, v San Jose, at Real Salt Lake, v Austin FC. And, yes, I typed more of the names out to celebrate not forever operating under 280 characters. Some notes…and I mean beyond obvious stuff like, “Blanco RULZ” (and he does) or “mistakes hurt the Timbers tonight.” Wait…moving on…

Van Rankin Van Rankles
Because I saw Steve Clark make two saves (at least) that easily could have gone in (and yet two shit goals did), I’m comfortable accepting the Timbers had plenty of other ways to lose this one…but, Van Rankin. He hasn’t fulfilled my expectations on either side of the ball. He’s not an outright liability either, it’s just….yeah.

A Major League Soccer Week 30 Forecast: Stasis in the West, Potential Cramping in the East

A glimpse at the top of the conferences.

Yeah, yeah. I got tired of editing my phrasing three times just to get under 280 characters. That said, I still want to honor the concept of brevity, so I’ll keep things tidy or try to.

This is Major League Soccer Week 30, apparently, despite virtually the entire league having played 28 games. Damn new math. Wherever we are on our shared journey, the goal here is to provide a little context for Saturday and Sunday’s match-ups. As such, I’ve woven together a brief narrative (with helpful data in parentheses) to forecast the weekend’s action. First up, here are all of Week 30’s games, listed in the order in which they’ll be played:

L’Impact du Montreal v Philadelphia Union (whoops, already on)
Los Angeles FC v San Jose Earthquakes
Columbus Crew SC v Inter Miami CF
New England Revolution v Chicago Fire FC
FC Cincinnati v Orlando City SC
DC United v Nashville SC
Toronto FC v Atlanta United
Houston Dynamo FC v Seattle Sounders
Austin FC v Minnesota United FC
Real Salt Lake v Colorado Rapids
Los Angeles Galaxy v Portland Timbers
Red Bull New York v New York City FC
Vancouver Whitecaps FC v Sporting Kansas City

Now, to address them in completely different order, starting with the two teams on top of both conferences.

Given the opposition, Seattle and the Revs are like two warriors glaring at each other across a battle, each steadily moving toward the other, killing fodder (e.g., Houston and Chicago) on their way. I know New England’s chasing the single-season points record (just seven points to go!), but I wouldn’t blame either team for resting players. Seattle’s only five points clear in the West, but remain a solid bet to win it. That same separation speaks to a general truth about MLS’s Western Conference….hold on, I have to remind myself how this shit works again. OK, ready.