MLS Weakly, January 27, 2022: Preseason Status Check & Historically-Informed Statement of Biases

This will only make sense at the end.

This post combines a couple thoughts to create a sort of grand frame for the 2022 season. And, yes, I absolutely overdid it. I’ll be parking these Weaklies for a couple weeks after this and, when I get back in the saddle, I’ll only have notes on teams that look like they might go somewhere compelling - an adjective I use in the spirit of the weasel word, because “compelling” contains multitudes, a spread wide enough to include teams that look like MLS Cup winners on one side and teams that might finally escape the cellar on the other.

This severely over-long post has two components:

1) A brief history of MLS, told through the lens of teams/systems who have won either MLS Cup or the Supporters’ Shield; followed by

2) applying that perspective to the thumbnail impressions on where each team in MLS, both generally and based on their 2021 season.

I’m doing all this to announce my biases going into the season. So long as another wild hair doesn’t sneak up my ass, this will be the only Total Coverage post of the 2022 season - i.e., the only time I anticipate having notes on every team in the league. Think of it as the sign I will tap when someone asks the question: what about my team? The answer: because they do not matter…

…but I also when nuts on the history because I like narratives. Time to excavate!

Trophies and the Teams Who Have Won Them
First, some numbers: a total of 14 teams have won MLS Cup in the league’s 26-year (right?) history; 15 teams have won the Supporters’ Shield over the same period - two of which, the Tampa Bay Mutiny (1996, aka, Year 1) and the Miami Fusion (2001, no longer exist, though Pablo Mastroen still haunts us all; eight teams have won both the Cup and the Shield - five of them landed a double - while six teams have won only MLS Cup and five have only won the Shield. I’ll get to the short, wild stab at history in a tick, but I want to examine the flipside of all that success.

The eight active teams who have never won either major trophy (yes, I am writing off the U.S. Open Cup, and always will) are: Austin FC, Charlotte FC, FC Cincinnati, Inter Miami CF, Minnesota United FC, CF Montreal, Nashville SC, Orlando City SC, and the Vancouver Whitecaps. All of those teams came via expansion, with (I believe) Vancouver coming in first, followed by Montreal, followed by the rest - and, no, I’m not gonna look up who joined when, because that undermines the primary mission of understanding my biases about each team, and that means going by memory as much as possible. [* Of course I had to (minimally) research the Cup/Shield thing to make the above list.] To extract a broad thought out of that, I’d say that makes strong case that MLS does a better than fair job of sharing the spoils. Or, rather, even allowing for freak-cases like Atlanta United FC, the spoils come after a certain amount of either time or, more often lately, investment. Which segues nicely into the history…

MLS Weakly, January 19(20), 2022: The Outlines of a Preview for 2022

This post will be, in some ways, inconsequential. And I stand by that choice on the grounds that nothing manifestly consequential has happened in and around Major League Soccer in the year 2022. Also, don’t think too hard about when things become “manifestly consequential” during the MLS season, because that only leads to questions about why one tunes in at all.

That said, and to avoid any confusion, I love this messy, middling league as much as a man with a wife, two kids, two cats, and a proliferation of hobbies and interests possibly can. Moving on…

I’ve decided to move the MLS Weakly posts to mid-week, and for a couple reasons. First, once the season starts, I’m going to use them for reviewing the week just past and previewing the week ahead; as (all four score of my) regular readers already know, I’ve grown increasingly obsessed with results over time, so why not situate the discussion in a place that looks back to look forward? Your people call it Wednesday (or Thursday). Second, and related, that best fits what I have in mind for framing the 2022 season. And that follows from a thought that has developed, 1) over (too many) years of watching and writing about MLS, and 2) the seemingly relentless expansion of the number of teams in MLS. There is, in a phrase, too much shit to keep track of. More germane to the point at hand, very real liberation comes from ignoring shit that isn’t worth tracking. Related, this next bit might get a little unpleasant for, oh, about 1/3 of the regular (or semi-regular) visitors to this site.

I follow FC Cincinnati for a couple reasons, hometown love and sincere affection among them. I have motivation, in other words, but Cincinnati has given even the most rabid/devoted MLS neutral fan absolutely no rational reason to give them even one stray thought outside limited scenarios - e.g., your team plays them next week, you’re from Columbus and love the city a little too well, you need to think of another team to make you feel better about your team’s struggles, Cincy’s perennial, horrifying quest to lower the collective bar each season, etc. Judge my personal choices however you want, call it masochism and I’ll tell you where I like it and how hard, but arriving at the full meaning of Cincinnati’s permanent irrelevance led me to a long overdue rethink of the TOTAL COVERAGE framing that has been my greatest obsession and my greatest obstacle for as long as I’ve rambled about America’s best pass at The Beautiful Game.

MLS Weakly, January 15, 2022: The SuperDraft Is a Bright, Shining Lie & Notes on Aging (and Agless) Players

At least Buyer 1205 knows what he's getting...probably.

Welcome to the…next one. Though Major League Soccer’s preseason has officially started for some and will start for others tomorrow, fans remain in that space in between 2021 and 2022. Which explains why The Mothership is running “stories” like “One reason every MLS team should feel optimistic as the 2022 preseason begins” (a slap in the face, frankly, to certain teams) and a pair of half-stale reminders about worries for each team in the Eastern and Western conferences. I get it. You do what you have to do to remind people you’re still pecking at the keyboard…as you can see…

That doesn’t mean the league hasn’t seen some eye-popping moves - e.g., Toronto FC singing Lorenzo Insigne (a move so big one only has to type “toronto fc italian” to find articles), the Seattle Sounders poaching Albert Rusnak from Real Salt Lake, and the mid-week mega-trade that sent Kellyn Acosta from the Colorado Rapids to Los Angeles FC (though didn’t the teams basically just swap defensive midfielders/No. 8s? And who would you rather have: Mark-Anthony Kaye or Acosta?). I acknowledge that’s a damned short list - and, surely, other, smaller trades are percolating as I type, even if some fall within comparatively meaningless reports of teams “showing interest” or “making a bid” - but the 2022 MLS SuperDraft has to count as last week’s biggest story.

Or is it nothing but a bright, shining lie?

With a nod to the hyped phrasing, I’m willing to let the reader decide. As for methodology, I reviewed all the MLS SuperDrafts since 2013 (and here are the rest of the links: 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021, and I wound up on nine years, because I can't count so good), looked at the total number of players picked or passed on, and weighed that against the number of players who have: 1) become reliable starters in MLS (or who later moved overseas), and 2) been able to secure reliable minutes, if fewer of them, aka, journeymen. Also, and because I might have noticed it for the first time, I looked at all the players signed as homegrown players since then to make a similar comparison. Two minor caveats on that: that sample did not include players who were eligible for one draft or another, but who signed elsewhere (e.g., Andrew Gutman for Scotland's Celtic), and who knew that the New England Revolution’s Matt Turner came into the league under “other notable player” in 2016, whatever that means.

Next, some definitions: “reliable starter” means a regular on one or more starting rosters since joining MLS, a definition that grows more flexible with the more recent SuperDrafts, e.g., I doubt anyone would quibble with calling Andrew Farrell or Walker Zimmerman a “reliable starter,” but that’s a tougher call with players like, say, DeJuan Jones, Chris Mueller, or even Richie Laryea. And yet I counted them all. Moreover, I drew a blurry line on either side of the players I dubbed “journeymen,” which group includes some now and former useful players, e.g., Kekuta Manneh, Dominique Badji, Tsubasa Endoh, Jonathan Lewis, Jacori Hayes, or even Danny Musovski. At any rate, I made the choices I did and if you want to look at the same source material and make your own calls, the links are above. For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’ll wind up on wildly different numbers if you do, but I also freely acknowledge that I no less about every team in MLS with each team they add.

MLS Weakly, January 8, 2022: Coaches v Rosters, Spittin' from High Altitude

On playing the hand one is dealt.

If you’re like me, you checked out from most things Major League Soccer after MLS Cup 2021 wrapped up and, let’s be honest, disappointed fiercely (if only locally). And, if you’re like me, you’ve started the cat-herding labor of catching up on what you’ve missed going into the 2022 season. And away we go.

The thrust of this first MLS Weakly of 2022 will view developments around MLS from a vantage both high and narrow - i.e., it will be neither encompassing nor granular, except in re the doings around the two teams this space follows, the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati. I tucked those notes at the bottom and will start instead with the most general of generalities: picking through points of interest in the first quarter of the 2022 domestic/domestic-international calendar. Just to note it, the article linked to just now covers all of 2022, so go as deep as the spirit moves you. A quick run-down:

MLS Preseason starts between January 10-16 - depending on the team - which I’ll care about to the extent I can actually see the games…and without straining; the MLS SuperDraft is on January 11, but the past decade or so has trained me to give zero shits about it; the penultimate CONCACAF World Cup Qualifying (“WCQ”) falls between January 24th and February 2nd…interest pending*; the FIFA World Club Cup plays between February 3rd and 12th, and, based on the teams involved, NEXT; that brings us to the first (personal) hot ticket of the year, the CONCACAF Champions’ League, which starts on February 15th-17th, and I love that perennial heartbreak like a teenage child who has grown to hate me, even if neither of my teams participates (the MLS participants, for the record: Colorado Rapids, Club du Foot Montreal, New England Revolution, New York City FC, and Seattle Sounders), which is to say, take me, I'm yours.

The MLS regular season starts earlier than it ever has, of course, on February 26, so that’s an early Christmas for us all and I’m looking forward to some snow games. That’s also when I plan on regular service resuming in this space. [Related: As an alternative to shutting down this site for the third time(/perhaps a psychological need for attention), I’ve committed to checking out to some extent at the middle of the season - i.e., around the time I feel like narratives have solidified and/or I feel like I’m repeating myself - but I’ll re-engage about 10-12 games before the stretch run.]