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| Have at you! (also, thanks, 200353484!) |
I gave up watching FC Cincinnati for this? A dogpile of draws, some of them lightly rancid, and what can be described as status quo ante, a collective holding of serve, or, more bluntly, at best a thimble-full more than a whole lot of nothing. Pfft.
That’s not to say I didn’t cheat: once I saw that Cincy and Inter Miami CF combined for the second eight-goal game/draw in MLS Week 23 – my Portland Timbers and Minnesota United FC had the other one (and here are my long form notes on that one) - I used that as an excuse to take a longer look at how a second oddball game happened in one midsummer weekend.
Both games required some coach-breaking defending in order to reach their final, 4-4 scores. I saw a headline where Miami coach Phil Neville accused his team of defending like “toddlers” or “children” (don’t know, didn’t read it), but, also, can confirm. Miami, in particular, pushed the “bend-don’t-break” concept to its limits and all over their defensive half; they didn’t defend so much as take up positions and wait for a turnover. That said, the game featured some lovely goals: the sometimes-maligned, oft-subbed Gonzalo Higuain bagged a first-half hat-trick for Miami (his free-kick was dynamite in inverse proportion to Cincy’s wall being gappy shit, but his run/finish of Alejandro Pozeulo’s feed for Miami's second was something), while Brenner started and finished Cincy’s first goal and Alvaro dimed a cross to Brandon Vazquez for what should have been a game-winner for Cincinnati. It was a tragedy to see Cincy’s legs desert them on Miami’s late, late equalizer, but credit to Miami generally and congrats to Christopher McVey for coming back from the dead to score it (seriously, kid looked like he could barely jog five minutes prior).
Imagine all that running and scoring and having it amount to so little. Cincinnati are factually having their best-ever season and they’re still above the playoff line, but they haven’t won a goddamn game since late June. Having suffered through (most of) three seasons (I got bored toward the end of 2021, but also missed nothing but pain), I know Cincy has never had a better team - Vazquez has been a revelation and, with the way Barreal’s come around, having him on the field with Luciano Acosta and with Brenner killing it as something close to a false-9 they can, as I like to say, fuck up a team – and yet. And yet. 1-1-7 in their last nine games. Wish I was making that up. Half-alive, half-dead.
And that whole “running-through-mud” theme expands nicely and fairly to MLS Week 23. A weekend stuffed with mid-table clashes and chances for mid-table teams to strut their stuff against either presently or historically weaker opposition, i.e., games crying out for a result, and with most teams moving like pawns in chess: one step at a time and toward uncertain outcomes.
So as to avoid overselling the rest of this post, the rest of this post reviews MLS Week 23 from a fairly high level. Apart from watching all of Minnesota v Portland and most of Miami v Cincy (spoiled for entertainment this weekend), the I spent real time on (~50 minutes) on just two more game: FC Dallas’ 1-0 win over the Los Angeles Galaxy and the San Jose Earthquakes’ piteous late collapse in a 2-2 draw at home against Real Salt Lake. (Why those two? They seemed the most interesting.) Every other opinion below comes from a combination of the current standings, the (sacred) Form Guide, box scores and highlights. Again, the goal is to give a sense of what’s going on. Ready, set...
If pressed to call a Result of the Week, I’d go with Dallas’ fatter-than-it-looked win over LA at home, with Los Angeles FC’s 2-1 home win over the Seattle Sounders as honorable mention. A second half penalty kick gave the Galaxy a real shot a cheating a draw out of the game, but Martin Paes (right?) got well in front of Dejan Joveljic’s shot and, no, LA got what they deserved this one: nothing. Box score be damned, Dallas created more and better chances (they should have had three by my count). Won’t lie, I didn’t pay LAFC v Seattle any mind, but that one followed recent trends – e.g., LAFC winning all the time, Seattle...doing the opposite - and as much as that result mattered (e.g., Seattle would be over the Timbers on the table right now had they won it), that makes two resume-padding wins for Dallas in their last two games and that’s LA below the playoff line for what I think is the first time in 2022. And I’d hold off on bets on them to get back over it.
A couple other games served up definitive results, but who didn't see Austin FC beating Sporting Kansas City (2-0, and with four legit great Austin “goals” called back for offside; #KilledEm) and the Philadelphia Union steamrolling a wrong-way Houston Dynamo FC (6-0; watching that after this goes up out of sheer sadism). It’s not that you can’t learn something from predictable results, so much as you can’t learn much. At any rate, those wins gave Philly breathing room at the top of the East and kept Austin in Western royalty, while confirming Houston’s sticky mediocrity and deepening the mystery of how Peter Vermes still has a job.
Oh, and it was nice to see DC United give Wayne Rooney a 2-1 winning debut, thanks to Taxi “taxi phone test” Fountas’ (God bless closed-captioning) late, late winner, but it looked like Orlando City FC pissed away three-four gilded insurance goals in the first half alone. In other words, maybe think of this more in terms of Orlando’s persistent failure to launch than signs of life from DC.
Speaking of, Chicago Fire FC muddied late revival with a goal-less draw at home against an Atlanta United FC team with a habit of dying on the road. Chicago thought they had a winner somewhere around the 60th (or thereabouts), but Xherdan Shaqiri fired home from an offside position. Consider that, and the game in general as another “but-for” for MLS Week 32. A Chicago win had a strong hypothetical of putting them level with Cincy.
That’s not to say I didn’t cheat: once I saw that Cincy and Inter Miami CF combined for the second eight-goal game/draw in MLS Week 23 – my Portland Timbers and Minnesota United FC had the other one (and here are my long form notes on that one) - I used that as an excuse to take a longer look at how a second oddball game happened in one midsummer weekend.
Both games required some coach-breaking defending in order to reach their final, 4-4 scores. I saw a headline where Miami coach Phil Neville accused his team of defending like “toddlers” or “children” (don’t know, didn’t read it), but, also, can confirm. Miami, in particular, pushed the “bend-don’t-break” concept to its limits and all over their defensive half; they didn’t defend so much as take up positions and wait for a turnover. That said, the game featured some lovely goals: the sometimes-maligned, oft-subbed Gonzalo Higuain bagged a first-half hat-trick for Miami (his free-kick was dynamite in inverse proportion to Cincy’s wall being gappy shit, but his run/finish of Alejandro Pozeulo’s feed for Miami's second was something), while Brenner started and finished Cincy’s first goal and Alvaro dimed a cross to Brandon Vazquez for what should have been a game-winner for Cincinnati. It was a tragedy to see Cincy’s legs desert them on Miami’s late, late equalizer, but credit to Miami generally and congrats to Christopher McVey for coming back from the dead to score it (seriously, kid looked like he could barely jog five minutes prior).
Imagine all that running and scoring and having it amount to so little. Cincinnati are factually having their best-ever season and they’re still above the playoff line, but they haven’t won a goddamn game since late June. Having suffered through (most of) three seasons (I got bored toward the end of 2021, but also missed nothing but pain), I know Cincy has never had a better team - Vazquez has been a revelation and, with the way Barreal’s come around, having him on the field with Luciano Acosta and with Brenner killing it as something close to a false-9 they can, as I like to say, fuck up a team – and yet. And yet. 1-1-7 in their last nine games. Wish I was making that up. Half-alive, half-dead.
And that whole “running-through-mud” theme expands nicely and fairly to MLS Week 23. A weekend stuffed with mid-table clashes and chances for mid-table teams to strut their stuff against either presently or historically weaker opposition, i.e., games crying out for a result, and with most teams moving like pawns in chess: one step at a time and toward uncertain outcomes.
So as to avoid overselling the rest of this post, the rest of this post reviews MLS Week 23 from a fairly high level. Apart from watching all of Minnesota v Portland and most of Miami v Cincy (spoiled for entertainment this weekend), the I spent real time on (~50 minutes) on just two more game: FC Dallas’ 1-0 win over the Los Angeles Galaxy and the San Jose Earthquakes’ piteous late collapse in a 2-2 draw at home against Real Salt Lake. (Why those two? They seemed the most interesting.) Every other opinion below comes from a combination of the current standings, the (sacred) Form Guide, box scores and highlights. Again, the goal is to give a sense of what’s going on. Ready, set...
If pressed to call a Result of the Week, I’d go with Dallas’ fatter-than-it-looked win over LA at home, with Los Angeles FC’s 2-1 home win over the Seattle Sounders as honorable mention. A second half penalty kick gave the Galaxy a real shot a cheating a draw out of the game, but Martin Paes (right?) got well in front of Dejan Joveljic’s shot and, no, LA got what they deserved this one: nothing. Box score be damned, Dallas created more and better chances (they should have had three by my count). Won’t lie, I didn’t pay LAFC v Seattle any mind, but that one followed recent trends – e.g., LAFC winning all the time, Seattle...doing the opposite - and as much as that result mattered (e.g., Seattle would be over the Timbers on the table right now had they won it), that makes two resume-padding wins for Dallas in their last two games and that’s LA below the playoff line for what I think is the first time in 2022. And I’d hold off on bets on them to get back over it.
A couple other games served up definitive results, but who didn't see Austin FC beating Sporting Kansas City (2-0, and with four legit great Austin “goals” called back for offside; #KilledEm) and the Philadelphia Union steamrolling a wrong-way Houston Dynamo FC (6-0; watching that after this goes up out of sheer sadism). It’s not that you can’t learn something from predictable results, so much as you can’t learn much. At any rate, those wins gave Philly breathing room at the top of the East and kept Austin in Western royalty, while confirming Houston’s sticky mediocrity and deepening the mystery of how Peter Vermes still has a job.
Oh, and it was nice to see DC United give Wayne Rooney a 2-1 winning debut, thanks to Taxi “taxi phone test” Fountas’ (God bless closed-captioning) late, late winner, but it looked like Orlando City FC pissed away three-four gilded insurance goals in the first half alone. In other words, maybe think of this more in terms of Orlando’s persistent failure to launch than signs of life from DC.
Speaking of, Chicago Fire FC muddied late revival with a goal-less draw at home against an Atlanta United FC team with a habit of dying on the road. Chicago thought they had a winner somewhere around the 60th (or thereabouts), but Xherdan Shaqiri fired home from an offside position. Consider that, and the game in general as another “but-for” for MLS Week 32. A Chicago win had a strong hypothetical of putting them level with Cincy.
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| Yep, still there. (actual title: "older-person-at-door") |
Let’s see...who else blew off an opportunity this weekend? Based on what I saw, New York City FC barely showed up against Club du Foot Montreal (seriously, this box score is nuts), only to have Montreal respond by squandering every opportunity they created. Some of Montreal’s misses and miscues bordered on parody, if I remember correctly, but their shared stall doesn’t really affect either team. The same dynamic applied to another goal-less draw between two teams a little deeper in the Eastern Conference standings. Djordje Petrovic stuffed Lorenzo Insigne’s penalty kick – a goal that would have validated what looked like a brighter afternoon for Toronto – and I saw Revs fans celebrate that....which is a choice, but they should be more worried the big picture – e.g., where the Revs place in the standings after (holy shit!) seven games without a win. In fairness, they’ve gone 0-2-5 over that time and against a tough schedule, but....well, what does a team become when they can’t win games against good teams, but a middling-to-bad team?
I suppose San Jose’s choking home draw to RSL goes into the same file. The comparison isn’t perfect in either case, but, like Chicago and Toronto, the ‘Quakes show enough signs of life to keep people checking on them. And, in keeping with that, they looked the better team for as much of the game that I watched. It wasn’t just that San Jose had at least two great chances in the minutes leading up to RSL’s late, late winner, but that both of RSL’s goals came out of something close to nowhere. Because I knew how the game ended before the long video review, comments from the broadcast booth about San Jose’s problems with finishing off games resonated a little louder. I still don’t know how they lost that game, honestly, but it probably relates to what has them eight points under the playoff line.
That’s most of the games. Charlotte FC v Columbus Crew SC got canceled – think it was the weather – and I didn’t look into Nashville SC’s 1-1 home draw versus the Vancouver Whitecaps because who gives a shit about Nashville drawing at home? It’s what they do, for one, but Nashville was never really at risk of going below the line this weekend, and Vancouver had no chance of getting over it.
That should cover everything. The approach should look something like this going forward, i.e., more about narrative and trends than details and tactics. If that floats yer boat, come on back next week. I’m aiming for Monday night next week, but we’ll see...
I suppose San Jose’s choking home draw to RSL goes into the same file. The comparison isn’t perfect in either case, but, like Chicago and Toronto, the ‘Quakes show enough signs of life to keep people checking on them. And, in keeping with that, they looked the better team for as much of the game that I watched. It wasn’t just that San Jose had at least two great chances in the minutes leading up to RSL’s late, late winner, but that both of RSL’s goals came out of something close to nowhere. Because I knew how the game ended before the long video review, comments from the broadcast booth about San Jose’s problems with finishing off games resonated a little louder. I still don’t know how they lost that game, honestly, but it probably relates to what has them eight points under the playoff line.
That’s most of the games. Charlotte FC v Columbus Crew SC got canceled – think it was the weather – and I didn’t look into Nashville SC’s 1-1 home draw versus the Vancouver Whitecaps because who gives a shit about Nashville drawing at home? It’s what they do, for one, but Nashville was never really at risk of going below the line this weekend, and Vancouver had no chance of getting over it.
That should cover everything. The approach should look something like this going forward, i.e., more about narrative and trends than details and tactics. If that floats yer boat, come on back next week. I’m aiming for Monday night next week, but we’ll see...
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