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| Good God, yes. Now stop shouting. |
I know I said I’d post a Portland Timbers review/preview by the end of the weekend, but I say all kinds of things that smart people take with a massive fucking salt lick – e.g., I’ll never post this feature again, I’m checking out of twitter, etc. etc. etc.
With the season wrapped up and MLS Cup in the well-heeled hands of Los Angeles FC – who, for the record, I doubted to the end – putting a narrative bow on Major League Soccer’s 2022 felt like a more fitting post for this Sunday night. If you’re fishing for something tactical or stats-driven, close this post immediately and look elsewhere. I have a simple goal for this post, one that boils down to answering one simple question: did Major League Soccer deliver a quality product in 2022?
Before digging in, set aside whatever frustration you feel about your local team’s failure to achieve – that goes double for Timbers fans, who suffered one of those even-year grinds where nothing went right and they missed out on the good stuff. Going the other way, having low expectations going in to 2022 could mean you wound up something close to happy about your team’s season, even if they didn’t so much as see a flash of silverware....and, there, FC Cincinnati isn’t the only team that fits that description.
With all that in mind, let’s start by working backwards from MLS Cup 2022 to the end of the regular season.
First thing first, 2022 ended with the rare feat of both No. 1 seeds – LAFC and the Philadelphia Union – making the final. A quick, sloppy review of the final standings of seasons past shows (Source 1 and Source 2) that has happened just three other times in league history – DC United and the Los Angeles Galaxy in 1998, the New England Revolution and the Galaxy again in 2002, and the Chicago Fire and the San Jose Earthquakes in 2003. All of those happened during the first 10 years of the league’s existence, back when the league fielded between 10 team and 12 – which put less clutter between any one of them and the top seed. A No. 1 seed reached the final 10 more times, but, again, the hit rate clusters to the league’s early history. In the years after 2006 – aka, the league’s 10th birthday – only four No. 1 seeds clawed their way to MLS Cup – the Columbus Crew in 2008, the Galaxy in 2009 and again in 2011, and Toronto FC in 2017.
Fortunately for all concerned, fans of both teams, neutrals, advertisers and current and potential investors, Philly and LAFC delivered a final for the ages. Hard-fought (just ask Maxime Crepeau and Corey Burke), technically sound and occasionally attractive, even with most of the goals coming late, both teams combined for a Big Apple final, i.e., a game that never slept. Not one goal came from open play and I think just one saw a foot touch the ball last (Jack Elliott’s 2nd; again, that's Jack Elliott), but the score Philly battled back to equalize twice before finally taking the lead balls deep into stoppage time, only to see the much-hyped Christian Bale steal a draw still deeper into borrowed time. Few finals feature a lot of scoring and precious few see teams trading blows to the death.
As for the penalty kicks...I mean, what can you call them but anticlimactic? The writing was probably on the wall when Daniel Gazdag’s plant foot slid out on the Union’s first penalty, but LAFC’s John McCarthy back-to-back saves on Union players’ leg-weary penalty kicks wrote a stirring counter-narrative into the history books. To answer the age-old question, yes, I was entertained...
...and I’d like to say the same about the rest of the 2022 playoffs, but...nah. And no small part of that goes back to the way the regular season ended.
Not many teams set standards for performance or excellence this season. The two top seeds did quite well, essentially running to their first-place finishes, but the great tangled knots in the middle of both conferences defined the 2022 season, at least in my mind. Even allowing for the separation achieved by Club du Foot Montreal and New York City FC in the East and Austin FC and (maybe) FC Dallas in the West, Decision Day (the branded name for the final day of the regular season) kicked off with ample open questions in the air. Too many of those questions followed from bad results and/or play, unfortunately, which boiled down to too few teams hitting the post-season in stride. Montreal belongs in that category, as did NYCFC and, of all teams, Inter Miami CF and Cincinnati, but that’s it by all but the most generous interpretations.
With the season wrapped up and MLS Cup in the well-heeled hands of Los Angeles FC – who, for the record, I doubted to the end – putting a narrative bow on Major League Soccer’s 2022 felt like a more fitting post for this Sunday night. If you’re fishing for something tactical or stats-driven, close this post immediately and look elsewhere. I have a simple goal for this post, one that boils down to answering one simple question: did Major League Soccer deliver a quality product in 2022?
Before digging in, set aside whatever frustration you feel about your local team’s failure to achieve – that goes double for Timbers fans, who suffered one of those even-year grinds where nothing went right and they missed out on the good stuff. Going the other way, having low expectations going in to 2022 could mean you wound up something close to happy about your team’s season, even if they didn’t so much as see a flash of silverware....and, there, FC Cincinnati isn’t the only team that fits that description.
With all that in mind, let’s start by working backwards from MLS Cup 2022 to the end of the regular season.
First thing first, 2022 ended with the rare feat of both No. 1 seeds – LAFC and the Philadelphia Union – making the final. A quick, sloppy review of the final standings of seasons past shows (Source 1 and Source 2) that has happened just three other times in league history – DC United and the Los Angeles Galaxy in 1998, the New England Revolution and the Galaxy again in 2002, and the Chicago Fire and the San Jose Earthquakes in 2003. All of those happened during the first 10 years of the league’s existence, back when the league fielded between 10 team and 12 – which put less clutter between any one of them and the top seed. A No. 1 seed reached the final 10 more times, but, again, the hit rate clusters to the league’s early history. In the years after 2006 – aka, the league’s 10th birthday – only four No. 1 seeds clawed their way to MLS Cup – the Columbus Crew in 2008, the Galaxy in 2009 and again in 2011, and Toronto FC in 2017.
Fortunately for all concerned, fans of both teams, neutrals, advertisers and current and potential investors, Philly and LAFC delivered a final for the ages. Hard-fought (just ask Maxime Crepeau and Corey Burke), technically sound and occasionally attractive, even with most of the goals coming late, both teams combined for a Big Apple final, i.e., a game that never slept. Not one goal came from open play and I think just one saw a foot touch the ball last (Jack Elliott’s 2nd; again, that's Jack Elliott), but the score Philly battled back to equalize twice before finally taking the lead balls deep into stoppage time, only to see the much-hyped Christian Bale steal a draw still deeper into borrowed time. Few finals feature a lot of scoring and precious few see teams trading blows to the death.
As for the penalty kicks...I mean, what can you call them but anticlimactic? The writing was probably on the wall when Daniel Gazdag’s plant foot slid out on the Union’s first penalty, but LAFC’s John McCarthy back-to-back saves on Union players’ leg-weary penalty kicks wrote a stirring counter-narrative into the history books. To answer the age-old question, yes, I was entertained...
...and I’d like to say the same about the rest of the 2022 playoffs, but...nah. And no small part of that goes back to the way the regular season ended.
Not many teams set standards for performance or excellence this season. The two top seeds did quite well, essentially running to their first-place finishes, but the great tangled knots in the middle of both conferences defined the 2022 season, at least in my mind. Even allowing for the separation achieved by Club du Foot Montreal and New York City FC in the East and Austin FC and (maybe) FC Dallas in the West, Decision Day (the branded name for the final day of the regular season) kicked off with ample open questions in the air. Too many of those questions followed from bad results and/or play, unfortunately, which boiled down to too few teams hitting the post-season in stride. Montreal belongs in that category, as did NYCFC and, of all teams, Inter Miami CF and Cincinnati, but that’s it by all but the most generous interpretations.
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| The coarse stuff has a slow-burn quality to it... |
Here's a fun aside: the hottest non-playoff teams going into Decision Day: Miami, Sporting Kansas City, the Vancouver Whitecaps and Charlotte FC, who had three wins each. The last three also had long odds of making the 2022 playoffs, at best, and they all lost on the last day of the season (as did Miami), some of them to teams who had stumbled down the stretch, sometimes badly – e.g., Red Bull New York, who beat Charlotte 2-0 after losing three of their last four, and Minnesota United FC, who went 0-5-1 before beating the ‘Caps 2-0. Just to note it, because nothing makes a wound sing like a little salt, Real Salt Lake beat the Timbers on Decision Day after a thin seven points over the prior eight games.
Most of the wrong teams had real momentum, basically, so it’s little wonder the first round of the playoffs didn’t see any real upsets. In the context of the Red Bulls record toward the end, I don’t think Cincy’s win over them counts (and Cincinnati was good for it, besides) and it was all home/better teams from there. That’s not to say every post-season game lacked for excitement or just plain sucked – Cincy gave the Union a hell of a game before succumbing and the Galaxy gave eventual champs, LAFC, a real scare in the Western Conference Seminal. And, sure, maybe I’m just making fun of Austin FC here, but the way LAFC straight ran them over in the Western Conference Final makes a pretty solid case that they had the easiest path for going deep, but the thin layer of cream did rose to the top, even if it wasn’t the thickest layer in league history.
There was a lot of predictability, in other words, and, as noted up top with the business about the No. 1 seeds, that broke with the long tradition that amounts to a complaint about MLS that has become cliche – i.e., it’s about getting hot at the right time. Maybe that appeals to some people, and wanting the better regular season team to best a lower seed in the playoffs is hardly crazy, but it sucked a certain quantity of intrigue, and dare I say menace (I dare, I dare) out of this year’s post-season.
Happily, the rest of the 2022 regular season served up some good storylines, as well as a couple real shocks that teed up a handful of really compelling narratives for 2023. I’m cooking up a follow-up post (or two; thinking one for each conference) that will go deeper into all of them, but, to name a few: what happens to the Seattle Sounders after missing the playoffs for the first time in their MLS history, and how the hell did last year’s record-setting, runaway Supporters’ Shield winners, New England, wind up missing this years by the same margin as Seattle? You’ve got other teasers – e.g., how much money can Toronto burn before it pays off on the field, can the two signings (William Agada and Erik Thommy) that turned around SKC’s season too late help them carry that form into 2023, and can Charlotte (or Austin or Cincinnati, for that matter) build on seasons that saucily slapped expectations and called them fresh? – and that gets you to about half the league with good stories to sell to their fans. Not too shabby, especially when you can slip in a warm and wonderful about RSL shouting back rumors of their demise one more time and against even more doubters.
That leaves some teams caught in their own personal, seemingly eternal mires – e.g., San Jose, Houston Dynamo FC, DC and Chicago – plus a handful of others keeping up with the pack but neither breaking away or falling (boring), but I’d call 2022 a respectable product, if not a decent one. For all the falling about and apart that made them, most games had stakes for one team or both up to the last couple weeks of the season. And, as noted above, Decision Day settled enough questions to preserve its brand as an event.
Thus begins the off-season downloading. I’ve got a couple more ideas in the tank and hope to get those out before the World Cup. Which I might watch because John Oliver said I could. Till then.
Most of the wrong teams had real momentum, basically, so it’s little wonder the first round of the playoffs didn’t see any real upsets. In the context of the Red Bulls record toward the end, I don’t think Cincy’s win over them counts (and Cincinnati was good for it, besides) and it was all home/better teams from there. That’s not to say every post-season game lacked for excitement or just plain sucked – Cincy gave the Union a hell of a game before succumbing and the Galaxy gave eventual champs, LAFC, a real scare in the Western Conference Seminal. And, sure, maybe I’m just making fun of Austin FC here, but the way LAFC straight ran them over in the Western Conference Final makes a pretty solid case that they had the easiest path for going deep, but the thin layer of cream did rose to the top, even if it wasn’t the thickest layer in league history.
There was a lot of predictability, in other words, and, as noted up top with the business about the No. 1 seeds, that broke with the long tradition that amounts to a complaint about MLS that has become cliche – i.e., it’s about getting hot at the right time. Maybe that appeals to some people, and wanting the better regular season team to best a lower seed in the playoffs is hardly crazy, but it sucked a certain quantity of intrigue, and dare I say menace (I dare, I dare) out of this year’s post-season.
Happily, the rest of the 2022 regular season served up some good storylines, as well as a couple real shocks that teed up a handful of really compelling narratives for 2023. I’m cooking up a follow-up post (or two; thinking one for each conference) that will go deeper into all of them, but, to name a few: what happens to the Seattle Sounders after missing the playoffs for the first time in their MLS history, and how the hell did last year’s record-setting, runaway Supporters’ Shield winners, New England, wind up missing this years by the same margin as Seattle? You’ve got other teasers – e.g., how much money can Toronto burn before it pays off on the field, can the two signings (William Agada and Erik Thommy) that turned around SKC’s season too late help them carry that form into 2023, and can Charlotte (or Austin or Cincinnati, for that matter) build on seasons that saucily slapped expectations and called them fresh? – and that gets you to about half the league with good stories to sell to their fans. Not too shabby, especially when you can slip in a warm and wonderful about RSL shouting back rumors of their demise one more time and against even more doubters.
That leaves some teams caught in their own personal, seemingly eternal mires – e.g., San Jose, Houston Dynamo FC, DC and Chicago – plus a handful of others keeping up with the pack but neither breaking away or falling (boring), but I’d call 2022 a respectable product, if not a decent one. For all the falling about and apart that made them, most games had stakes for one team or both up to the last couple weeks of the season. And, as noted above, Decision Day settled enough questions to preserve its brand as an event.
Thus begins the off-season downloading. I’ve got a couple more ideas in the tank and hope to get those out before the World Cup. Which I might watch because John Oliver said I could. Till then.
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