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| What we all want, and not so deep down. |
This post has exactly one through-line: everything relates to Major League Soccer. Now, let’s throw some shit at the wall.
I want to start with a wee celebration on the occasion of Sacha Kljestan’s retirement – and I’d like to begin those notes by admitting I haven’t done this kind of thing nearly enough. Players exit the league all the time, of course – not a few of them go on to better things, some become Alexi Lalas, aka, a guy doing a never-ending, insufferable bit – and they go out with nothing more than a few hundred tweets thanking them for their service. More of them deserve better than get it, basically, and Kljestan’s definitely one of those guys.
People who have followed MLS long enough probably remember the zeitgeisty phrasing that talked about it in terms of versions – i.e., MLS 2.0, 3.0, maybe with a 2.3 or 2.6 thrown in for those hung up on finer distinctions. Real old timers remember when the league contracted in 2002, cutting two Florida teams with very Florida names, the Miami Fusion and the (league OG) Tampa Bay Mutiny. While it didn’t take long for MLS to begin what looks like inexorable expansion in hindsight – starting with Real Salt Lake and Chivas USA in ’05 – it is important, for the purposes of this exercise, to try to imagine watching a tiny league that forever seemed on the verge of collapse.
Chivas USA drafted a young Sacha Kljestan in 2006 as a Gen Adidas player. While neither they nor RSL hit the ground running, Chivas USA turned things around first, topping the West in 2007 – and even pushing DC United for the Supporters’ Shield that same season. I barely remember Chivas' roster from that era – though much like New York City FC, they borrowed talent from their parent team, Chivas de Guadalajara – but Kljestan quickly stood out as a star player. And I mean that in the sense that he could play soccer: he had the skill, brains and technique to do good and interesting things on the field. Moreover, he joined an ever-growing collection of American players who fit the same description. Some of those careers in the league started before Kljestan’s (e.g., Clint Mathis, Clint Dempsey during his New England Revolution days), some became direct rivals for a time (e.g., Landon Donovan), and they all added their own piece to the idea that the United States of America could produce credible soccer talent. I’m not sure I can adequately describe what that felt like to anyone who didn’t watch MLS in the 1990s, but it was nice to feel something brighter than a nagging sense of doom.
And when he came back after five years with one of Belgium’s bigger teams (Anderlecht), he became the frontal lobe for one of the legitimately great, Shield-gobbling Red Bull New York teams of the second half of the 2010s; Kljestan logged 51 assists over his three years with the Red Bulls, and pitched in 16 goals besides. He never put his mark on the U.S. National Team the same way some of the contemporaries noted above did – where and how he played had a lot to do with that - but he knocked hard enough at the fringes that the question of “who not him?” was never too far away.
I can’t say exactly when MLS became the league it is today – i.e., broadly credible, a decent place to develop talent where bigger teams/leagues can see it for some, a viable place to build a career for others – but I sincerely credit Kljestan’s generation with making that present possible. With that, let’s turn to the present...the past week, specifically.
I think we’re still a couple weeks out from actual preseason action – aka, when people start kicking things – but The Big Warm-Up for the 2023 MLS Season has begun. That still leaves time for new additions – and may your team(s) and mine find some gems before the clock strikes midnight – but the serious horse-trading has already commenced, like a melody playing over the all the grunting of preseason camps all over the country. The rest of this post flags the handful of moves I can make sense of without talking out of the wrong hole. About that.
Every MLS offseason draws a unique species to social media, specifically, the amateur pundit who seems abruptly conversant in obscure leagues – e.g., people who talk about the Honduran top-flight one day, the Croatian the next, and all that while somehow having a deep familiarity with the ins & outs of last year’s season in Argentina. I know there are hundreds of thousands of people who, unlike me, follow leagues around the world and that some things they say do pan out, but...c’mon, no one can watch a world’s worth of leagues, never mind more than three (in my mind), so what can half that chatter be but third-hand info passed on with half-earned confidence?
All that’s to say, I couldn’t give a good scouting report on Los Angeles FC’s hot, young (that came out wrong) Croatian signing, Stipe Biuk, with a gun to my head, or what South African Njabulo Blom will mean for St. Louis CITY SC’s inaugural season. I’ve never seen either of them play, I don’t know how they’ll adjust to MLS’s unusual travel demands, how well and quickly they’ll adapt to moving far away from home at a young age, whether they’re injury-prone, etc. Related to that last sub-clause, I’m starting to react to word of recurrent or severe injuries in a way that borders on superstition, as if I can see the footprints of a black cat walking across the report as I’m reading it. There, I’m very much looking at Ashley Westwood, who joined Charlotte FC for the 2023 season. Blame seeing the Portland Timbers’ Sebastian Blanco come back a flittering shell of the menace he once was for that...
Bottom line, the only players I feel qualified to talk about are the ones who have either a couple of seasons in MLS, or the ones who had a single season strong enough to get fans excited about his personal future. The calculus changes a bit when an unknown player joins a team I feel like I know well enough – e.g., 25-year-old Finnish international center back, Leo Vaisanen joining Austin FC – because then it becomes a question of whether the team attempted to fill the correct position of need (full disclosure: I thought Austin defended well enough last season, so, no, I don’t entirely get that move unless Vaisanen is butter-silky on the ball or something).
I want to start with a wee celebration on the occasion of Sacha Kljestan’s retirement – and I’d like to begin those notes by admitting I haven’t done this kind of thing nearly enough. Players exit the league all the time, of course – not a few of them go on to better things, some become Alexi Lalas, aka, a guy doing a never-ending, insufferable bit – and they go out with nothing more than a few hundred tweets thanking them for their service. More of them deserve better than get it, basically, and Kljestan’s definitely one of those guys.
People who have followed MLS long enough probably remember the zeitgeisty phrasing that talked about it in terms of versions – i.e., MLS 2.0, 3.0, maybe with a 2.3 or 2.6 thrown in for those hung up on finer distinctions. Real old timers remember when the league contracted in 2002, cutting two Florida teams with very Florida names, the Miami Fusion and the (league OG) Tampa Bay Mutiny. While it didn’t take long for MLS to begin what looks like inexorable expansion in hindsight – starting with Real Salt Lake and Chivas USA in ’05 – it is important, for the purposes of this exercise, to try to imagine watching a tiny league that forever seemed on the verge of collapse.
Chivas USA drafted a young Sacha Kljestan in 2006 as a Gen Adidas player. While neither they nor RSL hit the ground running, Chivas USA turned things around first, topping the West in 2007 – and even pushing DC United for the Supporters’ Shield that same season. I barely remember Chivas' roster from that era – though much like New York City FC, they borrowed talent from their parent team, Chivas de Guadalajara – but Kljestan quickly stood out as a star player. And I mean that in the sense that he could play soccer: he had the skill, brains and technique to do good and interesting things on the field. Moreover, he joined an ever-growing collection of American players who fit the same description. Some of those careers in the league started before Kljestan’s (e.g., Clint Mathis, Clint Dempsey during his New England Revolution days), some became direct rivals for a time (e.g., Landon Donovan), and they all added their own piece to the idea that the United States of America could produce credible soccer talent. I’m not sure I can adequately describe what that felt like to anyone who didn’t watch MLS in the 1990s, but it was nice to feel something brighter than a nagging sense of doom.
And when he came back after five years with one of Belgium’s bigger teams (Anderlecht), he became the frontal lobe for one of the legitimately great, Shield-gobbling Red Bull New York teams of the second half of the 2010s; Kljestan logged 51 assists over his three years with the Red Bulls, and pitched in 16 goals besides. He never put his mark on the U.S. National Team the same way some of the contemporaries noted above did – where and how he played had a lot to do with that - but he knocked hard enough at the fringes that the question of “who not him?” was never too far away.
I can’t say exactly when MLS became the league it is today – i.e., broadly credible, a decent place to develop talent where bigger teams/leagues can see it for some, a viable place to build a career for others – but I sincerely credit Kljestan’s generation with making that present possible. With that, let’s turn to the present...the past week, specifically.
I think we’re still a couple weeks out from actual preseason action – aka, when people start kicking things – but The Big Warm-Up for the 2023 MLS Season has begun. That still leaves time for new additions – and may your team(s) and mine find some gems before the clock strikes midnight – but the serious horse-trading has already commenced, like a melody playing over the all the grunting of preseason camps all over the country. The rest of this post flags the handful of moves I can make sense of without talking out of the wrong hole. About that.
Every MLS offseason draws a unique species to social media, specifically, the amateur pundit who seems abruptly conversant in obscure leagues – e.g., people who talk about the Honduran top-flight one day, the Croatian the next, and all that while somehow having a deep familiarity with the ins & outs of last year’s season in Argentina. I know there are hundreds of thousands of people who, unlike me, follow leagues around the world and that some things they say do pan out, but...c’mon, no one can watch a world’s worth of leagues, never mind more than three (in my mind), so what can half that chatter be but third-hand info passed on with half-earned confidence?
All that’s to say, I couldn’t give a good scouting report on Los Angeles FC’s hot, young (that came out wrong) Croatian signing, Stipe Biuk, with a gun to my head, or what South African Njabulo Blom will mean for St. Louis CITY SC’s inaugural season. I’ve never seen either of them play, I don’t know how they’ll adjust to MLS’s unusual travel demands, how well and quickly they’ll adapt to moving far away from home at a young age, whether they’re injury-prone, etc. Related to that last sub-clause, I’m starting to react to word of recurrent or severe injuries in a way that borders on superstition, as if I can see the footprints of a black cat walking across the report as I’m reading it. There, I’m very much looking at Ashley Westwood, who joined Charlotte FC for the 2023 season. Blame seeing the Portland Timbers’ Sebastian Blanco come back a flittering shell of the menace he once was for that...
Bottom line, the only players I feel qualified to talk about are the ones who have either a couple of seasons in MLS, or the ones who had a single season strong enough to get fans excited about his personal future. The calculus changes a bit when an unknown player joins a team I feel like I know well enough – e.g., 25-year-old Finnish international center back, Leo Vaisanen joining Austin FC – because then it becomes a question of whether the team attempted to fill the correct position of need (full disclosure: I thought Austin defended well enough last season, so, no, I don’t entirely get that move unless Vaisanen is butter-silky on the ball or something).
That’s it for the caveats. The rest of this post will tick through points of interest, one team at a time and in no conscious order. Well, apart from starting with the two teams I follow...
FC Cincinnati
In his Eastern Conference “Depth Chart” review, Matt Doyle laid out what looks like a correct stab at Cincy’s so-far starting XI for 2023 – and where they’re thin to differing degrees of peril. At this point, center back feels like the only position of acute need. I’ve also seen one free agent center back after another (e.g., Aaron Long to LAFC and Matt Hedges to Toronto FC) come off the board, and Alexander Callens on the cusp of going anywhere but where I’d like him to (e.g., Cincinnati or Portland). As such, I’m going to squeeze all the glee I can out of Alvaro Barreal’s contract extension.
I do like Barreal, even if he lingers in that space between a player you like to have on the team and one you’d beg the front office to drop the second a “better” player comes around (scare quotes intended to mean, careful what you wish for). Still, he's there and he's done good work (his best, in my mind) playing in those wide left spaces...as a like-for-like replacement for Luciano Acosta, not so much.
For all that, Cincy still feels like a good bet to go places in 2023. Things are a little more complicated for...
FC Cincinnati
In his Eastern Conference “Depth Chart” review, Matt Doyle laid out what looks like a correct stab at Cincy’s so-far starting XI for 2023 – and where they’re thin to differing degrees of peril. At this point, center back feels like the only position of acute need. I’ve also seen one free agent center back after another (e.g., Aaron Long to LAFC and Matt Hedges to Toronto FC) come off the board, and Alexander Callens on the cusp of going anywhere but where I’d like him to (e.g., Cincinnati or Portland). As such, I’m going to squeeze all the glee I can out of Alvaro Barreal’s contract extension.
I do like Barreal, even if he lingers in that space between a player you like to have on the team and one you’d beg the front office to drop the second a “better” player comes around (scare quotes intended to mean, careful what you wish for). Still, he's there and he's done good work (his best, in my mind) playing in those wide left spaces...as a like-for-like replacement for Luciano Acosta, not so much.
For all that, Cincy still feels like a good bet to go places in 2023. Things are a little more complicated for...
The Portland Timbers
Nothing of note has happened (e.g., Nathan Fogaca has not signed on for 2023, but did join preseason camp), which means nothing has changed since the last post, i.e., I’m still nervous about...literally most of the team, while also laying an incredible psychic burden on Evander. And, when Matt Doyle posted his starting line-up for the Timbers in his Western Conference “Depth Chart” review, the midfield math didn’t add up.
I don’t think that’s how Gio Savarese will line up the Timbers – or at least I hope that isn’t - but, despite seeing people get excited about it, I would rather strenuously object to the Timbers lining up in so much as the suggestion of the 4-3-3 laid out in Doyle’s post. At least 70% of that flows from a panic over how long Diego Chara can keep defying gods and aging, so make of that what you will...which I suspect amounts to a long way of saying, the floor will fall out one day, and I anticipate a loud thud when it does.
Moving on, now, to notes on the rest of the league. In the order the cosmos feeds them to me and a fair amount of it riffing off Doyle’s comments in the two posts linked to above.
I don’t know what to make of Charlotte FC and I have no goddamn idea how well St. Louis built its inaugural roster – even after a second look. Charlotte didn’t do so bad in their first season, they stayed in close enough to the end to keep it respectable, etc., but I’m still having a hard time seeing either team upset the powers in their respective conferences.
Related, for all the times I’ve seen talk of DC United building a “win-now” team for 2023, the Revs made a real commitment to staying one step ahead by picking up Dave Romney from Nashville SC and the still-shockingly 26-year-old Latif Blessing from LAFC. The Revs have strong attacking pieces - so long as they can keep them healthy, at least – and those two signings should go fair distance from buying that attack time and padding to pick up points. Moreover, I can’t shake the feeling that DC have several more rivers to cross before their name shares a sentence with the word “competitive.”
Houston Dynamo FC belongs to the same club as DC. Both teams have operated under clouds, if of different thicknesses (and DC’s is far thinner), for some years and I really do believe getting past that involves some combination of an exorcism and winning tons of games...plus maybe a blood sacrifice or two. That’s to say, I see they signed a young Ivan Franco (22) from one of Paraguay’s “powerhouse” clubs, but the clouds still obscure the paths to their future.
Can I bring myself to take the Colorado Rapids seriously if they wrap the 2023 preseason with taking Kevin Cabral from the Los Angeles Galaxy and Calvin Harris from FC Cincy? Nah.
From what I gathered (at a minimum) second-hand, Gonzalo Higuain’s last-gasp heroics lifted Inter Miami CF into the 2022 post-season. While I didn’t see his final run at glory, but I’m glad I read this from his farewell to the last league he’ll play in:
“This year has been one of the ones I’ve enjoyed most. I never thought MLS would give me that. My intention was to come to enjoy and compete, but I never thought it would turn into one of my best moments of my career. This year has been just that, thanks to everyone who has helped me.”
Related, Miami lost all those goals and all that inspiration. Can they replace it? And with something more substantive than rumors about Lionel Messi joining them?
Finally, and to borrow the thrust of the argument from Matt Doyle’s “depth chart” article, Chicago Fire FC have decided to stand something like pat on the hand they played, or tried to, and not to the greatest affect in 2022. They did just sign a fullback from partner/sister club, Switzerland’s Lugano FC, named Maren Haile-Selassie, but I only know one Haile Selassie (and him not so well) and nice as it is to have a good fullback, they don’t tend to rewri even “wingers” can only help change history. That is, they aren’t often the people who write it.
Now, to turn to news about the teams who most people call competitive.
While I won’t pretend (or care) to understand how MLS’s roster rules work, Club du Foot Montreal banked a considerable amount of money over the off-season – a combined $17.5 million from the sales of Ismael Kome, Alistair Johnstons and Djordje Mihailovic - and that...just seems like a lot of money for this longtime fan, implausible even. For reasons I still don’t fully understand, I have a knack for catching Montreal at their aesthetic worst, which is to say I don’t fully understand the secret to their success...I only appreciate it keeps happening whether I see it coming or not.
Related very much thereto, I never saw anything super special in Wilfried Nancy’s Montreal team – though, again, they did fine so lick the nearest grain of salt – but a fair number of people seem just as excited about Columbus Crew SC’s chances now that Nancy signed on as their head coach. And, if those people are right, that’s one more team fighting for space above the playoff line – and I suppose that’s a thought I wish to close on.
The moves will keep happening – e.g., yes, I think Atlanta United FC did good by luring Garth Lagerwey away from the Seattle Sounders, but don’t know when that will pay off, and, yes, I don’t really know what to make of Heber’s arrival in Seattle (see, discussion of injuries) – and the promise of a better season will live on for both Atlanta and Seattle until the music and moves stop. And yet, how much fluidity can really coexist with, say, the Philadelphia Union looking just as ominous as they did in 2022 and when last season’s double winners, LAFC, signing Long (and with assurances the math panned out)?
All that’s to say, take a look at the teams who finished on the right side of the playoff line in 2022 and ask yourself how many of them you see falling under it in 2023. Different people will reach different conclusions, naturally, but there’s only so much room at the proverbial inn.
Nothing of note has happened (e.g., Nathan Fogaca has not signed on for 2023, but did join preseason camp), which means nothing has changed since the last post, i.e., I’m still nervous about...literally most of the team, while also laying an incredible psychic burden on Evander. And, when Matt Doyle posted his starting line-up for the Timbers in his Western Conference “Depth Chart” review, the midfield math didn’t add up.
I don’t think that’s how Gio Savarese will line up the Timbers – or at least I hope that isn’t - but, despite seeing people get excited about it, I would rather strenuously object to the Timbers lining up in so much as the suggestion of the 4-3-3 laid out in Doyle’s post. At least 70% of that flows from a panic over how long Diego Chara can keep defying gods and aging, so make of that what you will...which I suspect amounts to a long way of saying, the floor will fall out one day, and I anticipate a loud thud when it does.
Moving on, now, to notes on the rest of the league. In the order the cosmos feeds them to me and a fair amount of it riffing off Doyle’s comments in the two posts linked to above.
I don’t know what to make of Charlotte FC and I have no goddamn idea how well St. Louis built its inaugural roster – even after a second look. Charlotte didn’t do so bad in their first season, they stayed in close enough to the end to keep it respectable, etc., but I’m still having a hard time seeing either team upset the powers in their respective conferences.
Related, for all the times I’ve seen talk of DC United building a “win-now” team for 2023, the Revs made a real commitment to staying one step ahead by picking up Dave Romney from Nashville SC and the still-shockingly 26-year-old Latif Blessing from LAFC. The Revs have strong attacking pieces - so long as they can keep them healthy, at least – and those two signings should go fair distance from buying that attack time and padding to pick up points. Moreover, I can’t shake the feeling that DC have several more rivers to cross before their name shares a sentence with the word “competitive.”
Houston Dynamo FC belongs to the same club as DC. Both teams have operated under clouds, if of different thicknesses (and DC’s is far thinner), for some years and I really do believe getting past that involves some combination of an exorcism and winning tons of games...plus maybe a blood sacrifice or two. That’s to say, I see they signed a young Ivan Franco (22) from one of Paraguay’s “powerhouse” clubs, but the clouds still obscure the paths to their future.
Can I bring myself to take the Colorado Rapids seriously if they wrap the 2023 preseason with taking Kevin Cabral from the Los Angeles Galaxy and Calvin Harris from FC Cincy? Nah.
From what I gathered (at a minimum) second-hand, Gonzalo Higuain’s last-gasp heroics lifted Inter Miami CF into the 2022 post-season. While I didn’t see his final run at glory, but I’m glad I read this from his farewell to the last league he’ll play in:
“This year has been one of the ones I’ve enjoyed most. I never thought MLS would give me that. My intention was to come to enjoy and compete, but I never thought it would turn into one of my best moments of my career. This year has been just that, thanks to everyone who has helped me.”
Related, Miami lost all those goals and all that inspiration. Can they replace it? And with something more substantive than rumors about Lionel Messi joining them?
Finally, and to borrow the thrust of the argument from Matt Doyle’s “depth chart” article, Chicago Fire FC have decided to stand something like pat on the hand they played, or tried to, and not to the greatest affect in 2022. They did just sign a fullback from partner/sister club, Switzerland’s Lugano FC, named Maren Haile-Selassie, but I only know one Haile Selassie (and him not so well) and nice as it is to have a good fullback, they don’t tend to rewri even “wingers” can only help change history. That is, they aren’t often the people who write it.
Now, to turn to news about the teams who most people call competitive.
While I won’t pretend (or care) to understand how MLS’s roster rules work, Club du Foot Montreal banked a considerable amount of money over the off-season – a combined $17.5 million from the sales of Ismael Kome, Alistair Johnstons and Djordje Mihailovic - and that...just seems like a lot of money for this longtime fan, implausible even. For reasons I still don’t fully understand, I have a knack for catching Montreal at their aesthetic worst, which is to say I don’t fully understand the secret to their success...I only appreciate it keeps happening whether I see it coming or not.
Related very much thereto, I never saw anything super special in Wilfried Nancy’s Montreal team – though, again, they did fine so lick the nearest grain of salt – but a fair number of people seem just as excited about Columbus Crew SC’s chances now that Nancy signed on as their head coach. And, if those people are right, that’s one more team fighting for space above the playoff line – and I suppose that’s a thought I wish to close on.
The moves will keep happening – e.g., yes, I think Atlanta United FC did good by luring Garth Lagerwey away from the Seattle Sounders, but don’t know when that will pay off, and, yes, I don’t really know what to make of Heber’s arrival in Seattle (see, discussion of injuries) – and the promise of a better season will live on for both Atlanta and Seattle until the music and moves stop. And yet, how much fluidity can really coexist with, say, the Philadelphia Union looking just as ominous as they did in 2022 and when last season’s double winners, LAFC, signing Long (and with assurances the math panned out)?
All that’s to say, take a look at the teams who finished on the right side of the playoff line in 2022 and ask yourself how many of them you see falling under it in 2023. Different people will reach different conclusions, naturally, but there’s only so much room at the proverbial inn.
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