MLS Week 8 Review: Upsets & Threat Assessments

Old Steve Buscemi movie. Parting Glances. Huh.

First, here’s literally everything that happened.

Charlotte FC 2-2 Colorado Rapids [Skipped]

Columbus Crew SC 1-1 New England Revolution [Skipped]

Club de Foot Montreal 0-1 DC United [Skipped]

New York City FC 2-1 Nashville SC [Glance]

Toronto FC 2-2 Atlanta United FC [Skipped]

Red Bull New York 1-1 Houston Dynamo FC [Skipped]

Austin FC 0-0 Vancouver Whitecaps [Skipped]

Chicago Fire FC 2-2 Philadelphia Union [Glance]

FC Dallas 2-1 Real Salt Lake [Glance]

Minnesota United FC 1-2 Orlando City SC [Glance]

Portland Timbers 4-1 Seattle Sounders [a celebration, aka, my match report]

San Jose Earthquakes 3-0 Sporting Kansas City [Glance]

St. Louis CITY FC 5-1 FC Cincinnati [some defensive mourning, aka, my match report]

Los Angeles Galaxy 2-3 Los Angeles FC [Glance]

Now, let’s do our best to make sense of it – or to squeeze meaning out of it at the very least.

To start with the housekeeping, Again, I link to The Mothership’s match summary-fest inside the final score for every game. Next, when you see “Glance” between the brackets, that means I watched the highlights and scoured the box score, etc. “Skipped” means I didn’t bother with anything beyond big-picture context, because my mama gave me good sense. The rest of whatever flows through my fingers below comes from looking at the current standings (blink, or you might miss ‘em), the Form Guide, and Matt Doyle’s weekly burden.

With all that out of the way, let's start with the biggest of pictures. I think we can all agree that this weekend dished out some dynamite upsets, most of them toward the tail end of Saturday. MLS Week 8 continued to keep things lively by having a couple teams live up to their promise – e.g., Dallas with the home win over RSL and NYC with the home win over Nashville. On the one hand, it’s a lot of draws and garbage games after that (e.g., watching DC United beat Montreal at home has the unwholesome feel of conceptualizing a bad over-50 team play a good U-12; still, good for DC, even if I skipped it). So, all in all, not a bad weekend, there’s enough have/have-not stuff going on to goose the story lines going forward, and so on...

...but you’re still thinking about it, aren’t you? Why did I choose the six games I glanced at, while skipping the other six games? And Columbus v New England was one of them? Son....

Please, let me explain.

Explaining the Glances

At least 75% of the way I watch soccer boils down to threat assessment – and that’s something that works in both directions. For example, I burned the time I did on LAFC’s win over the Galaxy, not because I wanted to see how good LAFC can be (for what it’s worth Carlos Vela scored a very Vela goal and Ryan Hollingshead remains one of the best back-pocket pieces in MLS), but to poke around the apparent corpse of the Galaxy for signs of life. While they didn’t get blown out, I doubt that matters to anyone, so long as they’re still winless. The bigger points is the Galaxy had their chances – real ones, I mean, as opposed to the GotW shit Tyler Boyd yanked out of his ass – including a couple that could have pulled them within one goal before Mark Delgado did. So...where does this one line up? The result changes nothing, obviously, but wobbles for LAFC are good, while signs of life for the Galaxy, no matter how faint, are bad – particularly with FC Cincinnati and the Portland Timbers in mind. Moving on, in that vein..,

I’d call Orlando beating Minnesota the weirdest result of the bunch. On one level, I get the Loons are working through the post-Reynoso era, and they did a respectable job creating, Robin Lod had some powerful moments...but you can only list accomplishments for so long before turning back to the score. As for Orlando, it looks like they made to moments count – and future foes should file away the fact (sorry, a lot of alliteration) that both looked the same, e.g., a diagonal to the left, a cross to a wide open back post and Ivan Angulo, who either beat the ‘keeper or stretched him far enough for someone else to do it. That’s two straight losses for Minnesota, for what it’s worth, (@ CHI, now this one), and a second decent respectable road win for Orlando (@ PHI was the other...yes, I know).

Predictable as the rest of those results were – because of course San Jose beat SKC – but some form of confirmation came out of each of those results. In chronological order:

At center: Hany Mukhtar

- NYCFC has been acquiring (or reacquiring) pieces throughout the early season – i.e., they have filled in their ample blanks and it seems to be working - and one, Richie Ledezma, had some moments, but the marquee moment came when Talles Magno utterly broke a two-player trap and teed up a cross for Mitja Ilenic to ping off Keaton Parks’ head. Good as Nashville looked this was always a game you expect them to lose and it’s still hard to shake the whole “Hany Mukhtar & the [_______]” vibe of this team.

- I believe I’m a well-known Chicago stan by now (call me!), but what I saw and stared at made me wonder whether Doyle didn’t just have a narrative to push on this one – e.g., if nothing else, Chicago collapsed early, and in one of those 3-5 minute panicky brain-farts that can undo any and all good works. That doesn’t change the fact they got lucky on their second goal or that injuries forced them to pull a starting defensive midfield (Gaston Gimenez and Fabian Herbers) that has looked good every time I watched it, but Chicago still feels like they belong where they are in the standings. As for Philly, even with a big assist from Nathan Harriel, Julian Carranza and Daniel Gazdag look like two guys ready to go back to terrorizing the league...basically, the fun question to ask is whether Philly will ultimately replace Chicago above the playoff line, or if they’ll both get up there and crowd the space.

- Just a couple quick notes on San Jose’s win over SKC – because how does Peter Vermes still have a job? – both teams posted...similar enough numbers, but San Jose’s front three of Jeremy Ebobisse, Cristian Espinoza and Cade Cowell (in particular, great game from him) made the difference. San Jose’s not so different from Nashville – or even Colorado, Nashville, and RSL – teams that try to make it on a budget, a dream and maybe one good DP. At this point, San Jose has a good case for the cream of that crop – if they can get Cowell playing like the did in MLS Week 8 (he was very good/effective), they officially bump into nerve-shaking.

- As Doyle pointed out, RSL beat Dallas on shots by many multiples, but who gives a shit when they die by giving up two takes on the same kind of goal, and one every professional team strives to eliminate to boot, e.g., an outside-in run direct to the beating heart of the defense and half-naked to boot? Details aside, good (Jefferson Savarino looks ready to play) and bad (Andres Gomez’ hasty/play-killing decisions), RSL’s shots weren’t super-high percentage, so Dallas did plenty by creating those two sitters.

Hold those thoughts for now. Time to pick through, well...

Explaining the Skips

New England drawing Columbus at home strikes me as the pick of that bunch, but I’ve already deposited the idea both teams are solid/competitive into my brain's night box. I haven't done the same with (crucially) both Toronto and Atlanta, but Matt Doyle crunched the numbers (or borrowed pre-crunched numbers) and called both “roughly top 10 MLS sides.” I'm filing that away because he’s watching more games than I do. If you set aside the ongoing tragedies that are Montreal and, yes, DC United, most of the rest of those games ended in better or worse versions of the draws I worried about going into the week.

And, to wrap things up, I’d call those decent results for Vancouver and Colorado, because on the road and all that, but the teams each of them played (Austin and Charlotte, respectively; golly, this layout does not work) sucks all the fun out of both results. After that, it’s no real surprise Houston frustrated the Red Bulls, if only because Benny Ball, but I’ve also largely written off the Red Bulls as a concern at this point....and that makes a good segue to....

What It All Means for My Personal Fan Club(s)

In the near term, I look at Cincinnati’s situation from a top-down perspective – e.g., who can hurt them most in the event they slip. And, yes, they suffered a slip this weekend. Opinions vary as its significance, but, so long as Cincy can keep ticking off those 1-0 wins, the only teams I’m worried about are in the top 5 of the East – e.g., New England, Atlanta, Columbus, and NYCFC. Cincy has a good cushion over the rest right now, but two slips....?

Portland’s a different animal, of course, a couple rungs down the Grand Hierarchy. The goal here is to start beating the teams they “should” and to not worry about, say, the LAFC’s, the St. Louis’ (no such luck; two weeks off) and maybe even the San Joses of MLS; just beat the bad teams, basically, and count on MLS' bloated post-season to say you accomplished something. Throw in the odd win over the Seattles of the league, who knows? They might even finish, dare I say...eighth?

I see at least three of the teams currently below the Timbers – SKC, RSL, and Colorado – staying below indefinitely, maybe even four and, in a depressing number of ways, that’s all that matters right now. I see the crowd above as the bigger issue and, worse, I don’t see a lot of ways through it just now. Then again, I also missed all of the Timbers win over Seattle, so what do I know?