DC United Scouting Report: 75% Coping with Fast Zombies

Only time will tell...

DC United kicked off its 2024 regular season with a 3-1 home win over the New England Revolution that knocked Armchair Analyst, Matt Doyle, off the fence. He’s now convinced that DC will make the 2024 playoffs, spin of the wheel with odds equal to betting it'll rain during November in Portland. He may be right, he may be crazy, he just may be the lunatic we’re looking for…but all I can think when I look at the East so far is “competitive.”

That’s a thought for another day, because the only thing I care about right now is whether the Portland Timbers can compete against DC on Saturday at…is it still Providence Park, or did the state of Oregon’s real estate king/hospital system fuck off a la Da Bella? Anyhoo, as much as the weight of the schedule ahead feels lighter than it did when it first dropped – see road games against the punchless (e.g., New York City FC) and the wounded (Houston Dynamo FC) teams – I’d still rate the hike till May as moderate to difficult at a minimum. The Timbers can knock down that hike to easy-to-moderate, but they’ll have to play well to do it.

Based on the few indicators at hand, DC will shove that question to the fore, one way or the other. They may or may not be good –I’ll get to that – but they play the game like smartly-trained methed-up puppies. They showed they have the youth and legs last week to run a highly active and coordinated press; no Revolution player could hold the ball for over a second without a DC player either jumping in his pocket or chasing him like a ravening fast zombie. With a new coach (Troy Lesesne), early-season enthusiasm, and the team’s storied (long ago) history lashing at their shoulders, I expect DC to run at every Timbers player within 20 yards of the ball from the starting whistle until they take a spell to catch the breath. The method to the madness showed up in Doyle’s Big Week 1 Wrap:

“Lesesne talked all week about winning the ball higher up the pitch to give [Christian] Benteke opportunities and it worked.”

- Calen Carr

MLS Week 1 Vibez Review: It's Okay to Enjoy It, Even If It Doesn't Mean a Damn Thing

His eyes are my eyes, rn.

Welcome to the first one of these quick-hit reviews that, with breaks for vacation(s) and sanity, I plan on posting every week of Major League Soccer’s 2024 regular season – and beyond! (Which, here, only means posting through the playoffs). Before getting into anything at all, here are the results from MLS Week 1:

Inter Miami CF 2-0 Real Salt Lake (actually watched all of this one; just too late to fold it in)

Columbus Crew SC 1-0 Atlanta United FC

Los Angeles FC 2-1 Seattle Sounders %

Charlotte FC 1-0 New York City FC

DC United 3-1 New England Revolution %

Orlando City SC 0-0 Club du Foot Montreal *

Philadelphia Union 2-2 Chicago Fire FC

Austin FC 1-2 Minnesota United FC %

FC Dallas 2-1 San Jose Earthquakes

Houston Dynamo FC 1-1 Sporting Kansas City *

St. Louis CITY FC 1-1 Real Salt Lake

Portland Timbers 4-1 Colorado Rapids

FC Cincinnati 0-0 Toronto FC

Nashville SC 0-0 Red Bull New York *

Los Angeles Galaxy 1-1 Inter Miami CF

First, I’ve embedded links to The Mothership’s game summaries under each final score. Second, the above has a pretty simple index:

% means I went beyond the highlights and box score and actually watched 45+ of the game in question.

* means I ignored the game entirely.

[No Symbol] means I checked the highlights and the box score and maybe read a thing or two (which doesn’t mean I remembered it).

Now, I’ll do two things through the rest of the post. Third(?), will be a long paragraph – perhaps even a run-on sentence - that flags your more interesting results for the week just past. Everything under that goes under the titled The Grand Narrative. Fourth (now that I’m rolling with it), I’ll close on notes on all the games I either reviewed (%) or glanced at ([No Symbol]). Ready, set, go!

Portland Timbers 4-1 Colorado Rapids: Yes, with a Great Big (Twerking) But(t)

A conversation taking place.

I’ve got an angel on one shoulder fretting about getting carried away and a devil merrily twerking on the other whispering about giving all the way in and to every temptation. The angel’s going to win this round, and for a number of reasons, but mostly because I know too much about getting ahead of myself. That doesn’t mean the Portland Timbers 4-1 stroll over the Colorado Rapids didn’t feel great and soothing (like a good heating pad…I’m using one now). It just means taking a couple considerations seriously – and starting with a big one.

The Rapids fell apart before they got started in that first half. There, I’m talking less about Portland’s first goal (which I’ll come back to) than the second. All the credit in the world to Cristhian Paredes for finding Antony isolated a step behind of the penalty spot against Colorado’s Keegan Rosenberry, but you’re not going to see a captain go down with the ship the way Rosenberry did last night outside of your more chilling maritime disasters. Even allowing for the possibility that Antony’s stronger than he looks (and after last night, that’s a yes), I don’t know how a defender with Rosenberry’s experience lets the young winger get in front of him on that play.

To circle back to the maritime metaphor, who was around him when Antony scored his second goal of the night (Portland's third)? Rosenberry. And when Antony cut across the ball that bounced of the Rapids’ Sam Vines and into the net for a collective, soul-crushing own-goal (and Portland's fourth)? Yep, Rosenberry again.

That gets to the first big caveat the damn angel has sold me on: unless he ate 1,000 bowls of Wheaties and chased it with a course of high-grade steroids over the off-season, I doubt you’re going to see Antony run over, around a through a player like he did Rosenberry. Don’t get me wrong: I really loved what I saw from Antony yesterday – his defensive work as much as the three goal contributions (and can we call that a hat trick, so long as we take the asterisk with it) - but the caveat in re Keegan Rosenberry, aka, the captain to Colorado’s Titanic, feels like a sub-caveat to a larger one. To wit: for all the changes they made to their 2023 roster, the Colorado Rapids still have some road to walk before they arrive at capable and, if Chris Armas hasn’t improved drastically as a head coach since the last time I watched him a work, Colorado’s walk will be uphill both ways and through three feet of snow.

MLS Week 1 Preview, Getting Hyped on Thin Gruel

Solid show, btw.

At the risk of defeating the point of this post, I’m going to start by acknowledging that none of what’s below matters at all. By allowing nine (fucking) teams from each of its two conferences to qualify, Major League Soccer has made a conscious choice to devalue the regular season to a point where I wonder why anyone bothers to tune in before August. How well a team does through, say, April could be rendered meaningless by a cratering collapse or raging success in September; I can’t stress enough how much the results from MLS Week 1-20 just don’t matter. I've reached the sad place of pining for the 2024 Leagues Cup, because I think it's my first, best chance to feel anything of consequence before September. Stakes, people. They matter...

So, why do this? I mean apart from the fact that I just really like watching soccer?

First and foremost, I’ve chosen this as a hobby. Second, in the same way a sword-maker sharpens the sword over and over until it can cut through trees (apparently; Blue Eye Samurai lays waste to trees of all sizes as if that was the point of the show), seeing MLS’s 29 teams 34 times before they arrive at games that actually matter, aka, the playoffs, gives you a pretty clear bead on which of those teams have a shot in hell at lifting MLS Cup. That number has been whittled down to, at the very most, four or even three teams over the past couple seasons, which, again, highlights just how many meaningless games are played in this league plays year after year…and yet, is that so different than what the majority of teams experience in the English Premier League every season? Hold on…maybe spectator sports writ large are the problem?

To make this even weirder, this will be the only league-wide preview post I do all season. The current plan is to post weekly Vibez Checks at the end of each “MLS Week,” which (swear to God) will be just a loose rundown of what I saw in the games and what I see for patterns in the results. On the research side, I see myself watching two full games every week – one involving the Portland Timbers, the other involving their next opponent – long chunks (45-60 minutes’ worth) of the three games that most interest me, plus whatever else I get to after that. Unlike past seasons, I really do want to keep all this on a “vibes” level – i.e., expect the random name drop (as in, “holy shit, this guy’s killing it”) and general notes (as in, “Atlanta’s on a streak that bears watching”), as opposed to in-depth blow-by-blow coverage from this game or that or deep dives into the latest analytic stats on the market. Gods willing, people who find these posts will get a breezy read and the jokes will land.

To the extent this post has a purpose, it’s about hyping me up for First Kick 2024. Some of the commentary doubles as soft predictions for what I expect from each team, but I’m also approaching all that from something like a headline level (and the intelligence gathered from this incomplete series). With that, let’s look at what we’ve got on the platter.

Portland Timbers 2024 Preview: Hopes, Fears & Theories

In a better world...

“It’s Feb. 15 and [the Timbers] still have two open DP spots. It’s almost not even worth talking about them until they fill those spots.”

- Sam Jones, MLS Daily Kickoff

I hold this truth to be self-evident, and to the extent that this post won’t be so much a preview as a series of thoughts, opinions and speculation. Moreover, it starts in a place where I wish I didn’t.

When I saw the Portland Timbers line-up for their final preseason warm-up against Chicago Fire FC, I did not feel the glitz and glamour I’ve come to expect from events in the Coachella Valley. Instead, I saw too much of the same line-up I’ve seen over two back-to-back unsuccessful seasons. Here’s the (probable) line-up for that game (I couldn’t tell because that skeazy miser, Merritt Paulson, lacks the good goddamn sense to treat preseason like the course of appetizers they are):

4-2-3-1: James Pantemis (GK); Juan David Mosquera (RB), Zac McGraw and Kamal Miller (CBs), Eric Miller (LB); at the 2, Diego Chara paired with Eryk Williamson; at the 3, Santiago Moreno, Evander and Dairon Asprilla, and all that with a cherry on top named Felipe Mora.

Between turnover in the roster and players coming back from injury, that isn’t a name-for-name match to the line-up the Timbers trotted out, say, at the beginning of 2023. And yet, when you look at the line-up the Timbers used in MLS Week 1 2023, it amounts to splitting the difference between identical and fraternal twins. In the sense that I rate Mora higher than the departed Jaroslaw Niezgoda and Moreno over the bizarrely hesitant (and also departed) Yimmi Chara, sure, that counts as improvement. But how much?

The fact that Timbers line-up lost their final preseason game to a serially terrible Chicago team injects some vibez gloom into the launch of the 2024 regular season. I don’t know of any franchise in all of sports has put in the work to alienate its fanbase the way Chicago has. Missing the playoffs in 10 of the last 11 seasons is the tip of an iceberg that could sink 100 Titanics. I don’t put any more stock into preseason than the next fan, and I understand that one of Chicago’s goals was a freak-show error that couldn’t be replicated without a live chicken and copious amounts of despair, but, as they say, still…

New York City FC 1-1 Portland Timbers: Notes on a Palm Springs Scuffle

The Timbers ran the gauntlet today. And survived.

Just some quick notes on the Portland Timbers 1-1 draw versus New York City FC to pass on. It’s only preseason and there’s still the regular season slog to get through after all.

First, I have no actual complaints. The performance walked a line closer to fine than good, but it cast some glances in a brighter direction and left me with nothing more than quibbles to enter into meeting minutes. The Timbers gave NYC a hand on the ball (hey-oh!), and they got broken down all the way 10-15 minutes later (left two guys wide open at the back post, Santiago Rodriguez and Malachi Jones), but unless I missed something else in the first ten minutes of the second half (shower ran long), that’s pretty much everything from Les Pigeons.

The Timbers, meanwhile, regrouped nicely after going down a goal. Better, they calmed down some problems before they turned into issues (see 1b) below). After a first half where they could only find forward momentum in wide areas and struggled a touch with getting started out of the back, Portland came out settled for the second half and got to where they could throw some weight around. When their goal came – roughly 47 minutes after NYCFC’s opener – it was more opportunistic than constructed, but, again, preseason. Stuff like that only rises to an issue if it persists...and isn’t that the worry? Still, glad Santiago Moreno made the most of his defender’s slip and god bless the NYC defense for losing Felipe Mora at the back post. Seeing the Timbers send a little more menace the opposing goal would have felt better, but it is what it is, which is one point.

That takes care of the overview. Now, to tick through some details…

1) Midfield, Arrangement

So, that was probably something like a 4-2-3-1, right? Maybe a 3-4-2-1? What I picked up (generally) was Zac McGraw, Kamal and Eric Miller holding down defense, Jaden Jones-Riley in a fairly back-to-front role on the right, Eryk Williamson and Diego Chara sitting deeper in midfield, with Moreno and Antony on either side of Evander a little ahead of them, and all that with Mora up top? Even if they lined up a little different, I didn’t mind it. I like Moreno more advanced, generally, and Antony looked more comfortable to me than he did last season. Seeing the latter did the heart good because, call me crazy, but I’d like to see the Timbers up the fear factor in opposing defenses.

Getting Reacquainted with Inter Miami CF: The Nouveau Riche or The Expendables?

Not shit. I just love the painting.

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

Thumbnail History

I came this close to lumping the Miami Fusion into this post. They joined in the same pre-contraction expansion as the Chicago Fire, only, when contraction did come after the 2002 season, the league opted to keep Chicago and cut Florida loose…which continues to be a temptation, of course. I decided against for one obvious reason: the 1998-2002 team doesn’t have so much as a sparkle of the glitz and glamour of Inter Miami CF. The temptation lingered for a while, due mostly the fact that MLS legends like Kyle Beckerman, Pablo Mastroeni, Nick Rimando and (pushing it here) Jay Heaps, but the Fusion really did play and thrive in a totally different league…

…and yet, is that so different than the gap that separates Inter Miami’s MLS 4.0(?) Year and the Messi marketing cash-grab that so recently pissed off Hong Kong fans? My short response is no and yes, and in that order. The 2020 team went so rules-breaking big on its first roster-build that it forced the league to sanction it for playing a shell-game in terms of roster compliance. Miami still made the 2020 playoffs, but that comes with a couple caveats – e.g., the playoff pool was out-of-control-house-party big that season (because COVID) and the sanctions arguably derailed Miami’s 2021 season. They rode the death-rattle of Gonzalo Higuain’s career to get back to the playoffs in 2022 and I briefly became obsessed with Miami at the beginning of 2023 when they started strong on the back of sterling midfield performances from Gregore and Jean Mota. Gregore went down for most (if not all) of the season by the third game and Mota succumbed to an injury of his own somewhere around the 10th game, all of which caused Miami’s cruel summer to arrive ahead of schedule. Two months of eating shit followed: they went winless from the middle of May to the middle July, losing eight games of 11 and looking very, very doomed. And then came the Leagues Cup. And the arrival of Lionel Messi, Sergio Busquets, Jordi Alba, and…Robert Taylor. That all-star cast and a new director (they bumped now-Portland Timbers head coach, Phil Neville, for Tata Martino) lead them to the inaugural Leagues Cup title. They could not, however, climb out of the hole the former team dug over those two months of eating shit…well, that and the six-game losing streak that happened earlier that season after Gregore’s injury threw Plan A into chaos.

Best Season(s)

I’m calling it a toss-up. I imagine that winning the Leagues Cup was nice and all, but failing to make the 2023 playoffs must have been like chasing a shot of delicious Jameson with something disgusting and fucking weird like pickle juice (just…don’t). Given that, I’m going with Gonzalo Higuain’s rousing curtain-call at the end of 2022. Just feels more heroic.

Getting Reacquainted with Charlotte FC, aka, What a (Stupid) Rule Change Has Wrought

Aww, cute! (But also profoundly embarrassing.)

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

Thumbnail History

Charlotte FC joined the league in 2022. They missed the playoffs that season, but made them in 2023. After that, I have a nasty habit of picturing them as a team wholly composed of Brandt Bronicos. Oh yeah, and they lured Bill Tuiloma from my Portland Timbers and I was always something of an overzealous Tuiloma stan. He and I are both thankful that I never figured out where he lived while he was with Portland…

Best Season(s)/”Long-Term” Tendencies

2023, if with a Derringer’s bullet. The only difference I found between 2022 and 2023 was the fact that they scored one goal less in 2022 – i.e., 44 versus 45 in 2023. That’s literally it. Charlotte allowed the same number of goals both seasons (52) and finished 19th overall in both seasons. In other words, they fielded an utterly middling team in both 2022 and 2023, but, because MLS expanded the number of teams that qualified for the playoffs from a (half-)sensible 14 in 2022 to a comically expansive 18 in 2023, Charlotte cleared the lowered bar. Hold on, it gets better. Their defense actually performed worse against the goals allowed average in 2023, when the average for goals on both ends was 46.8, than it did in 2022, when that same average was 50.3.

Why’d MLS do it? I’m guessing they knew Messi was coming, so they lowered the bar for making the playoffs a little. Sure, that reads like a conspiracy theory, but, GODS, that’s an embarrassing thing to do in any case. To repeat the question that gets asked every fucking season, why does MLS bother with a regular season? Why do any of us? Worse, it's not like this did Charlotte any favors, who got slaughtered in the pointless play-in round.

Identity: Meh, almost distilled meh.

Joy Points: 0, which feels entirely and depressingly apt.

[Ed. – There is no point to a “names to know” section on a team entering its third season…]

Getting Reacquainted with St. Louis CITY FC, the Humiliation of Fatherhood

Keep talking motherfucker. Day's coming...

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

Thumbnail History

They came, they saw, they straight-up rolled some teams – including five straight to start the season. Hell, St. Louis CITY FC even rolled Sporting Kansas City 4-1 at home all the way at Week 32 of the season. The fact the same team that put them to the sword over a lopsided two-leg series in the first round of the 2023 MLS playoffs sums up St. Louis short-‘n’-sweet history in MLS: impressive, but visibly incomplete.

Best Season

I feel good saying 2023…

Long-Term Tendencies

They went wildly over the median on goals scored – i.e., 62 scored versus the 46.8 average – and, as well as the defense did, it seized failure with both hands often as not. Almost certainly related, St. Louis played an aggressive press, aka, one of soccer’s great “yes/no” propositions, there is no try, only do, etc.

Identity: Your son beating you at a sport for the first time.

Joy Points: 1, because making the playoffs in your one and only season makes your history brighter than eight other teams. (Also, index for how these work is below*.)

[Ed. – There is no point to a “names to know” section on a team entering its second season…]

Where They Finished in 2023 & What the Past Says About That, If Anything

First in the Western Conference and a genuinely impressive fourth overall. To be completely frank, I did not like this team from the jump and wanted them to fail – mostly because I hate pressing teams. Shit’s ugly. Going the other way, they effectively ambushed the six of the first eight teams they played and staked them to 18 fast points early in the season. And yet, and to their very real credit, St. Louis picked up a healthy share of wins throughout the season. I won’t pretend I don’t think they’ve been found out, but they had a great season for any team, never an expansion team.

Notes/Impressions on the Current Roster/State of Ambition

I don’t know enough to comment on the St. Louis front office’s state of ambition beyond acknowledging they did pretty damn all right in Year One. Even with the occasionally useful Niko Gioacchini and the infatigable (and pissy) Jared Stroud moved on to new and exciting professional opportunities, St. Louis comes in to 2024 with a good core. Having 2023’s goalkeeper of the year and MLS vet Tim Parker to organize the defense looks like a sound foundation to me and, so long as you have that and a competent midfield, all it takes to get your local team close to competitive is a couple smart attacking pieces. They seem to have those in Eduard Lowen and Joao Klauss, so long as he can stay fit. My best guess puts this team at playoff-competitive in 2024; add some talent – I hear they have an open DP spot- and they could make some actual noise in MLS’s Western Conference…that said, I’m still waiting for this team to get found out. The way they could go either way feels like a big deal for 2024.

Getting Reacquainted with Orlando City SC, an Erratic Rising Power(?)

Plan A, Part II.

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

Thumbnail History

Orlando City SC’s history follows the traditional expansion team narrative of eating shit for several seasons before finding their feet and running with the rest of the league. Ever the ambitious organization, they strived mightily to avoid that fate – e.g., they signed (aging) Brazilian great Kaka on joining MLS in 2015 and, after he moved on, they tried again by signing (aging) Portuguese great Nani in 2019. MLS broadcasters dutifully hyped both players, but Kaka never carried them to the playoffs and Nani would burn one season he could barely afford to (because old) before Orlando provided the supporting cast to get them there. On that last piece, it wasn’t for lack of trying: Orlando’s all-time roster (one of the good ones, btw) amounts to a casting call of the good, the great and the reliable from teams all over MLS, maybe even yours. Unfortunately, few of them lasted long and even fewer of them delivered the goods. Orlando’s turning point came in the Weird Year, aka, 2020, aka, the COVID season, when they not only made the playoffs for the first time, but also reached their first final, the MLS Is Back tournament (won by my Portland Timbers!). Tempting as it is to argue that Orlando enjoyed homefield advantage throughout the tournament, it's not like they had fans cheering them on, because no one did. What’s more, they argued against 20202 as a fluke where it counts, i.e., on the field: Orlando have qualified for the playoffs every season since. They didn’t always hit them in the best form – e.g., see 10th and 13th place finishes in 2021 and 2022, respectively – but they have 1) found (a form of) consistency, and 2) just wrapped up their best-ever regular season in 2023, finishing second overall and pushing eventual champs (and damn good team) Columbus Crew SC to extra-time in the Eastern Conference semifinals.

Best Season(s)

Didn’t mention that they won the 2022 U.S. Open Cup in the above, but I’m still calling 2023 Orlando’s best.

Long-Term Tendencies

Nothing that counts as a pattern, really, at least not beyond having good seasons every time they’ve posted good numbers at both ends of the field – i.e., 2020 and 2023 (also, duh). That said, their defense either killed them or fucking killed them over the first four seasons (2015-2018). It has improved since, but stout defenses are hardly their calling card. The attack yo-yos just as much, all of which is a long way of stating that Orlando puts it all together only now and then, but still more recently than they used to.

Getting Reacquainted with Minnesota United FC...

Don't google "special boy." The images only get darker.

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

Thumbnail History

If you put a gun to my head before I wrote this post and asked me when Minnesota United FC joined the league, I’d be writing this post at your mercy. 2017? Then again, maybe that’s for the best…they still don’t have a damn head coach last I heard…

One wild season aside (see below), I think of Minnesota as a team that always makes the playoffs, but never looks much like reaching the end of them. Turns out that’s only half right: the Loons fell short in both of their first two seasons – and by a fair amount. The half-remembered consistency kicked in after that: they qualified for the playoffs in each of the next four seasons - 2019-2022 - if from the middle of the table or thereabouts; 7th place overall finish in 2019 is their high-water mark. Adrian Heath coached them from their ascent from the USL (in 2017) to (something like) the latter third of 2023, when they let him go. In my mind, “Heath-ball” has generally meant trotting out teams that were sturdy in every sense of the word - i.e., stubborn and unimaginative – but that, like the other pieces above, didn’t fall into place until Heath got his defensive midfield in order. That took care of one side of the team, for as long as it did, anyway, but Minnesota has this tic, equal parts knack and limitation, of finding one guy with that special something, a game-changer…

…that’s just one game-changer, mind. Don’t want to go about putting on airs.

Best Season(s)

2020, easily, the playoff run that put the fear of God into a Seattle Sounders team that was a dead man walking without even knowing it (Columbus Crew SC beat Seattle at a stroll in MLS Cup 2020). Minnesota had found Emanuel Reynoso by then – i.e., the greatest game-changer in Loons history – which meant they’d finally found a means to make “stubborn” payoff and even dream a little. MLS journeyman/hot boy, Kevin Molino, did just as much as Reynoso to make that happen. Think of it as a combination of two kinds of wizardry, something not seen before or since in Minnesota.