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| Me going into every preseason, free 'n' easy. |
The original model – which was probably imagined more in service of clicks than coherence – had me putting up weekly league-wide posts that included scouting reports on the following week’s opposition for the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati. Because that’s a terrible idea, on its face, next week’s scouting reports on the Week 3 opposition for Portland (Nashville SC) and Cincy (Toronto FC) will get rolled into the same post as the review for their Week 2 games. But, since I’m rolling with Plan A for this post, you’ll find scouting reports for the Week 2 opposition for the Timbers (Austin FC) and Cincinnati (the Philadelphia Union) at the bottom of this post.
With that, let’s get back to the Week 1 results, which will start with one Featured Game of the Week from each Major League Soccer conference. As much as I hope to keep that feature, I will also burn it all the way down if I can’t squeeze it between life, other ambitions, and trying to remain sane and whole in a world full of flaming idiotic bullshit. Ahem.
Another concept that died on impact with reality: posting one review each for the Eastern and Western Conferences.
Western Conference Notes
Featured Game of the Week
San Jose Earthquakes 4-0 Real Salt Lake (Viewing: 15-30; 60-till the goals dried up)
This didn’t look nearly as bad as the final score in real time, something borne out by the top-line stats. Moreover, RSL rotated pretty heavily to preserve their legs for last week’s and this week’s CONCACAF Champions’ Cup games against Herediano – I’d turn to local reporting for a clearer read on how that much mattered – which means that, like a handful of teams (but not Sporting Kansas City, not any more), their heads might have been elsewhere. This eye-catching blowout comes with a couple caveats, in other words, those start with “it’s Week 1, y’all” and end with maybe tapping the brakes a little. Also, dig those away jerseys, Utah’s finest. My take on San Jose lands somewhere between giving them real credit for a strong opener (which comes with a side of quietly and sympathetically pulling for them) and rolling my eyes at a click-bait headline about “The Bruce Arena effect!” The ‘Quakes didn’t play against the ball as much as the possession stats suggest and connected smartly enough when they did go forward. The win featured a familiar standout, Cristian Espinoza, who lined up as a wingback in what everything I have available dubbed a 3-5-2 (the broadcast kept identifying him as a “right back”). He ended the game with two assists – one of them a dime dropped from a mile away (SJ’s third, scored by Ousseni Bouda) – but the balance of the damage followed from indifferent defensive cover from RSL’s midfield – e.g., San Jose’s first and fourth goals (and was that Diego Luna drifting off mid-defending in both cases?). RSL played, y’know, soccer well enough, and even created more chances (some quite good), but plenty of those 21 shots came from too far out to trouble the ‘Quakes ‘keeper, Daniel. A fair amount of credit for that goes to San Jose’s defense – Rodrigues looked as good as anyone on the field (and Bruno Wilson looks like everyone’s best friend; seriously, watch the goal celebrations) – and a little improvement could go a long way for them. So, again, this one’s hairy with caveats, but…noted.
Why This Game?
Every team that finished below the Timbers in 2024, but improves in 2025 stands out as a potential obstacle toward them reaching the playoffs. Think zero-sum meets relative, and let me know when you know what that means. I’m also not clear on where I think RSL will end up, so the possibility they may trend down for 2025 provided another draw. Related, I think Herediano kicked them out of the CCC earlier tonight.
On the Rest of the West (That I Care About)
There wasn’t much low-hanging commentary going around about the goal-less draw between St. Louis CITY FC and the Colorado Rapids and I don’t think anything about Los Angeles FC’s 1-0 win over Minnesota United FC stuck with me beyond Jeremy Ebobisse’s banger and some tactical stuff about LAFC’s adjustments in Matt Doyle’s long, long Week 1 review that’s of mild interest (that article is criminally long). I wouldn’t have given Austin v SKC a passing glance, but for needing to scout the former, but here are some strays I caught from last weekend’s more intriguing results:
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| A portrait of the author, Monday 10 p.m. |
One item worth picking out of Doyle’s column is the clip of the buildup for Houston’s lone goal. Seeing a team move that fluidly, on and off the ball? Pure heartbreak for a Timbers fan. Something in the commentary I either watched or read made this sound like a good win for Dallas – and, to be clear, this was a good result – but no small amount of it boiled down to Houston’s defense fucking up. Just something to file away…
Los Angeles Galaxy 0-2 San Diego…Team
Anders Dreyer scored a pair of beauties, no question, but this result produced some genuinely pungent hype, particularly on Apple’s wrap-up show. Between injuries (Painstil and Puig, two thirds of the Killers Ps!) and the departure of a couple regulars (Mark Delgado stan over here), a Game 1 let-down, and even a full-blow slow start, shouldn’t surprise you anymore than the sun coming up. Great result for San Diego and, noted, but there’s a lot of season ahead, so kindly keep it in your proverbial pants.
Oh, and this just in: the Portland Timbers didn’t actually play in Week 1, stop lying to the American people. Fine. They did. It hurt in all the ways that it was supposed to heal, but, once again, there’s a lot of season ahead. Moving on…
Eastern Conference Notes
Featured Game of the Week
Columbus Crew SC 4-2 Chicago Fire FC (Viewing: 5-25; 45-60)
Once I saw the silky smooth goals conjured by Jonathan Bamba and cast by Brian Gutierrez (who is suspended for next week, apparently), no other Eastern Conference game had a chance of keeping my attention (and, honestly, being “forced” to watch Orlando v Philly was sweet, sweet gravy). That didn’t, however, extend to surprise at the final score – everything from recent history to the venue pointed toward a Columbus win – but it still seemed worth watching how it happened. Chicago’s defense did fuck up, twice (aka, the margin for the loss), but Columbus buried them up to their necks in pressure from immediately after the Fire’s second goal to the point where I stopped watching. More than one person pointed to Wilfried Nancy giving Steven Moreira a No. 8’s freedom to find the game as a prime driver for the shift (again, noted) but the Crew just…got on the Fire and never let up. You could almost hear their backs snap after Columbus’ fourth goal. To give them their nod, the Fire moves the ball all right and, even if Hugo Cuypers barely figured in any moment I caught (think his contribution topped out at following up some shots and a clumsy foul), Chicago’s attack has looked capable on the two occasions I’ve watched this season/preseason. They’re not helpless, but that defense needs a lot of tidying if the Fire want to get anywhere near the mix in the East this season.
Why This Game?
Nothing would warm my cockles like seeing Chicago have a good season (a great one would give me vapors!), but this was mostly about scouting Columbus as a direct threat to Cincinnati’s dominance atop the East…and no other rivals exist. No, not even one.
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| The queen of "star fits." |
It doesn’t get more who gives a shit that the New England Revolution knotting Nashville at zeroes and Toronto’s 2-2 draw at DC United barely elicited a flutter; more study needed, of course, but all those teams need to string together some Ws before I can me moved to give a shit about them. I covered Cincy’s good, yet slim win over Red Bull New York in my post-match notes and an early red card to Tomas Aviles spills some oregano into the tea leaves, which made Inter Miami CF dropping two points at home to New York City FC hard to read. I caught Messi’s (star) fit at the end and, sure, fine the guy, but I’m not going to burn much brainpower there. Here are some strays on the only other Eastern-only fixture
Atlanta United FC 3-2 Club du Foot Montreal
Holy shit, did this one look like a hoot (see “Why This Game?” for why I didn’t give it more time), both teams just swinging and, per the score, landing a few. The early returns on Emmanuel Latte Lath look promising, Miguel Almiron hasn’t lost a step that I could see, and seeing a cavalry arrive for Saba Lobjanidze feels a little like justice after he carried them late in 2024. Montreal gave as good as they got – hell, even Sam Piette uncorked a beauty (in here somewhere, I'm sure) – but this should have been, and was, Atlanta’s game to win…but yet those two goals allowed do strike me as notable.
The Inter-Conference Game
Seattle Sounders 2-2 Charlotte FC
I mainly found this one notable by the fact that it pitted a watermark team from each conference against the other – i.e., I expect any team above either of them in their respective conference standings to be pretty damn good. Jordan Morris had himself a game (and the side-step Albert Rusnak took to set up his assist on Morris’s second? Beauty) and Seattle looked to have the whole thing stitched up until Yeimar, of all players, clipped in the late, late own-goal. Lost points rued for Seattle and one free point for Charlotte.
It’s just the pair of scouting reports from here and, as much as I hate to make introductions like this, I’ll be cutting those short for this week’s edition, because I’m running out of time. As for these MLS weeklies, the existence of inter-conference games leads me to think I have no choice but to continue to post league-wide reviews. More than anything else, I look forward to having more games from 2025 to inform which games matter, if to the extent any regular season actually matters in MLS, and which can be glossed over completely. I expect the number that I ignore outright will go down, but I also plan squeezing all the MLS content I consume and produce into a two days each week. We’ll see how that delusion holds up, but it’s time to move on to the closers. Going from East to West…much like the Oregon Trail, with dysentery, now and forever.
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| Your rugged guide, reporting for doody. |
On the one hand, yes, Philly kicked the holy shit out of Orlando, then circled back to kick the shit out of the shit for a minute, but I also didn’t see a lot of takeaways from this game that will translate to FC Cincinnati. As happened in several Week 1 games, Orlando gifted the Union a back-breaking goal, but I can’t imagine a world where Philadelphia pushes Cincinnati around and back like they did against the Lions. Everything I’ve seen from them tells me Cincy will defend not just higher, but more aggressively than Orlando ever did; Orlando defaulted to back-pedaling just about any time the Union got on the ball. Still, in the event Philly manages to force high turnovers, their first goal against Orlando points to how dialed in (up?) the emergency defending will need to be. Another notable thing: per the broadcast, the Union debuted at least four players last weekend, which, by my count was Olwethu Makhanya (paired with Jake Glesnes), Francis Westfield at right back, and Danley Jean Jacques and Jovan Lukic, both in central midfield (notably). None of them looked out of place and I’d go so far as to call Jean Jacques visibly good. To pose the age-old question, have they improved or was it Orlando? The time I watched has me leaning toward a little bit of both. While both teams had every right to be not all the way there, Orlando has at least two key players to get into the swing in Eduard Atuesta and Marco Pasalic (who, to be clear, did just fine) – and that’s on top of playing a system that relies on something more than angry-whippet energy. With Bradley Carnell in charge (and almost certainly feeling his oats after Week 1), that strikes me as the main thing Cincinnati will need to manage at Philadelphia next weekend. The Union still have some key skill players, of course – e.g., Kai Wagner raging up and crossing from the left and Daniel Gazdag still doing things like squeezing a near-post shot past the ‘keeper – but next Saturday's game should turn on matching Philly’s intensity. Cincy has the defensive spine to manage that (bit worried about early yellow card accumulation for Obinna), so my bigger questions turn toward the attack and whether they have horses to punch through Philly’s pressure and make a run on the goal. I think Kevin Denkey will be fine, so long as they get him the ball, and I sincerely rate Evander’s ability when it comes to managing a press…his decision-making, on the other hand, gives me some pause. He played faster than he sometimes did for Portland last in last week’s win over Red Bull, but Evander has this tic where he seems to treat a defender pressing him on the ball as a personal challenge and that can hold up the playing speed. On the plus side, both Lukas Engel and DeAndre Yedlin should give him outlets and help Cincinnati diffuse the press. Should be a good one, in any event, and I’m happy to see what both teams have to throw at the rest of the East this week. For what it’s worth, I think an improved Philadelphia team would be a real story in the East…
A Scouting Report on Austin FC (Viewing: 2nd half…at least until I got bored.)
On the one hand, you can say Austin beat SKC (1-0) with one designated player (Myrto Uzuni) tied behind on their backs. On the other, it took them 75 minutes to put a single goal past a leg-weary SKC side that competed in the CCC on either side of this game (also out of the CCC now, and out of low-hangiong excuses). The official stats make a fair case that the parts of the game I watched tracked with what came before, i.e., not a lot from SKC and a slew of possession and balls played blindly across the goal by Austin. To Austin’s credit, that looked like dominance and Portland’s defenders (minus Kamal Miller) will need to cover the space behind them again and again, and then one more time. The appeal of luring Ilie Sanchez from LAFC didn’t clock for me until Austin made him captain and I saw him on the field; he both calms the team and paces them and he had a pair of great support players for defensive coverage in Daniel Pereira (who buzzed all over against SKC, and to good effect) and Mikkel Desler (who popped up in midfield often enough that I mistook him for a midfielder; which he is not, apparently?). That core allowed Austin to be patient on the ball in a way I’m not sure (and damn well hope) they can’t be in Providence Park; in other words, getting some kind of pressure on that midfield feels like a good idea, so long as Portland can keep some kind of shape while doing it. I didn’t even remember Owen Wolff played last Saturday until I circled back to the lineup, but Portland’s CBs, whether by twos or by threes, will have plenty to manage with Brandon Vazquez running wild up there. While it’s entirely possible I’ve already seen his best seasons, Vazquez remains a big, fast, strong body that can fluster a defender in all of those ways. There’s also the pair of more-or-less true wingers in Osman Bukari (Juan David Mosquera’s side) and Jader Obrian (Jimer Fory’s remit), but neither has lit up the league despite time (Obrian) and money (Bukari). The seam between Fory and Eric Miller(?) has to be a concern after last week and the recurring nightmares of Jayden Nelson running up that same seam past Joao Ortiz haven’t gone away yet, which makes me really interested to see who Phil Neville starts and where against Austin on Saturday. God knows I’d be keying that area if I was Austin. I’m also keen to see who he starts in midfield – with whether David Da Costa starts at top of mind – as well as how he manages the backline with Kamal Miller out and Dario Zuparic still (presumably) recovering…
…I’m currently staring at the 4-3-3 that the Mothership’s official news-wire kicked out and that’s making the changes harder to visualize. Between the new faces (Ortiz and Kelsy, mainly), some old faces that I’d like to see the Timbers move past (with apologies and expecting a pelting of rotten tomatoes, Diego Chara), and the time and energy I needed to reserve in order to get this posted, I feel like I need more data before I can come up with suggestions that I trust.
That’s it for this one. Off to find a pillow for my head and a bed for my body. The next posts should go up on Sunday. Till then…
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