Level Set 17, Chicago Fire FC: A Fresh Angle on the Light at the End of the Tunnel

Could actually be a better team this time...

What follows is a brief history of Chicago Fire FC, plus more brief notes on whatever long-term tendencies they have. Their 2025 season gets weighed on both sides of that and the whole thing ends with where I see things with them in this very specific moment in time - i.e., before First Kick 2026. You should count on things happening between here and there.

The post ends with a scale I came up with to measure the long-term success of every team in Major League Soccer. It does some things well (e.g., count trophies/achievements), other things less well (capture recent trends). It's called the Joint Points Scale and you can find a link that explains what it does. I was really stoned when I came up with the scale and wrote the post. Caveat lector. With that...

Thumbnail History
Chicago Fire, aka, Chicago Fire FC, hold still-unbroken record of being the one and only team to win MLS Cup in its 1998 expansion season. And, as if to announce their hell, yes arrival, they won the U.S. Open Cup in the same season. The Fire remained highly-competitive nearly every season through 2009, reaching the semifinals of the playoffs or higher in eight of those twelve seasons (i.e., they reached MLS Cups in 2000 and 2003, so higher) – and winning the 2003 Supporters’ Shield, plus four U.S. Open Cups. The Fire went into their first twelve seasons in MLS looking like a contender and generally backing it up. Some of that followed from the “Marquee Player” rule still applying when Chicago joined the league in its third season (1998). When someone in Chicago’s front office went knocking around Eastern/Central Europe for talent, they found Piotr Nowak and Jerzy Podbrozny, both Polish, and a Czech sweeper named Lubos Kubik. With those three leading the way, the Fire played even with MLS’s best talent of the time and heads-and-shoulders above the rest. When those players left, and in surprisingly short order (in the order I listed them above, they left after 2002, 1999, and 2000, respectively), Chicago still had to one of the best, U.S.-based cores on an MLS roster, including Zach Thornton in goal (through 2006), (yes, that) Chris Armas in midfield (until 2007), Ante Razov banging in goals up top (in stints split between 1998-2000, and 2001-2004), and C. J. Brown keeping things steady in defense until 2010. A cast of characters rotated around those players in seasons to come – the standouts included Bulgarian legend(ary asshole) Hristo Stoichov and Mexican great Cuauhtemoc Blanco, plus on-again-off-again rising attacking talents like Justin Mapp and Patrick Nyarko. Those last two players actually open the path to a distinction: Mapp, as the smooth, genuinely productive winger, who played with Chicago through the back-end of its best seasons (2003-2010), Nyarko, as a hard-to-place forward/winger hybrid, who played at the end of their best seasons and through a lot of their worst (2008-2015). Head to head, Mapp blows Nyarko out of the water in terms of raw numbers…but you have to wonder how much Mapp benefitted from playing on a better team/in a better system than Nyarko. The worst possible version of that same question has haunted the Chicago franchise with the vengeance of a curse since the 2010 season. That same season they started their existence as the searing disappointment that Chicago fans endure and most MLS fans ignore. Until 2025 (more below), they enjoyed their last “high-water mark” in 2017, when they finished third in the Eastern Conference, but even then they face-planted out of the playoffs to Red Bull New York in the knockout round of one of MLS’s patented bloated playoff schemes. Everything on both sides of that has been literal carnage – up to and including back-to-back Wooden Spoons in 2015 and 2016, and a whole lotta missing the playoffs. In fact, that head-fake/fuck of a 2017 season aside, the Fire have finished 20th or lower in the MLS-wide standings for every season since 2015 – a run that includes a 28th-place finish in 2024. That brings me to the main thing that should keep fans of every other MLS team from drooping into an easy sleep: it’s not like Chicago hasn’t thrown money and effort at saving the ever-sinking ship – e.g., they had Serbian forward Nemanja Nikolic (crazy strike-rate) and German great, Bastian Schweinsteiger, between 2017 and 2019, and, as recently as last season, they took pretty big swings on Swiss hot-shot Xherdan Shaqiri and Belgian forward Hugo Cuypers. As evidenced by the above, all of that balanced out to a broad, “nah.” All of the stoutly average around those signings almost certainly played a role, but…all that started to feel like a gutted club/team culture years before those players arrived. The open question is the extent to which they’re a symptom (i.e., the players around them make them worse) or the cause (i.e., they just weren’t good/the right signings). Don't let the Joy Points* fool you on this one, because Chicago ain't good.

Notes on the MLS Stretch-Run, with the Portland Timbers, FC Cincinnati & Spinal Tap

I've always wanted a girl who believes in Chicago.

We’ve reached that special time in the Major League Soccer calendar when pundits start stitching together posts that look like proofs – i.e., the ones that breakdown all the permutations that will see your local team either eliminated (aka, ded) or alive to fight for one more…let’s face it, almost certainly pointless weekend. A few teams have already been eliminated, of course – goodbye, DC, adieu, Montreal – but that still leaves plenty of teams counting long-dead chickens and hoping they can pawn them off on somebody.

With that in mind, you can add the following to the games I’ll be ignoring for this look ahead at this MLS Week, I dunno, 29? (Nope! It’s Week 33.)

Club du Foot Montreal v St. Louis CITY FC
New England Revolution v Toronto FC
Real Salt Lake v Sporting Kansas City

That doesn’t mean I’ll cover every other game at length, especially when the stakes fall short of existential – i.e., I don’t have much to say about Atlanta United FC v Columbus Crew beyond noting that Columbus needs to win this one and it’ll say something if they don’t, because it’s been a minute since that team saw a W (I count four games). One could argue the same applies to FC Dallas v Austin FC, but that one hits too close to home for me to ignore it.

At any rate, I pulled this together with an eye to get myself back in a sexy regular season mood after the international break. More whip-around than analysis – this will be the biggest possible picture, don’t expect anything on absences (unless I remember them; rare) and keep dreaming on a tactical breakdown - the facts and theories will come fast, but hopefully enough with enough meat on them to make it worth the time. Think the protein blast of riding down the highway on a motorcycle with your mouth open.

Right…starting with games of the most local interest (born in Cincinnati, live in Portland, OR):

MLS Weakly, Week 24, aka, the Week Animal Spirits Went Wild (for the Most Part)

Hear ye! Hear ye! Don't sleep on the shitty teams!

MLS Week 24 was a fun little fucker. That said, the following teams failed to have fun: DC United and Red Bull New York (tied 0-0), the Portland Timbers and FC Dallas (tied 1-1), with dishonorable mention going to Club du Foot Montreal and Inter Miami CF (tied 2-2; though credit to Miami for stealing two points and earning one). So little followed from all those results - i.e., the present fate of all concerned remains unchanged - that they're hardly worth commenting on.

That said, the last game doesn’t entirely belong with the two former – in his (far more thorough) weekly round-up, Matt Doyle took a dim view of DC v RBNY (“...it’s more interesting to talk about all that than to talk about this game, which was… not great. Yeesh”), and can confirm Portland v Dallas flirted with barely-watchable – but, commentary confirmed what I got out of a glimpse of Montreal v Miami, e.g., that Montreal owed the draw to a late (but apparently) rare brain-fart by their ‘keeper, James Pantemis. Moreover, even if they fell asleep this Saturday, Montreal have kept a playoff-worthy 5-3-2 record over their past 10 and they looked 10 points better than Miami; the same can't be said for the other five teams in the discussion. If anything, that draw trumpets a message to the rest of the league – which, some of them did not get: take no game for granted.

Turning, now, to the bright, shiny, record-breaking results and words I never thought I’d type....

After a ho-hum first half, FC Cincinnati straight-up took over the game against the Philadelphia Union coming out deserved 3-1 winners over the East’s (still) top team. Their big players (e.g., Brandon Vazquez, who got a freakin’ ode in Doyle’s column, and Luciano Acosta (see set up on 2nd goal)) delivered and an increasingly strong supporting cast (e.g., Brenner (see Lucho’s link) and Alvaro Barreal combined on goals that flayed Philadelphia’s league (again, still) league-best defense. I only tuned in for the best bits (aka, the 45th minute to the 80th), but FC Cincinnati 4.0 will score goals on your defense: if you pull the goal-less road game at Columbus Crew SC from the sample, Cincy hasn’t been shut out since mid(-fucking-)April. Philly stirred to life after Cincy’s second –i.e., pressing, forcing mistakes, creating chances, etc. - but the Orange and Blue managed it well enough. Cincinnati needed the win, obviously, and it shouldn’t blot out questions about all the draws that preceded it, but they’re over the playoff line and with one of the biggest obstacles to their first-ever post-season cleared. And Philly’s fine, of course. Every team has an off day...

An MLS History Project, 2005: Expansion 1.0 (& Reliable Players)

Charles Ponzi, who knew a little light-foot to boot...

[Ed. – I understand that nearly all the statistical information about goals for/against in what’s below is more revealing than revelatory; I mean, what else would a mid-table team do, but post mid-table numbers?]

The average goals scored in Major League Soccer was 39.2 in 2004, the lowest in league history to that point. Also, you do know what I mean by that phrase, “the average goals scored”? Basically, I wanted to establish the baseline for goals scored for and against in a given season (it’s the same number, obviously…noted because it took me a couple passes), so I can see where each team’s goals for and against landed around that average.

Also, taking suggestions for better phrasing of the concept because I hate that one. Moving on.

By the end of the 2005 MLS season, the average goals scored would rise to a lofty 45.9. Real Salt Lake and Chivas USA joined MLS at the beginning of the year. This wasn’t the reason I started fixating on averages, but, well, it paid off here.

As noted in every post in this series since 2001 (and here’s 2002, 2003, and 2004), a combination of defenses tightening up across MLS and - hear me out – the retirement/decline among the first generation of Marquee players (explained in the 1996 post), conspired to make scoring goals in MLS harder. [Ed. – Did that same process help the American attacking talent that fed the U.S. Men’s Team by giving them more reps and more time to sort out what worked on the field?] This resulted in most teams in the league staying fairly tight against the average on both sides – e.g., goals for and against – through those years and that created a league that was highly competitive (amongst the teams), but that, on the worst Saturdays (aka, late July and August) moved one to think, surely, there is more to life. On the one hand, no team could run away with the title; on the other, the regular season looked like a cartoon reel of the most evil goal-less draws that Hell could engineer. And you had to stare at the hideous gridiron lines for half the season. [Ed. – Honestly, your eyes adjusted, and pretty quickly; it just looked like shit.]

An MLS History Project, 2003: The Ballad of Chris Roner (& The End of Puberty)

This is like that Big Foot photo. Defining.

Some part of my subconscious anticipated that these history posts would eventually reach a point where the talking points start and end with who won what trophy and which players made it possible. I didn’t think it’d happen so soon, but…

Fortunately, that also signals that Major League Soccer had survived its growing pains – the acne (teal uniforms), hair in places that it wasn’t before (going with the Tampa Bay Mutiny), breaking voices (no ties and the shootout) and random boners (I don’t know…the Colorado Rapids?). MLS has been a (probably) viable league (old habits die hard) since then and the panting of The Grim Reaper grew fainter and fainter with every season after 2001 (well, until the COVID). In general terms, the league keeps adding teams and raising the salary cap; fans see only tweaks to the rules of competition, maybe a poorly-scheduled post-season now and again, but they’re not seeing, say, rearranged conferences or the local team evaporating. Starting at a certain point, one very close to 2003, Major League Soccer looked like the same league it was the season before, only with more faces.

2003 didn’t see more faces – expansion hadn’t happened yet (and neither had relocation) – but the competitive rules did evolve a bit. First, they ended the one year experiment of letting teams qualify regardless of conference (see 2002 post); the top four teams in each five-team conference would make the 2003 MLS Cup Playoffs. They also managed the playoffs differently – i.e., for reasons that still don’t make sense, but…sure, only the conference semifinals featured a three-game home-and-away series, while both the conference finals and MLS Cup would be one-and-done. I can’t recall or state with confidence that those choices made anyone happy, but, the 2003 playoffs did include one hell of a powerful argument for the greatest all-time comeback in MLS history. The team that won it was the San Jose Earthquakes, and they’d go on to win 2003 MLS Cup as well, beating a restructured Chicago Fire team 4-2 in what remains one of the highest scoring finals in league history.

The venue is noteworthy too: the Home Depot Center, MLS’s second soccer-specific stadium, opened that season (June 7, 2003) and hosted MLS Cup. It gave the Los Angeles Galaxy a home and, in some ways, a home field for U.S. Soccer as a whole (they only used Crew Stadium when they wanted the closest possible version of a home-field or make Latin American players cold/uncomfortable; related, this is fun, and check out the venue that landed No. 1). I’ve heard a lot of things about this stadium down the years, some good, some bad, but it’s also unquestionably one of the original “cathedrals to the game” for MLS. Anyway, back to the game…

An MLS History Project, 2000: It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Least Watchable of Times

Bro. Don't. It doesn't end well.

First, and full disclosure, you can skip this post and just watch a young Rob Stone tell you the story of the 2000 MLS season. That’s about an hour of your life (and why'd they stop making those?!), so this’ll be shorter. Probably. I do go on…starting now…

If I gave the impression that I can place some, or even all MLS Cups in time, this is inaccurate. The 2000 MLS Cup Final, on the other hand, sticks in my memory like a rock in a shoe. It was the first final in league history that I dreaded and prayed to all the gods I can name (it’s a lot) to keep it from coming to pass. It did, obviously, and the 2000 Kansas City Wizards team that won it was that rock in my shoe. It took their more recent face-lift and a general improvement in their approach to the game to make me stop hating them. So, that was what? 15 years?

The Wizards won MLS Cup that season by beating a far more interesting Chicago Fire 1-0 on an 11th minute goal by Danish import, Miklos Molnar. To look back through brighter lenses, that awful ending casts a shadow over a season that sparkled with all kinds of massive debuts. The 2000 season saw the great incoming and upcoming of some of the most important players in MLS history, but it was the latter group (e.g., the upcomers) that teams would rely on and build around for the entire decade to come. As you’ll see when I get to them, these aren’t all household names; better still, at least one actual legend made a lot of noise when he joined the league, only to leave it with a bitchy little Teutonic whimper. I’ll get to all that, but, first, I’ve got to talk about MLS’s updated mechanics.

A lot of league’s most infamous gimmicks – no ties, the 35-yard shootout that prevented them, the ridiculous scoring system that followed from, keeping time on a scoreboard clock that counted down to 0:00 with no input from the referee, and so on; just all the comical misjudging of what American soccer fans wanted, not to mention the idea that that stupid shit would lure fans of America’s Big 4-5 to soccer (deep breath) – those all died with First Kick 2000. Don’t take that to mean the fever had totally broken:

An MLS History Project: 1998, An Expansion Team Among Expansion Teams

Not the main subject, but a key sentiment of this post....

First, I have to get this off my chest. Look at the 1998 final standings. (Look at them!!) Who the hell has two different kinds of wins and losses? Who does that?

Moving on, 1998’s was the first set of final standings that I really looked at – as in, saw where each of the (now) 12 teams (wait for it) finished and a couple data points really take me back…far enough that I’m going to dip my toe into some research.

Until recently as…shit, 2019, the ’98 Los Angeles Galaxy team held the single-season record for most team goals scored: they banged in 85, and they had two fewer games in which to do it than Toronto FC would in 2019. While that record and the team that held it has always lurked around the back of my mind, I couldn’t have placed it in time with a gun to my head. I knew it was back in the day, but…damn. A quick scan of that roster (or just its leading scorers) gets you to “god-damn” pretty fast – not just because that’s a massive brick in the building of Cobi Jones’ reputation (19 goals, 13 assists?!), but also because Welton, a wiry whippet of a player (if I remember right) who stuck in LA for a few seasons, plus a(nother) career season for OG-legend Mauricio Cienfuegos (13 goals, 16 helpers) – but the larger point was that this team had a lotta ways to hurt. The Galaxy was just as solid on the other side of the field, with a backline made up of Robin Fraser, Dan Calichman, Greg Vanney, and Steve Jolley (or Paul Caligiuri) – and that’s before I get to the fullbacks (e.g, Ezra “EZ” Hendrickson). Between front and back, they had this great one-two between Daniel Hernandez – a really strong d-mid in his day, and I think he’s still remembered – and another player named Danny Pena. The latter played more box-to-box, but he had some real sharp ideas on the attacking end for a guy in that role. Pena didn’t last long, but he was hella fun for as long as he did and those two were great to watch when they clicked. Taken together, that team managed a 2:1 between goals for/against. Impressive, obviously…

…but the one name I see that really caught my eye in that data-pile was Carlos Hermosillo. People, myself 1,000% included, sometimes talk about Mexican National Team players as if they’re coming to MLS for the first time over the past couple seasons. Hermosillo does and doesn’t disprove that. He remains among the top scorers in Mexican National Team history, and his numbers for Cruz Azul for the 90s qualify as a big step past bat-shit; he was massive in his day…those just happened to come one or two before signing to MLS, and I guess that answers the question. Still feels notable that he had twice as many assists as goals…

FC Cincinnati 0-0 Chicago Fire: What Should Have Been (And Are You Thankful?)

The only through-line.

Well, FC Cincinnati fans, that was the kind of game this team was built to deliver, a safety-first grind that put a wall of defenders between the opposition and your goal. It was effective to a point – Cincy got the slow-death 0-0 draw, didn’t it? – and it was entertaining to a lower point. It lacked for moments, clearly – see the abbreviated list of “highlights” – but it provided little gasps of drama here (e.g., the five-minute flurry by the Chicago Fire after the 60th minute) and there (the last 10 minutes), and either team could have taken it…

…it fits the 2019 season for both teams that neither of them did. Still, if I had to hand out a trophy, it would go to FC Cincinnati, who had the lower bar of achievement to leap over. At this point, Cincy can only tie the single-season record for losses. Can I get a "what what?" or “huzzah” or something?! (What is the sound of enthusiastic Ohioans?)

There’s not a lot to unpack, fortunately, because I’ve got a maddening match to watch in just over an hour (go, Portland!), so I will keep this really brief. The Fire remains three points behind the New England Revolution, the only team in the Eastern Conference they have any chance of leaping over – and the Revs have a game in hand. With allowances for miracles, I’d call their chances doomed in every sense but the mathematical. Cincinnati, of course, has nothing better to do than to pick up as many scraps of their dignity as possible before the season ends. Their only real loss on the afternoon came when Kendall Waston picked a suspension in the next game for that bullshit yellow card on Nemanja Nikolic. Waston’s elbow grazed Nikolic’s chin at most, and Cincinnati still has avoiding the single-season record for goals allowed to play for.

To wrap up Chicago, they looked the better team throughout, but barely. Their best attacks came mostly from early crosses (so many crosses, and when the crossed to Cincy’s defense once it condensed, forget about it), and Maikel van der Werff and Matthieu Deplagne cleaned up the worst of those. Przemyslaw Frankowski and Nico Gaitan did their best to keep them going, but it was pretty damn headless, or Cincinnati’s defenders made it so. If I had to pass on anything from Chicago’s performance to pass down to the youth, I’d go with Bastian Schweinsteiger playing out of pressure; so composed, even elegant, that everything around him looked a little Keystone Cops. The biggest shocks included how far Aleksandar Katai has regressed and the fact that Chicago can’t field anyone better than Brandt Bronico. More than anything else, the Fire needed a player to put his laces through the ball. They never found him, or he never found the ball. Moving on...

Portland Timbers 3-2 Chicago Fire: The Worst Rom-Com Ever...

The competition....

If you feel like you just watched the most pointlessly meandering rom-com in history tonight, you’re not alone. Everything from form to road records to comparative statistics to the Portland Timbers scoring the first two (semi-random) goals said that tonight would end happily for the Timbers; it was always a question of what obstacles would intervene to keep the lover (Portland) from its beloved (all three points). To start with the most salient critique, the plotting was terrible. In spite of a 3-2 win by Portland....yeah, I was bored.

Set aside the timing of C. J. Sapong’s second goal for the Fire – the rough equivalent of someone standing to object to the marriage only to reference something that already got resolved in Act II – because the whole goddamn production actually fell apart when the soccer gods decided to kill the villain in the 1st fucking act. First of all, who does that? Second, when Aleksandar Katai got sent off for (literally) busting Julio Cascante’s chops, this game was always going to end the same way – i.e., with a Timbers win. Tonight had all the narrative tension of the lovely couple playfully bickering about the color of the crockery suggested on their wedding registry.

That said, I’ll be the first to admit that I doubted Portland would score its third goal. Thank God they did too, because that was the only consciously-constructed goal that they managed tonight. It gave me some belief that they could score when called upon against a better team (if in the throes of transition), because I’m not so sure anymore. Don’t get me wrong; Portland’s first two goals were fine: the delicacy of Jorge Moreira’s chip takes real talent live, and it’s not like the Timbers didn’t find a way around Chicago’s stubborn defense to score the second goal; they still both had a haphazard, “look-what-I-found” feel to them, and this was against one of the worst road teams in MLS (Chicago), and one that’s hardly lighting it up generally to boot.

Chicago Fire 1-2 FC Cincinnati: What Schweinsteiger Said

He knows...

Anyone unable to appreciate the full narrative satisfaction of Fanendo Adi giving FC Cincinnati the moment both he and the team needed very, very badly does not deserve spectator sports. I mean, you could write a movie about Adi’s season and end it on the moment where he sat cross-legged on the ground in clearly grateful prayer. Even I, who's agnostic on my more pious days, felt all of that. Something else to note here: that's Adi’s best attacking play; running onto a pass and hitting the ball first time toward (or, god forbid, on) goal. That’s how he scored his best goals with the Portland Timbers. Use it.

Happily, that rare positive act was enough to carry Cincinnati to a 2-1 road win over a disconnected and aimless Chicago Fire team. It took an unlikely, lucky goal to gain an early advantage (Fabian Herbers…dude) and Nico Gaitan struggling from the penalty spot to allow the game to play out as it did to let the result hold up, but it did. As noted by the guys in Chicago’s broadcast booth, the Fire did the balance of whatever “doing” happened in the second half – i.e., they dominated possession and “piled on the shots” – but it’s not often that the gap between shots (20) and shots on goal (7) tells the story of a game so well. For every opening Chicago created, they somehow squandered two of them (absurdity deliberate; I know math), whether by Aleksandar Katai wandering the world over to tee up a shot (when he might have done better to lift his head and look around) or by attacking runs that took the runner out of the play. (C. J. Sapong deserves exemption from that statement; he was one of the few Fire attackers to use his runs to create space for the players around him.)

As sometimes happens when I watch FC Cincy games, I found myself watching Chicago more than I watched them – especially in the second half. Not to take anything away from Cincinnati, because they succeeded in their primary task of staying organized and forcing Chicago to break them down. More often than not, this took the form of watching Chicago under-achieve.

At some point during the game, the suspended Bastian Schweinsteiger stepped into the broadcast both where Chicago’s commenters talked to him about the first half of Chicago’s season. When the conversation turned to the things that might have held them back this year, Schweinsteiger named some demons that plagued Chicago in this loss: not all eleven players showing up (only Francisco Calvo, Dax McCarty and Gaitan stood out as clear positives, kind of the point); issues with communication/coordination (the serial mistiming of passes to runs; by the end of the game, both McCarty and Gaitan resorted to angrily gesturing at teammates to fulfill their most basic functions) and a lack of intention and purpose among the attacking players (which most often manifested in “wings-‘n’ prayers” flails from range from far too many Chicago players). One could make a decent case that Cincinnati didn’t win this game, so much as Chicago lost it. Chicago’s 5-2-4 home record shows they do this (literally) more often than not - again, math: 6 not-fully successful home results > 5 fully-successful results – and, when you’re not winning on the road ever, you need three points at home to get anywhere.

Form Guide ULTRA, MLS Week 16: A Message from the Department of Corrections

We regret to inform you, etc.

Let the record show that I skipped two beats this weekend; I won’t be writing about FC Cincinnati’s loss at home to the Los Angeles Galaxy or the Portland Timbers wholesome thrashing of the Houston Dynamo, also at home. This content is stale enough as is, when you miss a wave, you miss a wave, etc.

Moving on to the Major League Soccer week at hand – during which, it bears noting, both the teams I follow (e.g., Cincinnati and Portland) played – the results served up more confirmation than shake-up. For example (and details notwithstanding), the Galaxy beating Cincinnati in Cincinnati is just meeting expectations. The same goes for the Colorado Rapids' 2-2 draw against Vancouver at BC Place; good for the former, bad for the latter, but…well, raise your hand if you see either of those teams as viable contenders. In a somewhat indirect way, the same thing goes for the Chicago Fire’s 1-1 draw against RSL at home: nothing about that result changes the calculus in either conference, even if, at the same time, Chicago’s players should give Mo Adams a solid week’s worth of side eye for that deeply ill-advised hand-ball. So long as you view…more or less all of those teams as strictly undercard material (measure the Zlatan Effect however you see fit), their results hardly demand careful study.

All the same, this severely truncated weekend wasn’t a total waste. For instance, Portland’s full-frontal cleating of Houston, and the sad fallout of Columbus Crew SC’s home loss to Sporting Kansas City hints at the entrenchment of some potentially meaningful trends...going in different directions. Even if you factor in the fact the Timbers bullied a pair of B-teams on the road, the fact that they bullied them remains. Portland is showing vivid signs of life, basically, and with a (crucially) fresh mix of personnel to boot. It’s harder to read SKC’s win over Columbus as a sign of their revival, or as the continuing story of Columbus’ continuing illness. Meanwhile, FC Dallas’ utterly overwhelming demolition of Toronto FC falls into a different category all together – i.e., is a short-handed TFC team a big enough mess that they can be safely ignored, and what does that mean going forward?

Before I dig into the Info-Boxes that will fill in this post’s considerable tail, a visit from the in-house Department of Corrections moved me to revisit…a number of calls I made heading into the Gold Cup break (that barely was). I’ll start with the key for the bottom-most cell in the Info-Boxes, which I use to measure strength of schedule. When you see a “C” in the box under a team, that means I rate them as a contender. “M+” means “mid-table, but with some upside; “M-“ means mid-the wrong side of mid-table. Finally, “R” stands for road kill, as in these are the teams your team should beat, and that you absolutely should panic when they fail to do so. And that’s where the rub came in.

MLS Form Guide ULTRA, Week 12: A Brief, Tabulated Discussion of the Near Future

Who's world is this?

Howdy! Time for the second leg of the Week 12 Review/Week 13 Preview. As always, all of that – which, here, means the results for every team in Major League Soccer, listed and tabulated according to every foe and location – and with notes on all of it. I posted a narrative piece over on Orange & Blue Press, but, honestly, I’d read the three big talking points and then walk away. I fucked up that one…

As for this post, most of the useful information shows up in/around the Info-Boxes (i.e., where I tabulate the results), but, for the good folks in a reasonable hurry (hustle, y’all!), I pulled together some top-line notes. That way you can catch up on some trends and pick through what you want down below. You can skip the whole damn thing too, but, full disclosure: the rest of the preamble is nothing but teases.

First, and after years of training, I just can’t quit ranking things. On that, fuck it, it’s clarifying. To draw folks’ attention to some key points: loathe as I am to do it, the Seattle Sounders’ pathological solidity forced me to upgrade them; FC Dallas squeaked upward as well, and that’s in spite of earning only one point from two games against Los Angeles FC. Colorado went up based on long-term trends, while Toronto FC went down on short-term ones. And, to give one sharp example of how I make choices, I kept Atlanta United FC over the Houston Dynamo on the very specific grounds of Altanta’s defensive sturdiness, and the fact that Houston has built its impressive record almost entirely on the back of home wins – something that will continue through the immediate future. Speaking of…

With the Gold Cup Break coming up (I think June 9 is the last game till latter June), a lot of my attention down below goes toward how most (but not all) teams in the league do between today and June 9. Based on that, I’ve done my damnedest to lump all the relevant teams in MLS into three broad categories: Watch (which means, what they do till the Gold Cup matters); Hold (which means the team has a solid foundation, so maybe the next few don’t matter); and Just Watch (for a variety of reasons). To loop back to the “teases” theme, I’m just going to list them (fine, with parenthetical notes where appropriate). Here goes:

MLS Form Guide ULTRA, Week 10: Mediocrities and Middlings, the Heart of MLS

At root, the essence of sport. Down to the eye contact.

Welcome to the only seemingly-late Form Guide ULTRA, Week 10. I make the case for “seemingly late” below every time I talk about the games coming up (as I do 24 times), as well as the handful of games across the league that played out (according to reasonably predictable plots) tonight.

In a break with past tradition, I posted a narrative recap of Week 10 over on Orange & Blue Press earlier this week (one that I’ve cleaned up three times now, and only feel proud of after this last pass). While some of the conclusions down below filter into that, a lot of them don’t, and that has everything do with needing to stare at this great mound of shit every week and for enough time to figure out some things. (Just to note it, enough of my better hunches in there held up pretty well over here).

Given the tabulated pile of vomit down below (yes, I have the good taste to not use that as an image), I’ll keep the commentary atop this post brief. In no particular order:

FIRST, teams from Ohio are dying, teams from California are thriving. A metaphor for our nation. Now, cry. (At the same time, LAFC has slowed down a bit (see below), and it’s well worth questioning the Galaxy on the road – not least because Columbus Crew SC just did).

FIRST, 1.1, Seattle has also slowed down. Factually.

SECOND, Week 10’s big risers all come from the Eastern Conference: New York City FC, Atlanta United FC, and, to a lesser extent, the Philadelphia Union. All three teams racked up some real points over the past week, to which I can only say....noted.

SECOND, 1.1, the Portland Timbers know what they’re about right now, and that was the same formula for success as last season. Just noting that.

MLS Form Guide ULTRA, Week 3: The Last Pure, Hot-Take-Free Vessel (for it makes us morons)

If "pure vessel" doesn't lead with something terrifying, maybe there's hope.

I’ve flirted with reviewing some of the condensed games before posting this in the past, but Week 3 stood up for the virtues of the current (accidental) system. The reality is that if I start to poke around box scores and even the highlights, some (potentially) false narratives start getting introduced. To give a particularly…poignant example, if I’d only checked the box score for FC Cincinnati’s 3-0 win over the Portland Timbers, I might read them having a chance into it. The highlights probably would have corrected it, but that still risks putting inaccurate, faulty, or, in so many words, delusional bullshit into the mix, because Portland folded like fucking orgami when they folded.

Down below, and perhaps for the last time this regular season, all the commentary below follows exclusively from the results – that’s excepting FC Cincinnati’s win over the Portland Timbers, upon which I commented on at some length here (and this is your source for any references to “extended comments” in connection with Portland or Cincinnati down below). As much as I believe in the purity of a results-only process – as opposed to seeing that “next great thing” that gives your team hope, but that also has to come together at some point, or who gives a shit – my personal (largely self-enforced) schedule precludes that kind of purity. This time, though, I haven’t seen so much as one highlight reel (with intent), or read even one recap about any other game besides Cincinnati v. Portland. The focus here is on the final product produced by each team over the past three weeks, exclusively.

Finally, as close observers might notice, I do keep rearranging the teams every week…yes, loosely “ranking” them according to some loose frame of how I read each team’s strength. To underscore the overall point, everything below is based on 1) Week 3’s results and, 2) any impressions that carried over from watching previous condensed games and/or last season (see: the San Jose Earthquakes, Toronto FC, and Real Salt Lake, if to varying degrees). Until I/we have more to work with, the recent past, combined with the muscle memory stuff is all MLS fans have to work on. With that, below is a modestly-global shot of the recent records for every team in Major League Soccer and, less importantly, my comments on them. Until the data firms up, these are guesses. Also, enjoy!

SEATTLE SOUNDERS, 3-0-0, 9 points, 10 gf, 3 ga, (2-0-0 home, 1-0-0 away)

Last Ten: N/A

W	W	W
v CIN	v COL	@ CHI
4-1	2-0	4-2
N/A	N/A	N/A

Current Judgment: Perfect record, scoring freely, defending just fine…just note the competiton.

Next Game: @ Vancouver Whitecaps. And the hits keep on a-coming! REALLY hard to see Seattle losing this one…

DC UNITED, 2-0-1, 7 points, 7 gf, 0 ga, (2-0-0 home, 0-0-1 away)

Last Ten: N/A

W	D	W
v ATL	@ NYC	v RSL
2-0	0-0	5-0
N/A	N/A	N/A

Current Judgment: On the one hand, they’re playing teams with problems running from slow starts (e.g., Atlanta and NYCFC) to sucking eggs on the road (RSL). On the other…they haven’t given up a goal, guys.

Next Game: Bye week! Yay, time! @ Orlando. It’s hard to beat Orlando (for now) when you’re looking for a chance to get your road game going.

LOS ANGELES FC, 2-0-1, 7 points, 8 gf, 4 ga, (2-0-0 home, 0-0-1 away)

Last Ten: N/A

W	W	D
v SKC	v POR	@ NYC
2-1	4-1	2-2
N/A	N/A	N/A

Current Judgment: The main thing I’m looking for between the condensed game and the box score is whether LAFC out-played NYCFC. All good results so far.

Next Game: v. RSL, aka, another chance to flounce their reputation.

MLS Tourist Journal, Calendar Week 5: Keeping Up with the Joneses

He's not real, he's not real, please, don't let him be real...

“As a player, it’s one of the worst parts of preseason: Competing for a spot. You never know where you stand, and sometimes you’re competing with a friend. Every night you lie in bed and think about the way the coach spoke you, his mannerisms, and what they mean for your future.”

MLSSoccer.com’s Bobby Warshaw wrote a column about the preseason experience that broke my taboo against treating the soccer players as human beings. Until I get some real background – e.g., this article about the Portland Timbers’ Cristian Paredes' tough first year miles away from his home – I really do see soccer players as video game avatars. I’m not saying it’s healthy, I’m just sayin’…on to the weekly recap.

In all honesty, the first weeks of February don’t feel all that different from the last weeks of December. Sure, preseason has started, but, what’s going on with FC Cincinnati aside, it all feels like a big, stupid pile of names and numbers (e.g., FC Dallas beating Houston Baptist University 6-0, which feels like someone telling me the Toronto Raptors dunked all over the local high school’s varsity team, and why would you do that?). All the same, this was a busy week, one filled with trades what God-knows-what meaning, and a notable combination of action and silence between and amongst all the rest of the teams in Major League Soccer, aka, MLS…goddamn it, working in law has infiltrated my brain so fucking deep that I now use defined terms. The shame…

I’ll get to all that – plus a short segment on the teams who I don't believe are keeping up with the rest of the MLS Joneses, as well as my notes on the past week’s culture-shifting trades – down below. First, however, it’s time for a quick check-in with the two teams I follow, FC Cincinnati and the Portland Timbers. But not in that order. For reasons that will become immediately apparent.

Portland Timbers

Hometown Team 2.0 hasn’t done a thing since signing Claude Dielna last week (at which point I discussed it at some length), and, won’t lie, I feel like I’m sitting across from a significant other determined to give me the silent treatment. (What did the counselor say, Gavin, what did she say?!)

Translations on Someone Else's Notes: An MLS Round-Up

Useful, but A Plan is better. And other obsessions.

This won’t be complicated – at all. I read an article posted to The Mothership (mlssoccer.com) last night, asking my computer questions as I read. Yes, I mean out loud, rhetorically, and at an inanimate object (that will one day enslave us all); god forbid I look anything up. Some questions crawled out of narratives I’d concocted for each team while tracking league results last season, while something the author wrote triggered others. Either way, it felt like a good way to pass on a resource and to yak a little about MLS, league-wide.

The article in question was a fairly robust transfer tracker/analysis piece and, to make one thing clear, you’ll learn more reading it than you will reading this. I'm just adding value over here (arguably). In his piece, the guy (the author, Tom Bogert) listed all the teams, touching on subjects like “Biggest Move,” “Biggest Hole,” and projected starting Xi’s. For this post, I’ll only quote what I need to and trust those so interested to read the rest Bogert’s comments. Also, he goes through alphabetically, which I’ll do, but only after lifting Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati to the top. I want to get to the good stuff early because I hear most people check out of articles as early as…jesus, never mind.

To those hanging in there, let’s get started.

FC Cincinnati

Bogert hypes the defense (“abnormally deep and talented defensive unit for an expansion club”), and sees a hole where FC Cincy needs a playmaker, but, of all the new guys on this new team, Leanardo Bertone carries the biggest question mark. Between glimpses, history and word of mouth, I have something to work with any of Cincinnati's MLS guys, and I’ve got a grasp on anyone who’s donned Timbers green and gold that a stalker would envy, but a midfielder from a team in the Swiss first division, even a good one, just tells me the guy held down a job in a slightly more desirable neighborhood in the greater soccer universe. I see his name in Bogert’s projected starting XI, and assume he’s going to be there (otherwise, why bother with Switzerland?), but doing what, exactly, and how well? Prove me wrong (I beg you), but I’m not as convinced on the defense, either. Chalk all the above to expansion season jitters. Questions surround this team like a zombie horde, so I’ll be skittish they make it to the well-fortified safe-house…at which time other emotions will surely come to the fore.

Portland Timbers

“What are the options when Diego Chara and Diego Valeri, both set to turn 33 in 2019, need a breather?”

Since Portland counter-punched their way to MLS Cup with Jeremy Ebobisse coming in only at the end, the question above feels like the big one. That said, I’m no less concerned about Portland’s back four. Chara and Valeri aren’t the only players bumping against retirement – see, Ridgewell, Liam – and the Timbers defense leaned closer to solid than lock-down in 2018. Also, even if Zarek Valentin grew all over me last season, I think teams will key on him – especially the ones with faster, more technical players, while also feeling like they're probably on to something. I heard Gavin Wilkinson’s talk about bringing in 3-4 new dudes, but still don’t expect to see a bigger rebuild until 2020. For good reason too: as a twitter correspondent (very patiently) explained to me, Portland can’t afford to carry ready-made replacements for Chara, Valeri, Ridgewell, or even Sebastian Blanco on the roster, so I expect Portland to get another group of understudies, maybe with a DP forward thrown in. All I know is, the closer we get to 2019, the more 2018 feels like the Timbers bought it on credit. If Portland can’t figure out another, reliable way to play, whether by tactics or personnel, I don’t see a return trip to MLS Cup unless Chara, Valeri and Blanco somehow raise the limit on the credit card.

Now, for the rest of ‘em….

Chicago Fire 2-2 Portland Timbers: They Didn’t (And Yet)

When I typed in "goose butt," I had a totally different image in mind.

Which title answers the statement, “I can’t believe Portland’s gonna hold on.” (The rest of this post is about those two words in the parentheses. And the words outside it.)

On the other hand, it not only could have been worse, it almost was. Over the hours and events that passed between the final whistle and all this typing, The Chicago Fire’s late rally sort of faded into a larger personal narrative of two points lost, along with, like, a good, full-handed goose to the team’s confidence. Taking all three points out of the Timbers’ best game of the season so far would have been something…

With this game now in the rear-view, the “would” and “could” in the above paragraph don’t mean a lot because all of that stuff happened - e.g., the high of Sebastian Blanco gifting Timbers fans with one of your more inspired assists (Valeri’s goal looked pretty sharp ‘n’ spiffy, too) and the low of Portland’s defense coming apart too many ways to count on the Chicago goal that erased it. Broadly, the rest of Portland’s game operated between those two poles, and with a respectable portion of it tilting toward Blanco’s high. That, on the other hand, tells only half the story - literally, too.

The Fire have not started 2018 strong. They picked up their first point of the season yesterday - from Portland, for one, but clawing it back probably took a little sting out of losing the other two points - and they have fewer excuses that Portland (who now have two points - can I get a HARRUMPH?). They’ve played two home games and they score with reasonable reliability (2.0 goals/game so far), but (and damn the statistics), I’d argue Portland looked the better? No. Sharper? Meh. I’m going with “The Team Most Likely To” yesterday. That vantage begs the bigger question of Chicago because, if the Timbers, an improving team, came out of the totality of that draw looking like the team more likely to claim all three points, what does that say about the Chicago Fire in these earliest days of 2018?

Then again, when you shine a spotlight into a mirror, it reflect the same amount of light. In other words:

A. The Chicago Fire aren’t a very good team.

B. The Portland Timbers drew the Chicago Fire (if on the road).

C. Man killed God. (Wait. Isn’t that how those always end?)

MLS Week 4 Preview (I Got Curious) (ft. Chicago Fire v. Portland Timbers)

We all have this moment.

The bug that crawled up my butt (and took over my brain) has the crazy urge to glance at the weekend ahead in Major League Soccer - particularly, what ins & out I can manage with the Portland Timber’s visit to The Big Wind (Chicago). While I’ll start by previewing the Portland’s game, this post has just as much to do with taking some time to perform a little due diligence on the rest of the league - especially now that MLS has yanked our methadone (i.e., real condensed games, not that median-five-minute bullshit). So, I’ll read all those editions of The Kick Off I can’t find time to read all week (because I am a rat addicted to the “rage pellets” of political commentary), and we’ll see what comes out of that.

But first…

Chicago Fire v. Portland Timbers

(Official MLS preview)

First, I didn’t know the Timbers have history on their side for this game - as in the Fire has never so much as singed the Portland Timbers, never mind burned them. Probably doesn’t hurt that Chicago has struggled for almost as long as Portland has been in MLS. They’re also struggling this season: they’ve lost at home, on the road in a shoot-out, and to a barely-revamped Minnesota United FC (yikes!). Who else is also struggling? That’s right! The Timbers are struggling! Not as hard as Liam Ridgewell (who might be consoling himself in a room full of trampolines as any man would), but Portland also has yet to win, they’ve suffered a bigger hurt, but, on the plus side, the Timbers drew a game. And how you feel about that probably grows a little from how you feel about FC Dallas (Stumptown Footy’s Chris Rifer called Dallas “their most difficult of the season-opening five-game road trip,” but I don’t think Dallas has recovered from their shattering 2017), and a handful of other relevant factors. In no particular order:

1) Formationz in Flux

If my wrap-up of last week’s game had a unifying point - or two - it was that Portland’s coach, Giovanni Savarese lined up defensive - and also that I don’t think he has much choice on that, at least not for now. Because I start from there, it was interesting to read this passage from C. I. DeMann’s wrap-up of the same game:

“Three games into Gio Savarese’s reign, I’m finding it incredibly difficult to predict starters. And you know what? Maybe this is a good thing. Or, at least, not a bad thing.”

According to MLS’s preview, David Guzman returns from international duty this weekend and, with Lawrence “I Can Reach It!” Olum out, the Timbers need him. While all kinds of tinkering is possible, I’m putting money on the same formation with maybe some tweaks in personnel - say, Samuel Armenteros starting over Fanendo Adi. And that’s where it gets weird…or at least where opinions diverge.