Getting Reacquainted with the Seattle Sounders, the Kristoffersons of MLS

It's the way they make it look easy, honestly.

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The Seattle Sounders have missed the playoffs just twice since joining MLS in 2009  – and, here, “missing the playoffs” includes falling out at any point before the last eight teams wild card slot to qualify. Their haul of trophies makes them the second-best team of the past decade on the Joy Points Scale* – only Los Angeles FC tops them over that period (though not all time…wait for it…) – and, sure, that hits closer to him as a Timbers fan, but it doesn’t make it any less true. The question is how they pulled that off. It started with smart first-season signings – think everyone from Jhon Kennedy Hurtado from Colombia, Sebastian Le Toux from the USL, and most important for me, midfield wrecker Osvaldo Alonso, from one of the many in-tournament defections from a visiting Cuban team. After throwing in a smart reclamation or two from the Expansion Draft – all-time utility-player great Brad Evans stood out – adding their first DP (Swedish midfielder Freddie Ljungberg) and putting it all under a road-tested, road-approved MLS head coach like Sigi Schmid, the Sounders had themselves a team. They made the playoffs both from the jump, then season after season. They percolated into the semifinals by their third (2012) – still not an easy thing, even in the multi-DP era – and returned again in 2014. Those first two little “blurps” into the big time followed from signing league-leading attacking pieces – e.g., DP winger/midfielder Mauro Rosales and then-USMNT-regular Eddie Johnson in 2012, then USMNT fixture Clint Dempsey and the bustling Nigerian, Obafemi Martins in 2014 – and letting them cook without a care in the world in front of one of the Sounders’ many (insanely) reliable defenses. And then came the trophies: the Supporters’ Shield in 2014, then an MLS Cup in 2016 and another, better one in 2019 (MLS Cup 2016 almost put me off soccer). The Sounders had already won three U.S. Open Cups before 2016 and they’d compete in two more MLS Cups before 2020. Whether one starts that run in 2014 or 2016, it made Seattle the fourth Shadynasty in MLS history – i.e., late 1990s DC United first, then the San Jose/Houston teams of the early-to-mid 2000s, followed by the LA Galaxy from the first half of 2010s, then Seattle – and, again, they never really came down. Mapping out the succession of talent does a good job of explaining how all this worked: for instance, only one season separates the departure of DP midfielder Mauro Morales and the arrival of (improved) DP midfielder Nicloas Lodeiro (in 2016); they only burned one season of riding Dempsey’s aging knees and a mish-mash of attacking half-solutions before calling in Raul Ruidiaz (2018) to boost the next generation of attacking players (e.g., Jordan Morris) and the next round of journeyman (e.g., Will Bruin); Kim Kee-Hee took over the defense after MLS legend/monster Chad Marshall retired (2018?) and Roman Torres couldn’t step onto the field often enough, and Yeimar cane in after him. It even applies at the coaching level - Brian Schmetzer replaced Schmid after 2016 and he’s been there every since, with very little cause to leave – and that’s what separates the Sounders from the most MLS teams: they simply have yet to fall behind, on or off the field. That’s how a team wins eight trophies in 16 seasons in MLS, including the league’s first‑ever CONCACAF Champions’ League trophy in 2022. I’ve been waiting for the collapse, believe me, but I haven’t seen it either.

Total Joy Points: 50

Getting Reacquainted with the New England Revolution, MLS's Mighty Bridesmaids

New England, in off-season.

[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.]

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I moved to Boson in 1998, the same season I consciously uncoupled from DC United (successful teams don’t challenge you enough) and embraced the New England Revolution as my team. The Wooden Spoon stung their bums for the one and only time at the end of that very season and, to be clear, I was not surprised. I watched them try to squeeze star-power out of Darren Sawatzky, fer crissakes. How could I have known that the New England Revolution would go on to contest four MLS Cups in six years a mere three seasons later? Sure, they missed the playoffs two more times (the 90s were not gentle) before they established themselves as MLS’s Second Most Menacing Team and, obviously, all four of those trips to MLS ended in a disappointment and with soccer’s equivalent of a side of syphilis, but I bumbled into backing the right horse, regardless. Against the back drop of everything that came before, the 2002 MLS Cup run almost certainly felt like a fluke (bit fuzzy here; courting the wife, becoming a stepfather that season), but, for every fucking MLS Cup between 2005 and 2007, the Revolution walked onto the field with a very real shot at, and expectation of, winning. Never happened, of course, as New England lost every one and they remain the Buffalo Bills of MLS to this day, the bridesmaid to everyone else’s bride, etc. For me, none of those losses hurt like the 2006 final and, for all that I firmly believe that exploring the trauma sports fans experience when their team loses is the greatest possible waste of time for any and all therapists’ time, I do consider that loss formative to how I “enjoy” soccer to this day (i.e., never get too close). To their very real credit, the Revolution has never stopped trying since that stab straight through the fucking heart. They returned to MLS Cup the very next season…and lost again, to the same fucking team (the Houston Dynamo), only in regulation that time. They returned to MLS Cup again in 2014…which they lost to a different team (peak Los Angeles Galaxy that time), but at least they made it to extra-time in that one. And yet they picked themselves up again- if after missing the playoffs for three consecutive seasons (again), and after a couple seasons of “making the playoffs” (i.e., if you die after your first step in the door…?) – right after that, they produced the greatest regular season in MLS history. That happened in 2021. The record still stands, but I’d argue for a deeper truth about that record: the Revolution earned it with their third very capable team in franchise history. I have no doubt that all of the times they’ve fallen short stings every die-hard Revolution fan like a swarm of hornets, but, as well as the “bridesmaids” thing holds up, New England are kinda sorta the masters of the rebuild. They have been successful. They're the 10th most-successful team in MLS history on the Joy Points Scale (see end of post for methodology*).

Best Season(s)

Of course, I have to say the record-setting Supporters’ Shield winning season, but I have massive fucking respect for the Revolution team that shook off the shock of the 2006 MLS Cup loss and made it back to MLS Cup 2007. They’d lost Clint Dempsey’s combination of goals and a beating competitive heart by then, but that team rallied, put their collective heads down, and got shit done…well, until the second half of MLS Cup 2007. To think they went into halftime up 1-0 and on a goal by Taylor Twellman to boot. Those were the...ddddaaaaaaaaaaaayyyysss!

Getting Reacquainted with the Seattle Sounders, the Kristofferson of MLS

Different one, no Streisand.

[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.]

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Hurts to admit this, but the Seattle Sounders managed to reach second place in terms of all-time success in Major League Soccer (based on the Joy Point Scale; methodology below*) and that’s with nine other teams having a 13-season head-start. They joined in 2009, just the fourth expansion team in the post-contraction era, but took only one season to fall in step with the first two (and their direct rivals), Chivas USA and Real Salt Lake; moreover, Seattle hoisted their first Supporters’ Shield (2014) the season before MLS’s third expansion team, Toronto FC, made the playoffs for the first time. And, in a flourish that feels unintentional in the way Kristofferson just could not stop outdoing Ash (Fantastic Mr. Fox), Seattle snatched its first MLS Cup on Toronto’s home field in 2016 (if in one of the shittiest finals in league history, btw). The Sounders had something gratingly close to a standing invitation to MLS Cup over the next four seasons - and they won two of them (2016 and 2019). Hell, they won U.S. Open Cup in each of their first three season in MLS, and then won it again in 2014, aka, the same season they won the Shield. Bottom line, Sounders fans have never experienced pain, only mild discomfort…the spoiled assholes. Seattle missed the playoffs for the first time (the first!) in 2022.

Best Season(s)

Tough call, but I’m guessing Seattle fans feel more pride about the 2019 team that beat Toronto 3-1 than they do about the one that beat a better version of the same team by the tips of Stefan Frei’s finger-nails in Toronto. Looking at the rosters for 2014 (Shield), 2016 (Cup) and 2019 (Cup) doesn’t give you a lot to work with in terms of tie-breakers. I have answers to all of these questions, but: who do you choose between Kasey Keller and Stefan Frei? Was Chad Marshall really a better defender than Roman Torres, or Xavier Arreaga or Yeimar? Did Obafemi Martins have more upside than Raul Ruidiaz? Then again, what’s the point in arguing about which player is better when all of them worked? Seattle has won eight trophies in its 15 years in MLS, including the league’s first‑ever CONCACAF Champions’ League trophy. So, yeah, hard to say.

An MLS History Project, 2004: Parity Used to Mean Something, Dammit!

Brought to you glue. Or a rigid/low salary cap.

“One of the few teams with only one or two identities over its history in MLS. The big picture wasn’t much different back in 2002 – solid, reliably made the playoffs, only without going anywhere – but they’re also always unearthing talent that would later explode – e.g., Irishman Robbie O’Brien and, especially, Eddie Johnson.”

That’s my commentary on the Dallas Burn/FC Dallas in the 2002 post in this series. I quote it here in order to do two things to my bottom: first, give it a little “attaboy/good hustle” pat for recalling the two next big things for Dallas – e.g., O’Brien and (especially) Johnson. That’s one cheek (left, right, your call): the other gets a soothing massage, because I wrote that about Dallas’ identity – i.e., “solid, reliably made the playoffs, only without going anywhere” – immediately before Dallas missed the playoffs…uh, two straight seasons after 2002. And, by one account I’m choosing to trust, 2003 was their worst in league history.

I still think that “identity” for Dallas rings true, but that’s the point of all this: it’s not just remembering some names and faces, but also reconnecting to narratives, aka, the short arcs in Major League Soccer history. With 24 years behind us, I have loose identities for every team in MLS at this point – well, except Nashville SC, and Inter Miami CF, which is odd, because FC Cincinnati absolutely has an identity (and it’s bad) – and I think I can back up most of them. On the other hand, I’m learning where, for instance, I’ve got the right player and team, but I’m some number of years off (say, the San Jose Earthquake’s Ronnie Ekelund, who I would have placed later in their life-span), or when I forgot when each team hit whatever peak it had. Which brings me back to the Dallas Burn, now FC Dallas (and does the latter name really improve on the former?)

Whatever you call them (I’m leaning Burn), Dallas had a flaming shit-show of a season in 2003. They barely missed, however, in 2004 finishing just two points behind the (champions!) San Jose Earthquakes in the West. Still, that 36-point finish in '04 put them above not just the league-worst Chicago Fire than season, but also above a New England Revolution team that would scare the holy shit out of the DC United team that went on to win MLS Cup in 2004. In an alternate universe where MLS continued the playoff rules they used in 2002 (link above), Dallas would have made the 2004 MLS playoffs instead of New England, thus delaying the first known Rimando-ing in MLS history, and for who knows how long? (I’ve carried details from this game in my head – e.g., Taylor Twellman’s finish, Steve Ralston’s in-game PK bouncing in off Nick Rimando’s back – but the mini-documentary puts those details in their place within a freakin' incredible game. More to the point, Rimando and PKs go way back.))

Portland Timbers 3-1 Los Angeles Galaxy: Rich Kids Slumming

Looking for LA in their current home...

So, how much did your stomach sink when the Los Angeles Galaxy equalized within minutes (a minute?) of the Portland Timbers early goal in yesterday’s early morning game? Per the cliché, all’s well that ends well, but not even having enough time to tweet out a caveat fantor (not actual Latin) did leave me wondering today about the thickness of Portland’s glass jaw.

Fortunately, the Galaxy, who have been shit lately, continued to muck around their Personal Hell Sewer (TM). By game’s end, they could barely play out of their own half, never mind out of pressure. They got buried time and again in their left defensive corner; the Timbers’ pressure didn’t even need to be thorough to throw off LA; the mere sight of an opposite colored shirt saw LA give away the ball.

I set out, here, with an effort to not roll into one of those posts, one where I shit on the parade and then walk before it in unembarrassed nudity. No self-flagellation is in order because, bad as the trends have been for LA (0-6-1 in their last 7; e.g., bad), Portland had a couple bad habits to shake off as well – e.g., no wins at home since June (are you fucking kidding me?), and with a mental meltdown shit-show home loss to Real Salt Lake in that same wretched mix. Still, the Timbers did win today, cruising to a 3-1, and that’s what they needed and what we wanted, etc. But, guys, c’mon. Playing a train-wreck of a team at home? I mean, what’s the likeliest thing to happen? (Psst…LA loses. And suck it.)

History aside, though, this game will probably always be about VAR…whatever the fuck that stands for. (What? How many acronyms do you rattle off every day without knowing the root words?). As anyone who watched the game knows, the Galaxy had a Gyasi Zardes goal called back – and correctly – but I’ll be damned along with a school of the most wholesome nuns if I ever would have spotted that infringement in real time. Hell, it took many, many slow-mo replays for the commentating crew to catch the actual infringement (Zardes’ goal-hungry hands getting in front of his head (why, kid, why?) on the way to knocking the ball down to his feet to poke home.)

Vancouver Whitecaps 2-1 Seattle Sounders: On Keeping the Dam Whole

Like this, only shoved into a dam.

More games should end like this one did. The Seattle Sounder pushed against the Vancouver Whitecaps’ defense with what looked like the pressure of water pouring through a crack in a dam, but the defense held using the familiar tactic of stuffing body after body after body into the crack (again, soccer shows the way; we can only pray that hydro-engineers will listen) and the ‘Caps held on to beat the Sounders 2-1. When it wasn’t David Ousted (who’s doing better, even if he’s still shaky by his former standards), it was Tim Parker and Kendall Waston. Or even Sheanon Williams.

From the Seattle Sounders standpoint, though, they need to ask themselves why they held back for as long as they did. Seattle can answer that however they like, but I’d like to nominate a one-word answer: complacency. Vancouver started as the visibly weaker team; Seattle, meanwhile, looked fluid and comfortable, their players moving the ball easily in a way that showed a shared understanding of where the other players should be and where they want the ball. As Vancouver eased into the game – aka, once they stopped just passing the ball to the touchline or even the nearest Sounder – they started to take it over. What’s more, ‘Caps players started picking off Seattle’s passes – and that’s how Seattle’s strength – i.e., knowing where to find their players – became a weakness. It got to where Vancouver’s players knew where to find them too.

Seattle took too long to adjust; their late dominance might have been an illusion, the product of Vancouver bunkering to defend their lead (and was that the right choice? Did weary legs dictate the choice?). And I think that’s what I mean by complacency: it’s the theory that Seattle (perhaps like the Portland Timbers in 2016) came into the season sticking with the overall approach that won them MLS Cup. That ties into the cliché about championship teams having targets on their backs, a concept I’ve never really attached any meaning to till now. Maybe opposing teams do study the champs a little more carefully. And that obliges the champs to keep things fresh. Or to see that crown get knocked off their heads.

Anyway, that’s just a theory. This was a good win for Vancouver, an unlikely team that now has two big “on-paper” wins under the belt in this young season (Seattle this week, and the Los Angeles Galaxy a couple weeks back). As for Seattle, look, I could be writing an entirely different post if either of Clint Dempsey’s shots off the woodwork went in, or if Ousted didn’t make two back-to-back saves early in the second. None of that came off: Dempsey was the only positive in the Sounders attack for too long, and that’s how you lose games.

OK, let’s close this out with some notes on both teams.

The Late Tackle, 12 01 2016 - MLS Cup Finalists Finalized (Plus Everyone Else's Crappy Consolation Prize)

Like that, only with a couple consolation goals...

MLS Cup: Conference Champions...Revealed!

I never heard what Greg Vanney had to say just after halftime.

The 20-minute mini-game cut off the highlights right as Vanney, Toronto FC’s coach, was about to reveal his secrets – e.g. maybe that they’d channeled demons into Jozy Altidore (for he did play possessed), or that someone finally explained to Nick Hagglund, at long last, that he enjoys the freedom to score goals, as well as keep them out (or maybe that he was much bigger and faster than the Montreal Impact’s Marco Donadel). Vanney’s words could have explained everything, or nothing. What was clear from the start, though, was that Toronto hit the field turned up to 11 (shit, used a cliché). Nothing made that apparent quite like Michael Bradley’s slashing/manically-determined run into Montreal’s penalty area inside the first minute. (NOTE: Due to where and when I post, I only have the capacity to link to the match highlights; sorry for the inconvenience!)

Toronto simply never let up; if they ran over the Impact, they did it slowly. Or, rather than ran them over during the game, then backed over them in extra time. Count me among those shocked by Montreal’s set-piece defending (assuming such population exists). Hagglund got crazy-free twice (at least) and those lapses led to a panic/assist on (was it?) Toronto’s first, cleaned up by Armando Cooper (if memory serves), and the goal that forced extra time. At least Montreal had an excuse when it came to Hagglund – no one saw him coming – but, because they were warned about Altidore (see?), one has to ask just what the goofy fuck Montreal was thinking by letting Altidore run completely unmarked right before half; that was one hell of a tricky goal, but Jozy was good for it (again, possibly due to possession; there was no other word for how he approached the game all day, other than “surging”).

Montreal didn’t so much lie down, as protect its vitals for as long as it could while slipping in a couple pokes with a shiv. Dominic Oduro – who quietly put in a very credible year, as well as a rock-solid playoff run, which breaks his famous every-other-year pattern (congrats, kid!) – set himself up for the goal that could have won the series (against anything but a freight train) with the kind of touch he pulls off once every cycle of the moon. Piatti stuck in another one when he wrestled Montreal’s second goal over the goal-line. It was a brave performance, but Toronto was in what some folks call “a mood.”

MLS Snapshot, 09 01 2016: (Loose) Rankings, 10 Topics, Timbers v. FCD Preview

#Endorsed!

See what I did there? "Review" became "Snapshot," and instead of tying this post to Week [DON'T CARE!], I just typed in the date, today’s date. That one little change just freed me to post on MLS without thinking about the day of the week. I’ll still try to avoid stale content...just less neurotically.

Uh, what else? Generally, I won't talk much about specific results, not unless my timing lands just right, or if there's something that I didn't see or hear someone else pick up on (in my incredibly infrequent forays into the news) (A choice that totally rules out bringing up (for long) Toronto FC’s Game of Total Loss v. the Montreal Impact (see injuries) – but, while we're here, I think they'll weather it; Toronto survived Giovinco's scoring drought and Jozy's back besides; I think they're a little likelier for the Shield than they are for MLS Cup). In the end, I think most games possess a certain je ne sais quoi, res ipsa loquitur, so it's best to just assume that most people have clocked the results and watched all the videos they're going to by the time they find me. By and large, I want this to be a space for stretching the envelope (too far), conflating small data points into burgeoning trends, and Magical Thinking (e.g., creative, and ultimately pointless, leaps).

I'm kidding. I do my best to stay grounded, but I really do love playing with puzzle pieces, even the ones I can't actually get my hands on. With that in mind, here's what I hope, pray, and shall hereafter strive to achieve in these Snapshot posts:

Portland Timbers 4-2 Seattle Sounders: On the (Cleverly Disguised) Road Ahead

Wait...did they just score again?

I was lucky enough to get a late invite to today's game, and I couldn't be more thankful (thanks, anonymous person! You're the best!). I mean, how often does one get to live 45 minutes of happy incredulity, one of those moments where one can have a dozen coins in a row land on heads, and without being Professor Barnhouse?

It was a fascinating sequence, really: first, Vytas Andriuskevicius' goal eased the anxiety; Fanendo Adi's goal evidenced signs of the entire team's commitment, and, no less crucially, his; Lucas Melano scoring the third foretold either his personal redemption or the breaking of the sixth seal...wasn't entirely clear on that one; but, when Steven Taylor scored Portland's fourth goal and while standing on his feet, that's when a fog of sassified complacency sank onto the field to mingle with the afternoon heat.

To remind/inform, as the case may be, "sassified" comes from Clarence Carter's epic Strokin' (seriously, if you don't know this song, hit that link) and, as Urban Dictionary reminds us, it "[describes] the feeling following magnificent sexual gradification (sic)." (Guys, c'mon: it's "gratification". Does anyone even edit your copy?))

Things were going swell, I was smoking a cigarette, musing at the ceiling, etc., when a funny thing happened. That would be the Seattle Sounders scoring their second goal. Sure, there was one before that, but, in my state of bliss, that one only felt like Steven Taylor scored two goals on the day, one of them a helper for a brutally beleaguered opposition. When the Sounders scored that second goal, though, something changed. I haven't mentioned this yet, but I watched the game in the midst of Seattle’s fans. And, holy shit, does your body react when what you want to happen is the absolute opposite of what everyone around you wants to have happen. Put it this way, it borders on fight or flight, only without the irrationality.

The game ended 4-2 to the Portland Timbers in the end. After Jordan Morris nodded home from an unacceptably open space far too close to Portland's goal (and with Nicolas "Freakin'" Lodeiro  standing ready to play in the pass in the middle of a pasture with enough time to contemplate the meaning of his shot for each of the world's religions), the Timbers took a deep breath, re-centered, and like any good team (*****), they proceeded to play cool, possession soccer with an eye to bleeding the stamina out Seattle's legs.

Clint Dempsey & Hero Theory

Clint Dempsey's self-visualization.

This post has an Alpha, an Omega, and shit-ton of Greek letters in between, at least conceptually. Still, I hope to keep it brief…

When I watched the Seattle Sounder’s midnight-of-the-soul-loss to the Los Angeles Galaxy (because close enough), a couple things stood out – among them, LA’s sometimes impressive efficiency, and on both sides of the ball. There was something about the Sounders, though, the way Clint Dempsey appears to operate on the assumption that his teammates are second-best to him in all ways, a reality that, obviously, obliges him to handle everything from getting the ball out of the back, to approach play, to finally scoring the sweet, sweet goal that sends the fans home singing!

I picked up the phrase “hero-ball” somewhere – again, probably from Matt Doyle (because that’s all I read) - but that’s all the attribution that I have time for. I’m condensing it to “hero” here because it fits better. Now, to my point…

After recording the Dangerous Balls Podcast, I thought harder about what the “hero” concept means to me. Some players – and, here, yes, absolutely, I would include Dempsey, but also the Colorado Rapids’ Jermaine Jones and Toronto FC’s Sebastian Giovinco – want to put the game on their shoulders and carry it to victory. It’s just in their nature. Sometimes, this pans out – see, Giovinco through all of 2015 and up until…is it six games ago? See Jones’ (pre-meltdown) time in New England (e.g. before his messiah complex caught up with him?), and see Dempsey in the good games in the Copa America Centenario and through the Oba-Deuce year(s).

There’s an aside in all of this: coaches love “hero” players, at least so long as they can pull it off and probably for a few years after. It simplifies a coach’s job when a player can, say, both start and finish a play the way Dempsey sometimes can, or when Jones provides enough presence in midfield to make it effectively a vast no-go zone for the other team. Sounders’ coach Sigi Schmid enjoyed two years of looking like a genius for no better reason than writing “Dempsey” and “Martins” into the starting line-up. Really good players are short-cuts, basically, players with enough talent and sense/belief in what they can do to sort of dictate a new game-plan for their coach; it saves him from thinking, wins them more money, adulation and random hate for five lifetimes, etc. I'm not saying it's win, win, win. I am, however, saying that Klinsmann defaulted to this this past June…the lazy fuck.

What happened against LA, though, highlighted the increasingly real limits to the Dempsey’s “hero” time. The way he showed to receive the ball in the middle third limited his useful availability in the final third where the Sounders needed someone to link play, or, if nothing else, another runner in the box. Here, it’s less that he’s no longer capable of doing something he once did (think it’s true, though, just sayin’), than he’s undercutting some important work that his current and future teammates need to learn – e.g. how to get the ball to either him, or literally any other attacking player/fullback going forward. And, yes, it goes without saying that covering all that ground will get harder for Dempsey with each passing year.

Sometimes, the best way to help another player is to let him learn his job. So, yeah, back off, Clint.

Gold Cup: The U.S. Frustrates Panama, and Honduras/Haiti Bores Neutrals

That some serious, long-term casting for bully and toady.

Holy shit, that was fun! The U.S. v. Panama was a damn good game. The way the first half ended with that roiling boil that threatened to pour over every side of the pot? It rarely gets better than when an underdog pops the Alpha with a surprise shot to the chin. Good times, good times...

Know what wasn't good times? Honduras' tournament-ending loss to a, let's face it, solid Haitian side. Somewhere in the middle of a lengthy rant that shifted from a specific point – e.g. the prolonged, pointless whine that Honduran coach Jorge Luis Pinto directed at that match's fourth official – to a general one – e.g. the general, embarrassing bitchy petulance toward referees by Major League Soccer players and coaches – the commentating crew noted that the second half of Haiti v. Honduras boiled down to Haiti inviting Honduras to try to break them down. And, lord did they have time for that rant about whining players. That game contained more dead air than a coffin.

They never did it. Honduras, I mean. They barely accepted the invitation to attack, and came close all of once. So, beyond congratulating Haiti for going through, the less said about that game, the better.

Fortunately, the night's second act made up for a grimly poor first and on multiple levels. Panama came out firing on all cylinders, pinning the U.S. back into their own half for large portions of the, well, the half. The Central American side put a young, fairly untried defensive set through a tricky set of wringers before the whistle blew for halftime. As someone who watched the game with me pointed out (and please claim via tweet, if you read this), the Panamanians serve up a mean cross – and that's something they carried into the second half. Panama knocked, knocked, and knocked again, until they finally scored the goal they needed to lift them over Haiti in the Group A standings.

U.S. Tops Honduras in the Main Course (After a Nice Appretizer)

We are the world! We are the Turkey!

"...I only laced it with PCP."

And that's why I love the bar where I watch soccer most often. Because that's quality eaves-dropping...

One other note before getting into the nitty-gritty. Like most of you, I read two (or more) things today that bunched my undies, e.g.: 1) the record-breaking number of people who watched the Women's World Cup Final; and 2) reports on the comparatively shitty pay that members of that same team made during the tournament leading up to said World Cup final. Yes, yes, women's sports don’t draw with anything like the same consistency as men's leagues do around the world, and, yes, that translates into what they get paid. Still, and even if just domestically, those same women drew a shit-ton of eyeballs for that final, so call this my (extraordinarily modest) call to see them reap some (meaningful) measure of the dollars spinning off that whirlwind. Because they earned it, goddammit. And if it's because the sponsors failed to show up, leverage that shit into the next contract because people, Americans, especially, totally watch the women's game. Make it right. I don’t care how it's done, but fucking pay these women what they absolutely earned.

And, with that, time for the two-course meal that was tonight's CONCACAF Group A kick off.

Sounders v. Timbers. On Being Proud (Because You Have To)

Off camera: 7 other toddlers on their cans.

First of all, holy shit, was that a boring, boring, boring game. Cascadia "Clash" my considerably hairy ass (no image). One can find twice the intensity at Sunday afternoon croquet amongst toddlers.

For the first time ever, Seattle Sounders fans and Portland Timbers fans have something in common: the experience of watching two teams do absolutely everything in their power to not fail. Yes, this was the equivalent of watching your five-year-old learn to ice skate. All you non-parents out there, cherish this moment, maybe take a still from the game and post on your refrigerator. How boring was it? (Your answer: "I don't know!"). The referee concocted fouls just so he could dish out a couple yellow cards for something to do.

Anyone who watched knows the game's one and only turning point: one long throw, one soft shot by Seattle's Andy Rose, which was followed by Portland's Adam Kwarasey pattng the ball over his body and nearly into the goal like some kind of misguided kitten; I think Clint Dempsey claimed it, which only goes to prove the point that forwards are shameless as Hollywood starlets. In the end, the game ended in a 1-0 Seattle win.

I'll keep my comments on the Sounders short: if you're proud of that one, you're dyed rave green down to the roots of your wool. That's to say, you’re the kind of person who joins cults. Speaking of, did you know that your personal path to enlightenment starts with buying me a Mercedes? I'm happy to take checks.

Now, to turn to the Timbers...jesus, where to begin? I know! With bullet points!

MLS and the Global Tipping Point

Not Olympic, yet somehow totally appropriate.

Where is the tipping point? That’s the question under examination here.

When Major League Soccer (MLS) kicked off with a handful of U.S. World Cup heroes and some decently high-profiled internationals (here, I'm thinking of guys like Carlos Valderrama, Roberto Donadoni, and Marco Etcheverry), the league came off as a carnival barker's novelty. Even as MLS has grown and, somewhat recently, noticeably improved, it has never shaken the minor league status.

One major assumption has held through all this – the idea that any given American player's ambition is defined by his willingness to go to the European big leagues. Failure to find his highest possible level and test himself against it was, by definition, a preemptive denial of whatever potential he, or his career, had. Anyone who doubts this should read up on Landon Donovan's career, who could never do enough during his time with Everton because he failed to transfer to the Liverpool club outright.

A number of Americans – maybe one score, maybe two (maybe more; fuck it, I'm not counting) – put in real time in various European top flights. While some other enjoyed more success with individual clubs – here, I'm thinking Clint Dempsey and Brian McBride at Fulham, or maybe Sacha Kljestan at Anderlecht - Michael Bradley probably compiled the most storied and prolific European career of any American player. And then he came back to MLS. Like Dempsey, like Kljestan, like Jozy Altidore, etc. etc. That's all pretty new, so I guess we're all still sorting out what that means.