Portland Timbers 6-0 Sporting KC: Love & Trust, Plus a Club du Foot Montreal Scouting Report

Kindly turn your attention to the little red dot...

In last week’s post, I recommended that Portland Timbers fans memory-hole the hopeless, whistle-to-whistle loss at Real Salt Lake. At the risk of pissing off, OH, everyone, I recommend that people memory-hole Portland’s Sunday-best 6-0 demolition of Sporting Kansas City. The argument for treating the SKC win like someone else’s bestest birthday ever actually makes more sense because, which of these things feels most likely to happen again: 1) Portland getting outplayed at every position but goalkeeper, or 2) the Timbers kicking rainbow sparkles out of some hapless team going for all-time Wooden Spoon?

If the Timbers roll up to Montreal on Wednesday and we see bright shimmering lights in the eastern skies, we’ll know it’s not the Aurora Borealis. It’s our boys kicking rainbow sparkles out of Club du Foot Montreal.

Needless to say, I don’t like our chances up north. I also don’t need Portland to keep this great thing rolling. All I need from them in Montreal is something between recognizable competence and three points. Per the title, this post will close with a wee Montreal Scouting Report. Before that, let’s relive the glorious thing I’m charging you all with forgetting…swear this is for your own protection.

Portland Timbers 6-0 Sporting Kansas City
What Passes for a Match Report
Even after Kristoffer Velde banged in a 6th-minute goal that was somehow equal parts unlikely and entirely on-brand, I still had no goddamn idea which way the game would ultimately goal. Speaking solely for myself, all doubts evaporated by the 26th-minute own-goal scored by that poor bastard Jacob Davis (who, just to note it, is one of several Jacobs/Jasons in SKC’s defense that I’ve seen mortally mortify himself over the first third of 2026). That one had some dark magic in it. Like a monkey’s paw curling just to give you the finger for some sin you may never have committed.

Level Set 5, Club du Foot Montreal...Remembering the Good Times

Sometimes the produce isn't so good.

What follows is a brief history of Club du Foot Montreal, 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
One thing the entire "[Level Set]" project has surfaced is how few trophies Major League Soccer’s Canadian teams have collected over the years. While that makes sense when it comes to the Vancouver Whitecaps, who has battled gravity for as long as they’ve been a team (wait for it; one of stories of 2025), it takes looking past Toronto’s FC’s (one-off) all-conquering 2017 team and, to the case in point, the Montreal Impact team of the mid-2010s. As laid out in their list of mighty works below, Club du Foot Montreal’s best era amounted to two fleeting seasons, but it was a freakin’ party for as long as it lasted.

The Montreal Impact, known as Club du Foot Montreal since 2021, graduated from the USL to MLS in 2012 and, judging by their Year One signings, they came in determined to make a splash. While their inaugural roster contained the usual smattering of MLS journeymen (e.g., Collen Warner, Davy Arnaud and….Zarek Valentin), and hyped-up youngsters (e.g., Andrew Wenger), Montreal did some heavy shopping in Italy, signing CBs Alessandro Nesta and Matteo Ferrari and slick and saucy little forward, Marco Di Viao. All that investment not only failed to translate to Quebecois, it went two tits up in 2014, their only season to end with the shameful sting of the Wooden Spoon. After the failure of the Italian experiment, Montreal started sniffing around other leagues for talent and that search brought in two of their all-time great talents, the Belgian defender/midfielder Laurent Ciman and, one of my all-time personal favorites, Argentine winger/forward, Ignacio Piatti. Piatti had the misfortune of showing up in time to go through Montreal's one and only crawl through the Wooden Spoon paddle-wheel, but the arrival of Ciman and smart additions like midfield wrecker Marco Donadel the experienced Nigel Reo-Coker made turned the team’s fortunes on a literal dime. A mere five and half months after the worst regular season of 2014, the Impact went the distance in the 2015 CONCACAF Champions’ League, contesting the two-leg final against Mexico’s Club America. In a pattern familiar to any MLS fan from that period, Montreal carried a promising result out of Mexico City (1-1!), only to collapse under the weight of a second half onslaught front of their home fans. Those 135 minutes’ worth of dreaming certainly felt incredible and, with that breeze blowing at their backs, Montreal became the talk of MLS when they hit the high-profile player motherlode by signing Chelsea/Ivory Coast legend Didier Drogba in late 2015. With the core intact and Drogba throwing around his weight and talent up top, even if not for every game (dude was old by then), L’Impact put together their best-ever MLS season in 2016…and, just as quickly as they came, the good times ended. Montreal would bubble up into the fringes of real competition in the seasons that followed, but, more often than not, they fail to make a noise loud enough for anyone to notice, at least not one that isn’t a thud of failure. A season and a half at the top, huzzah, or rather, allons-y.

MLS Eastern Conference Check-In, A Word at the One-Third Mark

What I have to work with...

Welcome to this broad and necessarily shallow check-in on where things stand in Major League Soccer’s Eastern Conference about one-third of the way through the 2025 season. To set expectations a little:

I watch just one Eastern Conference team every week – FC Cincinnati – and most of the additional (somewhat) in-depth watching I’ve done involved teams that they played on the upcoming weekend. So, no, I’m not coming at any of this from some all-knowing, all-absorbing perch.

Against that, I sincerely believe that a lot of the week-to-week global coverage I see from this league (almost all of it from Official Organs) has a pernicious tendency to read too much into the last game played – i.e., Content, particularly the stuff around failure and progress in players, formation shifts, etc., tends to over-value the latest details, often at the expense of considering broader details like, say, did your team look like some hot-rod shit last weekend because they ran over Montreal at home? Basically, all of the everything below looks at the same things, just over a longer arc. That follows for necessity, for sure, but it’s also about patterns, particularly when it comes to results, where they happened and against which teams and in what condition.

Just to note it, I constructed the information boxes that top each section for each team from the (current) Conference Standings (that link will be stale by Sunday), the much-reduc’d Form Guide (still mourning the loss, contemplating egging MLS HQ…so long as that’s not a felony, because I can’t have another), and applying a filter one team at a time to the official stats page. (Just to note it, MLS has gutted its non-app content. Jesus fucking Christ, the home pages for must teams are like shopping malls circa 2022, i.e., tacky little ghost teams haunted by advertisements to no one.)

The teams below are listed in their order in the Eastern Conference standings and whatever comments I provide come from a combination of things I’ve read, both in the Official Organ and strays caught on Bluesky, watching highlights and longer chunks of games when I had to, or told myself I had to, and watching MLS Wrap-Up – which, to the credit of all concerned, has improved now that they have stuff to chew on.

Getting Reacquainted with Club du Foot Montreal, Canada's "Other" Flash in the Pan

Actual search result for "flash in the pan"

Thumbnail History
One thing the entire "Getting Reacquainted with" project has surfaced is how few trophies Major League Soccer’s Canadian teams have contributed to the collective trophy case. While that makes sense when it comes to the Vancouver Whitecaps, who has battled gravity for as long as they’ve been a team, it takes looking past Toronto’s FC’s (one-off) all-conquering 2017 team and, to the case in point, the Montreal Impact team of the mid-2010s. As laid out in their list of mighty works below*, Club du Foot Montreal’s best era amounted to two fleeting seasons, but it was a freakin’ party for as long as it lasted.

The Montreal Impact, known as Club du Foot Montreal since 2021, graduated from the USL to MLS in 2012 and, judging by their Year One signings, they came in determined to make a splash. While their inaugural roster contained the usual smattering of MLS journeymen (e.g., Collen Warner, Davy Arnaud and….huh, Zarek Valentin), and hyped-up youngsters (e.g., Andrew Wenger), Montreal did some heavy shopping in Italy, signing CBs Alessandro Nesta and Matteo Ferrari and slick and saucy little forward, Marco Di Viao. All that investment not only failed to translate to Quebecois, it went two tits up in 2014, their only season to end with the shameful sting of the Wooden Spoon. After the failure of the Italian experiment, Montreal started sniffing around other leagues for talent and that search brought in two of their all-time great talents, the Belgian defender/midfielder Laurent Ciman and, one of my all-time personal MLS favorites, Argentine winger/forward, Ignacio Piatti. Piatti had the misfortune of showing up in time to go through the Wooden Spoon paddle-wheel, but the arrival of Ciman and smart additions like midfield mind-fucker Marco Donadel the experienced Nigel Reo-Coker made turned the team’s fortunes on a literal dime. A mere five and half months after the worst regular season of 2014, the Impact went the distance in the 2015 CONCACAF Champions’ League, contesting the two-leg final against Mexico’s famous Club America. In a pattern familiar to any MLS fan from that period, Montreal carried a promising result out of Mexico City (1-1!) only to collapse under the weight of a second half onslaught front of their home fans in the return leg. Those 135 minutes’ worth of dreaming certainly felt incredible and, with that breeze blowing at their backs, Montreal became the talk of MLS when they hit the high-profile player motherlode by signing Chelsea/Ivory Coast legend Didier Drogba in late 2015. With the core intact and Drogba throwing around his weight and talent up top, even if not for every game (dude was old by then), L’Impact put together their best-ever MLS season in 2016…and, just as quickly as they came, the good times ended. Montreal would bubble up into the fringes of real competition in the seasons that followed, but, more often than not, they fail to make a noise loud enough for anyone to hear, at least not one that isn’t a thud of failure. Here's to a season and a half at the top, huzzah, or rather, allons-y.

Total Joy Points: 2

MLS Week 25 Snapshot Review: Of Life, Death, and "Postseason Hope"

Not subtle, therefore glorious.

Keep movin’, movin’, movin’, though they’re disapprovin’, keep them doggies movin’, Rawhide!

Three weeks in a row on these posts, baby. Officially hell-bent for leather…

I tried to tighten up the model this week, so we’ll see how that goes (good?). The due diligence felt…decent this week, watched a respectably stupid amount of soccer, took some notes, etc. – I even cribbed some helpful quotes from Matt Doyle’s (mostly) weekly column. I won’t bore you with the viewing schedule, but I want to close the preamble with this: I’d hoped to watch the Colorado Rapids stirring, if poorly recorded, 3-2 win over Real Salt Lake, but Apple TV+ still has that result at 2-1 and with no full replay available. Maybe they had John Denver on the tapes in the grips of a Rocky Mountain High? Or was it because it looked like a 90s-throwback night, only with shit attendance as the concept?

With that, here is your Major League Soccer Week 25, Leagues Cup Eve Snapshot Review. And, by way of chelebration, I’m gonna start big. And if anyone can remember which gutter-wine company used “chelebrate” for the ad copy, you’ve got a shiny quarter coming your way. Then again, it’ll never touch Orson Welles’ finest pitches.

1) This Is Not Postseason Hope
“Montréal’s three-game unbeaten run came to an end, but they still head into the break with real postseason hopes as they’re just one point under the red line, and just three back of Toronto in 8th.”
- Matt Doyle

In a league with all an Oprah-esque approach to the postseason – you get a berth! you get a berth! you get a berth! – the bare act of making the playoffs just means the local fans aren’t blushing at the end of the regular season. “Postseason hope" should mean exactly one thing: making the playoffs with an actual shot at doing something once you get in. Club du Foot Montreal has just three wins over their past eighteen (18) games. As you’ll see below (at No. 8), the bar for entry in the Eastern Conference hangs lower than the Count de Monet’s cuffs and Montreal’s just one of many teams who will, barring a miracle or a couple miraculous acquisitions, see their foot cut off the second it steps onto any playoff pitch they play over their heads to crash. That’s hardly unique, of course. Atlanta United FC looked genuinely good against a hot-streakin’ Columbus Crew SC in this weekend’s 2-1 win, but they’re still yo-yoing up and down in the middle of nowhere in the East. FC Dallas presents an even starker example, thanks to their recent revival – e.g., 5-3-2 in their last 10. That would matter if they could win a game on the road. Just one. So, again, when I use phrases like “postseason hopes,” I’ll be using it specifically.

MLS Week 2 Review: Brief Notes on Many Topics

Fill up on these faster.

The Broad Strokes

MLS Week 2 served up a healthy heaping of surprises – mostly in the form of eye-catching road wins, but I bet the current Los Angeles FC roster will talk about that snow game for half as long as their fans do (i.e., a damned long time). Somewhat related, I pissed away an hour watching MLS Wrap-Up – so, obviously, don’t recommend. If you like that show, no judgment, gods bless and carry on. I just fill up on hot takes faster than most and I hit my limit before they got halfway through the obligatory-till-His-retirement opening segment on Messiami.

Miami deserved more of the praise than I’d like to admit, but I also don’t know what the fuck Orlando was doing out there besides wasting everyone’s time….wait…fuck me. They made me do it too. I started with fucking Miami. Got played like conservatives play the New York Times…

Result(s) of the Week

I’m going with Club du Foot Montreal’s pretty dang legit (looking) win down in Dallas, with honorable mention going to DC United for wearing down (my) Portland Timbers, Red Bull punching points out of Houston Dynamo FC and both sides of the New England Revolution’s loss at home against Toronto FC. That lopsided sin over LAFC probably should have made the cut - particularly given how it played out -but X-factors make me skittish, so....

Right. Here’s what happens next. The list for all of the scores from MLS Week 2 are listed below, with links to The Mothership’s game summaries under each (i.e., the numbers in the middle). I’ve included a key for how closely I watched (or didn’t watch) each game after said list of scores and, after that, I provide some very short notes that include: 1) a one(-ish) sentence summary of each game/highlight reel; 2) mention one thing that might not have been picked up in summaries and highlight shows; and 3) close with a short note on where I see both teams in the today, or maybe sometime next week. I don’t know how much readers will value it, but all that will make sense. Let’s start with the scores:

Minnesota United FC 1-1 Columbus Crew SC (H)

Real Salt Lake 3-0 Los Angeles FC (H)

Inter Miami CF 5-0 Orlando City SC %

Vancouver Whitecaps 1-1 Charlotte FC *

Chicago Fire FC 1-2 FC Cincinnati %

FC Dallas 1-2 Club du Foot Montreal %

Houston Dynamo FC 1-2 Red Bull New York %

Sporting Kansas City 1-1 Philadelphia Union (H)

St. Louis CITY FC 2-0 New York City FC * (I still have to sit through this one; notes later)

Colorado Rapids 1-1 Nashville SC *

Portland Timbers 2-2 DC United (full game; link below)

San Jose Earthquakes 1-3 Los Angeles Galaxy %

Seattle Sounders 0-0 Austin FC *

New England Revolution 0-1 Toronto FC (H)

MLS Weakly, January 8, 2023: A Long Way of Saying I Know Nothing Except One Big Thing

What we all want, and not so deep down.

This post has exactly one through-line: everything relates to Major League Soccer. Now, let’s throw some shit at the wall.

I want to start with a wee celebration on the occasion of Sacha Kljestan’s retirement – and I’d like to begin those notes by admitting I haven’t done this kind of thing nearly enough. Players exit the league all the time, of course – not a few of them go on to better things, some become Alexi Lalas, aka, a guy doing a never-ending, insufferable bit – and they go out with nothing more than a few hundred tweets thanking them for their service. More of them deserve better than get it, basically, and Kljestan’s definitely one of those guys.

People who have followed MLS long enough probably remember the zeitgeisty phrasing that talked about it in terms of versions – i.e., MLS 2.0, 3.0, maybe with a 2.3 or 2.6 thrown in for those hung up on finer distinctions. Real old timers remember when the league contracted in 2002, cutting two Florida teams with very Florida names, the Miami Fusion and the (league OG) Tampa Bay Mutiny. While it didn’t take long for MLS to begin what looks like inexorable expansion in hindsight – starting with Real Salt Lake and Chivas USA in ’05 – it is important, for the purposes of this exercise, to try to imagine watching a tiny league that forever seemed on the verge of collapse.

Chivas USA drafted a young Sacha Kljestan in 2006 as a Gen Adidas player. While neither they nor RSL hit the ground running, Chivas USA turned things around first, topping the West in 2007 – and even pushing DC United for the Supporters’ Shield that same season. I barely remember Chivas' roster from that era – though much like New York City FC, they borrowed talent from their parent team, Chivas de Guadalajara – but Kljestan quickly stood out as a star player. And I mean that in the sense that he could play soccer: he had the skill, brains and technique to do good and interesting things on the field. Moreover, he joined an ever-growing collection of American players who fit the same description. Some of those careers in the league started before Kljestan’s (e.g., Clint Mathis, Clint Dempsey during his New England Revolution days), some became direct rivals for a time (e.g., Landon Donovan), and they all added their own piece to the idea that the United States of America could produce credible soccer talent. I’m not sure I can adequately describe what that felt like to anyone who didn’t watch MLS in the 1990s, but it was nice to feel something brighter than a nagging sense of doom.

MLS Weakly, MLS Week 25: Keeping Up with the Joneses, Working the Room

My wheels of steel in the 70s.

Teams across Major League Soccer scored plenty of goals over MLS Week (probably) 25. And, as with last week, all those goals didn’t do much besides throttle a couple of dreams. With one exception - a rather pathetic one too - the rich teams got three points richer, the poorest teams saw what little credit they had run out, and, again, with a couple exceptions, the Joneses fought tooth-and-tong to keep up with one another in the middle.

In other news, I can’t explain the games I chose for longer review, so I won’t. It is what it is, aka, less than what it could be, but....never mind. The original impulse came from a good place, for what it’s worth. When I looked at a couple results, a thought came to me, one inspired, perhaps, by the/my Portland Timbers’ 1-3 (bad, as in neither close nor good) road loss to Toronto FC: which teams are shaping up the ones who will trip-up some other team’s last, desperate grasp at the playoff line? I’ll round up results/thoughts from the little-long-playing video review sessions below, but first, I wanted to mention the games I didn’t watch and why (I linked to the game summary in the score).

Philadelphia Union 4-1 Chicago Fire FC
A) The game summary never got the full highlights posted, B) the only thing that surprised me was the magnitude, C) I should have done the little-long-playing thing with this one, because this result took a hard shot at Chicago’s moment, and D) I have no excuse, this one even fit the fucking profile, sorry, and E) I’ll do better. Maybe.

New England Revolution 1-0 DC United
“The Revs took care of business at home, riding an early Carles Gil goal to a 1-0 win over visiting D.C. United, who never truly threatened.”

From Matt Doyle’s weekly round-up. Felt sufficient.

Red Bull New York 0-1 Orlando City SC
My understanding of both teams boils down to they can beat or lose to anyone, case in point. Also, heard Pato went down. Also, this (Doyle, again):

“But there is no Bradley Wright-Phillips on this team, and there is no Sacha Kljestan on this team, and I’m not even sure if there’s a Daniel Royer on this team.”

MLS at 20 (or Thereabouts): Looking Back, Ahead, and Up and Down

He's not sure what he's seeing either.

Going into the June international break, I posted a State-of-the-League behemoth, which amounted to an update of a preview post I put up when Major League Soccer kicked off the 2022 season. On June 10 – i.e., just before the league picked up again after the June break - I followed that up with a pretty damn sloppy post (if structurally spot-on; that was Plan A all along!) that previewed the next five games for all the teams across MLS.

This post will pull notes from those, and look forward to the future with two thoughts in mind: 1) showing what I got and what I missed – which I see as a proxy for the relevant teams actually being what they looked like; and 2) reassessing, oh, everything now that we’ve got 20 games with which to work, my grand pronouncements should stand on a steadier soapbox – and I’ve organized the teams below on that firmer ground. The ranking system should ring a couple bells – e.g., “Contender,” “Playoff-Caliber,” “Margin Walkers,” and “Fodder” – but, again, it’s projection, something that most people should know well enough through everything between weather forecasting more than, oh, three days out. Bring an umbrella and warm clothes, basically, and trust no one and nothing.

Wrapping up the preamble, I thought I’d give quick definitions for each category:

Contenders: Teams that have done consistently well all season.

Playoff Caliber: Teams I can’t see slipping under the playoff line in the next five games…but never say never.

Margin Walkers: Teams I can see falling out of, or climbing into the playoffs over the next five games and for any reason whatsoever.

Fodder: Teams that have done consistently poorly all season, some of whom have been thinking about next season for the past several seasons.

That’s everything. As you’ll see, the “Margin Walker” category is the chunkiest. I explain the calls where I feel like I need to. And…we’re off….

FC Cincinnati Preview: Bring Your Running Shoes, the Good Ones

Lace 'em tight, stay frosty.

Club du Foot Montreal have a new crest (eh), and a solid run over the past 10 games, going 6-2-2 and against reasonably spry opposition. They lost a step on the back end of the 10, going 3-2-0; fwiw, they got home wins over Atlanta and Orlando, plus one on the road over Charlotte, but they lost away to Nashville…and then at home last weekend against Real Salt Lake. And one can make a reasonable argument that RSL outplayed them. So…what looms largest, a 6-2-2 recent record or the one oddball loss that goes against it?

I’ll start with this: Montreal doesn’t run the tightest ship at the back. They’ve allowed at least one goal in every game except that win over Charlotte. They’ve also scored above the league average (which I put at 17.5; Montreal has 24), which makes me think FC Cincinnati has another track meet on tap for this weekend. That’s not unusual for these Montreal v Cincy: they played to a 4-3 game with Cincinnati at home and on the losing end, which repeated another game in 2021, when they played the same venue (right?) with the Orange and Blue coming out at the wrong end of a 5-4 final score.

That’s the past, because a couple things have changed since even that last meeting – e.g., the arrival of Obinna Nwodobo and a fully-functioning midfield (with Junior Moreno). So, first question: can Cincinnati’s overall defensive shape/personnel keep Montreal to one or zero goals? I lean toward yes, but with some caveats and caution signs. Montreal has some sharp players working the width/channels – e.g., Djordje Mihailovic (assuming he’s not gone yet…The Mothership is behind on the availability info) and Lassi Lappalainen on their left and Alistair Johnston and Joaquin Torres on the right – and they spread the field nicely and play into the internal channels or to the far post according to the space they have. It’s a decent system, even if RSL bottled it up pretty nicely.

Against that methodology, the way Cincy plays its fullbacks – I assume Pat Noonan goes Alvas Powell and John Nelson again – looms larger than normal (also relevant: I think I say this every time). I hope they go a little conservative, at least on one side, and rely more on the fullbacks playing into Moreno and Nwobodo then out to Dominique Badji and (again, I assume) Alvaro Barreal, respectively, to work the ball up the field. I don’t mind either fullback taking chances once the ball is high, but hope they don’t hand Montreal any gifts, especially breaks behind the fullbacks inside Cincy's half. It’s not that Montreal can’t push up the gut, and Victor Wanyama does make his share of late runs to the top of the area, but he mostly seems to sit deep and coordinate, with the forward momentum happening on either side of him. That said, Montreal can change that up by calling in Kei Kamara, King of Journeymen, to act as a battering ram later in the game; that’s against Romell Quioto, who strikes me as just another guy they play into space.

MLS Weakly, MLS Week 11: Results Round-up, the Near-Future & a Funeral

A brighter future. Without....all this.

First, yes, I have once again tinkered with the format for this week’s Weakly. And, oh my holy God, how many fucking teams have midweek games tomorrow night? 20? Yeah, this is me tapping out on these weekly reviews. And I mean it this time. If anyone sees me post another one (except in the off-season), DM me and I’ll give you my address, so’s you can come over a slap me. Now, to this week’s round-up.

With a break (for most teams) coming in the first half of June (and anyone know why they’re pausing?), I decided to shorten the horizon and focus on just the next two, three games for all the teams around Major League Soccer. A two-week break feels like enough of a reset - e.g., teams could get key players back, coaching staffs can re-examine tactics that haven’t been working, make tweaks to one that have, etc. - to make that feel like a good spot for a breather/reassessment. With that in mind, I’ve listed all the games that each team in MLS has ahead between now and the end of May and threw my two cents at them for good measure. I’ll wrap up with a summary as well.

With that, it’s time for a rundown of the results. As always (and for the last time; pour one out), I’ve embedded links to The Motherships game summary in each final score and, to add a little more “why” to all the “what” below, I pulled some quotes from Matt Doyle’s Week 11 review in places where I thought he said something interesting. Now, a look back at the races….

Houston Dynamo FC 2-0 Nashville SC
[Spot Check: 1st - 20th, 45th -75th, plus box score]
Houston’s Adam Lundqvist walked off under a red mark at the 35th minute, but I didn’t notice the advantage any more than Gary Smith. Nashville teed up multiple lines on goal (e.g., C. J. Sapong, Daniel Lovitz, and Ethan Zubak) and missed them all. Houston, on the other hand, finished the shots they created and went 1-0 through Adalberto Carrasquilla nearly 20 minutes before Lundqvist’s ejection. More importantly, they looked coordinated and competent and Fafa Picault gave Nashville’s defense enough fits all on his own (just to note it, Walker Zimmerman didn’t start). In big picture terms, this result has me re-evaluating whether I’ve overrated Nashville over the first third of the season; a good, competitive team gets a point on the road against a middling team like Houston. Going the other way, this feels like an aberration for Houston, but also noted. Oh, and Doyle offered another theory on Nashville’s struggles:

MLS Weakly, Week 10: The Many Best, the Few Worst, the Muddle

Eh....

To tap out on the obvious question early, I don’t follow (or care about) the U.S. Open Cup because, for all its history, you can’t really learn anything from it. The MLS teams (generally) cut all the corners they can until the very end and, in the context of figuring out who’s got what, it feels like reading the wrong material for the test.

Also, yes, I know this is late to the point of pointlessness, but I made a commitment and, no matter how many times I disavowed the same (so, so many; so many), I will walk this plank until I run out of wood.

And, naturally, I’ve tinkered with the format…speaking for myself, I’d keep reading these things for that running pratfall. Rather than lead with all the results and then pick them apart, I’m just going to walk through them one at a time. I’ll start with the games I spot-checked, wrap up on the games I ignored and slip whatever (additional) comments I have on the two teams I follow (again, FC Cincinnati and the Portland Timbers) in between the two. Also, I’m ditching the Heaven, Purgatory, Hell arrangement - which didn’t seem to, y’know, pop! - for another organizing concept: Is It Safe? That’s part homage to the famous scene from Marathon Man, and part a reference to the current standings in Major League Soccer’s Eastern and Western Conferences. The question I’ll try to answer/divine is whether the current standings in each look like they’ll hold.

I’ll get to that fool’s errand at the end of all this. Before that, let’s talk results. Briefly. I’d encourage people who want more details, more drilling down on tactics, more data to Matt Doyle’s Armchair Analyst weekly review (which I crib below; see italics), or, better to the independents writing about this stuff in your local and/or chosen soccer market. The main thing I want my notes to communicate is whether or not people should buy the result. Here goes…and, as always, links to The Mothership’s data caves are embedded in each final score.

Club du Foot Montreal 4-1 Orlando City SC (And Montreal’s rebranding again…right?)
[Based on the following segments of the game: 10th to 25th, 37th to 45th+, 45th to 55th, 66th to 72nd, 77th to 84th; also the box score.]
Oh, yeah. Montreal kicked the shit out of Orlando. They exploited them (4th goal) and broke them down (2nd); there was simply never a mount in which Montreal wasn’t the subject and Orlando the object. One thing I noted was the way Montreal defended: a combination of immediate and close whenever the ball goes into the attacking third; call it man-marking, only without the dogma and only in certain parts of the field. As for Orlando, they have this way of announcing they’ve run out of ideas like few teams in MLS (…wait, Portland?), and so it went. Getting back to Montreal, they’re on a hell of a run: 15 points from the last 21 games, and most of those results signal quality. I feel fine saying Montreal has arrived - i.e., I don’t really look at their schedule, because I can see them getting points out of any game - but I’m not convinced they’ll stay there. On the plus side, Kamal Miller has looked man of the match good in every stretch I’ve watched this season. On the downside, and this falls under speculation, I can’t get myself to see a front three of Romell Quioto, Djordje Mihailovic and Joaquin Torres carrying them through a full season, then the playoffs. They’ll be interesting to watch, regardless.

MLS Weakly, 04 19 2021: A Weekend at the Donut Shop & Other Anomalies

A commentary on the 0-0 draws.

I didn’t know how much I missed watching people get weird in the stands until I saw some good ones this past weekend - e.g., the 10-year-old kid straight-up shrieking at a Philadelphia Union player as he took a corner, the kid in Columbus giving a comic thumbs down to Orlando’s Ercan Kara as he walked off the field with his mortified younger sister slapping at his thumbs to stop him, the middle-aged guy who comforted his visibly, yet mysteriously, anxious wife up in New England: ah, vignettes of the human condition.

Where to begin? First, I watched as much uninterrupted soccer over the past weekend as I normally do in two, maybe even three. What did I learn from all that? I learned I should take more notes, if nothing else, because even if you’re watching mid-afternoon sober, it takes something spectacular or violent to keep that shit from running together…and that’s less advocating for more violence in soccer, than saying I had to rely on kits more than I usually do to keep track of who I was watching. The spectacular doesn’t come up nearly often enough, of course, but isn’t that what makes it so?

At any rate, starved as I am for even gently-extended video to review, I’ve started watching chunks of the archived replays. That means dipping in at random to some extent, which means seeing defenders having tea parties, players running and falling all over midfield, shitty passes, time-wasting, the barking flash-mobs that gather ‘round referee, and all, but it also gives a more honest look at how a team holds its shape and plays in real time. The sample isn’t pure - my general practice is to watch 5 or more minutes on either side of the goals in the game, also, hold that thought - and it gets my eyes on games with a little less of the bullshit. Some things go missing - e.g., sitting through the middle 25 minutes or so of Toronto FC’s (broadly impressive) 2-1 home win over Philly meant I didn’t see the end where Philly jacked-up their numbers and, presumably, the pressure. Anyway, enough about my methods and problems. Here are all the results from Major League Soccer Week 7, with The Mothership’s summaries embedded in the final score:

Club du Foot Montreal 2-1 Vancouver Whitecaps FC
San Jose Earthquakes 2-2 Nashville SC
Atlanta United FC 0-0 FC Cincinnati*
Houston Dynamo FC 0-0 Portland Timbers (my extended notes, about as exciting as the score)
Red Bull New York 0-0 FC Dallas
New England Revolution 2-1 Charlotte FC
Columbus Crew SC 0-2 Orlando City SC
Toronto FC 2-1 Philadelphia Union
DC United 2-3 Austin FC
Minnesota United FC 3-1 Colorado Rapids
Chicago Fire FC 0-0 Los Angeles Galaxy
Seattle Sounders 0-1 Inter Miami CF
New York City FC 6-0 Real Salt Lake
Los Angeles FC 3-1 Sporting Kansas City

[Ed. - * Yes, I see the final score, yes, I wish I still would have watched it. Assholes…]

MLS Weakly, 04 12 2022: Notes, Factoids and Projections, Now in a New, Improved Format(!)

And I go back to the old framing...

The good news, I’m getting closer on how I want these Weakly Reviews to look with each passing week. Related thereto, I figured out how to get my eyes on more teams/games every week, but, because it’s blindingly fucking obvious, I’m not going to say what it is. Instead, I’ll just slip it into the copy quietly, as if it was something I’ve been doing all along.

I will, however, tell you what it is not only not helping the mission, but that is openly mocking it: The Mothership finally churned out a deluge on MLS in 15 clips for the past weekend. Sadly, literally all of them are highlights from MLS NextPro games, a league that, as much as I’d love to follow it…just, when. Now, the review…

To take a step back and drink it in, a couple things stand out when you look at the standings after Major League Soccer’s Week 6. To give the short form, they’re upside down. For instance, you’ve got last year’s Supporters’ Shield winner (the New England Revolution) and last year’s MLS Cup winner (New York City FC) staggering back at 12th and 13th in the Eastern Conference and with only Inter Miami CF to save them from early ignominy. Meanwhile, over in the Western Conference, those standings are literally 100% inverted from the final standings in 2021, with the California and Texas teams holding five of the top six spots and the Cascadia teams (et. al.) holding them up from below.

Week 6 continued that trend, for the most part. Here’s a run-down of the results, starting with the results you can safely ignore (links to The Mothership’s game summaries are embedded in each final score):

Orlando City SC 1-0 Chicago Fire FC
Philadelphia Union 1-0 Columbus Crew SC
Houston Dynamo FC 4-3 San Jose Earthquakes
Sporting Kansas City 1-2 Nashville SC
Vancouver Whitecaps FC 2-3 Portland Timbers (I also have extended notes on this)

As you’ll see in the last section of this review, saying one can ignore a result isn’t the same as saying it doesn’t matter - e.g., that Philly’s rolling matters quite a bit, as does the reality that SKC can neither get their collective shoes on nor find the field. Also, Houston’s win over San Jose was wild and ugly, closer to drunken mud wrestling than soccer (I watched a fair chunk of that one, for the record and/or research).

Moving on, now, to the results that did matter, with quick notes on each.

FC Cincinnati 3-4 Club du Foot Montreal: Look, Maybe Take a Week Off and Come Back After...

I couldn’t put FC Cincinnati’s 4-3 loss to Club du Foot Montreal at the Big Tickle to into words, but I think the image gets to the self-defeating spirit of what some of you poor bastards paid to see live.

Looking at the numbers seems like a waste of time, even though I know I’m gonna do it - also, don’t do it, it just makes it worse - but I think the better exercise comes with marching through the parade of “what the fuck” the led to each of Montreal’s goals.

Goale the Firste: With Luciano Acosta facing upfield, Yuya Kubo peels off Djordje Mihailovic to double-team(?) Kamal Miller on (Cincy’s right touch-line), which leaves Mihailovic isolated against Nick Hagglund, never the best idea. Geoff Cameron then peels off to defend…with Tyler Blackett picking up Kei Kamara, though there are two more Montreal defenders lurking in the area. Mihailovic cuts inside Hagglund and loops the ball around Cameron, who steps forward and opens up Alec Kann’s back-post. Bad.

Goale the Seconde: Acosta drops the ball to Kubo, who has (about) 10 feet of space all around him, and Kubo chooses to dribble forward (instead of, y’know, passing the ball; related, I have a still of Alvas Powell tossing up his hands in frustration right as the turnover happens (about 0:05 in on the clip). He’s gotten away with that all season, but this time his touch carries too close to Montreal’s Victor Wanyama, who steps past Cameron’s challenge and finds Kei Kamara to his left. At this point, at least four Cincy defenders collapse toward Kamara and Wanyama on the (/Cincy’s) right, including Kubo, who was aware of Mihailovic, but lost him in that moment, and Mihailovic passes home from about 13-14 yards out. Bad, but also the beginning of a theme.

Goale the Thirde: Montreal breaks Cincy’s press by spreading the field and, after the home team thwarts Montreal right back, Alistair Johnson’s run, the ball bounces back to Wanyama who has all the freedom in the world to dream of possibilities. He lofts a ball between Blackett and Cameron, both of whom have lost track of Kamara, which sends the grey eminence of Montreal alone on goal with all three center backs chasing. They do not win. Kamara slots in Montreal’s third to Kann’s right/the far post.

MLS Weakly, March 22, 2022: Notes on MLS Week 4 & the First Steps in a New Direction

I’m still working out the kinks on these damn things, in the hopes of making them leaner and smarter. That already involves a damn rebrand and, it’s possible things will keep on evolving if, say, The Mothership ramps up production on the high-grade highlights reels, aka, the MLS in 15 videos. They posted two this week, and even picked good games (see below) and, sure, two games beats the hell out of zero, but it still leaves too much to what amounts to short videos of barely-contextualized goals, plus a couple shots thereon (aka, the baby highlights), the related box scores, and the Armchair Analyst’s weekly column (that links to this week's).

I bring all that up as full disclosure. While I might start watching the MLS Review Show (this week’s edition), that just looks like Baby Highlights strung together, I’m not about to start sitting through ExtraTime Radio, on the grounds it’s fucking unbearable, but I also think it’s perfectly fine, if not healthier, to have a sense of the league as opposed to knowing everything about it. Especially when no one’s paying you to know it.

As those who dipped into the MLS Week 3 Review/MLS Week 4 Preview posts, I organized all the teams in MLS into a set of classes that, frankly, proved unworkable, but, that frame still set expectations for MLS Week 3, and I’m standing by most of that stupid fucking hierarchy, if with some little nudges and twists courtesy of MLS Week 4. The Week 4 Preview posed some questions and posited some theories, so I’ll start with how those handled the stress test.

First, the annual CCL hangover continues to create what most people interpret as anomalies in the results for last season’s elite. In plainer English, it makes sense to lowball expectations for the teams still involved (so, no excuses Colorado Rapids and fewer excuses Club du Foot Montreal and New England Revolution) till they drop out of that tourney and get in a couple cups of coffee and/or dry days. For instance, I expected the Philadelphia Union to get a win out of leg-drunk New York City FC, and so they did by a 2-0 margin, even if the goals came earlier than I expected (and Philly barely looked at the ball). Against that, I had some expectations that the Seattle Sounders and the New England Revolution would have enough juice left to skinny wins or, worst case, draws against a pair of newbies; Seattle held up their end with a 1-1 draw at Austin FC, while the Revs got on the wrong side of what I’m guessing most people read as one of the biggest surprises of Week 4 - i.e., a 1-3 loss at Charlotte FC, and impressive debut by that Karol Swiderski…but does any of that actually change anyone’s opinion about those three teams, never mind the teams they played?

Back in the world where the signals broadcast clear and true, that left 12 results to sift through. In the order in which they felt predictable, going most to least.

MLS Weakly, 03 10 2022: The Review (Week 2)/(Week 3) Preview, Keep Your Damn Pants on, People

Portrait of the author...

To start with a bitter message to The Mothership: either make the MLS in 15 video clips or don’t. They posted just two for MLS Week 2 and chose the shittiest (or least interesting games) for subjects - e.g., New York City FC’s unilluminating draw at the Vancouver Whitecaps and Real Salt Lake’s mildly interesting, yet largely explicable, 1-0 win over Seattle - and, if that’s the M.O., why fucking bother? Ah, and now I see they've added the blandest, least-inspiring result from the CONCACAF Champions' League ("CCL"), Club du Foot Montreal's 0-1 loss to Cruz Azul this morning. We’re 26 (27?) years into this marriage, this league and I, which means the distance between nothing and a little something doesn’t fucking exist at this point.

Before I put away the soapbox, here’s another one: is there a dumber question that “is [insert team, barely matters which one] for real?” two weeks into the fucking season in a centrally-planned league like Major League Soccer? Drawing any conclusion from data that thin, never mind a firm one, borders on parody for one - and I know from small sample sizes (see every poll I’ve ever posted) - but it takes blowing past a lot of context to type that phrase. Every team starts every season carrying lighter or heavier baggage and you can’t say a team that struggled through 2021, if with a couple blowout wins slipped in the middle (both over my Portland Timbers), has turned things around based on two home wins over two historically shitty teamss. I don't think the subject of that characterization is a mystery at this point....

One last thing before skimming the details (You did this MLS.com! I pissed away my review/research time waiting for condensed games like somm asshole waiting for the Great fucking Pumpkin! SALLY LEFT ME!!), I’m pulling results by MLS teams in the CCL from the “where are they now?”  conversation because, 1) the New England Revolution excepted, they all posted lackluster results for MLS Week 2, and I’m even dubious on what they did (e.g., a 1-0 home win over FC Dallas); 2) I have neither the interest nor the bandwidth to dig into what each team did with its game-day roster to keep its legs lively for the CCL, and that’s because, 3) the never-ending story that is every MLS regular season means all those teams can drop a handful of points early and, with the quality…nearly all of them have, make a run at winning the only trophy anyone talks about (e.g., MLS Cup). And teams like Seattle and the Revs feel like plausible bets to win the trophy I care most about, the Supporters’ Shield.

As such, I’m putting the following results on the list of games I’ll note without comment (though, as always, I’m linking to the Mothership’s summary for each result):

MLS Weakly, March 2, 2022: The (Week 1) Review/Preview (Week 2), Hopes & Expectations

Welcome to the first MLS Weakly Review/Preview of the 2022 regular season. As implied by the title the first half of this post takes a look back at what happened with MLS Week 1 and the second looks ahead to MLS Week 2. I’m also going to squeeze longer notes on the next two opponents for the two teams I cover on this site, the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati, so maybe call those the first and second thirds instead. It’s possible (eh, make it probable) I’ll start posting separate previews for both teams when I’ve got more with which to work. Speaking of…

People familiar with this site and its…sure, let’s call it a methodology, know that I’ve grown increasingly obsessed with results over the past several seasons. Think of it as the “G” in “xG,” only it’s Results versus expected results.

Now, because there’s just one game in the books all ‘round…hey, just noticed no one had a bye week. Huh. Back to it, a one-game sample isn’t even 1/10th of dick, so don’t expect any sweeping conclusions below, declarations of doom or glory, etc., but, that doesn’t mean assumptions haven’t been made. I wrote a pair of posts in the second half of January 2022 - one where (after a bunch of bullshit) I effectively dismissed six teams from each conference as irrelevant, and another where I listed all the teams in the league and talked about how I see them historically. If I didn’t mention it at the time, I wrote both those posts to provide some sloppy scaffolding for interpreting the first…call it 10 or so weeks of Major League Soccer’s 2022 season. For what it’s worth, I think it takes a dozen weeks' or so worth of results before one can really establish any kind of context for expectations for what should happen one week to the next. And, yes, after that a quarter of the teams will throw those out the window by either tanking (thinking Orlando City SC and the Los Angeles Galaxy for 2021) or thriving (thinking my Portland Timbers or the Vancouver Whitecaps for 2021) down the stretch. All this? It never stops being fluid.

If you didn’t read either of the two posts linked to above, I only linked to them for the curious or very bored. You won’t actually need to make sense of this post and these will get easier to figure as time goes on. With that out of the way, let’s kick around MLS Week 1.

A 2021 Major League Soccer Review, in Which I Circle Back to My Predictions

Revisiting my preseason predictions.

On April 4, 2021, I wrote a loosely predictive post about how all 27 teams in the league would fare over the whole damn regular season.

This post revisits that post.

I retained the groupings from the original post - The Good, The Middling, and Mystery Meat - as a kind of Route One to sorting out how much or how little any given team’s season surprised me. And I agree that makes no goddamn sense, but, once committed, etc. 2021 did throw me a couple curves, but they’re both more subtle and hittable than I expected when I banged out the original post with one good eye on the page.

With that in mind, what trippingly unspools below is a list of every team in MLS, in the order I organized them back in April (and, no, I don’t remember the rationale for the way I organized them, and deleted all the relevant information to boot). In most cases, the words you see after “[2021] Overall [Prediction]” in connection with every team below is a complete, unedited version of the comments in that preview post. The notes after “How That Panned Out” assesses how well my prediction held up, if with some gentle fudging…which sounds gross and wrong now that I’ve typed it.

With that, let’s review how I did.

The Good
Atlanta United FC
[2021] Overall [Prediction]: "I expect Atlanta to compete in the East, and in general, in 2021."
How That Panned Out: Anyone fishing for a reason to feel impressed should recall that Atlanta dumped the potentially sociopathic Gabriel Heinze just last July, because I didn’t see his mad reign coming, but they overcame and made the 2021 playoffs with the talent that was always there. They didn’t exactly kill down the stretch, but they look/feel respectably competitive.

Columbus Crew SC
[2021] Overall [Prediction]: "They still have to rank among the favorites to repeat, so anything short of close to that will look like a fail. Given the above, a slow start wouldn’t throw me too much…"
How That Panned Out: File this under a case of, name one person who saw this coming. If Caleb Porter didn’t have the, “the teams I coach to a championship will miss the playoffs the next season” curse, I’d call this impossible to explain.

MLS End-Run Preview: More (or Less) Static than You Think

Wait for it...

Seeing just one (1!)MLS in 15 video from the past week makes me question the entire concept of global, amateur punditry when it comes to Major League Soccer as a whole. I’d say throw me a fucking bone, but I’m not naïve, I know who I’m dealing with here. [Ed. - That said, I’m struggling to post down this congested stretch and would absolutely understand had the MLS interns who compile those videos went on strike two months ago, by which I mean, I get it.] As such, the end-run preview below relies on equal parts big-picture trends - i.e., results - and recency bias.

As for the frame, I look 10 games back before looking forward to what all the teams with something to either gain or lose will face over the final two or three games of the MLS regular season. To clear out some clutter (see above), I focused on teams operating in, by either numbers or circumstances, plausibly fluid situations - i.e., studiously ignoring all the teams already eliminated - which includes the all-but mathematically-eliminated, e.g., Inter Miami CF - but also the teams that don’t strike me as at risk. So, there goes the New England Revolution - who’ve already clinched top seed in the Eastern Conference, the Supporters’ Shield and the single-season record for points (thrilling for a guy who suffered with them through the aughts) - but also the Philadelphia Union who, because they host FC Cincinnati should escape the tussle ‘n’ tumult below them. Barring a curse, they'll stay in the Top 4 in the East, which means a hosting-at-home-in-Round-1 in the playoffs cream of the Eastern Conference playoffs. I’m pretty sure Nashville will wind up there, but my doubts also persuaded me to look at their end-run to be sure.

When it comes to the Western Conference, that meant pulling Sporting Kansas City, the Seattle Sounders and the Colorado Rapids out of the mix. I don't think a scenario exists where they won't be the Top 3 and I also don’t give a shit about seeding beyond that or which one of them wins the West. And yet, all three are deeply involved when it comes to where all the team below them finish. That’s to say, due to quirks in fate and scheduling, the West ends better than the East.

From here, I list wee data blocks for all the teams competing for either seeding or playoff spots, and organized them according to where I see them finishing the regular season. Also included, the last 10 results for each team, the number of points they’ve taken from that stretch, related notes on strength of schedule, the location and opposition for their final two (or three) games, and, based on that, some notes on their chances at making the playoffs or something better.

For what it's worth, I don’t see a lot of teams hitting the post-season hot. To hazard a sloppy, basically-unobserved guess, I’d give Atlanta, (maybe) DC, Portland, Real Salt Lake, LAFC and (maybe) Vancouver as the teams as the best bets for hitting the playoffs at a run. I can also see literally all of them cocking it up. Related, if the Sounders can't stop tripping over their own toes, maybe that's a global theme for 2021. Maybe we're all tired...