Los Angeles FC Scouting Report & an MLS Week 6 Wrap Up: To The Plan & Progress

"Reading Cliff Notes" taken very literally.

In the event others are ever tempted to try such foolishness, I’d argue that you can get almost as much from watching a 10-minute highlight reel than you get from parachuting in to watch a full half of two teams you barely know. The stray comments you catch from the broadcast booth is the only benefit of the latter and the former makes up a little ground by keeping in the best bits, plus a little more context. Think of it as a good, though not great, cut of meat.

In other news, a brain-wave on the way home from work has finally completed The Plan going forward for this site:

1) Portland Timbers Wrap Up posted no later than Sunday; and

2) a 50%-plus wrap up of the weekend’s results topped with a preview of Portland’s next opponent posted no later than Wednesday, but ideally on Tuesday (I did it, mom!).

A couple things recommend this shift, most personal, at least one practical, but that’s enough for the editorial notes because, this week, I’m on a damn schedule. Close readers will notice that the “50%-plus” figure in No. 2. The current goal has me including blurbs on six games in the weekly wrap ups. Those will be based on highlights, with a dash of historical context, but those six games, plus the Timbers game, plus a longer review of Portland’s next opponent will get my eyes on a total of 16 teams every week – i.e., just over half the league. In an attempt to get a jump on the future, I’m already revising The Plan for when Major League Soccer switches to a handful of regional conferences in 2027-2028 (that’s actually happening, right? I didn't dream that?), but I’ll cross that bridge next fall. In the here and now, though, The Plan means ignoring seven results every week. Covering those real fast, with links to The Mothership’s wrap ups embedded in each final score:

Results I Ignored (no real surprises here)
New England Revolution 3-0 Club du Foot Montreal (expected on both sides of the score)
Real Salt Lake 3-1 Sporting Kansas City (see above)
Charlotte FC 2-1 Philadelphia Union (Union=dead to me until they get at least a draw)
Inter Miami CF 2-2 Austin FC (very Austin season so far and ignoring Miami is my joint)
New York City FC 1-1 St. Louis CITY FC (mildly surprising; becoming St. Louis-curious)
Houston Dynamo FC 0-1 Seattle Sounders (wee alarms 4 Houston; Seattle boring again)
Los Angeles Galaxy 1-2 Minnesota United FC (expected; also good for the Loons)

With that out of the way, let’s talk about the Timbers’ opposition next weekend, with

Level Set 1, DC United: History & 2025, More of the Same, Only More So

DC United, first decade or so.

What follows is a brief history of DC United, 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 below that explains what it does. With that... 

DC United: A Thumbnail History
Pretty much anyone who follows Major League Soccer knows that DC United was its first great dynasty. How that success came about may be less known. Bruce Arena built his reputation there, of course, but it also started with winning the lottery on one of their first Marquee Player picks (Marco Etcheverry; click here and scroll down to see the full list). His selection connected them to the Tahuichi Academy, Bolivia’s (then?) premier player development academy, which connected them to Jaime Moreno and those two signings, plus a semi-random striker who would hold the single-season record for goals scored for 23 years (Roy Lassiter) went a long way in the league’s early days. Thanks to defenses staffed mostly of recent amateurs and college grads, MLS was a free-scoring league over its first five seasons, and DC generally led the way (with the 1998 LA Galaxy as the other big swinger). After the 2001 contraction, scoring fell off cliff (from 51 goals scored/allowed in 2000 to 42.1 in 2002) and, with the DP Rule/the ability to buy talent seven to eight (or 12) years in the future, DC’s on-field successes gave them the reputation as the best team in MLS, which helped them bring in ambitious players, which one could argue (as I am) made their generally forgotten mid-2000s Renaissance possible. With Moreno back from a stint in the EPL, shiny new playmaker, Christian Gomez, pulling the strings from midfield, Ben Olsen and Brian Carroll doing the dirty work and OG Kiwi Ryan Nelsen anchoring the backline, DC won a fifth MLS Cup in 2004; with solid replacements shuffled into the lineup – e.g., Bobby Boswell at the back and Luciano Emilio spearheading the attack – they added back-to-back Supporters’ Shields in 2006 and 2007. If you’re just counting trophies, all of that early success created the firewall thick enough to keep DC among the all-time most successful teams in MLS history (for now). They’ve flirted with success here and there, particularly over the competent, yet trophy-free seasons of 2012-2019, but DC has been flaming fucking awful more often than most since their glory years, as demonstrated by (now) five (5!) Wooden Spoons and some of the worst seasons in MLS history (looking at you, 2013). It’s not so much that they haven’t tried – e.g., a young Luciano Acosta, Wayne Rooney and Christian Benteke delivered! – but all that talent labored under lineups, systems, rosters, coaches, etc., that made every good player work twice as hard. Part of that followed from a hit-rate on signing top-rate talent from outside MLS that failed to hit – e.g., Edison Flores, Gabriel Pirani – but few teams have fallen for the next “wunderkind” with more ardor and frequency than most. They signed Freddy Adu 20 steps out of the womb and pissed away too many seasons waiting for him to become the player his agent promised; one hears echoes of that in the seasons wasted waiting for Santino Quaranta and Nick DeLeon to fill their forever-potential. They’ve been equally unsuccessful when it comes to rescuing once-useful-to-great cast-offs from other MLS teams – e.g., Julius James, Fabian Espindola, Chris Rolfe, Alvaro Saborio, and Pedro Santos – all of which has combined to cause then to fall ever further off not just their once-lofty standard, but the league as a whole.

FC Cincinnati 1-2 DC United, Disappointment, Malaise and a Dash of FC Dallas

A guerrilla warfare situation.

After watching FC Cincinnati stall out to a 1-2 loss versus DC United – i.e., the team currently 12th in the East and who started yesterday with half as many points as Cincinnati – I looped back to their midweek 3-3 home draw versus FC Dallas – i.e., the team currently 11th in the West, who have as many points (18) as DC on the first day of June. That was last night.

Before sitting down to type this, I looped back to my notes on last weekend’s 2-4 loss at Atlanta United FC. At that time, that performance/result presented as a bad day at the office meets an ambush – think the foxhole scene in Red Dawn, the original, not the remake – because who thought an Atlanta team eight games into tripping over their own dicks, particularly on the attacking end, would run over a defense, 1) operating with all hands present, and 2) that had allowed (about) just one goal per game to that point in the season?

So…how many bad days at the office does it take to add up to a slump?

About the Game(s)
When Kevin Denkey crowned a full-field attacking move at the 15th minute that went down easy as an oyster, signs pointed to the machinery being back in place and turning smoothly. Sure, DC had already gone up a goal by then – see Gabriel Pirani’s finish at the second minute from the top of the 18 off a (too) simple set piece – and, after some light preventive bunkering, they returned to a press that forced Cincinnati to play through traffic all over the field. Still, Cincy had managed it well enough, up to and including getting close to goal with avenues and options. Denkey’s goal got the Bailey bopping and DC United didn’t have Christian Benteke to manage, so more of the same seemed possible, maybe even likely…

…and then Conner “Excuse Me, Who?” Antley popped up at the back post on a corner to head DC back into the lead. Two set pieces, two goals; you literally hate to see it.

DC United Scouting Report: This One's About Aspirations

Is the future so bright that I need shades?

What started as a mediocre season for DC United has spun out of control in recent weeks – to the tune of making them the worst defensive team in Major League Soccer. The question a gently-hobbled version of FC Cincinnati answers on Saturday is whether they run with the Club du Foot Montreals of the league, or with the Orlando City SCs, or the…jesus, San Jose Earthquakes. To start with the basics…

DC United
1-3-3, 6 pts., 9 gf, 17 ga (-8); home 1-1-2, away 0-2-1
Last 5 Results: DWDLL
Locale/Strength of Schedule
v SKC (2-1 W); v MTL (0-0 D); @ ORL (1-4 L); v CLB (1-2 L); @ SJ (1-6 L)

Notes from the Field
Because I didn’t think the debacle at San Jose would yield much useful data – just from the seven-plus minutes of the highlights, DC gifted San Jose the first two goals, got in one another’s way all over the field, and broke the basic rules of holding a good defensive line on goals four and five – I spent most of my time (about 45 minutes) watching their home loss to Columbus Crew SC. Based on that review, head coach Troy Lesesne still has DC defending high and playing to force turnovers all over the field (i.e., they hunt the ball), Christian Benteke remains their key player/salvation (he’s scored over half their goals so far), and, besides that, it’s mostly a lot of semi-headless running around. They kept the game versus Columbus tighter (bravo), but they still did plenty of getting in one another’s way and players that compel one to say, “look out for this guy,” of “one of the league’s best” are in short supply. Despite all of the above, DC posts respectable top-line numbers – e.g., they’ve reliably posted shots in the double digits and get around a half dozen on goal every game (the Columbus game was the exception) – and the defensive numbers rarely looked egregious…though the 4.0 goals allowed/game over the past three games would appear to suggest some issues…

Notes on Formation & Personnel
Despite the above, Lesesne has stuck with the same line up/personnel combo over the past four games, with only a couple adjustments barely worth noting (prime example, for reference). The back four in his inevitable 4-2-3-1 has included David Schnegg at left back, Lucas Bartlett and Kye Rowles for center backs and Aaron “I Hope He Likes Living in DC” Herrera as the preferred right back; a youngster named Derek Dodson has acted as understudy and started in the San Jose disaster. Matti Peltola has paired with Hosei Kijima at the two in every line up I reviewed, while the preferred three appears to be Joao Peglow (their assist leader, fwiw, at two), Gabriel Pirani, and the high-effort, ever-combative Jared Stroud (Dominique Badji, who is too old for this shit, started over him at San Jose). Benteke tops off the formation at the one, aka, the loneliest number (number). Again, Columbus played one step ahead of DC on both sides of the ball and, gods willing, Cincinnati will do the same, but both the game at Orlando and the game at San Jose present as implosions – i.e., decent performances utterly undone by repeated, catastrophic mistakes.

Capping the "Getting Reacquainted With [_______]" Project & Barely Tying It to the Timbers

A ballet had the most metal one.

Since the middle of December 2024, I’ve posted mini-histories of every team in Major League Soccer under the title of “Getting Reacquainted with [Your Local Team]”…of varying quality, based on the evidence and feedback I’ve received online. That project had a variety of motives – among them, actually getting reacquainted with what every team in MLS has done over time, but also last season and how that looked against their history – but there was one motive to bring them all and in the darkness bind them: holding them all up as Ghosts of Christmases Yet to Come for my local team, the Portland Timbers.

I’ll close this post with links to all of those mini-histories, and feel free to pick through them as your personal ghosts so move you, but a couple lessons from all that half-assed reading stood out:

1) there are patterns for a fair number of teams in MLS, even if they’re not linear, and seeing those patterns harden in seasons ahead wouldn’t surprise me in the least;

2) I still believe, however naively, that there is enough flexibility in the supply side of the equation (i.e., a planet’s-worth of under-appreciated players) and still/just enough leveling in the league’s roster rules to allow teams from smaller markets to keep putting together a team good enough to compete in MLS, even against the big-market/glamour teams – e.g., Los Angeles FC, the Los Angeles Galaxy, (for now) Inter Miami CF, and (maybe? one day?) New York City FC and Red Bull New York. Once you pull those three cities/five teams out of the sample (shouldn’t Chicago be in there, if only for some countries? And what about DC now?), that leaves plenty of MLS markets where the first question that follows an agent’s pitch to a player is, “Where is that? In America, yes, but where is that?”

There are other ways for MLS teams to exist, operate and succeed, of course: teams like Atlanta United FC and Toronto FC are sloppy drunken spenders, which allowed them to both do it (i.e., win trophies) and almost immediately undo it; FC Dallas and the Philadelphia Union (mainly, though they’re not alone) have player pipelines that pump out a steady stream of young talent, a situation that helps them on the field, if only until they get an offer they can’t refuse and have to pull key pieces out of a good roster. Even those distinctions only matter at the margins, because MLS teams by and large compete on some uneven form of the same terms. How many times were you reminded about The Los Angeles Galaxy lost decade as they made their run to MLS Cup 2024? Then there are the teams from “where is that?” America like Columbus Crew SC and the Seattle Sounders and, sure, even Atlanta (wait for it*), who have won half the MLS Cups over that same period.

Getting Reacquainted with DC United, MLS's Aging Rockstars

Give us a push back stage, love, and you can see it.

Thumbnail History
Pretty much anyone who follows Major League Soccer knows that DC United was its first great dynasty. How that success came about may be less known. Bruce Arena built his reputation there, of course, but it also started with winning the lottery on one of their first Marquee Player picks (Marco Etcheverry; scroll down here to see the full list). His selection connected them to the Tahuichi Academy, Bolivia’s (then?) premier player development academy, which connected them to Jaime Moreno and those two signings, plus a semi-random striker who would hold the single-season recordfor goals scored for 23 years (Roy Lassiter) went a long way in the league’s early days. Thanks to defenses staffed mostly of recent amateurs and college grads, MLS was a free-scoring league over its first five seasons, and DC generally led the way (with the 1998 LA Galaxy as the other big swinger). After the 2001 contraction, scoring fell off cliff (from 51 goals scored/allowed in 2000 to 42.1 in 2002) and, with the DP Rule/the ability to buy talent seven to eight (or 12) years in the future, DC’s on-field successes gave them the reputation as the best team in MLS, which helped them bring in ambitious players, which one could argue (as I am) made their generally forgotten mid-2000s Renaissance possible. With Moreno back from a stint in the EPL, shiny new playmaker, Christian Gomez, pulling the strings from midfield, Ben Olsen and Brian Carroll doing the dirty work and OG Kiwi Ryan Nelsen anchoring the backline, DC won a fifth MLS Cup in 2004; with solid replacements shuffled into the lineup – e.g., Bobby Boswell at the back and Luciano Emilio spearheading the attack – they added back-to-back Supporters’ Shields in 2006 and 2007. If you’re just counting trophies, all of that early success created the firewall thick enough to keep DC among the all-time most successful teams in MLS history (i.e., sixth on the all-time Joy Points Scale (methodology below*)). They’ve flirted with success here and there, particularly over the competent, yet trophy-free seasons of 2012-2019 aside, but DC has been flaming fucking awful more often than most since their glory years, as demonstrated by (now) five (5!) Wooden Spoons and some of the worst seasons in MLS history (looking at you, 2013). It’s not so much that they haven’t tried – e.g., a young Luciano Acosta, Wayne Rooney and Christian Benteke delivered! – but all that talent labored under lineups, systems, rosters, coaches, etc., that made every good player work twice as hard. Part of that followed from a hit-rate on signing top-rate talent from outside MLS that failed to hit – e.g., Edison Flores, Gabriel Pirani – but few teams have fallen for the next “wunderkind” with more ardor and frequency than most. They signed Freddy Adu 20 steps out of the womb and pissed away too many seasons waiting for him to become the player his agent promised; one hears echoes of that in the seasons wasted waiting for Santino Quaranta and Nick DeLeon to fill their forever-potential. They’ve been equally unsuccessful when it comes to rescuing once-useful-to-great cast-offs from other MLS teams – e.g., Julius James, Fabian Espindola, Chris Rolfe, Alvaro Saborio, and Pedro Santos – all of which has combined to cause then to fall ever further off not just their once-lofty standard, but the league as a whole.

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)

Portland Timbers 2-2 DC United: Fragility & Composure

The Portland Timbers had all three points in their sweaty palms against DC United tonight only to piss two of them away one raised arm and one catastrophic failure in weak-side defending at a time. One thing led to another and that led to a 2-2 draw-that-felt-like-a-loss final score and...disappointment. Explaining all this gets a little tricky and I want to thank the person who posts as brettcalvin42 on the Timbers subreddit for forcing me to think a little harder about all this.

After a cautious opening minute or three, DC kicked into the fast-zombie press I expected from them. Like any press, it’s designed to force and feast on errors and it started to work its dark magic until Santiago Moreno pulled the classic soccer judo move of letting a ball pass across his body to carry it past a lunging DC defender (probably Pedro Santos). With the wide spaces of the right open to him, Moreno slipped a pass into Dairon Asprilla who finished off the play neatly as you like: 1-0 to the Timbers. And, as good things follow from good deeds, that break seemed to unsettle the one-way certainty of DC’s press. Despite all the buzzing harassment, the Timbers left the field at halftime with a slim but real advantage on the attacking side. They worked transition as well as they ever have and had a real chance to score one more when Moreno found an Eryk Williamson run that twisted DC’s (I think) Christopher McVey damn near out of his shoes.

All that inspired me to chime in with a short note that ended with “I’m happy” on a game thread on the Timbers subreddit. brettcalvin42 took issue with the general statement with a curt note about how giving the ball away was killing the Timbers. Even as I stand by what I…subreddited (is there a reddit equivalent of a tweet?) at halftime, his long-view take became more right than mine as the game went on. What I want to kick around below is why that happened.

Before digging into that, a couple things bear noting. First, for as little as they did in the first half, DC did create two sparklingly clear chances – the first a free header by Cristian Dajome from the outer chack of the six-yard box (which prompted a positively adorable, “I forgive you” hug by Maxime Crepeau to Zac McGraw), the other a shoo-in tap-in for Jared Stroud rediected by a timely toe-poke by Eric Miller. Those slips aside, and with a nod to the halftime stats, I did feel good about where Portland was at halftime. So I sub-redditted about it…

DC United Scouting Report: 75% Coping with Fast Zombies

Only time will tell...

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

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

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

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

- Calen Carr

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

His eyes are my eyes, rn.

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

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

Columbus Crew SC 1-0 Atlanta United FC

Los Angeles FC 2-1 Seattle Sounders %

Charlotte FC 1-0 New York City FC

DC United 3-1 New England Revolution %

Orlando City SC 0-0 Club du Foot Montreal *

Philadelphia Union 2-2 Chicago Fire FC

Austin FC 1-2 Minnesota United FC %

FC Dallas 2-1 San Jose Earthquakes

Houston Dynamo FC 1-1 Sporting Kansas City *

St. Louis CITY FC 1-1 Real Salt Lake

Portland Timbers 4-1 Colorado Rapids

FC Cincinnati 0-0 Toronto FC

Nashville SC 0-0 Red Bull New York *

Los Angeles Galaxy 1-1 Inter Miami CF

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

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

* means I ignored the game entirely.

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

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

MLS Week 1 Preview, Getting Hyped on Thin Gruel

Solid show, btw.

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

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

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

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

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

Getting Reacquainted with DC United, A Metaphor on the Benefits of Inherited Wealth

Had some great damn songs, but...

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

Thumbnail History

Tempting as it is to see DC United as the team that squandered its legacy as the first best team in MLS, that narrative writes their first (and only) renaissance out of its history – i.e., the 2004-07 seasons, which saw them win another Cup and two more Shields. The echo might have been half as loud, but it did happen. Against that, those first straight-up fucking insane seasons – DC won three MLS Cups and two Supporters’ Shields, on top of having a crack at a fourth Cup in 1998 (the Chicago Fire won that one) – created a firewall thick enough for them to hold at sixth place on the all-time Joy Points Scale (methodology below*) despite getting slapped with four (4!) Wooden Spoons and some of the worst seasons in league history. Between them checking out of the post-season a half decade at a time and 10 seasons of Benny-ball (when Ben Olsen was in charge) thrown into the mix, it’s almost impossible to remember that DC United reigned as the undisputed Kings of MLS 1.0. Some of MLS’s first great players starred for DC, not all of them listed below (e.g., Jeff Agoos, Roy Lassiter, and Raul Diaz Arce, to name a few). In fewer words, yeah, the designated-player era passed them by. That doesn’t mean they didn’t try, and that they haven’t had a couple hyped hopes, but they have yet to catch up to a league that seems to get faster with each passing season.

Best Season(s)

I’ll always have a soft spot for MLS Cup I, when DC stepped into the downpour that fell on it as the underdog, but I’d call the 1997 and 1999 seasons the franchise’s high-water marks. I don’t remember 1999 so good, partially because I’d moved on to Boston and rooting for the New England Revolution, but I had a front row seat for 1997 and they ran away with everything that wasn’t nailed down. Special team, special players…also, this is where I picked up my aversion to success…

Long-Term Tendencies

DC built their trophy-winning seasons on reliable, live-wire attacks – sometimes to the point of covering for a shaky defense. The reverse held true as well: they suffered their worst seasons when a stumbling attack became the anchor that drowned them. Defense hurt a little as well, but the offense was always a little worse. And here’s a fun little detail: despite its reputation for playing it safe, the Benny-ball era (2010-2020) didn’t consistently translate into improved defensive performances: DC either hit over or above the average for goals allowed in eight of his 10 seasons coaching the team.

MLS Week 22 Preview: On the Clout Maintenance Parade

Apt. And possibly copyrighted.

Gonna just kind of riff through the match-ups. Make it conversational...if in the espirit d'escalier vein.

Just to note it, I have two questions in my head when talking about any game: what is the likeliest result and how much would any other result matter?

To be clear, I mean the word “matter” in the context of Major League Soccer, a league where meaningful change occurs at geological speed. On with it...

Major League Soccer’s Week 22 kicks off smartly with the New England Revolution visiting FC Cincinnati – and no doubt scheming about how to batter or otherwise breach the walls of Fortress TQL. I imagine the U.S. Men’s pulverizing of St. Kitts & Nevis means Cincy won’t have Matt Miazga for another week, so maybe that’s the lever to finally crack Cincy’s home form. Only bad gamblers believe random events can be in any way “due,” so I’ll only say this: a Revolution win would make a good argument that they’ve pushed through their blues. Related/unrelated, FC Cincinnati has built a reputation they’re now damned to uphold until that burden falls from their shoulders.

That theme carries through a lot of the other games, or at least the good ones. I’d call...let’s go with “clout maintenance” as the primary theme of Week 22. To wit: Club de Foot Montreal will want to maintain his Cincy-esque home form – and their lifeline – by beating a limping New York City FC; the same goes double for the San Jose Earthquakes, who face the horror of waking up Sunday morning knowing that thousands observers will no longer say “yeah, but their home form,” with the same breezy confidence that people say, “yeah, but it’s a dry heat” (as you’re sweating off eight pounds just talking to them) if they hand even one point to the visiting/suffering Los Angeles Galaxy; finally, St. Louis CITY FC should expect to feel a similar heat (now, with humidity!) if they drop points to a visiting Colorado Rapids team with a straight-up shitty record of picking up any points no matter how hard the other team drops them. Another commonality in all those games: wins by any of NYC, the Galaxy or the Rapids won’t change many minds or raise low opinions.

MLS Week 21 (Probably?) Review: All the Thoughts I Had Before Falling Asleep on Monday

Okay, forward passes enable communism!

In order to get these league-wide wraps posted timely, I’m sticking with reviews and posting on Mondays (or Tuesdays). That simplifies the format (woot-woot), which goes something like this: I list all the games I look at – some of them longer than others (and [see the brackets] after every final score) – pass on the better notes that came to me as I watched what I watched in varying degrees of consciousness, embed a link to the MLSSoccer.com game summary in the final score (but otherwise don't link to shit), then move on to the next one. Now, please make sure your seat belts are fastened and extinguish any smoking materials, because this flight’s about to take off...starting with some loose thoughts that interrupted my fugue state...

At this point in the season, a growing number of games come down to which team of the two playing have more things nailed down. About 90% of that thought comes from watching Real Salt Lake and Atlanta United FC for long stretches – and, to flag which is which, RSL always looked like they had a chance to come back; Atlanta, meanwhile, played like a team that had been conditioned out of doing anything decisive by shock collars. Start watching for this. Also, don’t expect it to be a permanent condition. Only the good teams do that.

Something else that struck me this weekend: you don’t always see a goal coming – and not just in the “against the run of play” sense of the word. I think fans still get skittish about admitting this, but this game really can deliver a whole lot of running about and little more by the scores of minutes.

Finally, I imagine every week sees a Goal of the Week that wasn’t, but, Hector Herrera’s divine-but-for attempt against Austin? Better than 60% of the goals you saw and more inspired than all of them. R.I.P.

Well, that’s it for the chit-chat. Let’s talk about the games! Or at least the ones I care about.

MLS Baby Week 19 Review & How the East Is Getting Won and the West Is a Hot Mess

My process.

Hello and welcome to another week of soccer viewing and free association – though, in fairness, the “free” had a little trouble getting off the ground this week. Shakras all jammed up, people, and no combination of stretching and self-medication to loosen them.

Some notes before digging in. I already posted a long-form review of the Portland Timbers' puzzling, dull and goal-less draw away to the San Jose Earthquakes (short version, the Timbers may or may not have done all right against a strong, yet short-handed home team). Also, I caught the tail-end of New York City FC snatching a point from the jaws of defeat at home against Columbus Crew SC and, full disclosure, would have put my money on the visitors taking all three points when I checked out around the 85th minute (aka, too soon)...and yet, how many NYCFC fans feel better after that? Based on their 1-5-4 record over the past 10, it would take a conclave of the delusional.

I took longer looks at the rest of this condensed MLS Week’s action – and, yeah, I got a little misty about the days of 10-12 team league. The format’s the same – i.e., a link to The Mothership’s summary is embedded in every final score, where you'll find stats and highlights, and note the windows I watched in brackets in italics after it – and the notes follow. The methodology is pretty simple: turn on the game and let your brain ask questions like, “how many wins have they had lately?” or “what’s their goal differential again?” as you go. I’ll close with notes on (shit!) this Wednesday’s full buffet of games, but, before sharing my notes, I wanted to flag some big picture stuff I didn’t cover in my notes (e.g., how much more cleanly the Eastern Conference expresses its hierarchy than the Western does).

1) How the East Expresses Its Hierarchy (and the West Fails to)
In goals, basically. The average number of goals scored and allowed across MLS is 22.6. The average in the West comes in at a clean 21 “goal units,” while the average rises to 24.1 in the East. That’s a function of the fairly clean split between haves and have nots in the East. Your better teams – e.g., FC Cincinnati, Nashville SC, and the Philadelphia Union – have, not just wider goal differentials, but they’re above average for scoring and, perhaps more crucially, well below the average for goals allowed. Before any of you raise your hand to say, “what about the New England Revolution?” I’m tossing them into the same bucket at Columbus Crew SC and Atlanta United FC – i.e., the teams that succeed (insofar as they do) by running up the score. Along with St. Louis CITY FC, those are the three highest-scoring teams in the league...which brings me to the second half of this thought.

MLS Week 10/11 Review/Preview: Deep in the Season (and on the Disco Round)

A tapestry...of cats! (I'm crazy cat people, no judgment)

Yes, I’m changing the format. Can we just....not do this again, Cassie?

First, and because I think that’s where the demand is, I’m stuffing most of the actual data into the preview section – and, as always, the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati both get “chunky” previews, even if I’ve slimmed them down a bit. Second, I’m accepting defeat and embracing the dread and feeble bullet- point format. What can I say? It just works better than a trying to stitch a long and winding tale out of disparate parts.

And, wrapping up the preamble, because the editorial board has decided I don’t bring enough beef to the reviews, I’m thinning those out to the point of emaciation – and, to be clear, this has nothing to do with laziness (I’m nothing if not a masochist (call me)) or an aversion to reading an epic into a single result. Very much related, what we have now are results – i.e., cold, hard data that knocks down every “but the underlying numbers” and “when [Your Team’s Disappointing DP Here] comes good” you see laced into every match report, very much including the ones I write...

...and yet, as every fan of Major League Soccer knows, all it takes to get to the beginning of beautiful season is a three-game winning streak.

Now, I’m going to note and comment on all the games in MLS Week 10 – i.e., that is give you the result, a link to resources that will tell you more about it, and then add very few words about how much said result made...the Earth...move...under your feet. Finally, I shit you not, I am totally committing to bullet points.

MLS Week 10 Review(...even if there are hella 9s out there, even a couple 8s under “GP” in the table)
Nashville SC 3-1 Atlanta United FC
This one should have put all, or at least most, doubts to bed that Nashville has announced itself in the East, but Atlanta’s still fine, just fine, if without showing any signs of contending.

Columbus Crew SC 1-2 Inter Miami CF
Good for Miami, obviously (and they’re gonna need it; Jean Mota down, repeat, Jean Mota down), but the interesting thing’s what happened to Columbus over their past two games.

DC United 3-0 Charlotte FC
Is that Charlotte I see swirling down the toilet?

A Casual Fan's Review, MLS Week 7: A Good Weekend with a Major Blemish & Another Cincy Win

Massive lint ball on fire. Who knew?

To get the mechanics out of the way, I’ve sprinkled the final results for every game in Major League Soccer’s Week 7 somewhere below in this post; I’ve also embedded links to The Mothership’s roundup/data in the final score for each. The commentary includes three featured matches – one of which will always be what FC Cincinnati did that weekend (and almost all good stuff so far), and I'll note how much and where I watched of the other two games – plus a round up the rest at the end in a section titled, “Now...The Rest Of It.” And, yes, I do watch too much Last Week Tonight, but aren't we all aging together in the end? After that, it's whatever insights and agreements I get from Matt Doyle's weekly roundup, whatever stuck from Sam Jones' Daily Kickoff and a bunch of brain lint from previous posts that somehow stick in my head. For good or ill...

Up next, some bullshit...

The Red Bull New York/San Jose Earthquakes game exploded into chaos and ended far, far later than it should have courtesy of a now-confirmed use of a racial slur from Dante Vanzier. I don't want kick around the fact patterns overly - at least not behind noting how much sentences like this, “Further information will be provided upon completion of that investigation,” piss me off, and the fact that the highlights skipped the incident entirely, even as The Mothership gently buries it - but I can't think of one meaningful question that needs answering. Vanzier said what he said or he didn’t and that doesn’t take much investigating. And, per this press release, it’s pretty goddamn clear that he did. What to do about it is less simple.

First and foremost, unless you can prove a toxic culture with the Red Bull organization, the main thing I want is a punishment that communicates to the player, in the clearest possible terms, that he crossed the wrong goddamn line. I saw people call for Vanzier's expulsion from the league and, sure, that's an option, but I would also gently suggest that most foreign players don't fully appreciate just how fraught race relations are in this country right now - and I make that point with real fucking firm opinions as to who's making them fraught (the right wing, the rural and the religious). My own thought is, so long as you believe that even a rabid skinhead can be rehabilitated – and I do because it does happen – you treat Vanzier like something less than an unreconstructed racist. I’m fine with a chunky suspension, something along the lines of a quarter of the season (8 games, basically) and a very rigid probation period that results in the termination of Vanzier’s contract if he fucks up again. And I’d suspend Gerhard Struber for at least four games for his refusal to sub Vanzier out as a gesture toward restoring calm. And, hey, maybe a suspension feels too much like collective punishment for a one-(ish)-man crime, so I'd also be okay with fining the bejesus out of Vanzier; hell, maybe that's what you go with because that's what Vanzier, personally, will feel most. He fucked up, so kick him, but then see where things go from there. [Update: I'm still kicking this around, so think of the above as thinking out loud.] [Update to the Update: Charlie Davies made a case, and a damned good one, for a season-long suspension. Hit this link and scroll down to the video. He's right in my mind.]

A Casual Fan's Preview, MLS Week 7: At a Point in the Season, Tales of Addition and Subtraction

The red stuff is all the birthdays I forget...

With this weekend’s set of matches, Major League Soccer officially reached the 7/34th point in the season. Big shit, in other words...

After dragging the last preview post over the line (and myself across a board filled with tacks), I promised myself I’d keep these shorter (broke me promise, sadly). The fact I’m half-assing the FC Cincinnati v Philadelphia Union preview should help - oh, and I’ll defend that choice – but I’m also going to take something like a free association approach to the blurbs. What the hell, right? Spin the bottle, find out who are what you kiss, yolo.

Anyhoo, I can’t keep this short if I don’t get going. In making the calls below, I stared at my now-wife, The Form Guide, the current standings, and plumb the befogged shallows of my memory. The short-term memory loss thing? Totally true. Anyway, let’s dig in....

FC Cincinnati v Philadelphia Union
CIN: 4-0-2, 14 pts., 8 gf, 4 ga (+4); Last 6: WTWTWW (pretty tough schedule, honestly)
PHI: 2-3-1, 7 pts., 8 gf, 8 ga (0); Last 6: WLWLLT (about 50/50; should be better)

I didn’t even sit through the highlights of Philly’s (frankly) shock home draw against SKC. I doubt it would have been informative, it’d be like watching the Union playing drunk, they’re not themselves, they’ve refused to take out the trash in weeks, it’s wearing thin, etc.

I see Cincy all the time, of course, but I don’t have any great analytic thoughts beyond, “yeah, they look good.” The one big picture thing I’d say about them is that I doubt they come out as flat this week as they did last (my only half-hearted complaint about the win over Miami, fwiw).

A couple people hepped me to the fact that Philly fielded their starters against Mexico’s Atlas in the CCL on Tuesday – and they kept most of them on the whole game (anyone else wonder if they still think it was worth it?). That probably bodes as well as anything for Cincy’s chances, as they’re unlikely to get the Union at their best. That makes these big points in mind; savvy teams get ‘em while they can, people. I don’t know Obinna Nwobodo’s status – he’ll play if he does, right? – but I’m hoping for a calmer game from Marco Angulo should he start. More than that, I’d like to see Cincy’s Big Three get going. If they don’t, this one’s got low-scoring draw or 1-0 result in either direction – if with a lean toward Cincinnati – written all over it. I see those goals-for numbers. Anyhoo, I see Philly like a pro wrestler who’s been hit with everything including a steel chair: you know they’re going to get up and rally; it’s just a question when...unless their struggles continue into the summer. Next!

The Casual Fan's Review, MLS Week 5 + A Stirring 'n' Studly Win for FC Cincinnati

Bet the housh on Houshton...shh...shhh! Listen, listen....

To kick things off with a brief editor’s note, I’ll be dialing back to the Total Coverage next week. Getting eyes on everything doesn’t seem to matter what with the season having a couple weeks under its belt and some early trends taking shape (why, hello the Form Guide!). The next five-year plan presently involves watching the usual – the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati, a real pain/joy, yin-yang experience so far this season – plus chunks of three or four other games, depending how many I can fit in and/or feel motivated to watch.

Related, I outright skipped the following games:

Charlotte FC 1-1 Red Bull New York
San Jose Earthquakes 0-0 Toronto FC
Minnesota United FC 1-1 Vancouver Whitecaps

Part of that was running out of time, the other part follows from seeing these teams as known quantities. To float the loose theories, Minnesota’s plugging along nicely, I’ll watch them when I have to (probably), San Jose looks broadly all right but you just kind of sense the ceiling above, while Charlotte FC pulled out of the nose-dive...that’s it, i.e., they won't go down in a fiery crash, but who knows after that? I haven’t really worked out the two Canadian teams, but I’ve already watched both and expect to see both play footsie with the playoff line all seasons. Again, that’s expect. I don’t do predictions. Not unless I’m feeling saucy...not yet...

Now, for the team/game I’ll never skip, FC Cincinnati and whoever they happen to play on any given MLS Week. [Ed. - At least not unless I opt to take an entire weekend off.] For the record, I have organized the results below in the order of how I read their significance. Most weeks, Cincy’s result is only up top because I decided to lead with them every week, but they earned top spot up here. Better still, they done good!

Nashville SC 0-1 FC Cincinnati: Good Shit’s All Around [Full 90]
The most telling detail that comes to mind about this game is the fact that FC Cincinnati ran down Nashville’s total number of shots in a gradual, grinding way. They had the late-game flurry that Nashville never managed to produce – i.e., the flat line that runs across the latter’s xG chart on The Mothership’s stats page speaks the truth. And right where you see Nashville finally tick upward somewhere in the early-80s, you see Cincy slip further away a couple minutes later. That was the flurry, and the game.

The Casual Fan's Preview, MLS Week 5: They Could Have Framed It Better

International "duty" calls.

It’s that special time of week, the Pro-Am festival of grasping after the right talking points and, often, outright making shit up about what to expect from your local team in the MLS Week ahead. (Per Science, an “MLS Week” lasts just six hours (the longer timeline is, predictably, a lie) and weighs just a little less than a small Maine Coon Cat.) Yessirs and Yes’Ms, it’s Preview time.

I liked MLS Week 4, I did, but it didn’t do MLS Week five a ton of favors – by which I mean the match-ups didn’t really come together. Most of the offerings involve increasingly desperate teams getting a little more desperate, several of them in settings and/or against teams that you don’t see throwing them a bone. It’s not all sad trombones; maybe one of those teams who picked up their first win of 2023 last weekend, or even the one or two who hinted they may have a little something raises the noise a couple decibels. We’ll see, we’ll see...

Oh, and to make the entire exercise even less clarifying, just about every team in MLS will be without some of their best players this weekend. While by no means exhaustive, this column gives a fair taste of how many kids ran off to Senior Skip, aka, international call-ups (aka, “international duty,” aka, “ID”). Quick shout to U.S. Soccer, helluva job with the scheduling and platform. Way to bury the product, dipshits. And shouldn’t you be hiring, like, a bunch of people? At any rate.

I’ll touch on every match below – I may even try to stuff a couple together in preposterous (wow, I haven’t used that word in years) conceptual boxes – but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. As for process, I watch a fair/stupid amount of MLS soccer every week and post some notes on it; here’s Week 4’s review (again). After that, it’s just staring at the current standings and the bless’d and holy Form Guide and seeing if that knocks loose something useful. Again, Science.

But, just like every week, I start with longer previews for the two teams I follow. Just to pretend, like one of those parents who pretends they don’t have a favorite kid, I’ll list the previews in the order they kick off this weekend.