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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is like that Big Foot photo. Defining.

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

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

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

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

An MLS History Project, 2002: Coming Back from the Dead to Become the Buffalo Bills

Not judging, just stating (but, yes, judging).

It’s easier to know something about every team in a league with fewer teams, obviously, but few things do the experience real justice quite like the numbers:

“Each team played a total of 28 matches in the regular season, which ran from March to September, facing teams within their conference four times and outside of their conference two times.”

After seeing the same names that often, how could you not put a face to every name? (Also, it was mostly names and faces; I don’t honestly recall how many games I could watch on a weekly basis back then, but I think you’d be surprised; more later.) That was true at the time, but, today, I couldn’t pick Rodrigo Faria out of a police line-up if he was wearing a shirt that said “Rodrigo Faria” on it. And that guy lead the New York/New Jersey MetroStars in scoring in 2002. The limits of going by memory…

If you go by the goals scored, 2002 wasn’t much to look at. For one, it was the lowest-scoring season in MLS history to date with just 42.1 goals for/against league wide (helpfully, the 2001 average came in at 43.25, the former league-low; less helpfully, 2000’s average was 51.0). I remember commentators, and probably the league, panicking about that a little, but can you blame them? MLS contracted from 12 teams down to 10 between 2001 and 2002 – and, apparently, drew up the papers to fold. If you love soccer already, you’ve already priced in low-scoring games, but, just for a minute, put yourself in the shoes of someone whose chosen career is pitching soccer to a country famously hostile to soccer. Now, as that person, how would you feel if the league you ran spent two seasons basically proving the point of everyone who hates that sport – e.g., that no one ever (fucking) scores. So, yes, I’m sympathetic to the situation.

How bad was it? MLS Cup runner-up, the New England Revolution, scored the most goals that season, 49 in all. They barely raised a low average, in other words. The Revs had a pretty damn strong team that season, obviously; a team doesn’t (barely) win the Eastern Conference and reach MLS Cup without outdoing its peers. That didn’t make it any less fitting that MLS Cup 2002* was decided by a single goal, scored in extra time – this would be the last “golden goal” in MLS history – and by a team that had relied on its defense more than I remembered (* That link takes you to the highlights, and they're fun, for the Jones/Franchino battle alone; also, seeing the winner again...and it's been years...it hurt). To pick up another thread to the ultimate, achingly-awaited triumph: when the Los Angeles Galaxy broke its MLS Cup duck, they borrowed the playbook from the 2000 Kansas City Wizards (and, for the record, Blazing Saddles has forever ruined me for any phrase that begins with “Kansas City”; WARNING, not PC, but very effective in its message), and brought in a ringer: Carlos Ruiz, a Guatemalan forward/diver/con-artist/street-genius. It was no surprise at all to see him score the winner; Ruiz had already scored over half the Galaxy’s goals during the regular season (seriously, 24 goals of 44 goals). To hang an analogy on it, the Galaxy was only able to win an MLS Cup by going from Scandal to Patty Smyth and Scandal.

An MLS History Project, 1999: Late Bloomers & Shrinking Margins

The theme of tonight's TED Talk...

“This was the last season which used the 35 yard line shootout rule to resolve tied games, and that of the countdown timer, with MLS Cup 1999 adopting the IFAB-standard running clock thereafter.”

Major League Soccer’s unsavory gimmicks lasted somwhere around four years. I can't name a decisive date because the league’s commissioner only decided ditch the a game-clock that counted down instead of up when MLS Cup 1999 rolled around, thereby returning to the normal…profoundly well-established tradition of the referee keeping time on the field…and having people explain to that same referee at volume, and in extraordinarily personal terms, that he is an asshole who does not know how to keep fucking time. See? Tradition.

Then and future commissioner Don Garber made that call. For what it’s worth, I think that small, obvious decision bought “The Soccer Don” a well of sympathy that he has yet to burn through, if with the older generation. I don’t like him a lot, but he seems to get the big things…look, a lifetime of voting for Democrats prepares you for certain things.

As for the season, tell me if you’ve heard this one before: DC United reached and won an MLS Cup final. Guess who they played? Yep, the Los Angeles Galaxy. Guess where they played? You’re not gonna believe this, but…Foxborough, MA, yes, the same venue where DC snuffed out the Galaxy (whoa.) in the inaugural MLS Cup just four years earlier. I’d forgotten this, but Christina Aguilera performed for the MLS Cup 1999 halftime. I dug around a bit to see if I could find the video (nope!), but I did find a NY Times blog post from 2007 that included this little snippet:

“Christina Aguilera, who at that time was still more Mickey Mouse Club than ‘dirrty’ pop-diva, performed a song from her debut album that went platinum 10 times over and won her the Best New Artist Grammy in 2000. Meanwhile, M.L.S. average attendance dropped slightly the next season.”

The headline to that piece – which was about Jimmy Eat World playing the 2007 MLS Cup halftime - was “Pop Stars Riding M.L.S. Coat-Tails.” Yeah, no. Moving on…

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

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

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

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

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

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

An MLS History Project: 1996, So Goddamn Thirsty

Desperation should never start here. Pro tip.

With no Major League Soccer to watch and/or write about, I’ve decided to take my...let’s call it chemically-strained memory for a test drive. The vehicle will be a year-by-year personal history of the first 24 MLS seasons; call it my own little commemoration of a 25th anniversary season that may or may not happen (for the record, my money’s against it, but my heart’s for it).

Because this is about what I actually remember, the overall intention is to use minimal prompts – e.g., a couple Wikipedia articles, maybe one specific event or concept I can mine to give anyone who finds this something better than, “and then DC United beat the New York/New Jersey MetroStars*, where they played the Tampa Bay Mutiny** in the Eastern Conference semifinals." (* The original New York team has always struggled with branding. ** Wow, I still type “Tampa Buy Mutiny” the first time ‘round even all these years later.)

The broad goal is to track themes, trends, great players, weird players, bad ideas, good ones, and to just try to get my mind back to what those moments felt like; the underlying goal is to treat the whole thing like a trivia night at the local bar: there will be no googling and no further research after checking…let’s go with three prompts (except to, say, dig up video for something I remember and would like to post).

Before diving in, I can tell you where this whole thing is very likely to fail: I put my chances at not being able to make particular distinctions between, say, 2003 and 2004, very, very high. But that’s not what this is. It’s a trip down Memory Lane. Because, when you’ve got nothing else to look at, why not look at what came before?

The whole thing starts when Major League Soccer started: 1996. Let’s set the scene…

First things first, the league was supposed to start a year earlier, in 1995 (apparently), but it failed to launch in the originally-scheduled Year One. Recalling that knocked loose the memory that having an officially FIFA-sanctioned top-flight domestic soccer league was a condition for the U.S. getting the World Cup in 1994 (how explicit a condition, I don’t recall). When friends asked about that during World Cup broadcasts, I have this loose memory of thinking it’d never happen…and, once the product rolled out, I figured the whole damn thing was doomed.