With preseason finally in full swing, I’ve decided to switch focus to those results instead of dry-humping meaning out of which teams get what players – except, that is, when new arrivals land in Portland, Oregon or Cincinnati, Ohio. That doesn’t mean I didn’t see Oswaldo Alanis
(bastards!): it just means, um, I don’t really have anything to add beyond linking the name of someone I don’t know to a team that I do and, because all the teams listed above play in the Western Conference, I hope that each of those players bring a soccer-performance equivalent of the plague into those respective locker rooms, by which I mean I don’t want anyone to die
, but only metaphorically, and in a way that only hurts each individual player for as long as they are on those teams, and with good fortune and earnings thereafter, amen, etc. (There. That should satisfy legal...)
That said, the one player move from the past week that stuck with me was Real Salt Lake
to Brazil. I mean, it was only a week ago that RSL’s staff talked about having the team to compete for the title and I assumed at the time (and I don’t think unreasonably) that part of that plan included Savarino, who has been a good and useful player for RSL for the past year or so, if not their most dangerous player. I get that teams sell players, I do, but this still feels like a weird one…and yet it all feels very grown-up and first-world soccer at the same time. This assumes, of course, that RSL has someone lined up to fill the gaping “danger-hole” in their starting XI. And why wouldn’t they? I mean, have you seen this off-season? It’s like a drunken sailor party at Mardi Gras out there...it’s enough to make the CBA negotiations feel like they’re happening in another league, but they’re not. Wild, right?
And, best thing of all, both the Timbers and FC Cincy got invites to the party. With that, let’s turn to a results ‘n’ transfers check in on my two favorite teams. Think I’ll start with…yeah, gonna do Portland.
over Costa Rica’s Saprissa down in (the other) San Jose. People have rightly celebrated Diego Valeri’s
, but the real story is in the…nah, I can’t fake this one. The line-ups
feel like the coaches came with that line-up by picking names out of hat. It worked just fine – hey! - but I’m also guessing that all involved played with professional pride and courtesy and saw that no one got hurt
…OK, so that’s two months from February 1st till he comes back, and that’s April 1st. Got it.
The big news this week was the arrival of two (2) attacking players for Portland in
Jaroslaw Niezgoda (a player Timbers fans have expected to receive for…was it weeks or a month?) and
Felipe Mora, who came as something of a surprise, at least to me. Both players come with impressive resumes, which means I’m excited to see them both, but without expectations they’ll save us from either sin or an early off-season. Between their arrival and having it on well-connected word (right?) that Cristhian Paredes will return, and that means the Timbers go into 2020 with an already-solid team, and now with at least four new, potential upgrades. It’s the “upgrade over what” question that starts a journey.
Based on
very loose readings of what he does, I think I have some sense of what Niezgoda does on the field; based on still looser reading, I have no damn idea at all what Mora does: I’ll catch up on both when they play, like everyone else, but the immediate question is what those players’ arrival(s?) mean to Jeremy Ebobisse. The base-line thinking holds that Ebobisse starts either at forward or as a winger. Without knowing what Mora does (and I’m willing to wait), I don’t know that he’ll impact Ebobisse directly, but I’m guessing that Niezgoda will freeze him out of forward, at least until failure kicks in. Between Valeri, Sebastian Blanco, Yimmi...hell, maybe even Marvin Loria and Andy Polo, Ebobisse has a shit-ton of players to get through before he starts on the wing.
So...
That’s frustrating, honestly. Ebobisse feels like too strong an asset to burn, but I’d also allow that he’s an odd duck as a player, a better soccer player than he is a forward, better at combination play in the attacking third than he is at scoring. I think he’d kill as a second forward on a team built to accommodate that role, but it also becomes a question of addition and subtraction that gets messy real quick. Just as a thought exercise, try to build a tenable Portland Timbers line-up that has both Niezgoda and Ebobisse starting. I think it’s possible, especially if you’re willing to deploy either Valeri or Ebobisse strategically, but getting the balance right will take more thought than I’ve put into it so far. Also, I don’t think anyone in the organization is really thinking that way – by which I mean, I expect to see (possibly) too much of Valeri and Blanco this season, and that’ll surely squeeze out Ebo - then again, based on the line-ups against Saprissa, who knows?
Letting Ebobisse linger on the bench seems unfair, I guess, and perhaps unwise, but, if there’s wisdom in having competition across the roster, the Timbers have definitely set up something of a cage-match in the attacking positions…maybe I’m just anxious because I don’t know how they’ll settle it?
Results ‘n’ Transfers, FC Cincinnati
I think it’s been
reliably confirmed that Cincy has
successfully signed Jurgen Locadia – even if the question of “success” remains up for grabs. Absent some kind of personal knowledge about him among Gerard Nijkamp and Ron Jans, Locadia has the kind of resume that blows up most often – e.g., falling in and out of the line-up, going out on loan, etc., and consistently – so that’s the red flag. To put a more positive spin on it, maybe he’s a good player who wasn’t quite as good as the players in front of him – loans aren’t always a sign of failure – and a player like that probably clears FC Cincinnati’s and/or MLS’s threshold, so I guess it’s back to wait and see…with that thing about exploding resumes as an asterisk, of course.
We’ll see what happens when Locadia comes,
if Locadia comes, but FC Cincinnati now has two (somewhat) context-rich results behind them: 1) their
3-0 triumph over Phoenix Rising (but not fast enough, amirite?!), and 2) their
0-4 wake-up call about this not being the USL anymore MFs (and I know how totally 2019 that is, but the point stands), from a cocked-and-loaded Sporting Kansas City team. The results, as you’re fully aware, mean nothing; more to the point, had you asked me what I’d expect to happen in both games, I would have guessed both results, just with smaller margins. To name some points of interest from both games:
W over Phoenix: Rey Ortiz getting two assists is nice, so is seeing Andrew Gutman, Tommy McCabe and Joseph-Claude Gyau knocking in the three goals, you want your bit players scoring often as they can, etc. They made do in some ways – i.e., I wouldn’t field that starting XI often or confidently – and that’s the second piece of intrigue: FC Cincy’s second half XI strikes me as a likelier regular XI than the team Jans sent out in the first half.
L way under SKC: Cincy flipped the script in this one for me, in that this first-half starting line-up feels more like what I expect them to try in 2020, at least early on. And SKC shredded it. Daniel Salloi scored a goal, fer crissakes (srsly, check his
2018 versus his 2019). Based on both teams' rosters and recent histories, I’d expect the same thing to happen if Cincinnati played SKC at any point during 2020. One team upgraded on a solid/comically-underachieving foundation (that's SKC and, just to note it, Alan Pulido did not play), while another added some potentially useful pieces to the worst team in the league last season (uh, Cincy). If you expected better from this game, pay more attention to how often you’re disappointed and ask yourself why that is.
All the same, I do sincerely believe this is the beginning of a better year for Cincinnati. I’m confident I’ve mentioned this before, but I like Jans as a coach, and I think the team found and eliminated the fat quicker than we might appreciate. I didn’t agree with every move – e.g., Emmanuel Ledesma and Victor Ulloa are the ones I question (going the other way, Powell, no, Adi, no, Mattocks, no…say, there’s a lot of former Timbers in there) – but I do feel like they’re grasping toward a better, smarter foundation for 2020, and that they’ve found the hand-holds. We’ll see, of course, starting March 1, and every week thereafter from here till…it’s like goddamn Halloween before the season ends, right?
Anyway, Cincinnati will be better this year than last. How much better, and how that fits into all the teams they compete against? That’s the big, scary question, isn’t it?
More Results
I wanted to close with notes on some noteworthy results (no typo), because that’s where the rubber hits the road.
FC Dallas signed Denilson way back when, and you shouldn’t know who that is…the point is signings don’t matter till they pay off on the field, even the big ones, and that’s why I fixate on results, even the dumb ones.
DC United 1-3 Montreal Impact
I found this notable for the goal scorers – e.g., new kid Romell Quioto and the returned Ballou Tabla. Montreal has weapons. It’s also a mess, but also that.
Columbus Crew SC 1-1 Vancouver Whitecaps
1) Vancouver’s starting line-up looks plausible (between the defensive mid side, and the attacking three); 2) Artur with Darlington Nagbe seems like a really strong midfield pairing, but we’ll see.
Atlanta United FC 4-0 Philadelphia Union
I want to say that Philly threw out some lambs, but I recognize enough of those names to wonder. The bigger news is that Pity Martinez’s name keeps showing up on the score sheet this preseason.
Los Angeles FC 3-1 New York City FC
Mostly because it feels ominous.
DC United 1-3 New York Red Bulls
Noticing a pattern for DC, but they did have some key players missing for this one. Also, look at those line-ups and tell me the Red Bulls won’t at least be tough.
FC Dallas 1-4 Vancouver Whitecaps
As if on cue, the ‘Caps drill a middle-top-tier Western Conference team. But, no, I’m not reading anything into this…yet.
Chicago Fire 0-4 Philadelphia Union
Chicago’s second half line-up is a who’s who of where did they come from? For Philly, it’s so far better than Chicago, but worse than Atlanta. Which is doable. To a point.
In case you’re wondering, yes, that skips a fair number of results, most of them against USL teams or foreign teams. I don’t discount those games at all, I just don’t know quite how to translate them to anything meaningful – for instance, I can’t read Atlanta drawing IF Elsborg 1-1 the same way I can look at Vancouver beating up Dallas on neutral ground. A 4-1 result going in Vancouver’s favor raises an abundance of questions, and from multiple angles…
…but it’s also the preseason, so fuck it (but file it).
