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| Valeri's goal, amirite? |
Before getting into the details, I’ll start with an observation: I see almost no real give in the Eastern Conference standings - i.e., I don’t really see any of the bottom four climbing out of the outhouse - while the Western Conference looks decently interesting from 6th place on down. Do note, however, the 8th-place Colorado Rapids’ two-three games in hand on everyone around them.
As threatened last week, I’m back to handicapping MLS as a whole, if from a greater distance. The formula will likely evolve from the original plan of separating expected results from the oddballs, but the general idea is to dig deeper on the results that don’t make sense to try to figure out how they happened. I want to go Monday-to-Monday for the long haul, but I got this itch to drop a prototype and that’s what this is. Plus, I wanted to see (some of) what happened when FC Cincinnati visited Philadelphia last Wednesday. (The short, familiar answer: nothing good.)
What I’m fishing for with these weekly posts is enough information to clock some general trends, maybe drop some names about who did what and how often. Call it an acquaintance level relationship with Major League Soccer in sum, enough to join a water-cooler conversation about comings and goings and talking from somewhere more sophisticated than my ass.
Most weeks, I’ll start by ticking through the expected results, touching (very) briefly on stray points of interest. I’ll then close with as many of the oddballs as I can get to - which, for this week, included only two games (though it should've included one more) - and dig deeper into those. The biggest difference comes with the amount of video review - e.g., “baby highlights” + box scores for the expected results and MLS-in-15 plus box scores for the oddballs.
I’ll start this edition with a (very) late round-up of FC Cincy’s midweek loss to Philly, a result that was…so very expected.
As threatened last week, I’m back to handicapping MLS as a whole, if from a greater distance. The formula will likely evolve from the original plan of separating expected results from the oddballs, but the general idea is to dig deeper on the results that don’t make sense to try to figure out how they happened. I want to go Monday-to-Monday for the long haul, but I got this itch to drop a prototype and that’s what this is. Plus, I wanted to see (some of) what happened when FC Cincinnati visited Philadelphia last Wednesday. (The short, familiar answer: nothing good.)
What I’m fishing for with these weekly posts is enough information to clock some general trends, maybe drop some names about who did what and how often. Call it an acquaintance level relationship with Major League Soccer in sum, enough to join a water-cooler conversation about comings and goings and talking from somewhere more sophisticated than my ass.
Most weeks, I’ll start by ticking through the expected results, touching (very) briefly on stray points of interest. I’ll then close with as many of the oddballs as I can get to - which, for this week, included only two games (though it should've included one more) - and dig deeper into those. The biggest difference comes with the amount of video review - e.g., “baby highlights” + box scores for the expected results and MLS-in-15 plus box scores for the oddballs.
I’ll start this edition with a (very) late round-up of FC Cincy’s midweek loss to Philly, a result that was…so very expected.
