Getting Reacquainted with FC Dallas, MLS's Consummate B (or B-) Students

How's your Italian, young man?

[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.]

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FC Dallas, fka, the Dallas Burn undermine the entire “Joy Point” concept (see end of post for methodology*) because they rank seventh in MLS history more for consistency than what any fan would recognize as joy. Choosing their best season required no more thought than choosing between the two seasons they actually won a trophy. Dallas rose to these lofty heights the same way Red Bull New York did – i.e., by being in the league for as long as they have and consistently making the playoffs. Unlike the Red Bulls, I don’t believe anyone outside their most committed fans (meant, here, as both committed and “committed”) have ever uttered the words, “I think this is Dallas’ year. They did reach MLS Cup once, in 2010, but they lost to…the Colorado Rapids. (When people tell you that MLS is a weird league, believe them.) And yet, and to their very real credit, Dallas have missed the playoffs just seven times in 28 seasons (including one season they got tagged by the Wooden Spoon (2003)) and they finished in the top half of the table in (literally) half the time. Not a bad run, all in all, but not a great one, and not what any reasonable person would describe as “joy.” If one had to grade the Dallas franchise what could you give them but a B, or maybe even a B-. On the plus side, they do have that dynamite academy, aka, America’s answer to Ajax in the Eredivisie…makes you wonder how high they could rise if they kept some of those promising players two days after their 20th birthday. Or thereabouts.

Best Season(s)

The 2016 season, easily, and with nod to the prior season as a sign of things to come. I had to check back to both rosters to remember who suited up for them in both years (2015 and 2016) and, small coincidence, those same players are well-represented (if not over-represented and via a cheat) in the 10 Players to know section below. Those sections speak to another general truth about FC Dallas: it’s less that they never make ambitious signings than that they often miss the mark when they do, sometimes wildly. At any rate, Dallas won both the Supporters’ Shield and the U.S. Open Cup in 2016, which means their fans felt actual joy once – which I suppose beats the usual experience of salivating over the latest academy kid that they’ll say goodbye to right around the time they remember his name...

Portland Timbers' Loss to FC Dallas, in a Big Frame

Adi was about this aggressive...

Because this is one to two days late (by my usual pace), I thought I'd try to add a little value to the post by stitching the Portland Timbers into their place in the Western Conference milieu. First, and because it serves the larger plot, let's explore the Timbers rather outsized loss to FC Dallas last Saturday night.

I'll get to the game in, literally, the next paragraph, but I do want to pause to praise the Dallas bugler who includes at least two Texas classics in his/her in-game repertoire – e.g. the theme from Dallas and "Deep in the Heart of Texas." Sa-lute! Now, the game...

The best thing one can say about it is that the Timbers pushed past being four goals down deep into the 90 and scored a late, late, if meaningless goal. How meaningless? Well, Dallas' three- goal-gap contributes visibly to the Timbers now -4 goal differential (please, refrain from dissecting the logic of that statement). Though still on the right side of the crimson, velvet rope that separates "winners" from losers (use of scare quotes both intentional and attributable to MLS's stupid playoff format), Portland's recent run has left them vulnerable to getting over-run by the teams below them – hence the point of the "milieu" project.

On that late goal, though, some unseemly squabbling preceded it. The new guy, Lucas Melano, drew the penalty and, (presumably) wanting to show his team a little more of what he can do, Melano also offered/insisted on taking the penalty kick he earned. In a show of poor manners for the new arrival, two longer-term Timbers, Fanendo Adi and Gaston Fernandez, both offer...no, they insisted on taking the same penalty. Adi won in the end, mostly by grabbing the ball and turning a deaf-ear to further input from the Argentine Delegation. To his credit, Adi stepped up and buried the penalty kick. Though it was, as noted above, meaningless.

Yes, yes, there's typically a process in place that decides who takes penalty kicks, it probably is Adi (though I say that without any knowledge of the relevant process), and process is process, and without it there will be chaos, etc. Given the stakes involved in the game in question (low, low, low; one "low" for each goal against), and given the larger, more pressing task of bringing a new (expensive) player into the team, it strikes me that the larger, wiser gesture would have been to let Melano take it, score it, and thereafter envelope him in the hot, ample bosom of his new club. There's healthy competition and there's back-biting rivalry...follow the modifier to see which one think is best for Portland.

MLS Week 19: The Half-Rack (e.g 12 Thoughts/New Feature)

Still undecided. That's half a half of whatever, goddammit!

Well, I didn't promise promise I'd stay away from Major League Soccer. In fact, I think I've landed on something more satisfying than damn, dirty power rankings (not least because, as argued in the Week 18/Season End Rankings, I don't anticipate much meaningful change in terms of how MLS's clubs stack up against one another till the end of the season).

Time constraints being what they are, I sat through only condensed versions of every game in MLS for Week 19 (well, except Vancouver v. Sporting KC, which isn’t up, condensed-style, at time of writing). It looked like a great week based on those snippets, lots of goals, lots of bad defending, some wacky refereeing – i.e. one's daily diet of madness, basically. And huzzah!

Because branding is everything in these teenage years of the 21st century, I hereby introduce the Conifers & Citrus "Half-Rack": the 12 comments that came to me as I watched, in this case, all those condensed games. They're not talking points, even if as I view each of them as segues to larger conversations, and, ideally, I'll stray away from flagging the obvious. Even as I will sometimes fail, as when I point out that, holy shit, is that Sebastian Giovinco kid really goddamn good.

Last part to the preamble: was "half-rack" an East Coast or West Coast term? Not trying to start another rap war, but I spent enough time on both coasts, and have put enough mileage on my brain, that I can’t remember where I lived when friends (and, yes, family) asked me to "pick up a half-rack" on the way to this or that event, or when they just asked for a half-case.

At any rate, 12 Points, Comments, Ideas...Things unfold below...starting with a quick hit on my beloved, yet misbehaving, Portland Timbers.

MLS Week 17 Rankings: Sorting Through the...INCOMING!!!

Your newest member of the Sonoma County Sol!

I had this Major League Soccer at the Half Rankings concept all worked out. It had a couple of attendant challenges: for one, not every MLS club has played 17 games; some have less, some have more (along with the potential for sitting idly later in the season as other clubs play their cards in the hand well; see, the Los Angeles Galaxy and DC United). Giving a high-five to a milestone as it passed all of us by had some appeal, as well. A big part of attraction to that idea, though, was the sheer amount of goddamn data spit out by the last two weeks.

By all that's unholy...soccer. So much...soccer. The last week alone featured 16 regular season games, which spelled two-game weeks for all but 7 MLS clubs (yeah, that odd number tells me I overlooked a dead rat in the data). The Saturday and Sunday before that: more games. The freakin' week before that: U.S. Open Cup. For goddamn everybody. With that much soccer on offer, I figured some enterprising coaches would send out heavies to scout soccer-friendly bars across the country in search of able-bodied, and nearly-able-bodied males, recruiting the ones they could convince, and shanghaiing the rest as the market dictated.

The situation argued for a wider focus, basically, and what's more big picture than a big, Vaseline-lensed looked back at the first half of the 2015 season? Frame it as a projection, maybe, a way of arguing that this one club that no one would dare project in the playoffs, yeah, I'm sayin’' it. Going. Maybe even all the way. In a crazy league this one, I mean, who can say, really? Right?

And then I wrote it all down and realized that my "crazy" projections for the post season look a-whole-goddamn-lot like the current standings. The only change – literally, the only difference? – I have the San Jose Earthquakes going into the post-season over FC Dallas. So, there's that.

Still, can we all agree that the following three coaches are now circling The MLS Musical Chair Hot Seat: the Chicago Fire's Frank Yallop; the Colorado Rapids' Pablo Mastroeni; and the Philadelphia Union's Jim Curtin. My money's on Pablo. And I give him...mid-August. He.s gone by mid-August. OK, enough of that...

OK, onto the Methods section. Just two games watched in full this past weekend (Damn my obligations! And, OK yes, sometimes entirely natural wish to mix up my weekends a little!)

Real Salt Lake v. Columbus Crew SC
Portland Timbers v. Seattle Sounders (HA! Ha ha ha ha! Whoo...still enjoying that one)

Quickly, just prior to the ranking, I think I finally have clear explanations for two numbers beneath each team's name. If it's unclear to anyone, do speak up. And, full disclosure, I may or may not have watched the 20-minute mini-games for Week 16 1/2, Hogwarts Week in MLS (e.g. the June 24 set of games)...long may Hogwarts Week precede Rivalry Week.

OK, rankings time. Stack 'em up!

The MLS Divine Comedy, Week 7

Philadelphia? Hello, and sorry. To the left, please.

For Week 7, I decided to return to, but re-name, the whole "Sinking, Swimming, Treading Water" concept. Thought I'd reference the classics instead, with an homage to Dante's Divine Comedy: going forward, these posts will divide MLS's clubs between Heaven, Hell and Purgatory. That distinction is self-explanatory, yeah? And the arrangement should last even through the playoffs – that is, a club can remain in Purgatory in the post-season, for no man* resides in Heaven till he hoists MLS Cup! I’m keeping Hell pretty small and that's less about me feeling all New Testament, than about the passage to the playoffs seeming very much wide open. Good works and grace have nothing on stupid parity and the stupid playoff format.

(* Here, "man" shall mean, exclusively, a male professional soccer player, who plies his trade in the officially recognized domestic North American Division 1 soccer league, dba, popularly MLS.)

As happens more often than I should admit, the past weekend didn't come together so smoothly. I made it through only two games in their entirety:

Seattle Sounders v. Colorado Rapids
New York City FC v. Portland Timbers

With that entered into the record, I did watch the first 30 minutes of FC Dallas v. Toronto FC, it struck me as indecent to watch Nick Hagglund suffer more, not unlike Noah's daughters who wisely took a pass on seeing him rolling around all drunk and naked. The rest of the games I took through MLS Live's condensed matches – which, again, I can't recommend enough. Once again, the number in parentheses after each team's name records how many times I've spent/suffered the full 90 with it. I'll do better in catching full games going forward. Probably. The heart's in it.

The summaries for each team will be shorter than previously. All the detail stuff I once tried to work in – e.g. flagging some player, a trend, or a concept that's in the air or on my mind – will go over to a mid-week post going forward. That'll be me making sense of the week.

Portland Timbers Roll FC Dallas, 3-1

First, put on Asprilla. Then this guy.

It wasn't really clear to me how uncomfortable a one-goal lead made me until my bowels loosened after Diego Chara scored. Sweet, sweet relief.

Well, that was an eventful one. Liam Ridgewell getting cracked in the face with David Texeira's elbow (cough! cough! MLS Disciplinary Committee!...cough!); FC Dallas' backline defending like the Portland Timbers' often does (Nat Borchers didn't even have to jump); the Timbers defending like the Timbers do (Rodney Wallace on Tesho Akindele? Srsly?); Maximiliano Urruti scoring a pair of offside goals (yeah, I think he was off on Portland's 2nd, but no take-backs!): throw it all in a bowl, stir it up, drop Chara's insurance goal/birthday present* as a cherry on top, and you’ve got Portland's 3-1 win over league-leading Dallas. A night like that makes one's beer taste better.

We got this, too...which is profoundly unsporting, yet very, very enjoyable. (Situation explained? Maybe?)

What you didn't have was a pretty game, at least not for long stretches. Both teams conspired to condense the field, resulting in the ball bouncing around among a cluster of players. In one particularly stifled sequence, a blob of nine (or so) Portland players surrounded six (or so) Dallas players near the top of Portland's 18 with what looked like twenty yards to the touchline on either side. Made me think of the several rounds of pinball I played the night before.

Still, I’m a happy boy today. Here are some thoughts and reasons for that.

Portland Timbers Review/Preview, Week 4/Week 5: Little Things, When Big Things Are Needed

Portland needs this guy. He's pinning stuff down blind.

Caught in a crazy, busy week here at Conifers & Citrus, I don't have the time to do the usual Tour d'Agony through all that Portland Timbers-related commentary and speculation. Then again, is it really necessary? I mean, we all know happened, right, in that distasteful loss to the Vancouver Whitecaps? A mighty comeback, even a near-win via Fanendo Adi's second crack at damn, dirty David Ousted (there's yer twitter handle, son; I suggest you take it), undone when That Goddamn Pass met a Keystone Kops Kaper from Nat "Natty Bo" Borchers and Liam [Nickname Pending] Ridgewell ("Ridgey" is wholly inadequate). It's a sad song, but at least we all know the tune.

Even with Matthew "The Armchair Analyst" Doyle threatening to provide numbers that demonstrate that Darlington Nagbe roared like a lion through March (on Twitter; and then Doyle provided; well worth the read), I'm done looking back...Oh, all right!

I'll keep my over-arching point short and sweet. Sure, the second defensive collapse of the season is a big, glum cloud, but a silver lining surrounds it: the Timbers played decently last week, and are playing decently enough, despite the absence of two key players (arguably more once one throws in Ben Zemanski, who can help kill games, and Jack Jewsbury, who (I don't care what anyone else says), provides a range of passing in deep midfield that helps the team overall). Portland has been in every game, complete with good-to-great spells. It's just pinning down the result that causes the headaches and absence of points.

This week's brief Tour d'Agony supported that point and it didn't. Stumptown Footy's Chris Rifer put together what was, in all honesty, a compact, yet nutritious review of the season so far in service of arguing that coaching isn't the problem. And, yep. Chris Gluck compiled a bunch of stats for the same site, which revealed where the Timbers came short. Or didn't. That's the funny thing with numbers, when it comes to soccer: too many damn variables – e.g. possession against this team isn't possession against that team. Gluck notes the averages, though, which I'm sure communicates something. Uh...moving on to the familiar ground of naked speculation.