 |
| We regret to inform you, etc. |
Let the record show that I skipped two beats this weekend; I
won’t be writing about FC Cincinnati’s loss at home to the Los Angeles Galaxy
or the Portland Timbers wholesome thrashing of the Houston Dynamo, also at
home. This content is stale enough as is, when you miss a wave, you miss a wave,
etc.
Moving on to the Major League Soccer week at hand –
during which, it bears noting, both the teams I follow (e.g., Cincinnati and
Portland) played – the results served up more confirmation than shake-up. For example (and details notwithstanding), the Galaxy beating
Cincinnati in Cincinnati is just meeting expectations. The same goes for the Colorado Rapids' 2-2 draw against
Vancouver at BC Place; good for the former, bad for the latter, but…well, raise
your hand if you see either of those teams as viable contenders. In a somewhat
indirect way, the same thing goes for the Chicago Fire’s 1-1 draw against RSL at
home: nothing about that result changes the calculus in either conference, even
if, at the same time, Chicago’s players should give Mo Adams a solid week’s
worth of side eye for that deeply ill-advised hand-ball. So long as you
view…more or less all of those teams as strictly undercard material (measure
the Zlatan Effect however you see fit), their results hardly demand careful study.
All the same, this severely truncated weekend wasn’t a total
waste. For instance, Portland’s full-frontal cleating of Houston, and the sad
fallout of Columbus Crew SC’s home loss to Sporting Kansas City hints at the
entrenchment of some potentially meaningful trends...going in different directions. Even if you factor in the
fact the Timbers bullied a pair of B-teams on the road, the fact that they
bullied them remains. Portland is showing vivid signs of life, basically, and
with a (crucially) fresh mix of personnel to boot. It’s harder to read SKC’s
win over Columbus as a sign of their revival, or as the continuing story of
Columbus’ continuing illness. Meanwhile, FC Dallas’ utterly
overwhelming demolition of Toronto FC falls into a different category all together
– i.e., is a short-handed TFC team a big enough mess that they can be safely
ignored, and what does that mean going forward?
Before I dig into the Info-Boxes that will fill in this
post’s considerable tail, a visit from the in-house Department of Corrections moved
me to revisit…a number of calls I made heading into the Gold Cup break (that
barely was). I’ll start with the key for the bottom-most cell in the Info-Boxes,
which I use to measure strength of schedule. When you see a “C” in the box
under a team, that means I rate them as a contender. “M+” means “mid-table, but
with some upside; “M-“ means mid-the wrong side of mid-table. Finally, “R” stands
for road kill, as in these are the teams your team should beat, and that you
absolutely should panic when they fail to do so. And that’s where the rub came
in.
