MLS Western Conference Check-In, More Words at the One-Third Mark

I'm coming for yer place, Soccer Don.

Careful readers who visited last night’s Eastern Conference check-in may notice I cribbed that preamble for this one. Fuck it. Who reinvents the wheel when he doesn’t have to? Ahem.

Welcome to this broad and necessarily shallow check-in on where things stand in Major League Soccer’s Western Conference about one-third of the way through the 2025 season. To set expectations a little:

I watch just one Western Conference team religiously – my Portland Timbers – and most of the additional (somewhat) in-depth watching I’ve done involved teams that they played the upcoming weekend. So, again, I’m not coming at any of this from some all-knowing, all-absorbing perch.

Against that, I sincerely believe that a lot of the week-to-week global coverage I see from this league (almost all of it from Official Organs) suffers from a pernicious tendency to read too much into the last game played – i.e., Content, particularly the stuff around failure and progress in players, formation shifts, etc., over-values the latest details, often at the expense of considering broader details like, say, did your team look like some hot-rod shit last weekend because they ran over the Los Angeles Galaxy (ha!) at home? All of the everything below looks at the same things, just over a longer arc. That follows for necessity, for sure, but it’s also about patterns, particularly when it comes to results, where they happened and against which teams and in what form.

Just to note it, I constructed the information boxes that top each section for each team from the (current) Conference Standings, the much-reduc’d Form Guide (still mourning the loss, contemplating egging MLS HQ…so long as that’s not a felony, because I can’t have another), and applying a filter one team at a time to the Official stats page. Just to note it, MLS has gutted its non-app content. Jesus fucking Christ, the home pages for must teams are like the shells of abandoned houses with all the copper piping and really good built-ins stripped out.

MLS Weakly, January 27, 2022: Preseason Status Check & Historically-Informed Statement of Biases

This will only make sense at the end.

This post combines a couple thoughts to create a sort of grand frame for the 2022 season. And, yes, I absolutely overdid it. I’ll be parking these Weaklies for a couple weeks after this and, when I get back in the saddle, I’ll only have notes on teams that look like they might go somewhere compelling - an adjective I use in the spirit of the weasel word, because “compelling” contains multitudes, a spread wide enough to include teams that look like MLS Cup winners on one side and teams that might finally escape the cellar on the other.

This severely over-long post has two components:

1) A brief history of MLS, told through the lens of teams/systems who have won either MLS Cup or the Supporters’ Shield; followed by

2) applying that perspective to the thumbnail impressions on where each team in MLS, both generally and based on their 2021 season.

I’m doing all this to announce my biases going into the season. So long as another wild hair doesn’t sneak up my ass, this will be the only Total Coverage post of the 2022 season - i.e., the only time I anticipate having notes on every team in the league. Think of it as the sign I will tap when someone asks the question: what about my team? The answer: because they do not matter…

…but I also when nuts on the history because I like narratives. Time to excavate!

Trophies and the Teams Who Have Won Them
First, some numbers: a total of 14 teams have won MLS Cup in the league’s 26-year (right?) history; 15 teams have won the Supporters’ Shield over the same period - two of which, the Tampa Bay Mutiny (1996, aka, Year 1) and the Miami Fusion (2001, no longer exist, though Pablo Mastroen still haunts us all; eight teams have won both the Cup and the Shield - five of them landed a double - while six teams have won only MLS Cup and five have only won the Shield. I’ll get to the short, wild stab at history in a tick, but I want to examine the flipside of all that success.

The eight active teams who have never won either major trophy (yes, I am writing off the U.S. Open Cup, and always will) are: Austin FC, Charlotte FC, FC Cincinnati, Inter Miami CF, Minnesota United FC, CF Montreal, Nashville SC, Orlando City SC, and the Vancouver Whitecaps. All of those teams came via expansion, with (I believe) Vancouver coming in first, followed by Montreal, followed by the rest - and, no, I’m not gonna look up who joined when, because that undermines the primary mission of understanding my biases about each team, and that means going by memory as much as possible. [* Of course I had to (minimally) research the Cup/Shield thing to make the above list.] To extract a broad thought out of that, I’d say that makes strong case that MLS does a better than fair job of sharing the spoils. Or, rather, even allowing for freak-cases like Atlanta United FC, the spoils come after a certain amount of either time or, more often lately, investment. Which segues nicely into the history…

Portland Timbers 2-1 Houston Dynamo: Good and Good Enough

You taste it after. Trust me.

My man of the match for the Portland Timbers 2-1, get-on-to-the-next-round win over the Houston Dynamo was Larrys Mabiala. The reason: as born out by the box score, Houston set up the penultimate ball over and over again - and they posted 24 shots (over Portland’s 13), and crossed into the area 22 times (to Portland’s eight, a refreshing detail) - but one Timber or another got in the way of damn near everyone of those shots and crosses. The Dynamo’s four shots on target attest to that. Mabiala didn’t cut out everything that flew into the area, but he cleared more than his share, and I think Portland owes the win to its defensive core.

Before going on, I simply have to share my delight at hearing ESPN’s Alejandro Moreno talk about the staggering end of the Houston Dynamo dynasty, the 2011 and 2012 MLS Cup teams that “succeeded” by playing the grinding brand of soccer that fans enjoyed and neutrals endured, maybe even suffered. A throwback to the Bobby Boswell/Geoff Cameron juggernaut was a moment for a guy who marched through the first 20 years of MLS history (e.g., me; for the record, Moreno was on the much more compelling 2006 MLS Cup-winning Houston team).

Back to the present, Moreno dredged up that history in the context of the Dynamo’s shaky recent history - e.g., missing the playoffs, and badly, for four out of the past five years (and they finished 10th in 2017, the one season they made it; grim shit). The question was posed as a trade-off - pleasure versus success, enjoying watching your team versus reaching a final - and, as an argument, it manages to be fair and irrelevant in the same breath. Those early 2010s Houston teams took bigger risks on attacking talent (e.g., legit MLS legend Brad Davis getting enough out of Will Bruin and Cam Weaver), while Houston’s more recent editions looked to the best attacking talent Honduras has to offer - e.g., Alberth Elis, Mauro Manotas, and, until this season, Romell Quioto - often at the expense of a good defense, on the grounds they’d run over the opposition.

With more money coming into the league [Ed. - This is too loose], Houston has been able to hold on to its Honduran talent (Quioto excepted, who, incidentally, did all right for Montreal this week) and build up its defense a bit. They’ve still struggled a bit over past couple seasons, coming in over average, but not heavily, for goals against, but they’ve also attempted to cure by calling in Aljaz Struna and Matias Vera in 2019, then ripping the fucking heart out of Timbers’ fans by swiping up Zarek Valentin for their 2020 roster. All the same…surely, I’m not the only one who saw Houston try to win this game by pressing Portland, right? Especially after they went down at the 35th minute by way of a straight-up glorious striker’s goal by Jeremy Ebobisse.

An MLS History Project, 2007: A Grand Re-Re-Re-Opening

All was right in New England the next season...

“The 2007 season was often cited as the first season in the modern-era of Major League Soccer.”

This claim is currently under investigation…but the phrasing begs a question: did another season replace this one as the season “often cited as the first season of the modern-era of Major League Soccer”? Also, is that hyphen necessary?

Grammatical/verb tense cheap shots aside (to think, what someone else could do with any of my posts), Major League Soccer saw a handful of changes going into the 2007 season that stake the claim. For one, MLS allowed jersey sponsors for the first time that season (one of the sponsors hints at what might have nudged them over the line: “The international recognized brand, Red Bull became the shirt sponsor of New York Red Bulls, whom they owned.”). The long, uneven path toward standing up an international club competition in the CONCACAF region got a boost as well; while they wouldn’t switch to the CONCACAF Champions League until the 2008 season, MLS and Liga MX ran the Superliga up the flagpole – and, holy shit, the New England Revolution won the 2008 edition, beating the Houston Dynamo on penalty kicks. Turns out pigs can fly, man…

…but if I had to name the one thing that finally made these regional tilts worth playing, I’d go with the magnificent duels Houston played against La Liga’s Pachuca CF. They played the first during the 2007 season, back when it remained the CONCACAF Champions Cup. Houston, those beautiful bastards made it possible to believe a North American team might one day one it all.

Two new soccer-specific stadiums opened – one of them hosting a new expansion team (welcome aboard, Toronto FC!); the other was the Colorado Rapids’ Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, aka, The Dick (tell me they still call it that) – and MLS made some tweaks to the rules of competition (again; more below), but it was the arrival of the designated-player (DP) rule that really puts a spine into that “first season in the modern-era of MLS” claim. I think just about everyone likely to find this lonely post knows how the DP rule works (short version: “permitting one big-ticket foreign player to play for each team without going against the team's salary cap”), but it’s fun to look at who showed up in that inaugural class:

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…

FC Cincinnati 3-2 Houston Dynamo: Tortoise and Hare Metaphors, Strained

Knew I wasn't the only one who mixed that metaphor....

To start with the big question, what the hell just happened out there? If I’m allowed a follow-up (yes, go ahead), did I like it?

The answer to that hinges on what I really think about the Houston Dynamo’s apparent decision to sit out the first 50 minutes of the game. Could head coach Wilmer Cabrera really have sent them out under instructions to cool their heels through 50 minutes, even if hell and high-water washed over it all, and that they’d start playing then and only then? I don’t want to take anything away from FC Cincinnati, who won every header and clogged even more passing lanes over the same period, and they absolutely deserve credit, both for that and finishing their chances (Rashawn!) on their way to a 3-0 lead (not that one, this one). All the same, Houston struggled to build out of the back, and with lack of trying front and center. Midfielders played the ball backwards over and over again throughout the first half, and without any visible pressure around them; both of their d-mids, Juan Cabezas and Matias Vera, dropped centrally to act as an outlet, but Houston’s defenders bypassed that option again and again, in favoring of shoving the ball up the wings. And Cincinnati’s midfield players – led by Emmanuel Ledesma – chewed that shit up every time.

The Dynamo applied its first (remotely useful) spell of pressure around the middle-50s, when they finally pinned Cincinnati into its defensive end and set up a siege that, ultimately, came very, very (very, very) uncomfortably close to forcing a draw, or…let’s just call it God forbid. The thing that undid Houston was ‘keeper Joe Willis letting a weak shot to roll between his legs just as Houston got its momentum going (see "this one," above). There was no reason to assume that would prove the difference when it happened – honestly, I expected Cincinnati to score one more until about the 80th minute – but Houston flipped a pretty big switch once they found it. When the Mark (probably) Gantor (probably; no offense; I love referees) blew the final whistle, the game ended in a desperately-needed 3-2 win for FC Cincinnati. I call this a great result, and without reservation. After the worst loss in franchise history any win is an unqualified good thing, don’t look gift horses in the mouth, and mind where the Pope has a shit, and so on. (Wait…I always get the thing with popes and bears turned around.)

MLS Form Guide ULTRA: Week(s) 14/15: We Have Strength of Schedule Data

One of the many wild cards in play right now.

With the league taking a break to accommodate Gold Cup 2019, the schedulers at Major League Soccer HQ decided to put the regular season on hold until June 22, i.e., when teams across CONCACAF will play...their second group stage game. I don’t know what to say, except that the schedulers seem to like the U.S. Men’s chances about as much as anybody – which is to say, not at all.

Still, with the league on ice for just short of two weeks, I wanted to post this place-holder on the state of play across MLS. Also, with 21 of the league’s 24 teams having 15 games under their belts, it finally feels like pundits have enough data to make generally applicable statements about how every team in the league stacks up in terms of form and quality. I’ve made my own judgments below by lumping them into four broad categories. And those are:

Contenders: The teams who win more often than not and who look like reasonable bets for the playoffs and beyond.

Mid-Table Plus: Teams more likely to beat your team than not, if depending on circumstances (the Houston Dynamo defines this category), but without showing clear signs they can hang with the contenders.

Mid-Table Minus: Teams who are unlikely to compete for anything real (e.g., “we're focusing on Cup play”), but who can be a real pain in the ass when you play them – again, circumstances depending.

Road-Kill: The league’s reliable patsies, the team your team should dunk on every time, and you should be sad when they don’t. A real select group, this one…

I used those four loose categories to come up with the freshly-added “strength of schedule” information now folded into the Info-Boxes down below. And, because that took no small amount of work, and because I’ve got much, much (much, much) more left to do tonight, I’m calling this preamble finished. Just one final note:

Houston Dynamo 1-1 Portland Timbers: One Good Point and Choice Paradox

Work to do...

That was a good draw for the Portland Timbers and all that, on the road against the Houston Dynamo, and with the new (expensive) kid (calmly) scoring Portland’s equalizer only thickens a pot that’s already viscously boiling. The game ended in an earned 1-1.

All the same, if you’re thinking what I’m thinking (wait, are you? serious question), I think the Timbers are about to change. I have faith in the long-term project – not least because it’s necessary (and I have a lot of premature opinions on that) – but, full disclosure, what I saw from Brian Fernandez tonight…well, if it didn’t tear up the script, that fucker came back covered in red ink. Let’s dig into the guts…second hand, because I don’t know what the highlights will show for this (answer: so very little, and where are you, condensed games? a victim of corporate corner-cutting?).

First, and this may be exaggerated, I can’t remember the last time the Timbers played that many long balls looking for a runner – and getting rewarded for doing that (as they did on Fernandez’s equalizer) will keep that tactical choice going for a while. Speaking for myself, I was more excited about Fernandez’s involvement in two other plays. To take them in reverse order, after the long-ball failed a couple times, Fernandez drifted to the right to become play-maker. He spotted a lane into a space where Tomas Conechny was sprinting unobserved toward the penalty spot and he rolled the ball in; Conecnhy failed to connect but Fernandez looks like he's got good eyes. It’s an earlier play that really has me wondering about how Portland plays going forward: while I don’t remember who the short feed came from (think it was Diego Valeri) in came from Zone 14 and rolled into the box with Fernandez chasing; the ball went inside – i.e., between the defender and the goal – but Fernandez drifted to the opposite shoulder and came damn close to catching up to the ball for a clean shot. The point is, Fernandez is both versatile (e.g., he can move around in-game) and he’s a quick little fucker to boot; sort of everything as advertised on the basic attributes. He nearly beat that defender while covering 30-50% more ground. So long as he can finish, that kind of speed is…just, holy shit.

On the grounds that only fools need saviors (my school, right or wrong), I’m going to render unto Fernandez what he does for the Timbers, and render unto the rest of the team what they do for the Timbers (pretty sure I mixed a couple metaphors in there). Because I came into the game late (circa 18th minute), my version of the first half saw Portland’s heels slowly sinking into the earth as Houston forced them down. From the 30th minute forward, the Timbers backed off – a lot like they did against Vancouver in the second half of the first half last Friday. To pick on Renzo Zambrano a little, one of the first things I saw him do was receive a pass in midfield, and then smartly fight the ball sideways, looking for either a foul or a pass all the while (he got the foul! Ding! Ding! Ding!). He followed that up with getting caught, at least semi-horrifically in possession a couple times, and then becoming increasingly more like a vaguely floating presence as the half moved on. The whole team slipped into a reactive stupor right along with Zambrano, somewhere between the 30th and 35th minute. And then the same guys mostly made it right.

MLS Form Guide ULTRA, Week Nearly-7: Paring the Data Closer to the Bone

As easy as judging quality cinema.

I’m lifting too much shit in two different spaces, if mostly on those weekends when I do other things with my time like a normal person. (While I’m here, if someone calls you a “normie,” take it for the compliment it is.)

Welcome to the bones of the MLS Week Nearly-7 recap, the skeleton, the abacus, the first draft of the story of what just happened last weekend. Because I’m going to post my best shot at a final draft over on Orange & Blue Press, I’m going to keep the source material fairly minimalist. As usual, all the results from the 2019 season are listed below and it’s all laid out to where you can see which teams did what and where, a history of the season in numbers, plus some raw notes on what I think it all means and, damn whatever problem I have, links to a bunch of supporting material...because I think you think I'm a liar, all the time.

Once again, I listed teams according to my rough understanding of their comparative quality. I wouldn’t read much into specific placement of each team, at least not beyond the premise that the teams closer to the top will most likely beat the teams closer to the bottom. All the same, I’ll close out this preamble with some short declaratives about where I think things down below might be off. In the order they’re listed…

- I haven’t seen Toronto FC look bad or helpless yet. That counts.

- I don’t trust where the Los Angeles Galaxy and the Houston Dynamo are right now.

- I don’t know when Sporting Kansas City will get going. Waste enough time, that’s all I’m sayin’.

- I think FC Cincinnati and FC Dallas are the same kind of mid-table team, and I hope I’m wrong for both their sakes’.

- Orlando City SC is the scrappiest li’l team in MLS. I pull for them every week. And I try to announce my biases.

- The Philadelphia Union is the most mysterious team in Major League Soccer.

- The Colorado Rapids and New England Revolution might be the low-key worst teams in MLS.

OK, that’s everything. On with the Info-Boxes (e.g., where I keep the results).

MLS Form Guide ULTRA, Week 4: What the Hell Is Wrong With New York(s)?

Not this, but also this.

With Week 4 now (mostly) wrapped up (get with it, Toronto FC), and eight teams already into Week 5, we have enough data on our hands to scramble some preseason assumptions. To take a stab at one of the bigger ones, 2019 has proved cruel enough to the two New York teams in that neither team’s name pairs with the word “contender” the way they used to do. So, down they went. (To those new to these posts, while I don’t strictly rank all the clubs in Major League Soccer, they listed below in some rough semblance of good to bad.) Careful (or just patient) observers will also find last year’s MLS Cup contenders – Atlanta United FC and the Portland Timbers - down in the depths with New York - where they’ve shown they belong (dammit). Where those teams have covered themselves in shame and vomit, Toronto FC turned has so far produced a flawless rejection of their 2018 flame-out – and they doubled-down with what looks like one hell of an effective new signing in Alejandro Pozuela. (Just watched the condensed game; it checks out.)

Narratives extended from all the numbers down below, even if it’s hard in some cases to say where they’ll go from here (say, Philadelphia Union), and impossible in others (say, FC Cincinnati). I’ll flesh out some of those points in the narrative summary I’ll post on Orange & Blue Press (and, once it’s up, link to it right here; it’ll fuck up some of the spacing down below (dammit), but I’d rather link to that than not), but, overall, it’s the usual dogpile of teams stacking up in the standings as they do. Or dogpiles, rather. After the contenders (the top four, maybe five teams below), you’ve got teams with solid starts/reputations in one pot (say, FC Dallas down to the Los Angeles Galaxy), and, in another, you’ve got teams that have managed to pile up some points, but who could go any which way going forward…or maybe just FC Cincinnati and L’Impact du Montreal.

Shit gets weird after that – and having Atlanta, Portland and the New York teams crawling around the innards of the outhouse only makes it the thought of whatever busts out of it feel more threatening somehow (because it crawled out of a damn outhouse, son). Anyway, details on the most recent results for every team in MLS are down below, along with some commentary and who everyone has next – something that’s already becoming a factor in divining at least the short-term future for a lot of teams. I’ll be digging into that in the narrative, but, till that goes up, enjoy the data!

LOS ANGELES FC, 4-0-1, 13 points, 15 gf, 5 ga, (3-0-0 home, 1-0-1 away)

Last Ten: N/A

W	W	D	W	W
v SKC	v POR	@ NYC	v RSL	@ SJ
2-1	4-1	2-2	2-1	5-0
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

Current Judgment: Sure, they’re piling up the points by beating up a succession of situationally vulnerable teams (and Portland’s got next!), but that doesn’t roll back the reality that they are actually doing it, and Carlos Vela is playing MVP soccer.

Next Game: @ DC United, which feels LAFC’s biggest test of their young season.

MLS Form Guide ULTRA, Week 3: The Last Pure, Hot-Take-Free Vessel (for it makes us morons)

If "pure vessel" doesn't lead with something terrifying, maybe there's hope.

I’ve flirted with reviewing some of the condensed games before posting this in the past, but Week 3 stood up for the virtues of the current (accidental) system. The reality is that if I start to poke around box scores and even the highlights, some (potentially) false narratives start getting introduced. To give a particularly…poignant example, if I’d only checked the box score for FC Cincinnati’s 3-0 win over the Portland Timbers, I might read them having a chance into it. The highlights probably would have corrected it, but that still risks putting inaccurate, faulty, or, in so many words, delusional bullshit into the mix, because Portland folded like fucking orgami when they folded.

Down below, and perhaps for the last time this regular season, all the commentary below follows exclusively from the results – that’s excepting FC Cincinnati’s win over the Portland Timbers, upon which I commented on at some length here (and this is your source for any references to “extended comments” in connection with Portland or Cincinnati down below). As much as I believe in the purity of a results-only process – as opposed to seeing that “next great thing” that gives your team hope, but that also has to come together at some point, or who gives a shit – my personal (largely self-enforced) schedule precludes that kind of purity. This time, though, I haven’t seen so much as one highlight reel (with intent), or read even one recap about any other game besides Cincinnati v. Portland. The focus here is on the final product produced by each team over the past three weeks, exclusively.

Finally, as close observers might notice, I do keep rearranging the teams every week…yes, loosely “ranking” them according to some loose frame of how I read each team’s strength. To underscore the overall point, everything below is based on 1) Week 3’s results and, 2) any impressions that carried over from watching previous condensed games and/or last season (see: the San Jose Earthquakes, Toronto FC, and Real Salt Lake, if to varying degrees). Until I/we have more to work with, the recent past, combined with the muscle memory stuff is all MLS fans have to work on. With that, below is a modestly-global shot of the recent records for every team in Major League Soccer and, less importantly, my comments on them. Until the data firms up, these are guesses. Also, enjoy!

SEATTLE SOUNDERS, 3-0-0, 9 points, 10 gf, 3 ga, (2-0-0 home, 1-0-0 away)

Last Ten: N/A

W	W	W
v CIN	v COL	@ CHI
4-1	2-0	4-2
N/A	N/A	N/A

Current Judgment: Perfect record, scoring freely, defending just fine…just note the competiton.

Next Game: @ Vancouver Whitecaps. And the hits keep on a-coming! REALLY hard to see Seattle losing this one…

DC UNITED, 2-0-1, 7 points, 7 gf, 0 ga, (2-0-0 home, 0-0-1 away)

Last Ten: N/A

W	D	W
v ATL	@ NYC	v RSL
2-0	0-0	5-0
N/A	N/A	N/A

Current Judgment: On the one hand, they’re playing teams with problems running from slow starts (e.g., Atlanta and NYCFC) to sucking eggs on the road (RSL). On the other…they haven’t given up a goal, guys.

Next Game: Bye week! Yay, time! @ Orlando. It’s hard to beat Orlando (for now) when you’re looking for a chance to get your road game going.

LOS ANGELES FC, 2-0-1, 7 points, 8 gf, 4 ga, (2-0-0 home, 0-0-1 away)

Last Ten: N/A

W	W	D
v SKC	v POR	@ NYC
2-1	4-1	2-2
N/A	N/A	N/A

Current Judgment: The main thing I’m looking for between the condensed game and the box score is whether LAFC out-played NYCFC. All good results so far.

Next Game: v. RSL, aka, another chance to flounce their reputation.

MLS Tourist Journal, Calender Week 6: Preseason and Varieties of Excitement

This far and no further till the regular season. You know the drill...

The fresh signings keep rolling into Major League Soccer – some flashier, some smarter – and preseason has started for just about every team in the league. Shit’s gettin’ real, but I still wouldn’t mistake anything that happens today for future lived reality, yea, these are the Ponzi schemes of fandom (what?).

Only the preseason portions of the above applies to the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati – and I’m directing the late jab at the end toward FC Cincinnati – but, before getting to them, I wanted to start with a wide-lens snapshot of MLS.

Varieties of New Signings

“They're coming off a championship, so those are the things that motivated me to come. ... [The chance to move on to Europe] was a factor, too. You see players leaving [MLS] for Europe, so that played into my decision.”

So said Atlanta United FC’s Pity Martinez, but the broad idea of showing up/off in MLS as a stepping stone to fat European pay-days has gained real currency over the past couple seasons. And not all players are doing this the same way, so do read the fine print in any new arrival’s contract. For instance, it looks like Martinez signed “a long-term contract” with Atlanta, so, even if he (and even Atlanta’s FO) think he’ll be gone in a year or two, they’ll have some control when he leaves and will almost certainly get a kick-back out of it. The San Jose Earthquakes took a different approach in landing Argentine forward(? – thought he was a midfielder) Cristian Espinoza, and used new head coach Matias Almeyda as a sweetener. Espinoza’s signing is almost explicitly rehab, i.e., “[talented] young player that needs minutes moves to a team with playing time available.” The other club involved – Spain’s Villareal – tapped Almeyda to mentor Espinoza and, if things pan out, Villareal reaps the long-term benefits. That business of acting as a finishing school for bigger clubs around the world doesn’t sound like the best deal, but, on the grounds that weirder things have panned out, may as well see where it goes…

Several other eye-catching signings have come together over the past week…just real quick: rumor turned to reality when New York City FC landed their Romanian stud/Replacement David Villa, Alexandru Mitrita (they also added young American defender Keaton Parks, who called rich-people start-up NYCFC “a great club”…based on…?); sticking with defenders, the rich got richer when Atlanta added the well-pedigreed Florentin Pogba at centerback and the Los Angeles Galaxy correctly identified and filled a hole with the signing of Uruguayan centerback, Diego Polenta. Moving to the other side of the pitch, it’s good to see Real Salt Lake sign a forward, and here’s to wishing Liberian international Sam Johnson comes through for them, while further north and east, and promises to “eat people” notwithstanding, I think Toronto FC might have taken a flyer by signing injury-tinged American forward Terence Boyd.

Translations on Someone Else's Notes: An MLS Round-Up

Useful, but A Plan is better. And other obsessions.

This won’t be complicated – at all. I read an article posted to The Mothership (mlssoccer.com) last night, asking my computer questions as I read. Yes, I mean out loud, rhetorically, and at an inanimate object (that will one day enslave us all); god forbid I look anything up. Some questions crawled out of narratives I’d concocted for each team while tracking league results last season, while something the author wrote triggered others. Either way, it felt like a good way to pass on a resource and to yak a little about MLS, league-wide.

The article in question was a fairly robust transfer tracker/analysis piece and, to make one thing clear, you’ll learn more reading it than you will reading this. I'm just adding value over here (arguably). In his piece, the guy (the author, Tom Bogert) listed all the teams, touching on subjects like “Biggest Move,” “Biggest Hole,” and projected starting Xi’s. For this post, I’ll only quote what I need to and trust those so interested to read the rest Bogert’s comments. Also, he goes through alphabetically, which I’ll do, but only after lifting Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati to the top. I want to get to the good stuff early because I hear most people check out of articles as early as…jesus, never mind.

To those hanging in there, let’s get started.

FC Cincinnati

Bogert hypes the defense (“abnormally deep and talented defensive unit for an expansion club”), and sees a hole where FC Cincy needs a playmaker, but, of all the new guys on this new team, Leanardo Bertone carries the biggest question mark. Between glimpses, history and word of mouth, I have something to work with any of Cincinnati's MLS guys, and I’ve got a grasp on anyone who’s donned Timbers green and gold that a stalker would envy, but a midfielder from a team in the Swiss first division, even a good one, just tells me the guy held down a job in a slightly more desirable neighborhood in the greater soccer universe. I see his name in Bogert’s projected starting XI, and assume he’s going to be there (otherwise, why bother with Switzerland?), but doing what, exactly, and how well? Prove me wrong (I beg you), but I’m not as convinced on the defense, either. Chalk all the above to expansion season jitters. Questions surround this team like a zombie horde, so I’ll be skittish they make it to the well-fortified safe-house…at which time other emotions will surely come to the fore.

Portland Timbers

“What are the options when Diego Chara and Diego Valeri, both set to turn 33 in 2019, need a breather?”

Since Portland counter-punched their way to MLS Cup with Jeremy Ebobisse coming in only at the end, the question above feels like the big one. That said, I’m no less concerned about Portland’s back four. Chara and Valeri aren’t the only players bumping against retirement – see, Ridgewell, Liam – and the Timbers defense leaned closer to solid than lock-down in 2018. Also, even if Zarek Valentin grew all over me last season, I think teams will key on him – especially the ones with faster, more technical players, while also feeling like they're probably on to something. I heard Gavin Wilkinson’s talk about bringing in 3-4 new dudes, but still don’t expect to see a bigger rebuild until 2020. For good reason too: as a twitter correspondent (very patiently) explained to me, Portland can’t afford to carry ready-made replacements for Chara, Valeri, Ridgewell, or even Sebastian Blanco on the roster, so I expect Portland to get another group of understudies, maybe with a DP forward thrown in. All I know is, the closer we get to 2019, the more 2018 feels like the Timbers bought it on credit. If Portland can’t figure out another, reliable way to play, whether by tactics or personnel, I don’t see a return trip to MLS Cup unless Chara, Valeri and Blanco somehow raise the limit on the credit card.

Now, for the rest of ‘em….

Houston Dynamo 4-1 Portland Timbers: The (Highly Specific) Curse of Manotas

"The machine" ain't what it used to be.

The thing about science is that the whole damn thing falls apart any time one fails to subsume all the goddamn givens. Sure, a person could assume that refers to the Portland Timbers on-call ‘keeper, Steve Clark - and, yes, he was anything but a pillar of calm and stability tonight - but I’m talking about something that exists beyond the rationale, outside the bounds of science.

The Houston Dynamo’s Mauro Manotas has Portland’s motherfucking number, that’s all there is to it. He scored his first ever hat trick against the Timbers in 2016, another goal in July 2017, and then a brace in tonight. Sure, you say, that’s just six goals. But what if I told you that was six goals out of 27 goals all-time in Manotas' MLS career? That sounds pretty serious until you see that, however vigorously the Dynamo suck as a team, he’s having a pretty good season. His best in MLS, in fact. So let’s get back to blaming Clark for this one, OK?

I kid, I kid. For all his shaky moments (well, hello, X factor!), I only blame Clark for Houston’s third goal; I get the circumstances of the moment, but I also know that any team with any goddamn sense looks for a ‘keeper who handles crosses, etc. better.

So, what to make of this shit? The hyphenated word “must-win” has a lot of meanings. At the top-line, literal level it means a team must either win the game in question, or be cast into perdition. Another meaning holds that, if you want to lurk in the minds of your opposition going into the post-season, you have to win a game like Houston away late in the season, a team that, prior to Saturday, had sputtered through at 0-7-3 in its last 10 games (while scoring only nine entire goddamn goals). That assumes Portland keeps their date with the 2018 MLS Playoffs, and that they aspire to something more than being the team a better one steps on on its way to the next round.

The Timbers didn’t win tonight, obviously. They lost 1-4, in fact, and to a team that (read between the above lines) has been fucking terrible since mid-July. Portland didn’t even score a goal tonight, at least not without a ricocheted assist from the opposition (thanks, Alejandro Fuenmayor!). No matter how you slice it, that’s a terrible look for a team with any ambition. Unless they’ve changed the template (and I don't think they have), the Timbers would have to survive, first, a knockout game as an away team, then a home-and-home against higher-seeded opposition. And, wow, can I just note how much more I like their chances in a Western Conference semifinals match-up than I do in a knock-out road game? Or at least that's how I feel after tonight.

Portland Timbers 2-1 Houston Dynamo: A Win, a Loss, an Uneasy Sensation

Drafty...

“Timbers fans will never forget the complex emotional rush as he took the Providence Park field as a Timber one last time.”

That’s from The Mothership’s recap and, personally, nothing about the emotional rush was “complex.” I watched the Portland Timbers’ stressful (please, God, not another draw) 2-1 win over the Houston Dynamo with only a couple people, and we toasted Adi at least three times last night. Timbers fans had the fun of watching Adi grow into its first genuinely reliable forward of the Major League Soccer era, and that means Adi will leave a little history behind when he goes. Did I tear up when he scored the game winner? No, shut up…that was…hold on, look over there! (I’ll loop back to this.)

The recap also featured this statement:

“Blanco was in contention for [Man of the Match], given his opening goal and the work he did in breaking down Houston's defense all match. But then Adi stepped on the field, seized the narrative, and made his last one count.”

Nah, it was Blanco, not least because that (frenetic) game-winner doesn’t happen if he doesn’t rescue the ball from (pretty sure it was) Alfredo Machado’s sliding tackle. After a whole damn night of seeing Portland shove the ball forward with the blunt cluelessness of a toddler straining to shove the square-shaped object into the star-shaped hole, that moment of composure really stood out. I’ll skip the over-long back-story for what pops into my head every time I see a team force the ball forward like that* [ed. see note, at the bottom], but, even when you play into the teeth of a team’s defense, you still want to hit around the actual goddamn teeth. The Timbers kicked at one tooth after another more most of last night, and it very nearly cost them two points. And a serious dent to team/fan morale. So, God bless you, Mr. Blanco, and you too, Mr. Adi.

It takes a goal with that much narrative and poetry to it stuff (hold on, 80-12, yeah) 68 minutes of teeth-grating frustration into the place where I keep my repressed memories (e.g., that short hitch in the KGB). Between Houston’s (too-soon!) equalizer and the game-winner, an almost tangible gloom hung over the table where I sat, watching and stewing as Dynamo players seemed to read every pass Portland played into midfield. I’m looking at the box score now and I’m calling it what it is - a damned filthy propaganda. Unless the league has re-defined the word “pass’ to include cases where the player controls it for less than one second, the Timbers never completed 83% of its passes last night, and I think they got the numbers backwards on the duels too. (Maybe they used a random number generator? A rooster pecking corn?)

MLS Week 9, 10 Things, And How You Know About a Team

Went uplifting this time. See TFC? Basement trolls can be awesome!

Hello darkness, my old friend. (Also, Paul Simon and/or Art Garfunkel was a worse lyricist than you remember. Trust me.)

As advertised (I can say that now, right? I've been doing this long enough?), I’m still wrestling format to ground and feeling…just really pointless guilt about leaving things out. Can I be of service? (Please, let me be of service!) Per some number of the several pathologies that drive me, here are all the past week’s results, or the one’s I remembered to include:

Vancouver Whitecaps 2-0 Real Salt Lake

Atlanta United FC 4-1 Montreal Impact

Toronto FC 2-2 Chicago Fire

Philadelphia Union 3-2 DC United

Columbus Crew SC 2-1 San Jose Earthquakes

New England Revolution 1-0 Sporting Kansas City

Minnesota United FC 2-1 Houston Dynamo

Los Angeles Galaxy 2-3 New York Red Bulls

Colorado Rapids 1-2 Orlando City SC

New York City FC 3-1 FC Dallas

Los Angeles FC 1-0 Seattle Sounders FC

I’m going to try to take all the above loosely and dedicate the “10 things” segment to expansions, details, theories and myths, that kind of thing.

This felt like the first decently predictable Week of the 2018 season. Or, better, I can offer either a detail or a narrative that reasonably explains every result above. The same goes for the opposite result in each case, and welcome to Major League Soccer, The League of Relativity, but the results make most sense in this timeline. For example, based on most data points you’d expect NYCFC to beat FC Dallas at home, and for Atlanta to beat Montreal at home, while neither anticipating how much Dallas would contain NYCFC (by 200-250 fewer passes, roughly), nor how long it would take Atlanta to unlock Montreal (70+ minutes, and trailing most the while).