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 3-0 Colorado Rapids: In Which I Get Carried Away...

Shh. Shhh. SHHHH!! I...I got this. (And they did)

The first thing I want to say was that this felt different from the bawdy romp over Sporing Kansas City...back whenever the fuck that happened. I mean, SKC fell apart where the Colorado Rapids merely crumbled. Now, the real thing...

After watching Colorado’s Michael Barrios torment any New York City FC defender who ventured out to face him on their left, I’d already keyed on the Barrios/Claudio Bravo duel as a key to the game. Bravo did better than worse throughout the first half – I mean, he lunged here and there; he’s a chronic lunger – but he bit into a 48 oz. Porterhouse twice - one of those monsters they where they'll pay for your dinner if I keep it down - early in the second half and I figured it would take only one Rapids goal to start the Rube Goldberg machine of the Timbers’ unraveling; seriously, if Barrios ever got the upper-hand in that one, I’d be writing about a different game.

I wasn’t so much Bravo holding on – though he did – than the Timbers attack swarming the Rapids’ area like aggrieved hornets for a solid 10-15 that decided the game. Call Bravo’s little flutter (along with Santiago Moreno giving away the ball twice) the storm before the calm. I’m not entirely clear on which insurance goal deserves the most credit for knocking the collective wind out of the Rapids, but the game ended with both a whimper and a final 3-0 win for Portland.

The outcome looked less clear for the first 40 minutes. I don’t think the Rapids ever had better chances, but they had enough of them; the Rapids chose to open the space, even when that meant giving space as well, and both teams’ attacks benefited. While the game as a whole had its ins and outs, its beginnings of theories, that kind of thing, my top take-away was that the Timbers won for the first time this season by being good instead of lucky, or even gently blessed; to bring in a data point, I think The Mothership’s xG call gets it right. I’ll go to my grave arguing the Timbers had to get something going on offense in the first half of 2022, and they finally got that crucial critical mass of attacking momentum – there, I give most credit to Yimmi Chara and Santiago Moreno – to keep the Rapids attack honest, which, here, means conservative. Even after the edge slipped away toward the end of the second half, Moreno put in the hustle to chase a late, half-aimless through-ball. He got around the Rapids’ last man, got a clean touch on the ball, then got all of William Yarbrough (and without a whiff of malice). To continue a thought from the twitter thread, that might have been the singularly most obvious concussion call I’ve ever seen, and I wish the man a speedy and total recovery. Because that bell got rung.

The resulting penalty kick – tidy as you like by Sebastian Blanco – might have put the Timbers in the driver’s seat, but I started at the middle of the game, and the whole Bravo/Barrios duel, as a way to...acknowledge, I suppose, the moment when everything could have gone wrong. And it didn’t. Those five-to-ten loose minutes had a real drunk-teenager-walking-on-the-edge-of-a-tall-building energy, an experience highlighted by the double save by Aljaz Ivacic (c’mon, hop on the wagon), but Portland shook it off, got the upper hand and kept it up till the final whistle.

Portland Timbers Preview: Varieties of Desperation

Respectfully noted. For both, ideally.

Like the Old Gray Mare, the Colorado Rapids ‘hain’t what they used to be (‘hain’t what they used to be), but, fun fact, they’re still three points better than the Portland Timbers. If my animal-themed analog for that didn’t mingle horses and glue, I’d use it....wait.

Then again, let us bury the past, and deep as it'll go. To the best of our ability. And then start with some facts:

Colorado Rapids
Record/Basics: 5-6-4, 5-1-2 home, 0-5-2 road; 17 gf, 18 ga, -1
Last 10: LLTWLWLWLT (3-5-2; 0-4-1 road)
Oppo: @ FCD, @ MIN, v CLT, v POR, @ SJ, v LAFC, @ SKC, v SEA, v NSH, @ NYC

What We Know About Them
Broadly, I think of the Rapids as a team that, with a boost from discipline and a collective game-plan (nod to Robin Fraser, who strikes me as just plain good people), plays a step above their talent - or they did last season. Their record notwithstanding, they defend well (barely; see above, league average = 20.8 ga), but they can also move the ball pretty damn smartly; then again, if your attack is built like a spear, only the smith paid more attention to the shaft than the tip...I mean, is that a win? I think of them as the reigning money-ball kings of MLS, honestly. All in all, they’re just as unlikely to beat the Timbers on the road – not with that craptacular road record (wait, what? Microsoft officially recognizes, “craptacular”?), and not, with apologies to Gyasi Zardes, the floppy tip on that spear – but I wouldn’t bet large on the Timbers winning their fourth game of the season. Not unless the other side of the wager makes it interesting. And if Portland falls flat here, Lord knows what I’ll think ahead of the next one against Houston. Fuck me...

Oh, and they’ll mostly be whole. Lalas Abubakar will be out (suspended for serial naughtiness) and I’ve seen chatter about Jack Price as a possible scratch...which wouldn’t hurt. But, again, the collective is greater than whole with this bunch. Expect maybe Michael Barrios...if there’s a more underrated player in MLS history, I can’t name him.

FC Cincinnati 0-2 Colorado Rapids: The Painful, Present Limits of Moral Victories

You know the sound it's making...

After FC Cincinnati’s 0-2 home loss to the Colorado Rapids, I have two competing thoughts in my head:

1) Cincinnati fans are expecting a lot of progress from basically zero in a little time; and
2) can you fucking blame them at this point?

I want to start all this by centering one very important thought: the Rapids are a good team and they’ve started strong to boot. Their players have their roles and they know them well, they’re good at nearly every position and, since Robin Fraser took over, they’ve become damned good at finding the next pass and the one after that. For further perspective: Colorado has the fourth best record in the whole damn league - and with a game or two in hand against every team above them. There’s no shame in losing to a team like that. With Cincinnati dancing on the edge of another missed ceiling, hell, yeah, the circumstances suck - I mean, they suck - and yet there’s nothing to do but play the next game.

That should not, however, dissuade any FC Cincy fans from letting loose their blazing frustration with a team that has spent two and…think that’s one-fifth seasons failing to gett it together. I saw little moral victories all over the place for Cincinnati yesterday - e.g., an early pass from Luciano Acosta to slip Brenner behind, which was as good as anything I’ve seen in open play all season; the way Cincinnati knocked the Rapids off their rhythm between the two goals; Alvaro Barreal turning in one of his most threatening performances so far, quite literally, etc. - and yet…and yet, the second half of the phrase “moral victory” fades with every game that doesn’t end in actual victory. They don't count in the standings, for one. I didn’t fully digest how many quality shots Cincinnati fired at William Yarbrough’s goal until I reviewed the tape (22 shots, for the record, with 7 forcing a save). It’s hard as hell to see a silver lining, especially with yet another three points thrown away.

The deeper question is when you’ll know they’ve turned things around, both collectively and a way that sticks. And that’s a far slippier question to answer.

MLS Snapshot, 09 01 2016: (Loose) Rankings, 10 Topics, Timbers v. FCD Preview

#Endorsed!

See what I did there? "Review" became "Snapshot," and instead of tying this post to Week [DON'T CARE!], I just typed in the date, today’s date. That one little change just freed me to post on MLS without thinking about the day of the week. I’ll still try to avoid stale content...just less neurotically.

Uh, what else? Generally, I won't talk much about specific results, not unless my timing lands just right, or if there's something that I didn't see or hear someone else pick up on (in my incredibly infrequent forays into the news) (A choice that totally rules out bringing up (for long) Toronto FC’s Game of Total Loss v. the Montreal Impact (see injuries) – but, while we're here, I think they'll weather it; Toronto survived Giovinco's scoring drought and Jozy's back besides; I think they're a little likelier for the Shield than they are for MLS Cup). In the end, I think most games possess a certain je ne sais quoi, res ipsa loquitur, so it's best to just assume that most people have clocked the results and watched all the videos they're going to by the time they find me. By and large, I want this to be a space for stretching the envelope (too far), conflating small data points into burgeoning trends, and Magical Thinking (e.g., creative, and ultimately pointless, leaps).

I'm kidding. I do my best to stay grounded, but I really do love playing with puzzle pieces, even the ones I can't actually get my hands on. With that in mind, here's what I hope, pray, and shall hereafter strive to achieve in these Snapshot posts: