Level Set 7, Toronto FC: Salad Days & a Fucking Lie

The best days don't always last so long...

What follows is a brief history of Toronto FC, plus more brief notes on whatever long-term tendencies they have. Their 2025 season gets weighed on both sides of that and the whole thing ends with where I see things with them in this very specific moment in time - i.e., before First Kick 2026. You should count on things happening between here and there.

The post ends with a scale I came up with to measure the long-term success of every team in Major League Soccer. It does some things well (e.g., count trophies/achievements), other things less well (capture recent trends). It's called the Joint Points Scale and you can find a link that explains what it does. I was really stoned when I came up with the scale and wrote the post. Caveat lector. With that...

Thumbnail History
With Toronto FC, we arrive at the first expansion team to join Major League Soccer with the Designated Player Rule in full, if budding effect – i.e., the league allowed just one per team. Toronto wouldn’t sign their first DP until 2009 and, bluntly, it took them another five seasons to get it right. As follows (in the short-term), their inaugural season roster has strong Expansion Draft vibes, plus some half-desperate swings at star players – e.g., Danny Dichio, Carl Robinson, Julian de Guzman and…I don’t know, Adam Braz? Marco Reda? Their front office had the right idea (spending big), but finding the right targets took a couple trash seasons, sometimes absolute trash (e.g., Wooden Spoon’s in 2007 and 2012); it took them eight seasons (2015) just to make the playoffs (it was a weirdly big deal). When success did come, it’s hard to say where it started – e.g., was it signing Michael Bradley (2014), Sebastian Giovinco (2015) and Jozy Altidore (2015), or did that team need Greg Vanney to pull them together? – but I do know that those moves built Tim Bezbatchenko’s reputation into something that still sells today. In a better universe, Toronto would have won their first MLS Cup in 2016 against the Seattle Sounders (Stefan Frei had a goddamn day in that one), but they made up for it with a clean sheet/clean win over the same team in MLS Cup 2017. With all that money spent (burned?), it bears noting that the player who made them more reliable - Spanish midfielder Victor Vazquez – wasn’t a DP. Blessed with one of the great, single-season teams in MLS history, and a legit talent in Giovinco, Toronto made the U.S. top flight’s third close run at winning CONCACAF Champions’ League in 2018 and, to their credit, they came as close as any of them. The overall focus(/obsession) over DPs aside, the thing that stands out most about that 2017 roster is the large number of role-playing ploggers that populate it – e.g., Eriq Zavaleta, Mark Delgado, even Jonathan Osorio and the now-forgotten Armando Cooper. For a time, one could hold up Toronto FC as proof of concept for the DP Rule, i.e., the idea that three great players in the right positions can win a title. That wasn’t their last hurrah – they fought Seattle (that tug-o-war went on a few seasons) in MLS Cup 2019 with another DP, Alejandro Pozeulo, leading the way – but the manner of that loss already hinted at a dynasty petering out. The trophy case in Canada’s largest city has collected dust since and that brings up something else about Toronto – i.e., the gambler’s ambition that defines the team that remains Canada’s best in the MLS era. I haven’t seen players get blessed as the Second Coming (of what, though?) the way Lorenzo Insigne and Federico Bernardeschi did when they signed for Toronto in 2022. Both players wouldn’t arrive until the middle of the season, but the mere thought that they'd finish the season with Toronto kept pundits yakking against an Italian-baked turnaround even after a long string of very bad results. Things never improved, Toronto finished 13th in the Eastern Conference that season, 27th overall. They got a sobering smack from the Wooden Spoon the very next season (2023) and I’ll be damned if that wasn’t the gods punishing hubris. And vaping.

Getting Reacquainted with Toronto FC, the Once-Lucky Wastrels of MLS

Just reeks of the vibe, right? Especially then?

Thumbnail History
With Toronto FC, we arrive at the first expansion team to join Major League Soccer with the Designated Player Rule in full, if budding effect – i.e., the league allowed just one per team. Toronto wouldn’t sign their first DP until 2009 and, bluntly, it took them another five seasons to get it right. As follows (in the short-term), their inaugural season roster has strong Expansion Draft vibes, plus some half-desperate swings at star players – e.g., Danny Dichio, Carl Robinson, and…I don’t know, Adam Braz? Marco Reda? Their first forays in the DP market fell (very) flat – e.g., Julian de Guzman (hard, "eh"), plus a list of one-to-two season signings that impresses in all the wrong ways – but splashing cash paved their way to Toronto’s fleeting glory seasons. All the seasons prior to that point? Trash, sometimes absolute trash (e.g., Wooden Spoon’s in 2007 and 2012): they didn’t make the playoffs in any form until 2015. When the success did come, it’s hard to say where it started – e.g., was it signing Michael Bradley (2014), Sebastian Giovinco (2015) and Jozy Altidore (2015), or did that team need Greg Vanney (who looks better after 2024) to pull them together? – but I do know that those moves built Tim Bezbatchenko’s reputation into something that still sells today (not unreasonably). As the timeline below* indicates, the investment didn’t pay off immediately, but Toronto rose meteorically once they took off. In a better universe, Toronto would have won their first MLS Cup in 2016 against the Seattle Sounders (Stefan Frei had a goddamn day in that one), but they made up for it with a clean sheet/clean win over the same team in MLS Cup 2017. This brings up one key difference between the 2016 and 2017 rosters – specifically, the arrival of the Spanish midfielder Victor Vazquez. Unlike the rest of the big names, he wasn’t a DP; Vazquez was just a smart signing that gave Toronto the fourth dimension a good team needs to become great. Blessed with one of the great, single-season teams in MLS history, and a legit talent in Giovinco, Toronto made the U.S. top flight’s third close run at winning CONCACAF Champions’ League in 2018 and, to their credit, they came as close as any of them. The overall focus(/obsession) over DPs aside, the thing that stands out most about that 2017 roster is the large number of role-playing ploggers that populate it – e.g., Eriq Zavaleta, Mark Delgado, even Jonathan Osorio and the now-forgotten Armando Cooper. For a time, one could hold up Toronto FC as proof of concept for the DP Rule, i.e., the idea that three great players in the right positions can win a title. That wasn’t their last hurrah – they fought Seattle (such a fucking thing for those several seasons) in MLS Cup 2019 with another DP, Alejandro Pozeulo, leading the way – but the manner of that loss already hinted at a waning force. The trophy case in Canada’s largest city has collected dust since and that brings up something else about Toronto – i.e., the gambler’s ambition that defines the team that remains Canada’s best in the MLS era. I haven’t seen players get blessed as the Second Coming (of what, though?) the way Lorenzo Insigne and Federico Bernardeschi did when they signed for Toronto in 2022. Both players wouldn’t arrive until the middle of the season, but the mere thought that they'd finish the season with Toronto kept the team alive for a lot of pundits against the evidence of very bad results. Toronto finished 13th in the Eastern Conference that season, 27th overall. When the Wooden Spoon slapped them the following season (2023), I’ll be damned if that wasn’t the gods punishing hubris.

MLS Off-Season Weekly (12/14/19): Playa Moves, Painful Realities, and an Amendment

Amended, but neither forgotten nor invalidated.

On the theory it makes some kind of sense, I’m going to start this week’s review with the league-wide news before covering the latest on the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati…

…which also relates to the reality neither of them have made much news. And, for the same reason, this will be my last soccer post of 2019. I mean, why dry-heave out content (like this guy) when the world fails to provide? I’ll be back in 2020, like one of those plants you start to dump beer on, half hoping it’ll die, so you don’t have to deal with it. (Hat-tip to a long-time friend of mine, who once had a plant named “Worf” that, as he put it “thrived on neglect.” For the record, he did not, to my knowledge, ever water Worf with beer.) So, come along for this quick round-up of news from all ‘round Major League Soccer, starting with playa moves.

Playa Moves
As a public service, I want to start by directing people to one of The Mothership’s (aka, MLSSoccer.com) better off-season features: the one-stop transfer/needs tracker, which gives little thumbnails on every team in the league till they start kicking things again. It keeps a bird’s-eye view on comings and goings, but without reinventing the wheel every week (like some kind of dumbass). And, honestly, a good chunk of what’s happening right now aren’t really “moves” – e.g., DC United buying three more years of Bill Hamid, or even Atlanta United FC making Emerson Hyndman’s States-side return official – but they still count as both smart and good actions, even if they just reassert the Status Quo Ante First Kick 2020. That said, some are more interesting than others. For instance…

So…Michael Bradley, Huh?

Sometimes, details from a story gets stuck in your head, and it muddies something that comes later – e.g., that thing about Bradley’s option automatically renewing at $6.5 million per in the event he lead Toronto FC to victory last season. As such, when I read that TFC re-signed Bradley, my first thought was, “for $6.5 million, are you fucking stupid?” (Even my inner voice is an incredible potty-mouth.) They aren’t, of course. While full terms were (annoyingly) not disclosed, Toronto burned some TAM to keep Bradley around and freed up a DP spot in the same move – i.e., reportedly the same template the Portland Timbers will use to hold onto Diego Valeri. Full disclosure, I’m weird on Bradley, in that I see him as valuable and overrated in the same glance – to apply brute logic to the question, could Toronto find a better player for his position (my answer: yes) - but, I also believe that a team can hold a player for multiple reasons.

MLS Week "10" Review: Game of the Week (NYC v ATL) and 20 Brain-Farts

Just something I found googling the word "mediocre." Ties in with a line...

I want to start this Major League Soccer Week 10 in Review with a concept I slipped too softly into my write-up on San Jose’s sucker-punch, 3-0 win over my beloved Portland Timbers…of which, this week wasn’t shy on sucker-punch wins, whether it’s the Philadelphia Union’s at-long-last 3-0 win over the New York Red Bulls, or Minnesota United’s surprising-only-because-2-goals home win over Sporting Kansas City. Why a man in an expansive mood might even cast a curious eye over the Houston Dynamo’s 4-0 curb-stomp on Orlando City SC…because, as the man in the broadcast booth said, but for Joe Bendik, that one would have ended 6-0 or 7-0…

…but back to the concept. The Timbers looked like headless blind chickens out there, unable to think, never mind connect, and that got me wondering about how much any given team actively plans its Plan B. How much thought goes into how to play in the event that your team has to play, say, without Carlos Rivas, as Orlando did this weekend? How much game planning does a team plan for contingencies? How much can a team do? I don’t know the answer to that, but I think whatever it is takes a team to either MLS Cup or the Supporters’ Shield….speaking of the latter, anyone else getting the impression that winning MLS Cup is a shit-poor indicator for success in the subsequent season? All I’ll say is that I’m starting to collect data…and I’m lookin’ at you, Seattle.

Big question, that, but it’s time to move to the long-lived tradition of Conifers & Citrus Game of the Week (right?). This week I took in the full 90 of New York City FC’s 3-1 win over Atlanta United FC…or tried to. Damn wifi crapped out when the second half kicked off. So, I formed the impressions below based on the entire first half, followed by watching the condensed game on MLS Live. And, with confessions and caveats out of the way, this is what I saw.

Toronto FC 2-2 Atlanta United FC: A Report (With Big Digressions on Video Review and the High Press)

Hoplite. Before and after.

I’ll start this one with a statement: MLS, and soccer as a sport, needs to figure out how they want to cope with the rise of video technology – specifically how much they want to let it into the game. Yeah, I sound late to the party, but I think it’s live more now than ever, and more subtly. Of course I’m referencing the sending off of Atlanta United’s Yamil Asad for knocking Eric Zavaleta in the back of the head in Atlanta’s 2-2 road draw at Toronto FC. The lag was long enough to make it look like the referee flashed red only after a chorus of rage rained down from the crowd, maybe even after he caught video of Asad’s dubiously raised elbow.

I know video technology is coming, but I still think its introduction begs questions that are more dichotomous than its advocates want to admit. Assuming yesterday’s ref (David Gantar (clearly from Planet Awesome)) responded to pressure from the crowd, what does that detail, specifically, mean to the larger problem (yeah, I see it as a problem) of video review? I think there’s a lot of ambient faith that soccer fans get pissy when someone interrupts their collective flow. Maybe, that’s all I’m saying. What I’m arguing is that, the more people bitch about every last failure that any given referee will inevitably make, the more readily those gripes translate as pressure to “clean up” more and more parts of the game, Dr. Frankenstein didn’t want to create a monster, etc. (come, there’s a slippery slope to ride down!)

The underlying logic to video review gets at a symptom: the unspoken desire for a perfectly officiated game. Consider, however, the incentives. Once video review for certain circumstances comes into play, a referee has every reason to just blow the whistle and let video sort it out momentous decisions. The trick is, the referee has to patrol the rest of the game relying entirely on his own judgment and, personally, I think the mindset of relying on video will bleed through

I’ll be the first to admit this makes for a two-step argument, but I think it holds, so here goes: the second greatest service that any referee can bring to any game is consistency in the way he/she calls fouls, and generally handles shit (The first greatest: barring violence from the game to the extent possible). It is my strong belief that anything that causes a ref to second guess himself undermines said second greatest service.

But enough of that…to the game!

Jurgen Klinsmann: Reassessment of a Reassessment

"the 10% that are unimpressed need to go be Germany fans because they will never be happy otherwise."
- Ryan Larkin (@Larkin8), a tweet.

If Jurgen Klinsmann cured cancer, I don't think I would congratulate him. It's likelier, probable, actually, that I would just list all the ways that he could have done it better. I lead with Mr. Larkin's tweet, then, to acknowledge...let's call it "Klinsmann Derangement Syndrome," as well as the possibility that I suffer from an acute case.

By end of day Saturday, the U.S. topped Group A in the Copa America Centenario. I did not see this coming. Getting out of the group seemed reasonable, but, for a fan-base conditioned to it by the 2015 Gold Cup, the 2015 CONCACAF Cup, and a rocky start to 2018 World Cup Qualifying, failure presented as a plausible option. The team has Ecuador next and, in a happy change, thoughts of a win and a trip to the Copa semifinals doesn't feel like fans smiling affirmations to themselves in a mirror from inside a burning house.

Mood swings of that magnitude make sense. Whether this it's accurate or just an effect of living it in the here and now, the Klinsmann era seems like the most contentious in U.S. Soccer history. The question of if and whether the U.S. Men's National Team programs are progressing at all, never mind as advertised, hasn't cooled off since the 2014 World Cup. Bad results in games that mattered kept discontent at a boil, but identifying the origins of the problems divided U.S. fans into two broad* camps (* yes, I think I'm squeezing out some nuance): one group of fans blamed those terrible results on the U.S. talent pool, while the other dropped the blame and a shit-ton of grief on Klinsmann.

Gold Cup: The U.S. Frustrates Panama, and Honduras/Haiti Bores Neutrals

That some serious, long-term casting for bully and toady.

Holy shit, that was fun! The U.S. v. Panama was a damn good game. The way the first half ended with that roiling boil that threatened to pour over every side of the pot? It rarely gets better than when an underdog pops the Alpha with a surprise shot to the chin. Good times, good times...

Know what wasn't good times? Honduras' tournament-ending loss to a, let's face it, solid Haitian side. Somewhere in the middle of a lengthy rant that shifted from a specific point – e.g. the prolonged, pointless whine that Honduran coach Jorge Luis Pinto directed at that match's fourth official – to a general one – e.g. the general, embarrassing bitchy petulance toward referees by Major League Soccer players and coaches – the commentating crew noted that the second half of Haiti v. Honduras boiled down to Haiti inviting Honduras to try to break them down. And, lord did they have time for that rant about whining players. That game contained more dead air than a coffin.

They never did it. Honduras, I mean. They barely accepted the invitation to attack, and came close all of once. So, beyond congratulating Haiti for going through, the less said about that game, the better.

Fortunately, the night's second act made up for a grimly poor first and on multiple levels. Panama came out firing on all cylinders, pinning the U.S. back into their own half for large portions of the, well, the half. The Central American side put a young, fairly untried defensive set through a tricky set of wringers before the whistle blew for halftime. As someone who watched the game with me pointed out (and please claim via tweet, if you read this), the Panamanians serve up a mean cross – and that's something they carried into the second half. Panama knocked, knocked, and knocked again, until they finally scored the goal they needed to lift them over Haiti in the Group A standings.

Toronto FC v. Portland Timbers: A Clash of Fine China

Next-level Red Rover....

To shorten these preview posts a bit, I’m going listicle on the Portland Timbers’ previews and, when looking ahead to other games, I’ll stick to talking up (or down) only those with a good hook/angle. And, yes, this Wednesday game business is driving me goddamn nuts, because Sporting Kansas City v. New England Revolution? That there was a quality match-up, friends. It looked just as good on the menu as it did when it arrived on the table. (A missed penalty, a dubious penalty, big soccer players making big soccer plays; had it all, I tell ya!)

On to the main attraction: Toronto FC v. Portland Timbers. First, let’s set the stage...

Toronto FC. The buzz-boys of 2015. Major League Soccer’s big spenders. As Twitter announced yesterday, they spent over three times what the Timbers did to create their roster (just north of $20 million versus just short of $6 million). And what has all that scratch bought them? Three points fewer than Portland – though they can go even on points by winning this weekend and a keep a game in hand to boot.

Will they do it? The trends read better than the results, at least some of them. TFC started 2015 on a seven-game road-trip. Said trip started great and ended well, but a chasm yawned between in the form of five straight losses that surely reminded every Torontonian of a deeply-cursed former life (shudder to think of the atrocities committed by the former selves of every player who has ever pulled TFC’s red jersey over his shoulder). But two wins in their final road games (cough, Orlando, cough, in the bad days, cough, cough, Philly!) sent TFC rolling back to an embiggened BMO Field confident and hungry. The schedule handed TFC an opponent that looked entirely beatable, too, in the Houston Dynamo. A clear day broke. Toronto fans provided the theater, chanting and marching their way to the field. Promise swelled like the biggest, ripest fruit the club had ever seen...only to burst into a rancid puddle when Houston cut into the skin.

Toronto didn’t do so great against the New England Revolution last weekend, either; most reports I read said the draw flattered them, so there’s that, too. So, will Toronto make that big, beautiful stadium bounce when the Timbers come to town?

MLS and the Global Tipping Point

Not Olympic, yet somehow totally appropriate.

Where is the tipping point? That’s the question under examination here.

When Major League Soccer (MLS) kicked off with a handful of U.S. World Cup heroes and some decently high-profiled internationals (here, I'm thinking of guys like Carlos Valderrama, Roberto Donadoni, and Marco Etcheverry), the league came off as a carnival barker's novelty. Even as MLS has grown and, somewhat recently, noticeably improved, it has never shaken the minor league status.

One major assumption has held through all this – the idea that any given American player's ambition is defined by his willingness to go to the European big leagues. Failure to find his highest possible level and test himself against it was, by definition, a preemptive denial of whatever potential he, or his career, had. Anyone who doubts this should read up on Landon Donovan's career, who could never do enough during his time with Everton because he failed to transfer to the Liverpool club outright.

A number of Americans – maybe one score, maybe two (maybe more; fuck it, I'm not counting) – put in real time in various European top flights. While some other enjoyed more success with individual clubs – here, I'm thinking Clint Dempsey and Brian McBride at Fulham, or maybe Sacha Kljestan at Anderlecht - Michael Bradley probably compiled the most storied and prolific European career of any American player. And then he came back to MLS. Like Dempsey, like Kljestan, like Jozy Altidore, etc. etc. That's all pretty new, so I guess we're all still sorting out what that means.

Scott Caldwell, the Thoroughly Modern Midfielder, and A Promised Land

Box-to-box? Pure No. 6? He's tough to peg, but best let him pick his spot.

This is going to wander a little, so bear with me.

During last weekend's sour draw between the New England and the Montreal Impact, my attention drifted to Scott Caldwell. Generally, the only players on the Revs' roster less likely to draw attention than Caldwell are the guys on the bench. And brings me to my point.

I started watching Caldwell because, time and again, I saw the Revs' outside backs struggling to find a passing outlet while, at the same time, overlooking Caldwell. There he was, smack in the middle of the field, just outside the center circle on New England's side of the field with no one from Montreal particularly close to him; sometimes Caldwell raised his arms in a bid to catch their attention, but the Revolution stuck with Plan A – e.g. attempting to stuff the ball up the flanks in spite of Montreal's generally effective response of pinning them against the sideline.

Caldwell got more of the ball as the game progressed, but he never struck me as anyone's first option. This formed the impression that, 1) Caldwell's teammates don't trust him implicitly on the ball, or 2) they insist that he earns the ball – presumably by prying it off the foot of some opposition player.

All the above got me wondering (plenty of time for it in a game like that) about what Caldwell does when he gets the ball. Generally, he does what most No. 6's do: dish it to other players, most often with longer or shorter lateral passes; when he's feeling really nutty, he drops it back to defense. OK, yes, I did see Caldwell push the ball forward – it was even a decent pass, if I recall – but it's pretty clear that Caldwell's job is to find, say, Kelyn Rowe who (on a better day) will do something great with the ball, or Diego Fagundez who will (on a better day, in 2013) get dangerous, or, of course, Lee Fucking Nguyen. (I tried to dig up Caldwell's day via Opta, which only shows that I don't know how that works, or who gets access to it.)

Toronto FC 2015 Season Preview: Send the Drunken Sailor to Toronto. With His Wallet

A rainy day at BMO.

What Happened Last Year
Toronto FC tried so friggin' hard to make the playoffs for the first time in 2014 that it's fair to wonder if the Major League Soccer (MLS) Competition Committee didn't spare them a pitying thought when it expanded the number of playoff spots going into 2015. TFC's 2014 saw the arrival of Michael Bradley, who embraced the club with both arms, and Jermaine Defoe, who...ah, moving on. Gilberto came, too, and he did...things. It's hard to remember now, but TFC started pretty brightly – even as an uncomfortable number of red "L's" trickled into the early returns. No, my chief memory of Toronto's 2014 was the faint, yet very real awareness that their playoff hopes were absolutely fucking dead by September (this headline is funny in that context). The players talked bravely in the media, but the funeral dirge played a little too loudly by the time the last games came around. This made for painful viewing, to be sure, even as the Reds dying corpse could still kick hard enough to, oh, end my Portland Timbers' playoff chances (touche, fuckers). Conventional wisdom held that too few capable planets revolved around TFC's stars. Eh, could be. It certainly didn't help that Stephen Caldwell had to raise pups like Nick Hagglund while trying to hold Toronto's defensive line. It also probably didn't help that Defoe missed too much of the season (and hated Toronto with all his heart) and that the World Cup kicked Bradley's ass twice over (that's once for wear and tear, and once more for confidence). Whatever happened, the whole project has to float near the top of MLS's all-time Expensive Flops list. Fer reals.
Final Stats: 11-15-8, 41 pts., 7th in the East; 44 gf, 54 ga

Confirmation Bias and the U.S. Win over Panama

As we all know, you don't always get to view games in environments that foster complete focus. You can be at a bar, for example, in a seat miles away from the TV showing the game with some god-awful regional college football game hogging the rest of the atmosphere and all of the volume. And anyone who takes any interest in the game you're watching only does so long enough to tell you he/she hates soccer. Which is nice. It’s also possible that you're spending that time with family who feel like friends and friends who feel like family. I had the latter, better experience on Sunday when the United States took on Panama.

So, no, I didn't watch the game too closely, just enough to form a general impression. A Panamanian attack or two produced a mildly anxious start, but that only afflicted the U.S. like a low-grade fever till Michael Bradley broke it with that silky Olimpico. Gyasi Zardes and Clint Dempsey combined for a slick little goal a few minutes later and that ended the game in just about every way. Panama's efforts foundered after that and generally in the U.S. midfield. If I'm not mistaken, Sean Johnson, the U.S. 'keeper for the second half, touched the ball just once.

The win was nice, but only in the same way as a 50-degree day in January: fine, but only remarkable due to circumstance. When I got home, though (again, see visiting), I sat down and read a bunch of match analysis. Most of that confirmed what I was able to piece together in between watching toddlers careen around over hardwood flooring. Hold on...taking a break to pat myself on the back...wait, not as flexible as I used to be...OK, got it. There, that felt good.

Now, to delve a little deeper...hold on, one more. I saved Matt Doyle's "Three Things" article for my last read yesterday because I generally agree with his thinking enough that I feel smart when I'm done. So, read that. I'll wait. Back yet? OK, good. Now...to the nitty-gritty.

As pointed out by Doyle and elsewhere, the U.S. reverted to its familiar 4-4-2 (or maybe it was a 4-2-3-1), Bradley lined up deeper, Jermaine Jones had Matt Besler to cover him, etc. I think this was better, but, to credit some guy named "Kev," who posted a comment on SBI's breakdown, the U.S. would have been wiser to experiment with a 3-5-2 against Panama instead of Chile because that's a better measuring stick for a variety of reasons (good on ya, Kev!). By common consent, though, Bradley played looser and better than he has in months, but that applied to just about everyone whose name contains neither  "DeAndre" nor "Yedlin." Basically, every time I looked up, I saw the U.S. rolling toward Panama's goal, with either Bradley or Zardes or Dempsey leading the charge. And that's good.

Relevant to that, I read/heard/saw someone deflect away Zardes' assist to Dempsey to celebrate the same player's chest-bump near-assist to Michael Bradley (ah, there it is; in the body of SBI's breakdown). That’s a good thing to flag, because there's no replacement for having good ideas in and around the area. This is definitely a place where more meets merrier.

After that, it seems like Jurgen Klinsmann can't say or do anything lately without inviting a lot of second guessing. His choices of personnel with whom to experiment proved no exception. As Goal.com asked in their write-up, where was Wil Trapp, or more minutes for Luis Gil or Lee Nguyen? I second those questions with Trapp and Gil, in particular, especially given what Herr Klinsmanns's musings about what he might do with next January's camp (related: does this smack of arrogance and an inability to trust others to anyone else?) . This time around, at least, Klinsmann came up aces with Zardes by universal assent. Against that, fewer people bought into the Miguel Ibarra experiment and small wonder - from what I saw, his afternoon amounted to a flubbed cross and running that broke equally between impressively fast and disturbing aimless. Klinsmann, meanwhile, seems a little too eager to prove his reading of this player. Oh, and to claim unseemly credit for Bradley's Olimpico (he comes perilously close to saying he planned it in here).

It's kind of a nothing game in the end, even if the crappy run that came before inflated its importance. In the end, though, Panama is Panama. Only an idiot takes them lightly, but we own the series against them for inescapable reasons like resources, population, interest, etc. They're improving, without question, but zero to one is 100% improvement by definition. A loss here would have been embarrassing, but nothing more, no jobs lost, no one dropped irrevocably from the U.S. Men's set-up and so on. And, yes, that's a problem, if only in context. Another post for another day...

I'll wrap this up by seconding or quibbling with the player ratings posted on MLSsoccer.com (yeah, yeah, I'm working on expanding my sources; gimme time). Here goes:

1) The comment on Besler's passing (e.g. “smooth” at 67 of 68) bears noting for future experimentation with the 3-5-2. I got into a quibble with a (smart) guy on reddit about using Besler (or someone else) as a stopper and Jones as a sweeper; he assumed I meant in terms of formation, but I was really talking about function. I don't care if Klinsmann wants to play Jones as a defender and let him wander, but only if he's got someone who stays at home behind/beside him. In other words, I like a four-man back-line, or a loosely-interpreted three-man backline.

2) I saw Mix Diskerud, but only when he was closing down the opposition. I don't remember any clearly positive contributions, but I might have on closer viewing.

3) I don't think Jozy Altidore earned a 6.5 (nor did Ibarra). He did look eager, though (as did Ibarra). That said, I won't mind seeing him again (or Ibarra).

4) I was pretty well tuned out by the time the subs came on. So, um, their ratings don't mean much to me.

All for now. Like a lot of people, I think we'll learn more from the next camp and set of friendlies. Camp Cupcake/Struedel was definitely a wash this year. Unfortunately, the stuff that came before it, notably the blowout loss to Ireland, was emphatically not a wash. More later...and, hopefully, on some different people.