MLS Post-Week 5 Level Set. Because the International Break

Not pictured, always, the drummer.

I like the rhythm of the regular season (and the falling rain), enough to spend last weekend dipping into AppleTV for games that weren't there. Five matchdays represents a blip, of course, particularly early in the season, but patterns had started to show, I’d started to mold those patterns into the misshapen golems that pass for coherent thoughts, then – POW! - the international break arrives like a thunderclap (newman), leaving me with a headful of half-shapen golem-thoughts. And time on my hands. Which leads to the introduction of the monster lurking below.

The format is really straightforward: every team in Major League Soccer is listed below, in the order of the current place in each conference’s standings (starting with the Eastern as the sun rises over our fair, yet fouled land); each entry includes the basic stats for the teams, lists the teams they’ve played and where, and concludes with notes about their season so far and the players on the team. For the latter, I landed on “Players Who Excite Me” for a subheader only to treat each of those entries as an invitation to stare at the roster and just free-form. Add a couple puffs and a couple cocktails and you get...that. Attacking players dominate, but I'm not sure why anyone would expect anything different. Forwards are the lead singers of soccer, midfielders are the lead guitarists and/or the kinds of bassists that play melodies, and defenders are always, inevitably, the weird drummers that the groupies, and me, pass over. It’s not that we don’t care; it’s just that being at your best kinda means being invisible.

That’s it for the preamble. I think the format is self-evident, but what to do I know? Call this my marker for the time between Week 6 and whenever MLS shuts down for the World Cup. Lesdothis.

Portland Timbers 1-1 Los Angeles Galaxy: Something I'm Choosing to See the (or Some) Good in + a MLS Week 5 Recap

Me, before they even leave The Shire.

Welcome to another week of me triangulating toward what’s possible between time and other ambitions. Dreams of putting in long shifts on several games have shrunk to watching the Portland Timbers game, scouting the team they play next for 60-plus minutes, spending about the same amount of time on, literally, just one other game, plus going through as many highlights as I can get to. The plan is to tighten things up on the content side, but I've been dreaming that same dream since the late 2000s and yet what did I do but top the Director's Cut of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, with commentary and all the songs from The Hobbit (plus commentary on the songs). My therapist told me that not working on my problems is the worst thing I can do, so here we are. Something else I learned about myself this past weekend: I will not sit through ten minutes of a game when neither team scored and I know the result. With that in mind, I need to revamp one of the regular sections a little:

Results That Surprised Me (This section will be removed going forward)
Charlotte FC 6-1 Red Bull New York (wait for it...)
Sporting Kansas City 1-4 Colorado Rapids (didn't think SKC was this bad; don't trust a word I type)
Vancouver Whitecaps 0-1 San Jose Earthquakes (though maybe it shouldn’t have; more later)
San Diego FC 2-2 Real Salt Lake (maybe less “surprised” than notice taken?)

Results I Ignored (no surprises here; but also links provided!)
Atlanta United FC 0-0 DC United (but Atlanta should feel very disappointed)
St. Louis CITY FC 3-1 New England Revolution (expected it enough, and good for St. Louis)
Austin FC 0-0 LAFC (don’t think this was good for anyone, but see below)
FC Cincinnati 4-3 Club du Foot Montreal (Cincy dodged a bullet that shouldn’t be sighting them)
New York City FC 2-3 Inter Miami CF (they’re both good teams; didn’t feel educational)
Minnesota United FC 0-0 Seattle Sounders (see note on Austin v LAFC and below)

I’m tracking results/opposition for all teams, for what it’s worth – and fuck The Mothership for letting the Form Guide cut off at Week 23 and not including anything to scroll over (they don't add one later; I check) – and that gives me big-picture perspective on some of the results I’m ignoring. For instance, LAFC’s goal-less draw at Austin looks different than, say, Minnesota's goal-less home draw versus Seattle: the context for LAFC's result includes a road game, sitting atop MLS’s Western Conference and not a goal allowed all season; the context for Minnesota’s is them scoring less than one goal per game (0.8/game, fwiw) and allowing 11 (2.2/game, fwiw, though most of that happened at Vancouver) and just generally presenting as a team running through mud. With those games dismissed (I'll do this better/deeper in the copy next week, promise), let's turn to The Main Event:

The Unmentionable Thing Vancouver Did the Portland & an MLS Week 3 Wrap Up

You're not sinking, you're thriving. MENTALITY!

Major League Soccer Week 3 went into the books a few days ago, fucking up a narrative or two as it passed through. I’ll get to that, but let’s start with the usual editorial notes.

Responsibilities around home improvement forced some adjustments to The Plan. That was noted in last week’s post, but in light of the abandonment of The Plan, I shall not reference it further. The only plan is that The Plan will evolve with one exception: I will watch a minimum of 60 minutes of the game played by the Timbers’ next opponent every week they have one. That went out the window this what with the New England Revolution getting a reprie…er, having their game against Houston Dynamo FC cancelled for reasons I couldn’t easily find and don’t care to find out.

Further minor adjustments shall also go unmentioned as I think even careful readers won’t miss them. With that, let’s get to the good stuff, starting with…

Results That Surprised Me (both expanded on below)
Colorado Rapids 4-1 Los Angeles Galaxy
Red Bull New York 0-3 Club du Foot Montreal (also, congrats Montreal! Thought y’all were cooked)

Mild shocks aside – e.g., the final score on Nashville’s win over Minnesota and the weight of the hurt New York City FC dropped on Orlando (both also noted below) - every other result tracked well enough for me. Moving on, now, to this week’s main event…and I see you, Orlando fans.

Level Set 16, Orlando City SC: Life After Breaking a Bad Model

A ringer. Not pictured: Kaka or Nani.

What follows is a brief history of Orlando City SC, 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
Orlando City SC’s history follows the redemption variety of the expansion team narrative: eating shit for several seasons before finding their feet and running with the rest of the league. Ever the ambitious organization, they sought to avoid that fate on Day 1, if with a fatal flaw – e.g., bringing in (aging) Brazilian great Kaka on joining MLS in 2015 and, after he moved on, trying an updated version of the same thing luring (aging) Portuguese great Nani to Orlando in 2019. MLS broadcasters dutifully hyped both players, but Kaka never carried them to the playoffs and Nani would burn one season he could barely afford to (because, again, old) before Orlando finally built a roster equal to the work of pushing the team higher. It wasn’t for lack of trying, either: Orlando’s all-time roster (these things vary widely btw, but this is one of the good ones) amounts to a casting call of the good, the great and the reliable from teams all over MLS, maybe even yours. Unfortunately, few of them lasted long and even fewer of them delivered the goods. Orlando’s turning point came in the Weird Year, aka, 2020, aka, the COVID season, when they not only made the “real” playoffs for the first time (quarterfinals, baby!), but also reached their first final in the MLS Is Back tournament (won by my Portland Timbers!). That run could have been written off as Orlando enjoying homefield advantage throughout that tournament, but that argument never went far - it's not like they had fans cheering them on where other teams didn’t (no one did) – and they’ve (broadly) proved themselves a better organization season on season from there. Even if the Joy Points Scale doesn’t pick it up*, the Lions have qualified for the playoffs, if only as a wild-card team, from 2020 forward. More significantly, Orlando has found 1) reliable, if limited, consistency and 2) made improved showings in each of the 2023 and 2024 post-seasons. They bowed out to the eventual champs in both years and pushed (a damn good) Columbus to the wall and/or extra-time in the Eastern Conference semifinals in 2023 (2024 Red Bull was the other team; reached the Eastern Conference final that season). That’s something the, say, 2017 and 2018 teams could hardly imagine. The “Sign Famous Old Guy” model died a righteous and deserved death, which is good, but that takes us to…

FC Cincinnati 1-0 New York City FC, a Hot Date in Philly & A Saucy Spin 'Round the East

Too heavy for you, FRIEND?!

As I was thinking about everything to what’s on my mind to the late timing of this post, I decided to put up the FC Cincinnati post first. If nothing else, the weekend complicated their shit more than anything in Major League Soccer’s Western Conference affected the Portland Timbers.

This post also counts as my first stab at a new format/concept. On the most basic level, it involves: 1) kicking around (or just kicking) FC Cincy’s most recent result; 2) checking in on the team Cincy plays next, in this case the Philadelphia Union, and 3) taking a quick tour around the relevant parts of the Eastern Conference for perspective on the grand scheme. As for what you can expect, more style than substance, for starters, and leaning into what I’d call, for lack of a better word, riffing. Why? This is supposed to be fun, dammit. Moving on to something that wasn’t fun…

FC Cincinnati 0-1 New York City FC
About the Game, Briefly and Broadly
A classic example of one of those goddamn games where your local team’s stumbles leave the proverbial door open for the opposition. In a game that found too few, NYCFC found/built the better chances – up to and including coming within a touch or two of waking the ball into the back of the net at the 76th minute (has to be in here, right?). Cincy’s attack looked anxious and flummoxed, never looked wholly connected and, in the earliest part of the game, got short-circuited by one too many impatient shots from range by Evander. To his credit, he put a tricky one on goal somewhere in the mid-20s(?), but even that effort didn’t do more than build the pile of hopeful shots on shot higher.

NYC didn’t create much more – neither team did – but they made the most out of their four shots on goal (all arguably bested by Hannes Wolf’s shot off the post). And yet, it still took a defense-wide gaffe by Cincy to clear the path for Alonso Martinez’s winner – e.g., Matt Miazga got pulled miles left (for some goddamn reason), he forced Nick Hagglund to come across when he played a soft pass out of a press, and that opened the entire right half of the field to one of The-Men-Most-Likely-to-Break-a-High-Line in all of MLS. Maybe mistakes were made in the chase, maybe Roman Celentano should have come out (gods only know how many demons live up Miazga’s ass), but the footrace was over before it started and, when you get right down to it, good defending means never having to make hard choices.

Facing Up to the Stretch Run for FC Cincinnati: I've Seen Worse

De nada.

The concept is simple, maybe even pointless. [Ed. – Don’t listen to him.] The post below has the simple, direct purpose of looking backwards and forward for every Major League Soccer team that “poses a threat” to FC Cincinnati’s chances in the very much alive Supporters’ Shield race. As noted/argued in my previous post on Cincy’s win over the (full disclosure, and) my Portland Timbers, Cincy has succeeded in picking up points whilst surviving injury – and to the tune of second/tied on points for Shield-Quest with San Diego (probably?) FC.

Not every team below necessarily belongs in the Shield conversation, but I opted to take a wide view for this post. While I provide a lot of details on each team – e.g., their record over the past 10 games and their remaining schedule, mainly – I’m neither equipped to nor interested in strapping in for much analysis; related, while I acknowledge trades that have happened since the beginning of August, only a handful of the names rang a bell, so I don’t have much to offer beyond their name and the letter that connotes their position on the field. The notes I have will focus on past results, players that seem worth noting, and some informed speculation on the games they have left – and they won’t be lengthy or linky.

As a quick, hopeful editorial note: I intend (emphasis on intend) to spend the rest of the season focusing on the teams either closest to FC Cincinnati, or the one that did something on the past weekend that feels worth flagging. Caveat lector: that’s more concept-in-progress than work-in-progress.

Think that’s everything. Let’s start by framing…

1st) FC Cincinnati
16-7-4, 27 games played; 52 pts., 42 gf, 34 ga (+8); home 7-3-2, away 9-4-2
Last 10 Results: WWWWLWWDLW (7-2-1)
Strength/Location of Schedule
@ NE (1-0 W); @ MTL (3-1 W); @ ORL (2-1 W); v CHI (2-1 W); v CLB (2-4 L); v MIA (3-0 W); @ RSL (1-0 W); @ MIA (0-0 D); v CLT (0-1 L); @ POR (3-2 W)
Remaining Schedule: v NYC; v PHI, v NSH; @ LAG; v ORL; @ RBNY; v MTL
Additions: Ayoub Jabbari (F); Samuel Gidi (M)
Losses: DeAndre Yedlin

Don’t love the Yedlin trade in the here and now – though, to be clear, I’m open to embracing whatever value it ultimately provides – and hope it doesn’t bite ‘em. Ayoub Jabbari and Samuel Gidi are names I have read on the internet. Obligatory “hope they’re good,” and…moving on…

Orlando City SC 1-0 Portland Timbers: Hitting a Speedbump, Hitting a Speedbump, Hitting a Spee...

A celebration of a great, perhaps useless design.

Neither a lot to get excited about, nor much to fret over. The Portland Timbers traveled to Orlando City SC and lost a slow, sweaty, tired affair 1-0, a result that, for me, differed from expectations by only a goal or two in Orlando’s favor. To be clear, that was my sense going in. Let’s move on to what actually happened.

About the Game
Orlando got on Portland early and Timbers players did their part to pile pressure on themselves with loose giveaways. The weight of it didn’t translate into much more than a few shots from range, with the best falling to (fortunately) left back David Brekalo and (less so), Luis Muriel. Santiago Moreno fired Portland’s best, early-ish shot with a Short Olimpico (i.e., it knuckled to near-post) and Kevin Kelsy crowned their first half attacking effort with a shot that was more wise than good (46th minute, came closer to the top row than Pedro Gallese’s goal mouth). Sadly, those efforts came on either side of Orlando’s one and only goal of the game, scored by Duncan McGuire off a slick Eduard Atuesta slip pass. Portland’s defenders shared the burden of that goal fairly equally – e.g., who’s to blame more between the three-to-four dudes stepping to Atuesta while (the theretofore great) and Jimer Fory and Finn Surman leaving a wide lane for McGuire between them – and that left Portland’s attack the burden of finding the equalizer. Or at least that’s one way this game could have played out…

Per the official stats, Orlando topped the Timbers by 2-to-1 on the basic attacking stats and (somehow) tripled them for xG…but they never looked much like adding a second goal. I just reviewed the full highlights to see whether there was some great chance or moment I forgot, but the Lions never found much better than aspirational over the second half and they didn’t even find that often. Sadly, the Timbers never really found third gear either – David Da Costa might have had their best chance of their seven (that's 7) total on the night, but that amounted to 2/3 a chance, at best. Unfun reminder, that leaves Portland on just 12 shots over their past two games.

To give them some credit, Portland had the better of play over the second 45 minutes. By the 60th minute, Orlando shipped them as many turnovers as the Timbers sent the other way over the opening 30 minutes of the first half. Portland held the ball better, even if they didn’t always know how to get more out of holding onto it, and they managed to pin Orlando into their own half, it a little further from goal. They even had a reasonable shout for a penalty when 2nd-half sub, Ariel Lassiter, got around Brekalo, but the referee waved it away after seeing the tip of the defender’s toenail catch the ball after passing through Lassiter. As with the game, that “missed call” tracked as neither a lot to get excited about, nor much to fret over. I’ll get to the bigger fish to fry after…

Getting Reacquainted with Orlando City SC, MLS's Solid B Students

My man, bringing all the good not great.

Thumbnail History
Orlando City SC’s history follows the redemption variety of the expansion team narrative: eating shit for several seasons before finding their feet and running with the rest of the league. Ever the ambitious organization, they signed to avoid that fate on Day 1, if with a fatal flaw – e.g., bringing in (aging) Brazilian great Kaka on joining MLS in 2015 and, after he moved on, trying an updated version of the same thing luring (aging) Portuguese great Nani to Orlando in 2019. MLS broadcasters dutifully hyped both players, but Kaka never carried them to the playoffs and Nani would burn one season he could barely afford to (because, again, old) before Orlando finally built a roster equal to the work of pushing the team higher. It wasn’t for lack of trying, either: Orlando’s all-time roster (these things vary widely, but that's one of the good ones, btw) amounts to a casting call of the good, the great and the reliable from teams all over MLS, maybe even yours. Unfortunately, few of them lasted long and even fewer of them delivered the goods. Orlando’s turning point came in the Weird Year, aka, 2020, aka, the COVID season, when they not only made the “real” playoffs for the first time (quarterfinals, baby!), but also reached their first final in the MLS Is Back tournament (won by my Portland Timbers!). The near term could have been written off as Orlando enjoying homefield advantage throughout that tournament, but that argument never went far - it's not like they had fans cheering them on where other teams didn’t (no one did) – and they’ve (broadly) proved themselves a better organization season on season. Even if the Joy Points Scale doesn’t pick it up*, the Lions have qualified for the playoffs, if only as a wild-card team (and on a regrettably bloated invitation list), from 2020 forward. More significantly, Orlando has found 1) a reliable, if limited, consistency and 2) have clawed a little higher in each of the past two post-seasons. I speak to the 2024 season below, and finally start naming names, but they also pushed eventual champs (and damn good team) Columbus Crew SC to extra-time in the Eastern Conference semifinals in 2023. That’s something the, say, 2017 and 2018 teams could hardly imagine. The “Sign Famous Old Guy” model died a righteous and deserved death.

Total Joy Points: 2

How They Earned Them (& *How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
MLS Is Back Runner-Up: 2020
MLS Playoffs Semifinals: 2024
MLS Playoffs/Quarterfinals: 2020, 2023
U.S. Open Cup: 2021

Wrapping Round One of the Playoffs & Pondering a (Potential?) Hole in the Timbers' Roster

This machine, like pundits, lies. I am all man.

With Major League Soccer taking its annual embarrassing mid-playoffs pause (mid-playoffs! nuts!), the urge to jump in and gently pick it apart got hold of me last weekend. The Portland Timbers started their pause a couple three weeks before that, and I’m going to close with some loose notes on that, but let’s start with the post-season.

First and foremost, and as much as it made me giggle immodestly, I’m not going to join in the circle-jerk around Inter Miami CF’s early exit from the 2024 playoffs as The Greatest Upset of All Time – not with the way crowned heads fell off across MLS’s Eastern Conference. Miami’s (admittedly shocking) fall versus(!) Atlanta United FC cleared a path wide enough for Columbus Crew SC to line-dance their way to a second straight title, but they crashed out against a revived Red Bull New York before that path even opened. I’m calling anyone who claims they saw that coming a liar, not least because the Crew survived a mosh-pit of a season and (and!) they beat the Red Bulls on the road, on Decision Day. With everything they had going their way – claiming second in the league after an achingly slow start, a coach all observers mooned over like a young, slim Frank Sinatra, and a roster deep as the Marianas Trench – seeing them get swept rises every inch as high on the Shock-o-Meter as Miami’s early ouster.

FC Cincinnati’s failure to capitalize was far less surprising – especially given that long stumble down the stretch. Having to rebuild the defense late in the season had a lot to do with it, but, from my vague look from a distance, the way the goals and confidence dried up did them in as much as anything. Those particular symptoms notwithstanding, Cincy’s demise highlights a recurring theme across MLS playoffs history the positive power of momentum and its damning opposite. Pat Noonan’s team had labored since the middle of July, which makes that less backing into the playoffs than commuting to and from work in reverse every day. To be clear, nothing about that felt inevitable – New York City FC trekked across their own wilderness before a three-game wining streak lifted them past the play-in (that was with them losing at Montreal on Decision Day in the mix) – and Cincy had enough chances and half-chances to score the go-ahead in Game 3. Maybe it’s something about how long the poison stays in your system after the snake bites.

MLS Round-Up: Some Word Association on the Cusp of Decision Day

Ooh. Something about Orlando coming up.

With some strays called in – e.g., Columbus Crew SC (expectedly) picking at the bones of the New England Revolution (4-0) and Los Angeles FC sniping the Vancouver Whitecaps in second-half stoppage (2-1) - and nothing left to play but Decision Day, an urge to get things organized one final time before we take ‘em one game at a time (aka, the playoffs) kicked in. The rest of you do this in the privacy of your own mind, and you’re almost certainly better off for it. And yet, here we are…

Don’t expect deep analysis in anything below and I didn't flag more than a couple players by name. Also, judge me, if you must, for giving up early on doing league-wide coverage literally every season, but I still haven’t landed on a way of actually cover Major League Soccer that 1) I trust and 2) doesn't feel like rehashing the same shit everyone has plowed over three times or more. I’ll take another swing in 2025 – i.e., tinker with the methodology, maybe lower the bar for “trust,” etc. – but the best I can offer for 2024 is recollection of half- (or less-than-half-)remembered videos and highlights, a review of undeniable trends, both long- and short-term, and a succession of hiccups percolating up from my gut.

In nuts-‘n’-bolts terms, I’m gonna list every team in MLS, by conference and in their current order, from top to tail, and give a brief read on where they are now and their season as I understand it. Hot takes will come as my gut gives ‘em, otherwise…allons y!

WESTERN CONFERENCE (hey, that’s my home conference!)
Los Angeles Galaxy (1st in West, 2nd overall)
The somewhat rare team that can pull apart the opposition, arguably as good in possession as they are in transition. Vulnerabilities include a middling road record (6-6-4) and a middling defense, but the Galaxy have real talent all over the attacking third (given a preferred starting XI) and they can score from as many places. They’ve been lethal at home all season – only LAFC beat them there (and the last of their three home draws came in mid-May) – and they can beat any team on their day. They’ll have to win on the road to do it, but the Galaxy have a real shot at MLS Cup.

MLS Week 25 Snapshot Review: Of Life, Death, and "Postseason Hope"

Not subtle, therefore glorious.

Keep movin’, movin’, movin’, though they’re disapprovin’, keep them doggies movin’, Rawhide!

Three weeks in a row on these posts, baby. Officially hell-bent for leather…

I tried to tighten up the model this week, so we’ll see how that goes (good?). The due diligence felt…decent this week, watched a respectably stupid amount of soccer, took some notes, etc. – I even cribbed some helpful quotes from Matt Doyle’s (mostly) weekly column. I won’t bore you with the viewing schedule, but I want to close the preamble with this: I’d hoped to watch the Colorado Rapids stirring, if poorly recorded, 3-2 win over Real Salt Lake, but Apple TV+ still has that result at 2-1 and with no full replay available. Maybe they had John Denver on the tapes in the grips of a Rocky Mountain High? Or was it because it looked like a 90s-throwback night, only with shit attendance as the concept?

With that, here is your Major League Soccer Week 25, Leagues Cup Eve Snapshot Review. And, by way of chelebration, I’m gonna start big. And if anyone can remember which gutter-wine company used “chelebrate” for the ad copy, you’ve got a shiny quarter coming your way. Then again, it’ll never touch Orson Welles’ finest pitches.

1) This Is Not Postseason Hope
“Montréal’s three-game unbeaten run came to an end, but they still head into the break with real postseason hopes as they’re just one point under the red line, and just three back of Toronto in 8th.”
- Matt Doyle

In a league with all an Oprah-esque approach to the postseason – you get a berth! you get a berth! you get a berth! – the bare act of making the playoffs just means the local fans aren’t blushing at the end of the regular season. “Postseason hope" should mean exactly one thing: making the playoffs with an actual shot at doing something once you get in. Club du Foot Montreal has just three wins over their past eighteen (18) games. As you’ll see below (at No. 8), the bar for entry in the Eastern Conference hangs lower than the Count de Monet’s cuffs and Montreal’s just one of many teams who will, barring a miracle or a couple miraculous acquisitions, see their foot cut off the second it steps onto any playoff pitch they play over their heads to crash. That’s hardly unique, of course. Atlanta United FC looked genuinely good against a hot-streakin’ Columbus Crew SC in this weekend’s 2-1 win, but they’re still yo-yoing up and down in the middle of nowhere in the East. FC Dallas presents an even starker example, thanks to their recent revival – e.g., 5-3-2 in their last 10. That would matter if they could win a game on the road. Just one. So, again, when I use phrases like “postseason hopes,” I’ll be using it specifically.

MLS Week 23 Snapshot: Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes Where They Largely Don't Matter + Up From the Depths!

Best sidekick eva! Woo-woo!

Just like that, I’m on a roll. League-wide posts two weeks in a row. Woo-woo!

The preamble for this series/concept went up in last week’s post, so I’m going to just refer anyone who wants to know the “why” of this post back to that one. To give the short version, these aren’t detailed posts for two related reasons:

1) the details generally don’t matter; unless…

2) they either rhyme with or emphasize trends that have been going on for a while.

That doesn’t mean I’ll never flag details – i.e., three of the talking points below are only in here because I spent more time on a result that tickled my fancy – but these posts will mostly traffic in trends. Fans of deep cuts can always mosey over to Matt Doyle’s weekly columns (which I only skimmed this week; on a schedule), or lose as many hours as they’re willing to burn in the distinctly non-local MLS Season Pass archives, but it should take more than some random dude scoring a banger (e.g., Cristian Dajome, for a still-woeful DC United team) to make this short-list…which, for the record, is still longer than the specs said it would be. Dammit.

With that in mind, let’s dig into the notes for MLS Week 23 (again, yes, this is Week 23, look at the current standings (effective for reference only through Wednesday morning, July 17, which a bunch of games get played). Here are 10 Things That Happened on or Before MLS Week 23:

1) Nothing Happened to the Supporters’ Shield Race, Ignore MLS Content
I don’t have a sense of the overlap between the people who find this tiny corner of the internet and who subscribe to the MLS Kickoff newsletter, but Monday’s edition dug into race to the Supporters’ Shield – specifically, all the league-topping teams that lost games last weekend. The list includes, FC Cincinnati (waylaid by Charlotte FC! (see below)), Real Salt Lake (drummed out of Providence Park (see below)), the Los Angeles Galaxy (who couldn’t get going at FC Dallas (see below)), and, in the one game that actually felt like it mattered, Los Angeles FC, who got all but drawn-and-quartered against Columbus Crew SC in LA. Here’s the thing: that didn’t change anything about the relative position of any of those teams. Not one of them. Did a couple distant rivals gain ground on all of those teams? Sure, but only one team looks like it has a real shot at catching up with the pack…hold on...

MLS Week 4: Brief Notes on Many Things & Trends A-Birthin'

No, really. I'm doing this for you.

Grand Narrative

First, we are inching closer to the most wonderful time of the year – i.e., the tipping point in every season where pundits, be they professional or amateur, can start leaning more into top-line stats and the standings, and less on reviewing stupid amounts of video. Sometimes that’s all a body needs to know….we’ll see whether I embrace that come mid-season or if I keep it up with the masochism.

As for Major League Soccer’s Week 4, it served up some wild ones – e.g., Chicago’s late, late win over Montreal and the Galaxy’s last-gasp salvage operation against a…spirited St. Louis team…has anyone tested their Gatorade, because, my god. And yet both of those feel like happy little blips (because both games were fun!) against some early trends in the early season. To go in the order they played ‘em, in an ominous sign, Miami became the first team to fully solve DC’s hyperactive puzzle, Columbus keeps rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ and look at those strong early starts by Vancouver and Minnesota. Coming from the opposite side, Jesus Christ and hide the children, how are both Orlando and New England San-Jose-Earthquakes bad?

With that, it's time to pick through some details, if briefly and with a distressing absence of embedded video, but I have something to say either about everything that happened or the teams involved. Before getting into it, a quick reminder on the symbols you’ll see after each result below (all of which include a link to The Mothership’s game summary for the relevant match):

* more or less skipped it, coasting on the fumes of past impressions.

(H) – I watched the highlights and checked the box score to update the opinion.

([Numbers]) – those represent the parts of the full game I watched, plus box scores.

That’s it for the preamble(!). The formula really is tightening and, if all goes as planned, I’ll be down to watching all of two games each week, plus 45-60 minutes of just three others by MLS Week 10 or 12. With that, let’s dig into what I saw and the sweet nothings all that whispered into my ear.

MLS Week 1 Preview, Getting Hyped on Thin Gruel

Solid show, btw.

At the risk of defeating the point of this post, I’m going to start by acknowledging that none of what’s below matters at all. By allowing nine (fucking) teams from each of its two conferences to qualify, Major League Soccer has made a conscious choice to devalue the regular season to a point where I wonder why anyone bothers to tune in before August. How well a team does through, say, April could be rendered meaningless by a cratering collapse or raging success in September; I can’t stress enough how much the results from MLS Week 1-20 just don’t matter. I've reached the sad place of pining for the 2024 Leagues Cup, because I think it's my first, best chance to feel anything of consequence before September. Stakes, people. They matter...

So, why do this? I mean apart from the fact that I just really like watching soccer?

First and foremost, I’ve chosen this as a hobby. Second, in the same way a sword-maker sharpens the sword over and over until it can cut through trees (apparently; Blue Eye Samurai lays waste to trees of all sizes as if that was the point of the show), seeing MLS’s 29 teams 34 times before they arrive at games that actually matter, aka, the playoffs, gives you a pretty clear bead on which of those teams have a shot in hell at lifting MLS Cup. That number has been whittled down to, at the very most, four or even three teams over the past couple seasons, which, again, highlights just how many meaningless games are played in this league plays year after year…and yet, is that so different than what the majority of teams experience in the English Premier League every season? Hold on…maybe spectator sports writ large are the problem?

To make this even weirder, this will be the only league-wide preview post I do all season. The current plan is to post weekly Vibez Checks at the end of each “MLS Week,” which (swear to God) will be just a loose rundown of what I saw in the games and what I see for patterns in the results. On the research side, I see myself watching two full games every week – one involving the Portland Timbers, the other involving their next opponent – long chunks (45-60 minutes’ worth) of the three games that most interest me, plus whatever else I get to after that. Unlike past seasons, I really do want to keep all this on a “vibes” level – i.e., expect the random name drop (as in, “holy shit, this guy’s killing it”) and general notes (as in, “Atlanta’s on a streak that bears watching”), as opposed to in-depth blow-by-blow coverage from this game or that or deep dives into the latest analytic stats on the market. Gods willing, people who find these posts will get a breezy read and the jokes will land.

To the extent this post has a purpose, it’s about hyping me up for First Kick 2024. Some of the commentary doubles as soft predictions for what I expect from each team, but I’m also approaching all that from something like a headline level (and the intelligence gathered from this incomplete series). With that, let’s look at what we’ve got on the platter.

Getting Reacquainted with Orlando City SC, an Erratic Rising Power(?)

Plan A, Part II.

[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.]

Thumbnail History

Orlando City SC’s history follows the traditional expansion team narrative of eating shit for several seasons before finding their feet and running with the rest of the league. Ever the ambitious organization, they strived mightily to avoid that fate – e.g., they signed (aging) Brazilian great Kaka on joining MLS in 2015 and, after he moved on, they tried again by signing (aging) Portuguese great Nani in 2019. MLS broadcasters dutifully hyped both players, but Kaka never carried them to the playoffs and Nani would burn one season he could barely afford to (because old) before Orlando provided the supporting cast to get them there. On that last piece, it wasn’t for lack of trying: Orlando’s all-time roster (one of the good ones, btw) amounts to a casting call of the good, the great and the reliable from teams all over MLS, maybe even yours. Unfortunately, few of them lasted long and even fewer of them delivered the goods. Orlando’s turning point came in the Weird Year, aka, 2020, aka, the COVID season, when they not only made the playoffs for the first time, but also reached their first final, the MLS Is Back tournament (won by my Portland Timbers!). Tempting as it is to argue that Orlando enjoyed homefield advantage throughout the tournament, it's not like they had fans cheering them on, because no one did. What’s more, they argued against 20202 as a fluke where it counts, i.e., on the field: Orlando have qualified for the playoffs every season since. They didn’t always hit them in the best form – e.g., see 10th and 13th place finishes in 2021 and 2022, respectively – but they have 1) found (a form of) consistency, and 2) just wrapped up their best-ever regular season in 2023, finishing second overall and pushing eventual champs (and damn good team) Columbus Crew SC to extra-time in the Eastern Conference semifinals.

Best Season(s)

Didn’t mention that they won the 2022 U.S. Open Cup in the above, but I’m still calling 2023 Orlando’s best.

Long-Term Tendencies

Nothing that counts as a pattern, really, at least not beyond having good seasons every time they’ve posted good numbers at both ends of the field – i.e., 2020 and 2023 (also, duh). That said, their defense either killed them or fucking killed them over the first four seasons (2015-2018). It has improved since, but stout defenses are hardly their calling card. The attack yo-yos just as much, all of which is a long way of stating that Orlando puts it all together only now and then, but still more recently than they used to.

The Late, Late, Late MLS Week 18(?) Review: We're Free Associating Now, People...

Knocking not recommended...

You reach a point in the season where the specific reasons that any one thing happened matters far, far, far less than the sum of the things that keep happening.

Or, to go with a spin on the popular phrasing, your local team bears a striking resemblance to their results.

Also, I just watched Houston Dynamo FC wrap up a 1-0 win over Los Angeles FC – and on the road to boot. I see the red card (but also didn’t see it) and I didn’t see the one goal, but, 1) funny result! and 2) I whistle past the idea that LAFC has the blues below...maybe that’s me being guilty of getting stuck on the “LAFC is good” narrative instead of really engaging with what I’m looking at. Again, why futz with how much the numbers “love” a given team? Why turn one’s back on the empirical evidence?

Very much related, there’s this annoying tic in soccer commentary, and sport commentary generally, that refuses to engage (sorry for the verb repeat) with the very obvious premise that both the opposition and venue make every game unique for your local team. The discussion carries on as if they play [MLS Opponent], like there isn't a massive difference between, say, playing Nashville in Nashville versus playing Colorado...pretty much anywhere. Sorry to bang on about that, but I’ve become obsessed with this argument in recent years, and with a Teddy Kaczynski level of intensity, only without the letter bombs. This is my grand theory of most things, people...

At any rate, I’ve stripped down my weekly review formula to match what I tend to get for readership on these posts. So, rather than indulge in fancy writing and grand theories, the content that below amounts to a series of exercises in word association as I watch either games or highlights. I note which is which next to each header, The Mothership’s game summary is embedded in every final score, etc. And I’m barely editing the phrasing and readability can go to hell. Oh, and careful readers will notice I didn’t touch on every game below. I did that in the interest in time and sanity. Right, let’s get into it.

MLS Week 10/11 Review/Preview: Deep in the Season (and on the Disco Round)

A tapestry...of cats! (I'm crazy cat people, no judgment)

Yes, I’m changing the format. Can we just....not do this again, Cassie?

First, and because I think that’s where the demand is, I’m stuffing most of the actual data into the preview section – and, as always, the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati both get “chunky” previews, even if I’ve slimmed them down a bit. Second, I’m accepting defeat and embracing the dread and feeble bullet- point format. What can I say? It just works better than a trying to stitch a long and winding tale out of disparate parts.

And, wrapping up the preamble, because the editorial board has decided I don’t bring enough beef to the reviews, I’m thinning those out to the point of emaciation – and, to be clear, this has nothing to do with laziness (I’m nothing if not a masochist (call me)) or an aversion to reading an epic into a single result. Very much related, what we have now are results – i.e., cold, hard data that knocks down every “but the underlying numbers” and “when [Your Team’s Disappointing DP Here] comes good” you see laced into every match report, very much including the ones I write...

...and yet, as every fan of Major League Soccer knows, all it takes to get to the beginning of beautiful season is a three-game winning streak.

Now, I’m going to note and comment on all the games in MLS Week 10 – i.e., that is give you the result, a link to resources that will tell you more about it, and then add very few words about how much said result made...the Earth...move...under your feet. Finally, I shit you not, I am totally committing to bullet points.

MLS Week 10 Review(...even if there are hella 9s out there, even a couple 8s under “GP” in the table)
Nashville SC 3-1 Atlanta United FC
This one should have put all, or at least most, doubts to bed that Nashville has announced itself in the East, but Atlanta’s still fine, just fine, if without showing any signs of contending.

Columbus Crew SC 1-2 Inter Miami CF
Good for Miami, obviously (and they’re gonna need it; Jean Mota down, repeat, Jean Mota down), but the interesting thing’s what happened to Columbus over their past two games.

DC United 3-0 Charlotte FC
Is that Charlotte I see swirling down the toilet?

A Still More Casual Fan's Review: MLS Week 6, Not the Best, fwiw, and FC Cincinnati on the Grind

More of this energy, please.

As hinted it...maybe on twitter, maybe just in my head, I’m thinning out these review posts – and mostly on the grounds that not a lot of people read them. The biggest change will be a switch from writing long blurbs about featured games – with the accompanying pain of marching through nearly all of them - to just writing a narrative that puts the prior weekend’s action in context. And categories. I can’t get enough of those goddamn things. Like popcorn that tastes like jalapeno...

To summarize/judge MLS Week 6 as a whole...it wasn’t the best. Too many ties, too much slouching toward the mid-table, too little rising, shining, showing God your glory, glory, and so on. All the ties involves crap teams and most of the blowouts saw crap teams on the logical end of that equation. It could have used a little more pizazz, basically. Not unlike the one match that will continue to feature at the top of each and every one of these reviews – any game involving FC Cincinnati. On with the show, this is it....

FC Cincinnati 1-0 Inter Miami CF: I Mean, It Was Good. No, It Was Good....

So...do the dots on The Mothership’s xG charts represent the shots on goal? For what it’s worth, I did count 10 dots in Miami’s slowly rising line and noticed how it nudged them one step ahead of a FC Cincy in the second half – at least until they very end when the host’s late chances could have well and truly sealed the game and padded the final score.

Then again, wouldn’t that have misrepresented the game just a touch?

I’d argue a goal-less draw would have provided a fairer result for a Miami team that often gave a little better than they got. A team gets what it earns, of course – and the visitors and/or Phil Neville (or an ill-advised on-field adjustment) did hand Cincy the game winner by having DeAndre Yedlin and Josef Martinez guard Yerson Mosquera at the near post – but Miami did a handful of things better than Cincinnati on the day, most of them following from winning the lion’s share of the 50/50 balls. Going the other way, Miami’s passing map tells another story with its mullet shape – i.e., thick and luxuriantly connected at the back but thinned out up front.

That, in a nutshell, is what makes the final result fair: Cincy defended very well, they didn’t give Miami many clear looks, and Roman Celentano cleaned up the rest – for instance, a shot that a largely locked-out Josef Martinez didn’t hit hard enough to rattle anyone. The only time I recall seeing Celentano really beat was the bomb Franco Negri bounced off the crossbar from the depths of Miami’s attacking third (which I imagine has to be somewhere in the highlights). For all times the visitors set up a siege just beyond the top of Cincinnati’s 18, they rarely broke through the lines, which limited them to half-looks – a reality that, for me, begs the question of why Neville doesn’t consider starting the young Shanyder Borgelin until their regular big-‘n’-bulky, Leo Campana, can tie on his starting boots.

A Casual Fan's Preview, MLS Week 6: Of Bloodlettings and Impostor Syndrome

It's raining Mcmansions.

First, holy shit, I can’t tell you how relieved I am to have numbers – REAL numbers, from xG to records to goal differential – to help shape this discussion. No more building houses on clouds, people, it’s gonna be glorious. If nothing else, I should help tighten up the copy, Ahhhhhhhhhhh-meeeennnnnnnnnnnn!!

At any rate, it’s the same old format – i.e., the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati get longer previews and then smoosh all the rest of it into categories that expand or contract per my personal requirements – only updated for another week. At first glance (and it is that), I see a little intrigue, some faint whiffs of desperation and, frankly, a couple games that I expect to slip from the memory of even the most ardent local fan by the end of Saturday night. I’ll get into all that, but let’s turn to my two personal main events. For what it’s worth, I decided which team to start with by flipping a coin...it’s getting weird out here...

FC Dallas v Portland Timbers
Because we’ve had so little of it, here, in the upper left-hand corner of Oregon, allow me to start with the good news. I just caught word (typing this Tuesday freezing the thought in amber) that Evander, David Ayala and Dairon Asprilla participated in full training on (or perhaps starting) Tuesday, all in the hope of playing Saturday. What? I didn’t say how good the news was...

I kid, I kid. Even if Evander hasn’t set my cockles ablaze and I can’t say I’ve ever seen Ayala play a game that made me feel anything but anxious, I’m happy for the options. Seeing Asprilla in that mix feels better, if only because he’s more of a known quantity; he has arrived/plateaued at a solid second-banana level of contribution – which, sadly, was good enough to make him Portland’s leading scorer last season. Having more of a presence up top, or even just an attacking player able to do more than run(/get swallowed up) by the channel (never to be seen again), certainly can’t hurt an attack that currently clocks exactly one goal per game. Turning, now, to what whoever lines up for Portland will be up against...

First, and for anyone who has ever questioned my reasons for asking the Form Guide to join me in holy matrimony, I’d started mapping out an argument for how “this Portland team could never score on Dallas, a team back-stopped by a steel-plated Alamo.” As it turns out, they’ve allowed a goal in every game of 2023. Not crazy enough that Portland fans should get their hopes up – they’ve allowed six total - but the goals get in their net, even at home.

MLS Week 4, The Casual Fan's Guide: Hubris & Depth, Plus a Nice Dusting of Disruption

Kinda looks like it's doing The Charleston...

Don’t know about you, but I’d call that a solid weekend. Decent number of goals, some compelling early storylines, a couple teams lifting themselves off the mat, a couple failing to, plus a couple more that leave you feeling those kind of midnight doubts that haunt you in the day. Speaking of the Portland Timbers...

Portland isn’t stumbling alone...and am I thankful for that, but I have extended notes on their gut-wrenching loss to Atlanta United FC in a separate post. The upshot, even with the injuries, they shouldn’t look nearly as dire as they do. Atlanta United generally, and Thiago Almada in particular, backed up the rumors by flaying the Timbers defense like a spatch-cocked chicken (that’s not the word? shit!), though it’s worth noting the teams they’ve beat on their way to the second-best record in MLS.

Moving on, I had Atlanta v Portland in a group of games that I called “On the Edge of Now or Never” in my Week 4 preview post. The basic thought was pretty simple: some teams had to get going before the going gets too far ahead of them. Two teams pulled it off – Club de Foot Montreal and Houston Dynamo FC – while Sporting Kansas City, like, the Timbers, did not.

The results by Montreal and Houston count as disruptors in this early season – i.e., scores that feel like snagging your sock in the carpet – but those weren’t the only kind. I framed another set of games around teams who had perfect records after the first two weeks, only to lose in MLS Week 3. They had better or worse shots at proving they still had the proverbial "it," but here’s the thing: only one of those teams – the New England Revolution – backed up their early start. The rest failed (Inter Miami CF and, especially Orlando City SC) or fell short (Seattle Sounders...huh...skipped that one), and what’s that but more disruption?

All in all, call it a week that poured some sugar in the ol’ gas tank. Nothing crazy, but it kept things lively. Seattle v Los Angeles FC aside (why? Pffft...), I touch on every game below – and that brings me to one more thing that churned my butter (a bad thing, fwiw). I was promised (you promised!) access to full-game replays by the Apple TV package and, near as I can tell, the platform left me hanging on a couple games I would really liked to have seen more of. Given that I’m fully subscribed – and to the point where I still haven’t got around to asking them to refund my original payment – I’m not sure what the hell’s going on, I only know I don’t like it. I don’t like it enough that I could very well make a phone call, maybe even ask to speak to a manager...that’s right. I’m Karen-pissed.