The Late, Late Tackle 01 09 2017: Melano, Maloney, and Rebuilds

Never been asked before, but, is this metaphor to harsh?

After weighing my personal comfort level with the thought of losing my job and my increasingly-impending mortality, I’ve decided that I can’t post at work anymore. Yes, this means I’ll always be behind. That means I better make this interesting, goddamn it.

Speaking of, or the opposite, these brief highlight reels from the MLS Combine (ongoing, check your local listings: Chaos v. Control and Copa v. Tango) don’t really give you much sense of how any given player is doing (fine, admittedly, they’re not awful). Personally, my default in this, not to mention when watching the college game is, “he’ll never get away with that in MLS.” And, by and large, that holds.

This will fill in some blanks, but, even then, nothing matters till you suit up and perform, week after grueling (often pointless) week in Major League Soccer (unless you’re chasing the Supporters’ Shield; otherwise, why care till the end o’ June? (Yes, I’ll bury this thought in the background soon…rule of 3, rule of 3, rule of 3)). And, I guess that’s the point of all the roster rebuilds going on right now, so let’s get back the recap of things I can barely understand, but that I understand a little better than The Combine. Starting local, as I always will, when I can.

Melano-Vederci

One time future bright spot Lucas Melano got shipped (OK, loaned) out of Portland and back to his original (right?) Argentine club today. To the credit of the Timbers front office – and I mean this – they made an arrangement I hadn’t thought of: they loaned him back to Atletico Belgrano, so that they still might have an asset to move if Melano improves down there. Because he sure wasn’t doing it up here…

Lucas Melano, and Why He's Wrong for MLS and the Timbers

Yes, Number 175. No, just Number 175.

Thought I'd try something different today; I mean as opposed to retching out every last thought I have on some aspect of the Portland Timbers' strengths, weaknesses, limitations, or awful goddamn haircuts (hey, at least we're better than the New England Revolution – e.g. Major League Soccer's #1 coiffurial shit-show), until I'm on the floor dry-heaving, I thought I'd try a genuinely single-subject(-ish) observation. I have dreams of going brief and more frequent, but that requires listening to the little boy who lives in my mouth (Randall*) when he tells me that, yes, I really can leave out that sentence I just fell in love with, or that paragraph that, for whatever reason, I that I think is the skeleton key that unlocks the Rosetta Stone (NOTE: not how that happened at all).

(*There's Judy, too, obviously. I'm just not sure who she is yet, or where she lives.)

At any rate, exploring a single topic today – e.g., how signing a player Lucas Melano doesn't make sense under the MLS salary model.

While this has been kicking around my head for a week or so, I'd like to begin by giving credit to this week’s Portland Timbros' podcast for refining the argument. The relevant part came with the discussion of how the presence designated player shapes, or even outright warps, the game-day roster. That part of the argument only hits my point on Melano sideways, but, y'know, credit where it's due.

I'd also like to make clear that nothing predictive, condemnatory (well, I'll be, that is a word) on Melano as a player informs this position. One of the first unwritten rules of MLS is that All Players Will Require Time to Adjust to MLS, for one, but there's the fact that he's young to boot (and eager and fine, like a two-year-old thoroughbred rattling the gates at the Breeders' Cup). I never expected greatness from Melano from the first touch (though, to be clear, I do appreciate the eagerness).

To disclose my honest opinion, yeah, in my book, Melano has underwhelmed. Kid looks choked up out there, uptight; he plays the game like he's got to take a shit for the full 90. Even so, I think he'll come good fairly early in 2016. This assumes he comes good at all. He better come good, goddammit; in MLS terms, $5 million is pre-market-bust-level leverage. And, yet, it's not just the money. I'm thrilled to see the Timbers spend big (and let the record show that I just stifled a metaphor). If not that, then what?

MLS Week 26 Review/Week 27 Preview, Plus: Best & Worst DPs And...9 Quick, Hot Takes

Official Conifers & Citrus icon...in spite of what some memories I note below.

(Posting late again. I know, Judy. I know. Next week. Or maybe the week after. I know you can't stop it, Judy, but can you make it slow down?)

Time to slip out of the small, scenic pond where the Portland Timbers reside (Lake Oswego?) and into the big, rollicking ocean that is Major League Soccer as a whole. While I'm still refining the format – and believe that this feature will be more fluid than fixed until 2016 – I do feel like I'm getting closer. At any rate, lots to get to below, which include:

1) The Review/Preview, the lede that looks both backward and forward at trends in MLS;
2) This week's feature on the best and worst in designated players for 2015; and
3) Takes, Quick and Hot, e.g. quick, (ideally) worthwhile thoughts about MLS teams, players and...or just me sharing my pulling out my next wild hair.

OK, that's it. Time to dig in.

Week 26 Review/Week 27 Preview
MLS stuffed a heavy work-week into Week 26, featuring 12 intra-league games in all. The general schedule piled on a few more games for MLS clubs, courtesy of the Canadian Championship (which ended in a comfortingly sensible manner) and the CONCACAF Champions' League (CCL). The overall set up asked more of some clubs than others and, to be fair, some held up better than others. The trickier issue comes with figuring out why.

Fatigue, or some version of it, offers up an obvious villain in all this. For instance, DC United could argue that all those midweek airplane miles combined with the New York Red Bulls to kick their ass last Sunday night. Sporting Kansas City could finger the same guy in the police line-up (still talking about fatigue) as the reason for their now-100% apparent slump, and so could the Montreal Impact, who also played two games in Week 26 and lost both - and Laurent Ciman, for a bit (and, it bears noting, they will play catch up the rest of the season). It's not a perfect excuse, though, as demonstrated by several examples, including the Colorado Rapids (played two, won two), or, to compare apples to apples, why not ask why the Seattle Sounders, a club that logged more miles than DC, came out with results that ran the opposite direction.

MLS Week 25: (Loose) Playoff Talk (and Prepping for the Future), Plus Midfield Conundrums

What? Seriously? MLS Cup better be up there...

Due to this week's late start (my Portland Timbers thing went up Monday, fer crissakes) and just a fucking mess of a week, I have to go general and short (as I can make it) on Major League Soccer Week 25/26 Review/Preview and...hold on, is that gentle breeze that just fluttered my hair a collective sigh of relief?

And, barring further vacillation, the Beer and Shots Review will be replaced by Review/Preview posts going forward, which, ideally, will go up Wednesdays. Look, it'll all make sense by the time 2015 ends. Trust me. Moving on...wait, first, below are the two games I took in over this past weekend.

Portland Timbers v. Houston Dynamo (already written up at some length)
Columbus Crew SC v. Sporting Kansas City (recorded at right...and that's it)

Between time and having several other things on which I'd like to focus, I have only one really important direct point about Week 25: the mirrored fates of Kansas City (two reputation-denting losses) and the San Jose Earthquakes (who, on the back of two consecutive road wins, both of them impressive, suddenly look like Bad Soccer just revived its curse) tell anyone who follows the league everything he/she needs to know. Good teams will stumble, while bad teams will rock, if only for a while. Because, MLS. Internalizing that applies to both long-time fans of MLS (like me), or the greenest, noobiest of new supporters: the former forget how much parity defines the league, while it will take the latter a while to fully appreciate that reality. More (and less) on both points wind in and out of the narrative below. It's this fall’s now-abruptly-impending playoffs that I want to talk about today.

It took an article posted on MLSoccer.com – they called it the "Red Line Report" – to shake me from my annual summer slumber. Without that, I would have gone right on recording each week of the season with the same rough awareness and conscious thought that a marathoner puts into thinking about each foot-fall just one mile in her race. Consider, however, that the overwhelming majority of MLS clubs have fewer than 10 games in which to declare their intentions . And that’s not just for the post-season, but what sort of figure they'll cut once they get there...and, for my Portland Timbers, this space expects "dashing." If there's not a trail of multi-colored rose petals sprinkled along a sun-dappled path to MLS Cup, all I can say is that the Timbers will really have to pull out several more stops, at a minimum, if they expect any nookie over the winter.

Chicago Fire 2015 Season Preview: On Breaking the (Countless) Deadlocks

Good enough. They were ties, man.

What Happened Last Year
The Chicago Fire tied over half of their games in 2014. Literally. Think about that. That's less a season than an intellectual/physical exploration of mediocrity as a philosophical construct – e.g. can mediocrity to have "heights" and, if so, how many draws does it take to achieve the Platonic ideal? I didn't watch Chicago much in 2014. With the outcome at least heavily implied – again, literally, over half the time – I figured I knew how the games would end. I caught enough, however, to form some impressions, among them: Quincy Amirikwa's solid season as a bee-in-the-bonnet forward; Harrison Shipp's Rookie-of-the-First-Half-of-the-Year season; the now-departed Bakary Soumare, by all appearances, not giving a fuck (an impression confirmed by later comments); the essential wisdom of Gonzalo Segares' recent retirement; the nice send-off for the long-serving, lately-suffering Logan Pause; long-time midfielder Jeff Larentowicz shifted to the Fire backline midway through perhaps per Soumare's visible lack of shit-giving; Juan Luis Anangono...he played in Chicago last year, right? (Barely, but right). The Fire had a crap year by anyone’s standards. Six wins is the unpalatable flipside to all those ties...that's blue balls frustration. Worse, something larger loomed over the franchise – specifically, an apparently widely-held belief that the front office is reluctant to invest in winning (uh, turns out the evidence is scarce; swear it showed on message boards; or something). The contrast with the original, winning Fire teams must sprinkle salt in the wounds.
Final Stats: 6-10-18, 36 pts., 9th in the East; 41 gf, 51 ga

Who's Winning the 2014-15 Off-Season: Part 2...Think of Burning

Because what's funnier than Nazis?

Welcome to the 2nd installment of "Who's Winning the 2014-15 Major League Soccer (MLS) Off-Season"...which really needs a snappier title. Working on it...

Last week's edition crowned Columbus Crew SC the early winners. Even as I’m starting to question that call – see below – it was, and is, defensible. Ives Galarcep talked it up enough in a recent podcast that I can at least argue that it’s not a completely lonely position to take.

So, before getting into the back-sliding, let me remind readers of my personal criteria for weighing new and new-to-you players who come into MLS:

A star DP > MLS player of good reputation > a foreign acquisition with a respectable CV > a known MLS squad hack > a homegrown player > players acquired through the Superdraft.

Plenty of players have come into MLS since that last post (dated, January 18, 2015), none bigger than Sebastian Giovinco. He’s the big ol' shit, the inspiration for chatter and that annual heartbreaking optimism that Toronto FC fans cling to every season until hope, as always, abandons them. Other moves abound, whether intra-MLS transfers, players re-signing with last year's club (probably after a pay-cut), or foreign players with smaller names coming in from solid,  yet less-heralded, European leagues. And players keep coming to New York City FC and Orlando City – which are just like new toys that we all get to share somehow. In short, it's been a good off-season.

And yet I find myself having to walk back last week's awarding of first place to Columbus. It's much less about anything the Ohio club has done, or failed to do. Hell, they even brought in (another) fullback in Hernan Grana, which is enough to make one wonder if anyone will play centrally for that club (of course, someone will…I mean, someone has to).

No, it's about a total failure on my part (shit, again with the retractions!) to fully consider what the Chicago Fire has done since the 2014 season ended. For me, this is a little secret of the MLS off-season: Chicago has rolled over a lot of their team (see the "Out" column on the very first line). And, well, here's to hoping a lot of those come good...if only for Chicago's sake.

Before turning to Chicago, please allow a couple comments. First, the East is winning the off-season hands-down. They're more active, they're digging up more interesting players (see the above personal criteria), and more of them. Yes, this is a function of being the lesser conference in 2014 (fronting), but it's still true (see: Andy Craven and Kyle Bekker...who looks like an extra from Hogan's Heroes (which is on, one channel another, without stopping....ever)

Second, Toronto FC seems the obvious choice to overtake Columbus, what with all those very, very expensive signings. Personally impressed as I am with the Giovinco signing, Toronto has serious issues with balance...at least until they sign that Polish defender. Even then, I might not buy their overall project. Bekker going seems like a loss, even if he is/was a project, but I also think Jonathan Osorio gives them enough of something similar that he won't be missed. Anyway, give TFC a second central defender, plus an outside back who can flip, and Toronto crushes the off-season.

So, Chicago. Here's the thing for me: They have all but rebuilt their front-line, bringing in no less than three at least intriguing forwards. Add the...let’s call it the apparent signing of Wigan Athletic's Shaun Maloney (NOTE: not yet on the roster), and the Fire's attack is, according to my criteria, much transform'ed. What I missed before with Chicago is what had me lean toward Columbus: while the Fire had clearly stacked up their attack, virtually all of this came at the forward position; this meant they hadn't done much to improve a defense and/or midfield that was, at times, iffy and/or a collection of parts in 2014. With that in mind, Columbus' latest acquisitions (Kristin Steindorsson and Chris Klute) read like tidy fits for their system. Throw a great far-post attacker like Kei Kamara on top of the team they already had and things looked pretty sunny in Central Ohio.

In fairness, Chicago added a fair number of unknowns – i.e., guys listed in the third spot for my personal criteria (e.g. "foreign acquisitions with a good CV"). That makes them unknowns, of course, which means they should probably get "doubt" before they get the "benefit" therefrom. Then came, apparently, Shaun Maloney. Yeah, there are issues with what to do with a guy like Harrison Shipp (hat-tip: March to the Match's (tragically) final podcast), but Chicago is trying hard enough and seeking enough upgrades all over the field for me to believe they're really aiming to climb out of their personal Hell in the 2015 season. To personify my oversights in the form of player names, I only caught Adailton when I reviewed the Fire's off-season, but failed to see, say, Joevin Jones' arrival.

I don't know what to expect from Chicago this season, but, goddammit, they're trying. Harder than the entire Western Conference, anyway. So, good luck, The Fire...