MLS Week 28 Review: Blow-by-Blow, Team-by-Team

Our interns, hard at work.

As regular readers know, we at C & C Labs (Conifers & Citrus Laboratories, LLP) experiment continuously with framing, formatting and concepts, all with the long-term goal of presenting the perfect readable post. Yes, we've laid some mutant eggs – let us not forget...well, shit, already forgot it, apparently, but, suffice to say, we've laid some eggs that the mother not only walked away from, but quietly pushed off a cliff. And she's right. Fuck those things.

At any rate, somewhere in the middle of spacing off during...again, I dunno, some game, we came up with another approach, this one involving a full-spectrum review of Major League Soccer review that taxes neither writer nor reader. And doesn't that sound...just nice? This is really straight-forward (for once): I frame every game that happened in the week just past and wrap it up in one of two ways:

1) I provide three talking points for each club for the games where I went the full 90; and
2) Just one talking point per team for each game where I only took in the 20-minute mini-game.

Nifty, I think, and clear, I hope. The "interest rankings" have been updated at right. So, let's get rolling.

MLS Week 28
It's pretty easy to frame the week as a whole: the clubs that look ready showed it by winning where and when they should. The clubs that didn't? Well, they choked, didn't they? Some more than others, too, but most begged questions along the way. In the former column (winners!), you've got Columbus Crew SC, New York Red Bulls, the New England Revolution, and, if you're stretching, FC Dallas. So, who blew it this weekend? How about the Houston Dynamo, the Seattle Sounders and...goddammit, the Portland Timbers. Yeah, we're in there...especially given what Orlando did to Sporting Kansas City just today. Jeez-and-Us. Then again, guess who else slipped? The mighty, mighty, almighty Los Angeles Galaxy. So the league condenses again!

On to the games, full 90 first!

Portland Timbers v. Sporting KC; already written up, and in some distress.

MLS Week 20 Review + The Bargain-Bin Starting XI

I know! Kennedy Igboananike at $800K? Madness!

I'm a late getting to this review of Major League Soccer's Week 20. I didn't even get links into the review of the Portland Timbers draw against the Vancouver Whitecaps last weekend, fer crissakes (links in there now; embarrassed by the delay). A combination of reasons led to that, all of which I will cover in the semi-traditional, semi-confessional prologue that always seems to top my posts. Said prologue will last exactly one paragraph, after which paragraph, the conversation shall return to MLS and the Timbers.

I caught only two whole games over Week 20, Portland v. Vancouver and the New England Revolution's home win over New York City FC. Worse, where I usually power through a full diet of 20-minute mini-games easily as a family of four goes through that first bowl of chips and salsa at your finer Mexican restaurants, I left chips and salsa on the table this weekend (or, more directly, I have yet to sit through Real Salt Lake's win over the Houston Dynamo). Worse, I experienced every game – whole, mini-, or live – at a remove, as if I watching television about someone else watching the games on television. I blame all of this on The Great Bon-Bon of Indifference, a chocolate confection possessed of the power to rob a person of his/her agency. Just...keep that in mind, at least for what it's worth, when you read the stuff on Week 20. The rest is gold. Or at least gold-flaked.

For Week 20's review, I'm going with a six-pack of observations and a big-ass shot; we're talking a three-finger at minimum, on the latter. As with any good night out, may as well start with the shot. You know the saying: "Liquor, beer, everclear." Or something to that effect. At any rate, the six thoughts that came to me as I watched the Week 20's game comprise the six-pack. As for the shot, well, that's courtesy of a gift I unwrapped six days late.

The Sarvas Trade: The Tale of a Goal-less Draw (that a shoot-out may yet resolve)

Follow the curls...now look into my eyes and see your future!
(Photo credit: Pablo Maurer)

Did Colorado Rapids head coach Pablo Mastroeni twirl the ends of that glorious mustache whilst discussing the trade that brought Marcelo Sarvas from the Los Angeles Galaxy to the Rocky Mountain side? I imagine he did because this deal is weird enough going both ways to feel a little sinister...

...now, let us never speak of that mustache again. Don’t wanna get the vapors.

OK, first, who thinks Sarvas likes this trade? It’s enough to put a Brazilian in Colorado, but after a couple years in sunny LA? Factor in the slumming element of going first to virtually-worst and one has to imagine the man is packing one article of clothing at a time, glumly, and over the course of several days.

The deeper question, though, is how all this work on the field for both clubs.

For Colorado, this move brings in “winning” and with savvy to a shell-shocked club. Apparently, Sarvas will also cover an anticipated departure: I read somewhere (can’t recall where) that Spaniard Jose Mari is on his way out. So, far so good. The man has his fans among pundits I trust (Mr. Analyst; no, I don’t read super-widely anymore), but he’s one of those players I can’t get my head around. This suggests talents that are both efficient and unspectacular. As such, expect Sarvas to do the yeoman thing – e.g. to work to make his alleged betters better – but that introduces the issue of age. Sarvas ain’t exactly young, which begs the question of how he’ll hold up; that looms larger with each piece of physical/cognitive/emotional stone he’ll be asked to carry for the Rocky Mountain’s most grabastic club.

All the above is a long way of saying that I get what Colorado gets out of the trade, but, were I a Rapids man, I’d have wanted Juninho’s legs and long-range cannon..maybe Mr. Mastroeni twirled the wrong side of the ‘stache? (Ach, vapors! Swoon!)

With LA, this boils down to replacing one old-timing player (Sarvas) with another, higher-profile old-timing player (Steven Gerrard; say, anyone interested in a really colorless story about how he was acquired?). Now, I’ve heard it argued (somewhere in this podcast (hope that link works)) that fans/concerned citizens shouldn’t worry about Gerrard’s legs because he’d have Juninho and Sarvas buzzing around behind and/or around him. Well, there goes half that working theory. Appointing some younger legs to run in support provides the obvious solution, but no obvious names appear on LA’s current roster. Maybe Kenney Walker’s ready for that role? (And welcome to the limits of my knowledge of LA’s roster!)

In this blog’s short history, I admitted to not being sold on the Gerrard signing: I suspect that he’ll have just one well-adjusted year in a Galaxy uniform, by which time he will definitely be old. I get that LA wanted and/or needed a big name and that Gerrard can still ball...for now. Those of us of a certain age know how quickly, cruelly, and absolutely your body turns on you; in that scheme, two years is a long time. LA shipped Sarvas too early if you ask me...

To go the other way, lord knows Colorado needs composure - any team that collapses thoroughly as they did in 2014 needs layers of security blankets – but it’s hard to see what on-field attributes Sarvas brings to the club beyond that. If the legs aren’t able, your club has arguably just drafted an something closer to an assistant coach...but one who's on the field, taking up a spot...

So...did anyone win this thing? LA, but only if they bring in Sacha Kljestan (though that leaves open the question of where they play him).

Firing Petke: Red Bull New York's Poison-Pill Gamble

What the man did for coaching fashion was enough...

Forget the English Invasion (Now, With Walkers!). The unceremonious and outrageous firing of New York Red Bulls’ head coach Mike Petke stands tall and all on its lonesome as the biggest story of the 2014-15 Major League Soccer (MLS) off-season.

Yeah, yeah, Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard are living (and playing) legends for two of England’s biggest clubs (Chelsea and Liverpool, respectively), but they’ll spend the second half of 2015 getting to know teammates who simply aren’t as good as what they’re used to. On top of that, they’ll have to acclimate to the air travel, getting kicked by over-eager American youths (and bitter veterans), and having burning red cleat marks ignored by American referees: these are all part of the MLS experience. Presumably, that leaves only the 2016 season for both players to prove that soccer’s equivalent of The Expendables can survive MLS. Lampard’s going to be 30-freakin’-8 come June of 2016...just sayin’.

The Petke...shit, what to call this thing? Betrayal? Shivving? Assassination? Anyway, the thing that happened to Petke is big. The story has legs, for one, what with the angry buzzing from reasonably - no, rightly-aggrieved - Red Bulls fans. Tributes in both graphic and liquid forms, and the hasty, sloppy, yet entirely necessary damage control from the Red Bull brass give the whole affair the regular accessories of scandal.

More than that, an air of symbolism attaches to the whole affair. This thing has a very MLS 3.0 vibe. Ambition's the word. And Petke doesn't match that vibe. His persona and legacy tap deeply into MLS's other incarnations (as in, MLS 1.0 and 2.0): he's a meat-and-potatoes, get-the-job-done type. As such, he fits better in a scrappy league that can't fly high enough to show up on radar. Who knows? Maybe the view from the boardroom looks down and sees a relic of the small-time past?

No one seems to blame the Red Bull’s new coach, Jesse Marsch, for any of this and that’s appropriate. The man only took the job on offer, after all (and after several others passed, reportedly) and Marsch has the smarts to say the right things. All frustration and anger flows toward the Red Bulls front office – samples of the flood air on this now-famous podcast (which features a touching cameo by Mr. Petke) – and most of rage pours toward Ali Curtis, RBNY’s new Sporting Director. Curtis won the scorn when he "owned" the decision to let go of Petke. Fair's fair.

Red Bulls fans can't wrap their heads around some perceived need to replace Petke because it stinks of a solution in search of a problem. Even if it's arguably not true that he presided over the Red Bulls’ best era – for instance, what about the Red Bulls team that actually reached MLS Cup? – Petke did one thing no other Red Bull coach every had: he brought hardware to the club's barren trophy case. Further, not a few people credit his capacity for learning on the job. And well: this goes beyond some callers into the Seeing Red podcast linked to above and directly to a frequent talking point from 2014 - e.g., where people credited Petke for the effective pairing of Dax McCarty and Eric Alexander in midfield. The "relic of the small-time past" description doesn't match the evidence...even if I just made up the phrase. Or applied to Petke.

What happened in New York seems likely to be a noticeable component of MLS 3.0, maybe even a new normal. Not every club will be able to keep up as MLS grows. That will encourage, for lack of a better word,"spazzing." Clubs will make dramatic, unpopular, even manifestly stupid moves, and sometimes with an eye to nothing better than the appearance of action. After all,l doing something dumb is still doing something. This is why Congress forms committees. To be less cynical about it, they might even believe in those moves. They might also need to coat them in thick, cherry-flavored delusion in wrestle them down the gullet, but I'm pretty sure they'll be happy to do that if there's even the slimmest hope of taking credit later.

I file the Gerrard and Lampard signings under appearance of action, but that's just me. I don’t see either doing much for the respective clubs with only a rickety year (2016) in which to do it. Because, holy old. But both moves generated lots of copy and, with Lampard, especially, enthusiasm. That’s half the goal, at least, but whole-goal signings seem the wiser course.

The thing with Marsch is something else. It could work out just fine, of course. He seems smart enough and he's got real-world coaching experience. Sadly, the smartness of his hiring doesn't really matter, not against the ham-handed P.R. stupidity of firing a club icon like Petke without clear cause. Even assuming Marsch succeeds the question of whether Petke could have done just as well, if not better, won't go away for years. With the way he left the club, it might not ever go away. Worse, every one year that Marsch, or any future successor, fails to maintain some unspoken standard will translate to two more years of questions about what might have been, not to mention bad blood.

It’s a no-win, in the end, not unless Marsch brings home an MLS Cup in, oh, two year’s time...