Houston v. Portland Preview, More Rope Is Dope; + MLS Week 11 Previews

It's all good. VALERI!

I'll start with a brief confession: I’m a little limited when it comes to actually studying games. Oh, the number of games I've started swearing to keep a close eye on a certain player, or to watch a team's approaches to a game to where I'll get some sense of why they're playing a certain way. This comes off...rarely. Sure, if someone points out a detail, I'll pick it up pretty quickly, but, in the final analysis, though, my "analysis" boils down to "that guy kicked the ball good."

Self-flagellation now over, it's time to turn to MLS's Week 11 offerings, starting with the Portland Timbers, the mighty, mighty, tighty-whitey Portland Timbers. Huzzah! I'll run through the rest of the games, briefly, after running the ruler over...

Houston Dynamo v. Portland Timbers
A Look Back in Angora
Hat-tip to Ed Wood (or Tim Burton) for that subtitle, but last weekend's win over the Montreal Impact seems to have Timbers community feeling new uncomfortable things - like optimism. Diego Valeri's 70+ minute return made for the big (obvious) news, as did the fact and manner of his game-winning goal (hey, why not re-live it?). Portland got rolling (in the 2nd) and everything just looked...more coherent in the attack than it has all season. Part of me wants to argue (again) that one player's absence shouldn't hurt a team so much; another part of me shrugs and settles into this "que sera, sera" mind-set of feeling thankful to have the Franciscan back on the fold (seriously, something vaguely monastic surrounds Valeri, that blend of seriousness, rigor, humility and sincerity). The defense continues to be sound and, check this out, turns out the Timbers are a pretty good road team. That's a good thing seeing as they're on the road again this weekend. Sure, there's probably some stat about the Timbers turning in shit results after a win, but I'm going to wallow in the bliss of my ignorance, thanks.

Moving onto Houston...

MLS Week 4: Sinking, Swimming, and Treading Water

RAWWRRR!!

While it's tempting to say that narratives are taking shape after Major League Soccer's (MLS) Week 4, I'll resist that temptation. There's good reason for this, for Week 4 was the week of mini-redemptions, the time when teams who entered the season carrying the (or some) weight of expectation started to carry that weight at long last. Here, I'm talking about your New England Revolutions, your Real Salt Lakes, your Sporting Kansas Citys, all of whom picked their first wins of 2015 this weekend. (And why am I talking about these things as if there are more than one of each?)

That said, one team given some small expectation to succeed took a step back to reconsider the weight. And that would be my still-beloved Portland Timbers. Goddammit.

Some teams trend in the opposite direction with continued, even inexplicable, success; I'm looking at you, Vancouver Whitecaps. (Flip-side of the link in the paragraph above.)

With all the above now stated and acknowledged, the reality is that the New York Red Bulls are, hands-down, the most interesting team in MLS right now...

...which isn't so hard given the back-drop. If there's something else everyone seems to agree on, it's that the last two weeks have sort of underwhelmed in aesthetics and entertainment departments.

Before diving in, let the record show that I managed only two games this weekend. Sad emoji, but I had the rich satisfaction of time spent with family...who reminded me of how very disappointed they can be in me:

Vancouver Whitecaps v. Portland Timbers
FC Dallas v. Seattle Sounders FC

On to the question, who's sinking, who's swimming, and who's treading water. I haven't yet decided just how exacting a judge I'm going to be. For this weekend, however, I'm going pretty soft due to all the international absences...which is something else I should have mentioned earlier. And, again, the number in parentheses after each team's is my confession of how many times I’ve watched them play this season.

MLS Week 3: Sinking, Swimming and Treading Water

Yes, the current state of MLS is a quarter wrapped around and inside itself.

And...we're back with another set of thumbnail impressions of each of Major League Soccer's (MLS) 20 teams and, since we're only three weeks in, some feeble attempt to put all those impressions in a frame that means...oh, jack shit. Before digging in too far this weekend, I'll start with a list of the games I took in for Week 3.

New England Revolution (1) v. Montreal Impact(1)
Sporting Kansas City (2) v. Portland Timbers (3)
Colorado Rapids (1) v. New York City FC (1 1/2)
Orlando City FC (1 1/2) v. Vancouver Whitecaps (2)

And in that order. Nice. And, anyone notice the numbers after each teams' name above? That's the number of times I've watched those clubs play this season. Going forward, I'll move that down below, to where I list each MLS club, just so it's out there. Call it my version of full disclosure, a quick-reference confession as to how well one can expect me to know any given team. Trust me, there will be blind spots (and blood!), most of them the result of me, well, not really giving a shit about one team or another. And it could be yours. Just know that, on my end, it's arbitrary. Anyway, we're all about disclosure here at Conifers & Citrus. Well, I am. One-man operation and all that.

So, what to make of Week 3 as a whole? What did we learn? For me, it's a general upsetting of expectations. For instance, who thought New England would start so badly, or that the San Jose Earthquakes would be in the top half of the league, never mind the top 3? Sure, FC Dallas is the hot team right now, but, as a long-time follower of the league, I can promise you that they've done this many, many times before. And, no, I'm not spending next hour searching and linking to Wikipedia's surprisingly good record of all this to prove my point. The rest of it's kind of a fuzzy little fuck-up in all honesty, a question without answers, a coin-flip that somehow fails to land on either heads or tails. The point is, it's early so no one knows anything with any certainty right now and that the only thing we all agree on so far is that the Chicago Fire is bloody awful.

OK, time to check in on who's sinking, who's swimming, and who's treading water. (Short answer: damn near everybody's treading water.) And, just so you know, a little thought went into where I placed each team down below. A little, mind you. These are deliberately and consciously not power rankings.

MLS Week 1: Talking Points, Speculation....and BLACK GOLD!!!

You don't like Houston? Or Colorado? You're WRONG!

If nothing else, Major League Soccer's (MLS) opening weekend revealed that MLS Live will only carry me so far in 2015, at least in terms of timeliness. That 48-hour national/regional broadcast delay will conspire to keep me away from the marquee match-ups. Is this a problem to solve or a limitation to embrace? Hmmm...

Regardless, below is the planned posting schedule for Conifers and Citrus. I'll do my best to honor it (and, no, every week will not feature long, house-keeping preambles):

Monday: 10 (loose) talking points on the prior weekend's hot action.
Wednesday: A look ahead at the Portland Timbers news and next weekend's match.
Thursday: Round-up of the 10 stories from all the games I couldn't watch.
Whenever: Post-match thoughts and analysis for Timbers games.

In general, don't expect deep diving into tactics or club minutiae for the round-up posts (other people do that, and well, and they get paid for it). When I talk sports, it hails from the looser precincts of the human body (e.g. off the cuff, from the gut, out of the ass, etc.). As such, I enjoy a love/hate relationship with the data explosion (see: all the Opta crap) that has lately seized the sport – by which I mean I only value it insofar as it confirms what I already know. (I coulda been president, I tell ya! (W. I kid, I kid)). I think I will, however, shake what the good lord gave me – e.g. that subscription to MLS Live – and focus on the games it serves up; I'll only hit the national market stuff when the match-up compels viewing (see: Portland Timbers games and the games that the progress of the season imbues with due and defining stature). All in all, though, I suffer from a "wise-guy impulse" – i.e. the powerful urge to be first to see great things or hidden failings in a team or a player before anyone else. Basically, there will be speculation. If I break better than 50/50, I'm changing my name to Cassandra.

Jesus, enough preamble, man. Below is what I took in over course of Week 1:

Los Angeles Galaxy v. Chicago Fire, 2nd half
Vancouver Whitecaps v. Toronto FC
Portland Timbers v. Real Salt Lake (live, dammit!)
Houston Dynamo v. Columbus Crew (late, and a little bleary-eyed)
Orlando City FC v. New York City FC, 2nd half

I hope to match or better that schedule each week. Everything else came by way of highlights.