MLS Week 18 Rankings/Playoff Predictions + Timbers v. San Jose (- MLS Hiatus)

Eat it, San Jose! That's one tooth for each point and one for the goal!

For Major League Soccer's Week 18, I only had time for the Portland Timbers v. San Jose Earthquakes. That's it. And I only caught 60 minutes of that. The good 60 minutes from what I hear, but, yes, stupid, stupid, interfering life has once again mugged soccer and taken most of its valuables.

Then again, it is with a mixture and loin-stirring anticipation that Conifers & Citrus announces that this shite...whoops, "site," I meant "site." What a strange little slip. Anyway, Conifers & Citrus hereby announces that it will set aside all things MLS and most things Timbers in order to switch to total coverage of the CONCACAF Gold Cup for much of the month of July. Or, well, total coverage of Gold CUP, Group A, because, honestly, there's no fucking way I can do more than that. Seriously.

Said coverage kicks off...well, tomorrow, frankly. I'll go on a Preview Safari in the meantime and try to roll that into my comments going forward, showing off knowledge in the vain spirit Great White Hunters display the carcasses of animals they killed from a far remove (also, I'll pull out one chest hair for every minute it takes to do said homework, because, all man; also, at that rate, I can remove every last hair from chest in about an hour). As much as I'd like to preview the whole thing, I just plain ran out of time. All I can say is that I'll try to make it up to each of you, personally. Promise*! (* This promise is conditioned on limits on time, clear-headedness, and, again, damn, dirty life.)

MLS Week 14 Rankings: Creating v. Getting, MLS's Mason-Dixon Line

At one point, there was definitely a right side of this one.

(Man, I really have to work on titling my posts sometime before the last minute.)

Going with very little preamble this week, and rankings. Just...rankings. And some comments before and within. I'll post other content elsewhere. Soon. At any rate, here are the games I watched in full during Week 14:

Portland Timbers v. New England Revolution
DC United v. Toronto FC
Sporting Kansas City v. Seattle Sounders

I was in Seattle for Week 13, where I endured Seattle's win over the New York Red Bulls. All I'll say about that is, thank god for good company.

Before assigning a number to each MLS club, a couple things occurred to me over the past couple weeks. First, good teams create chances while mediocre and/or bad times get chances. Yeah, that's a pretty banal observation, but it strikes me more and more as this season progresses. It's the difference between this this (good) and this (lucky, even when a team makes some of the luck) – especially in open play. A great cliché of the game is that all goals count. Like most cliches, that's true and trivial all at once. Chance creation speaks to replicability – i.e., the capacity to do it consciously and with some form of intent, instead of relying on lucky bounces and a defender falling on his ass.

Second, and more significantly, I had hoped to wax excited about some long-awaited separation opening up between the top clubs and the bottom clubs, but Weeks 13/14 put the kibosh on all that. Sadly, only a select few MLS couple clubs appear primed for excellence. With too many of the rest, it's once-good teams slipping (e.g. FC Dallas, Columbus Crew, New York Red Bulls), as a selection of the previously dire outfits rise (e.g. Montreal Impact, Toronto FC...paging Ottawa; sensing a pattern here). The really crazy thing: that the New York Red Bulls can lose three straight and stay on the right side of the Velvet Rope (stupid playoff format). More to the point, how the hell do just 12 points separate acknowledged no-hopers like the Colorado Rapids from league darlings like the Seattle Sounders?

OK, onto the rankings! Again, the first number in parentheses is the number of times I've watched a full game for each MLS club, while the second numbers show the previous week's ranking for that club – or, in this case, where I ranked that club for Week 12. This week’s sub-text: Right, on with it:

MLS Week 12 Rankings: The Underdogs Punch Upward and Taintward

Step One: Just getting into the truck.

This will remain a power rankings post – and those rankings will come up (or near the) top – but the bulk of the content below discusses what I saw, or thought I saw, in the games from Major League Soccer's 12th Week. Without going too deep into the thought process, single-game performance and overall form don't always run on the same track – an argument supported by several games in MLS's Week 12. In some ways, then, this boils down to separating head (analyzing a game) from heart (arguing one team is better than any given other). Should be easier to readers, too, in that they read about the games they want to and skip the rest.

Speaking of, I tucked in for a full meal during Week 12 (as in, three courses):

Toronto FC v. Portland Timbers
Colorado Rapids v. Vancouver Whitecaps
Seattle Sounders v. Sporting Kansas City

View that selection of games through the right lens (e.g. Cascadia tinted) and you'll notice a pattern: this space might adopt the practice of watching the Cascadia teams every weekend, picking other games as necessary to reach my full complement of three games. Stay tuned...

...and shit weekend for Cascadia, yeah?

So, what kind of weekend was MLS's Week 12? Underdogs bit up, for starters. The Philadelphia Union put in the biggest bite when they took a piece out of the New York Red Bulls – at Red Bull Arena, no less – but the Montreal Impact’'s jawed on FC Dallas leg bones, while the Rapids gave a not-sharp-enough Vancouver a little nip. After that, a couple late "moments" built on reputations (here, I'm looking at the lucky Los Angeles Galaxy mugging all three points from the Houston Dynamo) or put a dent in them (see, the Chicago Fire channeling Lazarus to come back against the Columbus Crew). Beautiful goals were set up (for Colorado and Montreal) and players were sent off – too many for the New England Revolution. But what did it all mean for the rankings?

Not a lot, as you'll read below. Too many good teams looked bad in Week 12, but that doesn't mean all the heretofore crappy clubs crawl up to their places on the league ladder. Climbing one rung doesn't automatically translate to an inevitable climb to the top of the ladder; it just means you went up that one rung. Big whoop.

Anyway, the Week 12 rankings are below. The number in parentheses after each team’s name still notes the number of times I've watched a full game for said club (12 semi-abusive nights and days with Portland; and counting), but I did throw in the previous week's ranking for each club, too.

MLS Week 11 Divine Comedy: Real Rankings, People...

I mean, they're more or less all the same, yes?

(...and some as yet unaddressed discomfort with the same.)

With this week, I officially begin the work of formally ranking all the clubs in Major League Soccer. As always, this project deserves a caveat – mainly because the essential task at hand boils not just to separating apples from apples, but red delicious apples from red delicious apples. It's not all baffling, obviously. I mean, some are disgusting mealy messes, but what about the ones with thick, shell-like skins? Are those better than the ones that have that weird chemical slick texture on the outside? In plainer terms, the real challenge comes with calling one club better than the other in a league that has been consciously managed to make all the clubs as equal as possible. My people call this parity (yours might call it maize).

Personal headaches aside, I decided to retain the Heaven, Purgatory, Hell frame. Each team will still be assigned a ranking, but I'll also place those rankings within those three ultimate destinies, the meaning of which is identified below. Oh, and I'm adding a new angle this week: arguing in favor of three results as the most significant of the past weekend. Let's dig in, shall we?

I managed only two and a half full games this Week 11 (stupid blackouts, and wicked cable companies!!):

Houston Dynamo v. Portland Timbers
San Jose Earthquakes v. Columbus Crew ('Quakes finally on my personal viewer board!)
Philadelphia Union v. DC United (just the second 1/2 here)

As always, the number in parentheses after each team's name is the number of times I spent the full 90 with them in 2015. That's as opposed to the previous ranking. I don't do that. Uh, sorry?

And now, the biggest, most important results of MLS’s Week 11