MLS 2018, Form Guide ULTRA, Week 22: One Stray L'il Doggie (and it's coming to Portland)

These posts are my tattoos.

Again, I use the words “IN” and “OUT” to mean teams that are in and out of the playoffs, respectively, at time of writing. That’s a loose identifier for “good” and “bad,” basically.

Moving on, the more I feel better about the data, the less I feel like preambles are necessary. The week featured what looks like an oddity - i.e., an unusual wealth of road wins - until you check out who played who (the more obvious examples: New York City FC 0-2 at Orlando, Atlanta United FC stealing all three points from Montreal Impact FC with a 2-1 win (if with some notable wrinkles; also, on paper went off at least one script), and the Seattle Sounders 1-0 over at the San Jose Jackpot…er, Earthquakes). Sure, there was one oddball win - the Houston Dynamo coughing upa 1-3 loss at home to the Philadelphia Union presaged a terrible weak for East Texas - but, given everything that happened around it (two weeks and some travel for the New York Red Bulls, plus the solid state of the competition), it wasn’t so surprising to see Columbus Crew SC win in New York. Whoops, one more: the Sounders looked like a decent bet to beat NYCFC in Seattle, but the score-line (3-1) bears noting.

Because some kind of clockwork explains all the rest (hold on...what's left now?), I want to close out this preamble with a firm opinion on something. People argue that teams should “start the kids” and, as much as I agree with that, making that call is some serious pre-game dunking on your opposition. There’s just a second side to the equation, that’s all I’m saying.

OK, the usual data-dump unfolds below - e.g., I look at the last 10 games for every team in MLS down below, create a thumbnail profile from that. I wrap it all up with a look back (at last week’s game(s)), then a look ahead (at next week’s game). Caveat lector: I’m looking at highlights and results only, so don’t expect a deep-dive into anyone’s tactics outside the one team I watch in Major League Soccer - i.e., the Portland Timbers - and whoever they happened to play that week (Houston, in this case). Here goes, and in the order of the conference standings, Eastern Conference first:

MLS Week 4.5 (aka, 3/31 to 4/2) Review: Still Just a Big Pile of Crap

They'll build something out of it some day, instead of just laying in it. Like MLS.

And…we’re back to comprehensive coverage for Major League Soccer Week 4.5* – something that will happen on any weekend I can get enough of my shit together to manage it (and, honestly, my shit is like cats, every trip to the bathroom, an adventure). (* As noted here and there, I refuse to call this Week 5, because most MLS teams only played their fourth game this weekend, and, no, I'm not letting anyone forget it; I built my own calendar, and will be following that throughout the season).

So, time for the usual caveats – e.g., it’s early in the 2017 season, and therefore impossible to tell which teams built for the long-haul (Supporters’ Shield) and which will pull it all together for the late-season smash-and-grab and/or crown a winning season with the trophy everyone values most (if only by way of ready translation, aka, MLS Cup). I’ll be getting more into that aspect as the season gets to where it has lasted long enough to tell us something beyond the circumstantial.

One practice that will come back, at least to the extent possible, is checking in with each team’s local SB Nation blog. The first attempt already failed (e.g. The Blue Testament, which again, with a one-word change is what I call my poops) because they only run match reports and, again, I hate those things on the grounds that it takes a very, very special writer to make a chronology of events read as anything but.

Think that’s all for this week. Come may, I might start trying to top these things with some form of power rankings/progress report at least once a month. For now, though, and as noted above, I feel like we don’t know much about any team in MLS except that the smart money should still chase FC Dallas, Columbus Crew SC has gone some distance to proving my preseason assumptions wrong (thought they'd suck; they don't), and it’s possible that Sporting Kansas City will be even more torturously dull this season than last. Oh, and Atlanta is fast.  OK, let’s talk games, all of ‘em.

A Preface: The Cliff Notes Version of the 2015 Season Review

Hoping for better full versions than we have here.

The 2015 season ended some time ago for a little under half of Major League Soccer's clubs/teams/franchises; so ended the regular season. Between there and here, seasons have ended for as many clubs (eight. that's eight teams), which leaves us with the four teams left in contention. Well, some of those four teams are more in contention than others...OWWW! (Fuck, what was that? I'm JINXING it? Do you really think that’s a thing, Randall? Are we twelve-year-old fucking girls, Randall? Shit!)

Anyway, the more time that passes into the rearview, the keener I am to get started on the big, dumb off-season I have planned between here and the kick off of the 2016 MLS Season. Yes, it's the ol' Look-Backward-So-We-Can-Look-Forward-With-Clear-Eyes, Season's End Review of the year that was in Major League Soccer, and for each club in MLS. I say that knowing that at least four clubs have more tales to tell before their 2015 ends (Randall! Randall! Back off, man. Back. Off. Corner. Get in the FUCK-ing corner and stay there! Don’t move. Don’t. Are we clear? I said are we clear?!), but, at this point in the season, each and every club in MLS has written their story for their 2015. Also, if I don't start this soon, I don't see how I get this done before First Kick 2016. (As in, holy shit, I have to crank out these puppies, probably at a clip of two per week, so efficiency's king, speed-reading's queen, and god damn the video.)

How's this gonna work, then? Below, I will tell a brief, thumbnail tale (rhyming!) of each MLS team's 2015 season. The subsequent reviews for each club will examine how well my sometimes distant perception of each team holds up. I'm checking my sense of reality against some better approximation of reality, essentially. How to get the better approximation of reality is a work in progress...for the record. Judy is doing the research on that as we speak. (Need anything, hon? Tea? Yeah, I'll clean the garage; next weekend, Judy, can't it be next weekend?)

If you're new to this site, you might ask, well, "what are your credentials, sir?" I'll start by directing that curious hypothetical straw-man to the Conifers & Citrus Interest Rankings, which are posted at right. Those record the number of times I watched a full 90-minute game for each of the clubs in MLS this season. That hasn't been updated for a while, but I've watched at least 12 of those clubs one or more times since the last update (Portland chief among them, of course), and I watch every condensed, mini-game that MLS put up on MLS Live all year long (even if the state of mind in which I watch these can be relaxed-tilting-toward-coma).

Off-the-cuff impressions of each of Major League Soccer's 20 clubs for the past season unfold below, going from worst to first (per the final standings). The reviews will come out in the same order. And, ideally, those will look forward as well as back. For what it's worth, I think that'll come out sorta elegantly, in that the best teams will generally (very generally) have the most to fix in the coming off-season. OK, caveats posted, so let's lock and load.

The MLS Divine Comedy, Week 7

Philadelphia? Hello, and sorry. To the left, please.

For Week 7, I decided to return to, but re-name, the whole "Sinking, Swimming, Treading Water" concept. Thought I'd reference the classics instead, with an homage to Dante's Divine Comedy: going forward, these posts will divide MLS's clubs between Heaven, Hell and Purgatory. That distinction is self-explanatory, yeah? And the arrangement should last even through the playoffs – that is, a club can remain in Purgatory in the post-season, for no man* resides in Heaven till he hoists MLS Cup! I’m keeping Hell pretty small and that's less about me feeling all New Testament, than about the passage to the playoffs seeming very much wide open. Good works and grace have nothing on stupid parity and the stupid playoff format.

(* Here, "man" shall mean, exclusively, a male professional soccer player, who plies his trade in the officially recognized domestic North American Division 1 soccer league, dba, popularly MLS.)

As happens more often than I should admit, the past weekend didn't come together so smoothly. I made it through only two games in their entirety:

Seattle Sounders v. Colorado Rapids
New York City FC v. Portland Timbers

With that entered into the record, I did watch the first 30 minutes of FC Dallas v. Toronto FC, it struck me as indecent to watch Nick Hagglund suffer more, not unlike Noah's daughters who wisely took a pass on seeing him rolling around all drunk and naked. The rest of the games I took through MLS Live's condensed matches – which, again, I can't recommend enough. Once again, the number in parentheses after each team's name records how many times I've spent/suffered the full 90 with it. I'll do better in catching full games going forward. Probably. The heart's in it.

The summaries for each team will be shorter than previously. All the detail stuff I once tried to work in – e.g. flagging some player, a trend, or a concept that's in the air or on my mind – will go over to a mid-week post going forward. That'll be me making sense of the week.

MLS Week 2: Sinking, Swimming, and Treading Water

That you, Chicago?

Trying something new for Week 2. Rather than pull 10 talking points out of my ass (takes a lot of digging, not all of it pleasant), I thought I'd cut those talking points in half, post those one by one, and start the week instead with something at once simpler and more global – e.g. thumbnail impressions of each of Major League Soccer's (MLS) 20 teams (big thumbs). More or less information will form each impression based on the obvious – e.g. how often I watch any given team. Each week will start, then, with a really basic overview – e.g. "Well, that was a week of red cards dipped in bullshit!" – after which will come a list of the games I watched over said weekend. Thumbnail impressions of each MLS club will follow from there, each organized according to how each club currently projects.

As for the impressions, first, these will be honest. If I don't really know, or have much to go on, I'll admit it. You'll see. Second, I'll frame those around an obvious water metaphor: sinking, swimming, and treading water – failing, succeeding, and holding steady, respectively. Even if they'd match the site better, tree- or citrus-fruit-based metaphors just don't communicate as easily. I mean, I like oaks better than pines or, say, grapefruit better than limes, but is that universal? More to the point, who doesn't understand that sinking in water is bad, because drowning?

Moving on to regular programming, I took in the following games over MLS's Week 2:

Portland Timbers v. Los Angeles Galaxy
Real Salt Lake v. Philadelphia Union (well, 60+ minutes of it)
FC Dallas v. Sporting Kansas City
Columbus Crew SC v. Toronto FC

And it was good. It was a pretty solid weekend, overall, some good games, exciting goals and some top-notch weirdness (see: RSL v. Philly). Still, that was a week of red cards dipped in bullshit, y'all!