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.

Toronto FC 1-0 Portland Timbers: The Real Meaning of #RCTID

RCTID, aka domestic bliss.

About three years into a real relationship – as in a sexual, monogamous, in-it-for-the-long-haul sort of arrangement – all the failings that you once laughed at become the grating quirks and habits that make you want to either leave, or set up a very, very active Tinder account. There's a decision to be made at this point, obviously, staying in or getting out. And, with the Portland Timbers, I, and just about everyone else who calls themselves a fan, is committed for the long haul, warts, farts, terrible hygiene, bad breath, philandering, perverse, diaper-based sexual preferences, and all.

But, lord, the Timbers try the patience of ten GGG saints...

I watched the game next to a guy who laughed non-stop all the way through the first half. I thought it was fitting, if in the spirit of a long-suffering wife laughing at her husband’s impotence. I know the feeling because, right now, I feel nothing short of contempt for my club. After weeks of having faith that Portland has a shot to get some kind of result from every game, the gears shifted after this one. My default belief going into every game is that Portland will lose.

To keep with analogy, every win will become my constantly drunk wife remembering our anniversary for the first time in three years. All together now...AWWW...

So much hate to spread around. I want to hate Adam Kwarasey because, as I tweeted during the game, every cross that flies over his box looks like the first one he's ever seen. And yet he's not the problem: not only did he make (a minimum of) three solid saves, he even improved on crosses as the game wore on. And, once again, Darlington Nagbe turned in another...let's call it a head-scratcher. The man has turning sickness – i.e. the disease one sees in wildebeests with their brains eaten full of holes where they turn in circles till they die in the dirt – and yet he probably set up Portland’s best, few chances, or the passes that led to the same. I want to fault the defense, but, after setting up a shooting gallery for Toronto FC and/or Sebastian Giovinco over the first 20 minutes, the back four shut down pretty nicely overall. And yet I did manage to hold onto a bundle clear, satisfying hatred...see talking point #4 below.

Toronto FC v. Portland Timbers: A Clash of Fine China

Next-level Red Rover....

To shorten these preview posts a bit, I’m going listicle on the Portland Timbers’ previews and, when looking ahead to other games, I’ll stick to talking up (or down) only those with a good hook/angle. And, yes, this Wednesday game business is driving me goddamn nuts, because Sporting Kansas City v. New England Revolution? That there was a quality match-up, friends. It looked just as good on the menu as it did when it arrived on the table. (A missed penalty, a dubious penalty, big soccer players making big soccer plays; had it all, I tell ya!)

On to the main attraction: Toronto FC v. Portland Timbers. First, let’s set the stage...

Toronto FC. The buzz-boys of 2015. Major League Soccer’s big spenders. As Twitter announced yesterday, they spent over three times what the Timbers did to create their roster (just north of $20 million versus just short of $6 million). And what has all that scratch bought them? Three points fewer than Portland – though they can go even on points by winning this weekend and a keep a game in hand to boot.

Will they do it? The trends read better than the results, at least some of them. TFC started 2015 on a seven-game road-trip. Said trip started great and ended well, but a chasm yawned between in the form of five straight losses that surely reminded every Torontonian of a deeply-cursed former life (shudder to think of the atrocities committed by the former selves of every player who has ever pulled TFC’s red jersey over his shoulder). But two wins in their final road games (cough, Orlando, cough, in the bad days, cough, cough, Philly!) sent TFC rolling back to an embiggened BMO Field confident and hungry. The schedule handed TFC an opponent that looked entirely beatable, too, in the Houston Dynamo. A clear day broke. Toronto fans provided the theater, chanting and marching their way to the field. Promise swelled like the biggest, ripest fruit the club had ever seen...only to burst into a rancid puddle when Houston cut into the skin.

Toronto didn’t do so great against the New England Revolution last weekend, either; most reports I read said the draw flattered them, so there’s that, too. So, will Toronto make that big, beautiful stadium bounce when the Timbers come to town?

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

Houston 3-1 Portland: 3 (Damned, Dirty Things)

Why, Nat Borchers? WHY??

Check my (slightly mushy) rankings post, and you'll see that I still haven't decided whether the Houston Dynamo is having a good 2015, or a bad 2015. When you're trying to run a yardstick over your own team – specifically, one that coughed up three super-soft, Sunday league goals roughly 2 hours, 45 minutes and 40 minutes ago (as I type this intro, obviously) – that's something you want to know.

Then again, is it? Because those three super-soft, shitty (can I add the word , "shitty?") Sunday league goals pretty much tell the story of the Portland Timbers' 3-1 loss in stupid, sweaty Houston, Texas. To give some idea of the profound emotional dissatisfaction I'm feeling tonight, here's a killer detail: I wasn't even sure Fanendo Adi's goal went in in real time. I only clued in when Diego Valeri embraced Adi and the people around me started clapping. Yes, this is no one's fault but mine, but tonight’s loss has a handful of "proud" owners.

Before reading the Riot Act in Three Parts, let's pause to touch on Houston. The Dynamo didn't have a great night tonight, so much as an effective one. Their players followed up when they needed to (Houston's 3rd goal), stayed switched on during half-broken plays (their 2nd goal), and they stood tall and brave against all the soft serve crap that the Timbers threw at them. Sure, that boils down to batting away a series of warm-up pitches. The last possession stat I saw (probably halftime) showed Portland in the lows 60s and Houston in the high 30s. That only goes to show that possession is as least as much fetish than potential. When it comes to putting possession on a pedestal, lord knows I've stuffed in the ball-gag, put on the chaps, etc. It's gotta work, y'know, or it's just awkward performance art, no matter how private (no image; don't worry).

The whole thing with possession was going to be one of my talking points, but a better one bumped it off the list. Regardless, the list below comes in the order in which each point preoccupies me. Feel free to contest...

MLS 2X6: Sending Off DeRo; The (Imaginary?) Jewsbury/Johnson Situation + 6 More!

But....TRADITION!!!

First of all, and son of a bitch, somebody pinched my feature title (yes, yes, almost certainly before I first used it, but still)! It turns out that the Portland Timbers' official site carries a feature titled 2 X 4. It's pure puff-piece to me, but I’m not about to go toe-to-toe with a media behemoth like portlandtimbers.com...so I went with the obvious solution – e.g. add a couple inches to one side.

That said, since I'm rarely going to be timely posting this thing once-per-week, I really need to kill on content. Or at least produce an amusing read. Gulp.

TWO...
1) A Legend Quietly Departs Stage Left (Tres Canadien)
And that quiet piece is curious because, as pointed out in a "what all did he mean for Canadian soccer?" think piece, Dwayne DeRosario didn't play quiet. A showy goal celebration defined his career (on top of pulling off one of the most memorable political moments in MLS history*) and, prior to the last couple seasons, De Rosario could flat-out fucking ball (more on that later). As has been pointed out all over, DeRosario could have got a long (tortured) Landon-Donovan-esque arrivederci had he retired right – that's as opposed to doing well short of a whole lot for Toronto FC last season and posting a whisper via Twitter. Happily, the tributes came in regardless (even archived ones) and DeRosario absolutely earned it. He was every bit Donovan's peer, a ready answer in any argument about who was the best player in MLS for everyone who didn't like Donovan. Now, personally, I always preferred DeRo, who was gritty and inventive were Donovan was practiced and polished (to diamond clarity, it bears pointing out). Hit that first link above and you'll see why DeRosario had his haters, too, if for vastly different reasons than Donovan. With the latter, it was an argument about phoning it in, while it was a whiff of arrogance that dogged the former throughout his career. Well, screw that: I like my players messy; that's why I didn't really take to Donovan until, 1) his freakout departure to Cambodia, and 2) I could no longer ignore all the, uh, records.

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...