Getting Reacquainted with Sporting Kansas City, aka, MLS's Barely Magical Wizards

When at his best, that's when you gotta watch out.

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

Thumbnail History
Seeing Sporting Kansas City as the fourth-best team in MLS history makes sense and doesn’t at the same time – especially given all the ups and downs (more than I expected or remembered, certainly) and the fact that they had their last championship season 11 years ago. They alternated between success and failure more over their first 14 seasons, reaching MLS Cup here (e.g., in 2000 and 2004) and missing back-to-back post-seasons there (e.g., 1998 and 1999 and again in 2005 and 2006). SKC became more consistent over the back 14, missing the playoffs just three times, but, after their second MLS Cup, the trophies got smaller and then stopped coming. They’ve fielded some famous goalkeepers – e.g., Tony Meola, Jimmy “White Panther” Nielsen, and Tim Melia – and as many famous defenders (e.g., Ike Opara, Jimmy Conrad, Matt Besler), and I suspect most long-time fans of MLS associate them with seemingly eternal head coach Peter Vermes’ aggressive, grinding approach to the game. Kings of the 1-0 win, basically, or even claiming the game in penalties after they throttled the life of the other team’s attack and couldn’t shove in a goal of their own: that’s probably unfair, but that’s the reputation I hold in my head. We’ll see how that holds up below, but I’ll always quietly love them for coming into the league with beautiful rainbows on their kits and literally starting as the Kansas City Wiz. The fact they thought switching “Wiz” to “Wizards” made it better? Chef’s fucking kiss.

Best Season(s)
I might get some dissents on this call – particularly given the way it centers MLS Cup 2013, a game they won on penalties over Real Salt Lake in the coldest final in league history – but I’m going with 2012 to 2017. Despite some shaky finishes (e.g., 10th overall in 2014 and 2015), SKC added three U.S. Open Cups (in 2012, 2015, and 2017) to their second MLS Cup. The counterpoint is 2000, the season they did the double (winning Cup and Shield), but the league had such claustrophobic margins back then and I genuinely believe they built their best, most stable long-time roster in the 2010s.

Long-Term Tendencies
The loose impression holds up pretty well, honestly: a couple exceptional seasons aside (some recent, e.g., 2018, 2020, and especially 2021), SKC generally sticks at average or under it in terms of goals scored (18 of 28 seasons) and generally gets at average or under on goals allowed (17 of 28 seasons). Think a lot of stacked ‘n’ stubborn defenses, combative midfields and an occasionally-interrupted succession of attacking stars to turns Ds (or Ts) into Ws. For what it’s worth, I do think this is shifting, if slowly, and with Vermes’ blessing. He’s mellowed. Except when it comes to working the refs.

Getting Reacquainted with Red Bull New York, MLS's Ugly Duckling (And All That Means)

Pow.

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

Thumbnail History
Born as the New York/New Jersey Metro Stars (and with a logo inspired by, yet embarrassing for, the bottom of a skateboard), Red Bull New York, aka, New Jersey’s finest soccer team, has always been a weird one – e.g., the one time they reached MLS Cup (2008), they made it by way of a run through MLS’s Western Conference. Despite later, praiseworthy successes (wait for it), the Red Bulls have been…haunted, I suppose(?), by a failure to take that final step – hence, the once-famous saying, “that’s so Metro.” Did that start over the earliest seasons when they missed the playoffs almost as often as they made them (they even felt the cruel caress of a Wooden Spoon in 1999), or when they seized their second Wooden Spoon in 2009 (yep! the season after their only MLS Cup)? I don’t know, honestly. What I do know is that the rebrand from MetroStars to Red Bull came in 2006, immediately before that sharp rise to and fall from glory. And yet, that second Wooden Spoon season aside, the Red Bulls became the team that MLS fans know today – i.e., the one that qualifies for the playoffs every single season (which, per one in-house source, is a sportz record). They’ve crossed that threshold with a heavy limp, at times, and more lately than before (i.e., four of the past five seasons). In some ways, that has become the Red Bulls new normal…

Best Season(s)
It’s gotta be one of the three seasons that Red Bull won the Supporters’ Shield, so that’s 2013, 2015 and 2018. All that started with the arrival of France/Arsenal legend Thierry Henry, but he was only around for the 2013 Shield and probably mattered most in terms of creating a culture of success and/or embracing the full potential of having one of the world’s most famous cities (NYC) as a recruitment draw. Only two big-name players were present for all three Shields, both of whom belong on the MLS all-time lists for me: Luis Robles, one of the more underrated goalkeepers in MLS history, and Bradley Wright-Phillips, one of the best pure, poaching goal-scorers the league has ever seen. Midfield machine Dax McCarty deserves honorable mention for being present for two of their Shields, but how much this succession of Red Bull teams rotated and still found good parts to replace the departing ones – e.g., Tim Cahill, Jamison Olave and Tim Cahill in 2013, Damien Perinelle, Sacha Kljestan and (why not?) Mike Grella in 2015, and Aaron Long, Sean Davis and Daniel Royer in 2018 - is more or less the story.

Getting Reacquainted with the Seattle Sounders, the Kristofferson of MLS

Different one, no Streisand.

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

Thumbnail History

Hurts to admit this, but the Seattle Sounders managed to reach second place in terms of all-time success in Major League Soccer (based on the Joy Point Scale; methodology below*) and that’s with nine other teams having a 13-season head-start. They joined in 2009, just the fourth expansion team in the post-contraction era, but took only one season to fall in step with the first two (and their direct rivals), Chivas USA and Real Salt Lake; moreover, Seattle hoisted their first Supporters’ Shield (2014) the season before MLS’s third expansion team, Toronto FC, made the playoffs for the first time. And, in a flourish that feels unintentional in the way Kristofferson just could not stop outdoing Ash (Fantastic Mr. Fox), Seattle snatched its first MLS Cup on Toronto’s home field in 2016 (if in one of the shittiest finals in league history, btw). The Sounders had something gratingly close to a standing invitation to MLS Cup over the next four seasons - and they won two of them (2016 and 2019). Hell, they won U.S. Open Cup in each of their first three season in MLS, and then won it again in 2014, aka, the same season they won the Shield. Bottom line, Sounders fans have never experienced pain, only mild discomfort…the spoiled assholes. Seattle missed the playoffs for the first time (the first!) in 2022.

Best Season(s)

Tough call, but I’m guessing Seattle fans feel more pride about the 2019 team that beat Toronto 3-1 than they do about the one that beat a better version of the same team by the tips of Stefan Frei’s finger-nails in Toronto. Looking at the rosters for 2014 (Shield), 2016 (Cup) and 2019 (Cup) doesn’t give you a lot to work with in terms of tie-breakers. I have answers to all of these questions, but: who do you choose between Kasey Keller and Stefan Frei? Was Chad Marshall really a better defender than Roman Torres, or Xavier Arreaga or Yeimar? Did Obafemi Martins have more upside than Raul Ruidiaz? Then again, what’s the point in arguing about which player is better when all of them worked? Seattle has won eight trophies in its 15 years in MLS, including the league’s first‑ever CONCACAF Champions’ League trophy. So, yeah, hard to say.

Getting Reacquainted with the Los Angeles Galaxy, MLS's Very Own Nora Desmond

No longer ready for their close-up.

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

Thumbnail History

The Los Angeles Galaxy started as the first Buffalo Bills of Major League Soccer. True story. They reached MLS Cup in literally half of the league’s first six seasons only to flop on the biggest stage. Those failures gave them the opposite of stage-fright: the Galaxy became the first dominant team in league history, making the playoffs every season over the first ten years – virtually always in the top 5 too. Hell, one of their “Bills” seasons saw them claim the Supporters’ Shield (1998), but they didn’t have to wait long for their first Cups, either: the first came in 2002 – which they paired with another Shield – then again in 2005. Their fallow seasons – 2006-08 – look like hiccups today because OG LA dominated the first half of the 2010s, chewing up and spitting out one trophy after another. The Galaxy didn’t become the team current fans know until 2017- the same season the Wooden Spoon slapped their bottoms for the one and only time in team history. By now, the glory years have faded enough to where you have to wonder if their fans even remember them. The Galaxy have missed the playoffs in five of the past seven seasons. Worse, they haven’t looked like doing much the two times they didn’t.

Best Season(s)

The Galaxy ran away with their ’98 Shield at a sprint that would have left Usain Bolt’s jaw on the ground, but their best years came between 2009 and 2014, when they won another Shield (2010) and reached MLS Cup four times and won three of them (2011, 2012, 2014; they were runners-up in 2009). Those seasons saw Landon Donovan and Roy Keane running absolute riot up top while absolute rock defenders like Omar Gonzalez and A. J. DeLaGarza held things down at the back in front of a succession of strong goalkeepers (e.g., Donovan Ricketts, Josh Saunders, and the underrated Jaime Penedo). Absolute juggernauts, I tell you, and I still hate them for it. Oh, and they won the CONCACAF Champions’ Cup in 2000, but that shit was so goofy that the Mexican teams didn’t pay it much mind…until 2001.

Long-Term Tendencies

Their very best seasons (1998 and 2014) saw the Galaxy do very well in defense and even better on offense, but they built their best seasons on sturdy defenses and Bruce Arena’s second great run as a head coach. [Sidebar: does anyone know what words or actions cost him the New England gig?] There’s a lot of reverting to the mean on either side of that, but nothing has defined the bad years (2017 to…well, now) like defensive fragility: they’ve been over the league average for goals allowed in six of the past seven seasons.

The "Getting Reacquainted With" [MLS Team] Project, Introduction and (Eventual) Index

[UPDATE: I pulling the plug on this series due to late intelligence that a handful of teams actually post live/archived streams of games from the 2024 preseason. And gods bless them for doing so. It's for the best because the mold on these posts grow furrier with each passing week (a little like the room of my oldest child, despite attempts to preserve with museum exhibit exactitude). I will, however, float some form of preview for my Portland Timbers before the season kicks off and slip a link to that preview where it belongs (at No. 15) in the section full of links. Finally, if you scroll down to the second "UPDATE" section below, I did close out this series in the best possible way for someone who is, admittedly, half-assing it. Wait, seriously? Half-assing isn't a real word yet?] 

This is the first post in an off-season project/series that will ultimately become an index for said series. The broad goal is to look back at the history of every Major League Soccer team that will compete in the 2024 season – the Orchid anniversary, from what I’m told, so get those gifts lined up – with an eye to connecting each team’s past with its present, no matter how short the former is.

If you loved me, I'd have this.

The posts will come out in the order of the teams’ historic success, something I calculated on a loose scale built around what I called “Joy Points.” I’ve been compiling the underlying data for that like a damn lunatic, if with couple tweaks and updates, since the pandemic put the league in hold for the first few months of 2020. At any rate, here’s the foundation for the math, new and old:

Joy Point Index
Winning the CONCACAF Champions’ League: 5 points
Claiming Supporters’ Shield : 4 points
Winning MLS Cup: 3 points
CONCACAF Champions’ League Runner-Up: 3 points
MLS Cup Runner-Up: 2 points
Winning the U.S. Open Cup: 2 points
Winning CONCACAF Champions Cup: 2 points
CONCACAF Champions League Semifinalist: 1 point
Making the Playoffs: 1 point
Missing the Playoffs for the Majority of Seasons: -1 point
Missing Playoffs in 1996-97, 2002-2004 (when 80% of the league qualified): - 2 points
Wooden Spoon: -3 points (a heads up to FC Cincinnati fans...)

I appreciate that this system has flaws, that some people won’t agree with the numerical values I’ve assigned to each accomplishment and failure, but, to translate a little, I based the positives on degree of difficulty and the negatives on the amount of pain. Also, for those unfamiliar with one of the early Frankenstein-esque concepts, the CONCACAF Champions’ Cup – i.e., the regional club tournament from MLS’s 1996 founding to 2008 - was both weird and weighted in MLS’s favor for the first several seasons. Small surprise, then, that Mexican teams commenced to dominating the year after the Los Angeles Galaxy won the 2000 Champions Cup and have only needed to check the rearview in recent seasons.

To acknowledge something that will become obvious as the posts trickle out, yes, that methodolgy does reward some teams for nothing more than being in MLS since Year 1. Going the other way, that same system of credits and debits reveals how the expansion teams that hit the ground running rose to join the cream of the league. Personally, I found the way the numbers shook out in fascinating ways and, for all its faults, I hope other people do too.

So Long, It's Been a Slice: A Meditation on Twitter

Three dudes and a dream that'll never come true. Yep.

[WARNING: This post barely discusses soccer, MLS or otherwise. You’ve been warned, everything after this is on you.]

I’ve been on Twitter long enough to forget how I used to promote posts to a larger public. True story. I know BigSoccer played a role at some point…speaking of, if you wanna see a dead body, visiting BigSoccer is the online equivalent of walking through a graveyard with all the graves dug up and the caskets open.

I doubt Conifers & Citrus could have worked without Twitter. I’m not entirely sure it will work without it, but I’m about to find out.

Like millions of people – a phrase I use with confidence for the first time, btw – I’ve been mulling deleting my twitter since Elon Musk bought it, near as I can tell, as the self-driving car of toilet paper. It’s less stupid than it was last spring, aka, the parade of bad ideas/threats that went on for months – don't know about you, but my first personal “fuck this” came with his two-day experiment with limiting the number of tweets non-subscribers could send or send – but fall roughed it up in its own way, maybe one that’s worse. To strain a metaphor…

I haven’t closed down a bar since my 20s (fine, mid-30s), but Twitter Musk.0 has recreated a Bizarro version of the experience. Some form of desperation defined Twitter from Day 1, obviously, but the tang of it stings the nostrils a little more with each passing week. Over half the likes I get lately come from – I don’t know, bots? lazy marketing for dating/soft-porn sites? – and 75% of the ads sell a slurry of crypto-currency, life-/investment coaching, and the kind of weird shit they used to advertise on late-night TV to lonely people with diminished impulse control. Unlike a bar, Twitter works to keep you in, not kick you out - and they do it appealing to your most lizard-brained fantasies...depressing, comes to mind…

FC Cincinnati 2-3 Columbus Crew SC: The Tragedy of Alvas Powell

From googling "tickle palace."

I don’t know what to call that besides a game that leaves you muttering, “c’mon, not like this.”

Last night, FC Cincinnati ended the best season in its – and I want fans and pundits to linger on this next word – brief history with a devastated and dizzied 2-3 loss at Tickle Palace against its dread rival, Columbus Crew SC.

First and foremost, nothing hit the gut half as hard as the blunt fact that Columbus deserved the win. Outside 15 minutes somewhere during the first part of the second half (sorry, I work real estate law), Columbus ran at a Cincy defense that toggled between adjectives all night: sturdy grew to heroic, before a quick journey through desperate yielded to a word I slipped into the conversation above, i.e., dizzied. One of the twits in the broadcast booth called the Columbus’ first goal a turning point, but I’d argue that the second pointed to where the game would ultimately end up. The only question was whether Columbus could get there before the final whistle turned the game over to soccer’s infamous tiebreaker, aka, the test of wills we all call a coin-flip, aka, the penalty shoot-out.

Columbus beat the whistle, of course, and Cincy didn’t look any better on the third goal they allowed than they did on the second. Or the first, for that matter. They didn’t just get outplayed last night; Cincy got beat. Thinking about what that does for the rivalry is the only positive I can take from the loss…

…going the other way, how dim that fire burns against what could have been had Cincinnati won ugly on the back of Aaron Boupendza putting a little more mustard on his best shot of the night? Back in the real world, Patrick Schulte came good in that moment and, I think most observers would accept that justice was served. However much it hurt to send Timmy upstate…

On a purely personal, slightly petty level, I have a notepad full of tantalizing questions that just went to waste – e.g., do you start Aaron Boupendza or Dominique Badji in the MLS Cup that will never happen? Or, if Obinna Nwobodo can go, do you start him or do you honor continuity and Yuya Kubo’s (sturdy?) service over the past two, three games? And to what percentage of a Nwobodo does that answer apply.

All those questions just got kicked to 2024.