Blood moon insanity on the rise!
We've played seven months, only to enter the final four weeks of the season with the top 12 in the standings separated by a whopping eight points. There are 16 teams within a four-game winning streak of the top spot in the Supporters' Shield race. Five separate teams in the historically brutal Western Conference have exactly 12 losses; four of them are below the red line, but the fifth is in second place. The Sounders, who lost 10 of 13 this summer, are in fourth place with a franchise-worst 13 losses … and are still in a pretty good position to defend last year's silverware.
The New England Revolution have the season's longest winning streak, taking 18 points out of 18 from Aug. 1 to Sept. 16. They also have a tie for the league's longest losing streak, dropping five straight from June 21 to July 11. LA averaged 3.25 goals per game in a perfect, 4-0 August, then were shut out in three straight before bouncing back on Sunday night.
The biggest road win of the year? That was a 5-0 thumping of then-first-place Sporting KC by then-eighth-place San Jose. The second-biggest road win of the year was 4-0 by Colorado over FC Dallas in April, which stopped a record-tying 18-game winless skid. Dallas were also in first place at the time.
This is all by way of saying that I have no idea who the favorite is down the stretch. Anybody can beat anybody else, and that's been shown over and over again during the course of the season.
Onto the games:
1. The Kids Are Alright
MLS is weird, and parity makes it weirder. The one truly consistent and predictable team this season – the Red Bulls – got hammered 5-2 at home on Friday night, five days after an epic, cross-country road victory that seemed to set them up for an autumn stroll into the playoffs. Orlando City got a hat-trick from Cyle Larin, a masterpiece from Kaká and a typically rugged and energetic performance from Cristian Higuita in central midfield.
But they also got precision crossing from Carlos Rivas, who was previously noteworthy for driving more balls into the stands than Mike Trout. This was a weird weekend.
Regardless, Larin stole the show and continued to offer evidence that he's an elite finisher and has the tools to be more. He bullied Matt Miazga physically, and he burned Damien Perrinelle for pace, and the quick release on his shot makes him lethal – he uncoils much faster than most big men, which makes it tough for 'keepers to get a read on where he's going. Even Luis Robles, who is stellar in those situations, seemed to get a late jump on every shot.
The numbers say Larin's finishing will regress some, but I suspect he'll consistently beat expected-goals models because they don't account for "wind-up" time. He's a special talent.
Even with all of that, he may still be the second-best 20-year-old No. 9 on the roster, because Bryan Róchez is superb:
The goal is nicely taken, but the simple, efficient, perfectly weighted pass into Kaká's stride is what makes the play. Róchez, in his brief minutes this season, has shown a knack for that particular skill, and earlier in this one put Rivas in on goal on a very similar play. That type of creative yet understated passing is both difficult to master and essential to being a complete center forward.
"Great," you're thinking if you're an Orlando City fan. "We have these two guys to lead the line next season!"
I'm not so sure that'll be the case. Neither Róchez nor Larin are hybrids, and since this isn't England in 1981 or San Jose in 2012, nobody's going to seriously advocate for trotting two center forwards out there at the same time (there's a reason it hasn't happened yet for Orlando, after all). Picking one to be a back-up sounds fine enough until you do the cap math and realize it means having a big chunk on the bench, and that Kaká can't play under two forwards anymore, and that they'll miss the same international dates, and that Pedro Ribeiro has looked the part of a capable MLS No. 9 as well.
An asset is only an asset if you use it. Orlando have two gigantic, long-term assets in Larin and Róchez, but they can probably use only one at a time.
So over the next month they have to figure out which one they're going to build around and which one they're going to shop this winter. Given the holes all over the rest of the roster and the lack of depth everywhere except center forward, they have plenty of pieces to go looking for. Given the quality of both, they'll have plenty of interested trading partners as well.
2. Won't Get Fooled Again
I sing the praises of good No. 9 play in this space all the time. Permit me, then, to whistle a different tune in praise of both Jason Kreis and Frank Lampard, who've conspired to drag New York City FC into a semblance of contention in recent weeks with an unorthodox tactical look and attacking approach. Their latest victims were the Vancouver Whitecaps, who were dispatched 2-1 on Saturday night thanks to a classic Lampard "trailing run" goal and a couple of pretty dubious penalty calls (one in each direction) at the end.
NYCFC have mostly been playing without a center forward. David Villa lines up as a lone striker, but he primarily drifts wide to the left and avoids the central channel. There's no point in putting him there, since it's just inviting a physical battle he's not likely to win.
Clearing Villa out to the side and holding possession of the ball in the alleys gives Ned Grabavoy, Angelino and Andrea Pirlo a fourth musketeer to combine with as the Light Blues methodically drag the opposing defense out of shape. The knock-on effect of that is … yup, a wide open central channel for Lampard.
He wasn't perfect against Vancouver – his passing is still way off – but he had a ton of the ball at BC Place. Better still, from NYCFC's point of view, is that most of Lampard's service came directly from Pirlo. The Italian maestro found his DP brother in arms 17 separate times from the run of play (indicated by the blue lines below), and the two of them constantly drove the game forward, right up the gut:
It's an identity, and the results say very clearly that it's working. The shame of it, from NYCFC's point of view, is that it took nearly an entire season of stops and starts before the two of these guys were here, healthy and on the same page.
In the interim, they've lost any legitimate chance at a spot in the postseason. If the gang's all here again in 2016, however … well, we should cross that bridge when we get to it.
3. Who Are You
After several months of tinkering the LA Galaxy once again started to look something like what I'd expected of them when Steven Gerrard got here. They've been working their way through several identity crisis-level issues, including figuring out the attacking balance with two very similar front-liners in Robbie Keane and Gio dos Santos; breaking the back line out of their slumber, which is an ongoing project; and – most crucial, I think – getting the midfield balance something close to "correct."
They nailed that last point during Sunday night's 3-2 win over FC Dallas, a game in which the Galaxy finally played something closer to the "Y" midfield that served them so well over the last two seasons. The foundation of that particular midfield shape is that the two central midfielders are stacked, with the deeper midfielder providing coverage and the other offered free rein to advance. Given Gerrard's engine and offensive prowess and Juninho's comfort at the base of the "Y", I thought this was a natural fit.
But LA had abandoned the "Y" since Gerrard's arrival, forcing Juninho into a box-to-box role for which he's not really suited. This made them susceptible to counterattacks and also put them into situations where nobody was really able to drive the ball forward from central midfield. Teams were able to count on just picking off Gerrard's long-balls to the flanks.
The balance is better now:
That's a network passing visualization made using Opta location data from the game. The numbers correspond with the players, and the location of each circle is the aggregate position of each player, while the thickness of the lines between circles represents how many passes they exchanged.
Gerrard is now playing marginally higher than Juninho, who was more conservative in his positioning and, thus, made the Galaxy better.
I don't think it's 100% smooth, becuase Gerrard remains a really difficult player to play next to – throughout his illustrious career, only Xabi Alonso has really managed to figure him out. Juninho's good, but he's not that good.
Nonetheless, the attacking pieces fell at least a little bit into place on Sunday. Unlike Orlando and NYCFC, the playoffs beckon for LA.
A few more things to ponder …
7. I wrote about Sebastian Giovinco and Toronto FC on Saturday followingtheir 3-2 win over the Chicago Fire. Upon review, MLS gave him the goal for this, which I'm flummoxed by.
Whether it's a goal or an assist, though, that's an outrageous bit of skill, and Giovinco is having an outrageous season. He will be the MVP, and he's probably authoring the single greatest individual season in league history.
6. Didier Drogba continues to be a boss. Here he is giving Dilly Duka the Pass of the Week, from Saturday's 2-0 win over D.C. United:
Duka's been energetic and productive, and he had a PotW contender himself later in the game. You could also see him internalize the lesson of his run – which was the wrong, less dangerous run, even though it was directly toward goal – on that pass.
The best part of having world-class players here is watching them make the guys they're playing with smarter. Drogba's obviously raised the level for Montreal in the immediate, but he'll have a profound long-term effect as well, because he'll change the way guys like Duka see the game.
That was Montreal's second win of the week, after they'd handled Chicago 2-1 last Wednesday in a bit of a scrap. The six-point week puts them four points clear of the red line with two games in hand, so the Eastern Conference playoff race is all about seeding, now.
5. Also registering a six-point week? That'd be the Houston Dynamo! They've risen from the dead like a mighty Phoenix to play totally adequate soccer in posting a pair of one-goal home wins, 1-0 over Sporting KC on Wednesday and then 3-2 over Colorado on Saturday.
4. Houston needed to get full points this week because Portland improbablywon on the road at Columbus by 2-1, pulling out of their four-game funk. Darlington Nagbe had a Pass of the Week contender himself on a brilliant, ruthless feed to Fanendo Adi.
More of that, please.
3. That 1-0 loss in Houston was ugly for Sporting, but they followed it up on Sunday with a 1-1 home draw against Seattle, which was a good result given the circumstances. This is good, honest, forward-thinking stuff from Peter Vermes:
At one point, Kansas City had three rookies and three Homegrowns on the field, as well as a couple of other relative youngsters in Mikey Lopez and Jordi Quintilla. Yet they absolutely did not look out of their depth going against a Sounders team comprising World Cup veterans and MLS All-Stars.
That said, Sporting need a backup center forward in the worst way. It'll be interesting to see whether Vermes goes shopping for one overseas or tries to fill that hole through the draft.
2. Another coach who made a tough "other competition" decision was RSL's Jeff Cassar. He chose to bring star playmaker Javier Morales off the bench for the final 25 minutes of his team's midweek CONCACAF Champions League tilt against Santa Tecla and was rewarded with two assists and a 2-1 win.
But in those situations, the risk is always, "Oh God, what if he gets injured in a game that doesn't have anything to do with whether or not we make the playoffs?" Morales, of course, got injured, and missed Sunday's limp 1-0 loss at San Jose.
Hardcore MLS fans have long wanted our teams to take the Open Cup and CCL seriously. We got a double dose of exactly that this past week, but it came at a high cost for the Claret-and-Cobalt, as their postseason dreams are now probably, finally, dead.
1. And finally, our Face of the Week exists in tribute to the performance of the week, which was delivered by Philly 'keeper Andre Blake in the Union's 1-1 draw at New England:
Both the Union and Jamaica are in good hands with Blake for the next decade if they'd just play the kid.
