This will be a game of opposites. The LA Galaxy and New England Revolution are vastly dissimilar teams, and that usually makes for interesting games. I'm guessing that's what this year's MLS Cup (Sunday, 3 pm ET; ESPN | ESPN Deportes | UniMas | Univision Deportes | TSN1 | RDS2 | WatchESPN) will be.
Here's the main subtext for this entire game: LA want to have the ball as much as possible. The Revs, on the other hand, don't give a damn about possession.
Here's what to expect:
Have Ball, Keep Ball
LA were third in the league in overall possession this season at 55.4 percent. More to the point, though, is that they led the league in total passes, which explains a great deal about how they play.
For comparison's sake: Sporting KC led the league in possession (57 percent) because they were so good at turning you over on your first or second pass, then stringing together three or four of their own, which is the hallmark of a high pressure team in the Bielsa era.
The Galaxy are different. They don't go as hell bent for leather to force early turnovers, instead trying to shape your outlets, force you to play up blind alleys, and then win the ball before you get close to creating danger. Then once they have it, they don't give it back.
To put it into British broadcaster parlance, this is "keep-ball."
That's a 26-pass sequence leading to a goal, which was the longest in MLS since Opta began tracking the league back in 2011. Obviously not every Galaxy goal is like that, but just as obviously they've been able to regularly build goals through 10-to-15-pass movements that most other teams in the league can't emulate.
So they're slower to force turnovers than the Revs, but they're also slower to give the ball back. As a result, their games have fewer possessions in them than anybody else's in MLS.
