I’m back from my little vacation and ready to dive back in. Today we’ll be talking about things falling apart in Philly, an Orlando team that’s starting to find its way, things getting good again in Cascadia and a crowded Supporters’ Shield race with one team starting to distinguish themselves – even though they’re not atop the thing just yet.
Let’s start there. In we go:
It was a rematch of last year’s MLS Cup, and it was billed as a heavyweight matchup between two titans. By the underlying numbers, LAFC entered Saturday night’s contest as the very best team in the league and had the 10-game unbeaten run to prove it. By those same underlying numbers, the Crew were second-best and had won eight of their past nine with a +20 goal differential in that span.
And at the end of the night, LAFC were a corpse. Columbus battered the West leaders from about the 10-minute mark onwards, crushing them on set pieces, running them to death on the break, suffocating them with their press, and, as always, cutting them into a thousand pieces with a thousand beautiful, little passes.
It finished 5-1, and it is as comprehensive a win by one truly excellent team over another as I can remember in recent MLS history, and it clearly stung LAFC manager Steve Cherundolo.
“Columbus was better in every moment of the game tonight. Hats off to them. They played a fantastic game and they deserved to win,” Cherundolo said afterward. “But for us, it was obviously super disappointing for our fans, and we don’t want to ever present ourselves like that again at home. I don’t think we ever have.
“Sometimes it’s better to get it all out in one game. I’d rather lose 5-1 once than 1-0 four or five times. So, in that sense, we can try to learn from it, forget it, move on and continue in a winning way. But certainly, there was some things tonight that can’t ever repeat themselves.”
Some of the stuff Cherundolo was talking about were simple turnovers when playing out of the back – truly bad moments from a team that’s had so very few of them over the past three months. I think he’s right to say “learn from it and move on.” His players know better, and will be better next time.
Other stuff, though, is just dealing with the Crew’s unique brand of soccer in this league. And there’s a good chance that anybody who wants to win either Leagues Cup or MLS Cup is going to have to solve for come pretty complex issues:
You can ignore the first 15 seconds of the clip if you want (though you shouldn’t, as that kind of east-west possession along the backline is designed to open up passing lanes into or even through the half-spaces, as LAFC learned to their detriment in MLS Cup) and focus only on the play once left wingback Max Arfsten gets the ball on his foot.
What then unfolds is the Crew’s nominal No. 9 drops deep to play what looks certain to be a 1-2 with the wingback, but instead is a disguised 1-2 with one of the halfspace merchants. That misdirection sucks in three LAFC defenders: Cucho, upon completion of the 1-2 with Diego Rossi, then engages a fourth by taking an extra touch to draw in left center back Jesús Murillo, which opens a clear path into the primary assist zone for Arfsten, who is now on the ball at a sprint.
Meanwhile, Columbus’s other halfspace merchant, who is actually a true No. 9, is ghosting into the golden zone between the weak side center back – who’s shaded toward Arfsten since Cucho sucked in Murillo – and the weak side fullback, who’s afraid to sell out tracking Christian Ramírez since doing so would leave the back post open for one of the Crew’s patented wingback-to-wingback goals.
Checkmate. Goal. And the floodgates opened.
I need to stress that nobody plays like this in MLS. Hell, there are few teams in the entire world that are so beautifully ruthless with the ball while being so precise and inventive in their movement off and of it. It is all the world of soccer as manager Wilfried Nancy has made it.
“This is not about expectation. I don't believe in expectation. I believe in standards,” Nancy said in the aftermath of his club’s best win of the year. “We have a standard performance, and this is what they did."
That quote goes so damn hard.
As do the Crew themselves, who are clearly set on doing something most had felt was not possible in this era of MLS: going on a deep Concacaf Champions Cup run in the spring, and following it up with a Supporters’ Shield campaign through the summer and fall. They are now up to sixth in the Shield standings, but are actually third in PPG (fractionally behind Cincy and Miami) with two games in hand, and are first by a mile in goal differential at +26.
That’s not how any of this is supposed to work. Teams that empty the tank going after continental glory usually die in the aftermath. Columbus have, instead, merely started playing the best ball in their club’s history – and this while figuring out a new partner for Darlington Nagbe deep in that midfield after Aidan Morris was sold.
I picked Miami to win the Shield ahead of the year. I’m sticking with that pick because they have Lionel Messi, and the next time they take the field he will likely be on it wearing their colors. And look, the only MLS team to have beaten Columbus in the past two months was a Messi-less Inter side (though I would argue that was an extremely high variance outcome given the way that game played out). So it’s not like the Crew are invincible.
But man, it’s hard to watch this performance on Saturday and come away with any other opinion than Columbus are the favorites, and maybe even heavy favorites at that. Ones that, right now, seem to be going places no MLS team has been before, second star to the right.
“I am limitless,” Nancy said in the postgame. “I want to be limitless.”
His team seems to feel the same way.
I don’t think there was a bigger play all night than Kristijan Kahlina’s stop of Lucho Acosta’s penalty attempt in the 48th minute of Charlotte’s eventual 3-1 win at FC Cincinnati. The Crown had raced out to a 2-0 lead inside 25 minutes, with Cincy pulling one back just before the half.
Then a handball, and then Lucho stepped up. It felt like a foregone conclusion – after that rough first half-hour the Garys had found the accelerator, and if you’d asked me at that point what the final score would be, I’d have said something like 4-2 Cincy. Kahlina had other ideas:
Afterward, Kahlina told local reporters he let Adilson Malanda choose which way he should dive, and “then it was up to me to put pressure on Acosta with mind games so he really shoots there.”
Seems like an All-Star-caliber play to me.
A few minutes after that, Luca Orellano nearly equalized himself with a left-footed blast after cutting in (he was playing as an inverted halfspace merchant in a 3-4-2-1) onto his stronger foot, but that was correctly ruled off for a clear offside at the start of the attacking sequence.
And with that, Cincy’s momentum fizzled and Charlotte regained… I’m not going to say “the upper hand.” They’re not a team that takes the game by the scruff of the neck and makes it theirs. They don’t really play with an upper hand.
Instead, I’d say Charlotte operate at their best with a methodical comfort punctuated with moments of ruthless opportunism. It can be especially apparent in how they carry themselves when protecting a lead – and for whatever reason it had gone missing in this one after those wonderful first 25 minutes.
Then Kahlina performed his heroics and the comfort level came back. 2-1 turned into 3-1 and nearly turned into 4-1 if not for another (correct) VAR decision.
In the end it ended up being Charlotte’s best win of the year so far (the other contender is a 2-0 over the Crew in March, though that was 1) at home, and 2) when Columbus were smack in the middle of that CCC run). Kahlina was a star; Malanda and Andrew Privett did just enough in central defense; Ashley Westwood picked up three assists threading passes into the channels for the Crown’s surfeit of pacey attackers.
This really was Charlotte at their best. Manager Dean Smith was practically glowing afterwards in the postgame presser.
“[Cincinnati’s] front three try to take care of the middle of the pitch and their wingbacks have to come from a long way to get to our fullbacks, so we wanted to play them a lot lower, get a quick ball to them, and then, you know, when the wingback is actually coming in, we can drag the center half out and we’ve got space in behind,” is how Smith described his team’s gameplan. “That ball inside them, to play into [space], that caused them lots of problems.”
None of Charlotte’s goals actually came off that exact sequence, but the consistent, high-level threat that kind of build-out presented had Cincy dislocated in a lot of their own attacking movements through midfield. And with that dislocation came frustration, and with frustration setting in they began to press a little bit and take chances – like hucking a throw-in at a deep midfielder surrounded by two opposing defenders – that they’re normally too savvy to risk.
Oops.
And that is the real story of how Charlotte are a solid sixth in the East: They’re reliably good at creating space in behind, and they have midfielders committed to playing that ball quickly and accurately. They have a very good defense and an excellent goalkeeper.
They are a clear playoff team. I’m not sure they’re a threat to move much higher than their current spot – the five teams above them, including Cincy, have the Crown beat on pure talent. But the window opens this week and moves will be made, at which point they can perhaps reach beyond what is expected of them. Again.
Between now and then they head to Columbus on Wednesday night (7:30 pm ET | MLS Season Pass). The Crown have already made one statement this week. If they can make another, this will go down as by far the best four-day stretch in this young club’s history.
12. Cristian Dájome came back from suspension with a brace in D.C.’s much-needed 2-1 home win over Nashville, a scoreline that fairly accurately reflected the balance of the game.
The dub ended a brutal 11-game winless skid for United, one that stretched back to early May. And remarkably, United finished the weekend just three points behind Nashville for the final play-in spot, though Nashville do have a game in hand.
After a good start to the post-Gary Smith era, the ‘Yotes have now lost four straight. This team badly needs a talent infusion when the window opens later this week, and that might not be enough as they still, after all these years, can not defend set pieces. I have never been able to figure out why.
11. CF Montréal are very much in the race for a postseason berth following their 1-0 home win over Atlanta United. And the game’s only goal was as pretty as a picture:
As the tweet says, that’s a very Crew-y goal. And on the night Montréal were at a Crew-ish 62% possession, which they did a good job of turning into 17 shots worth 1.9 xG. This was a very, very promising performance.
Atlanta looked mostly cooked even before Stian Gregersen saw red in the 55th minute. They’ll obviously be one of the busier teams when the window opens at the end of the week, and they need it.
10. Toronto snapped their six-game losing streak thanks to another late meltdown from Philly. This time Jack Elliott was the culprit as he first scored an own goal in the 74th minute, then hit an ill-advised (to put it mildly) right up the gut for the Reds to pick off and ram down the Union’s throat for the 2-1 final.
"We found ways to make mistakes and get punished for them,” Philly boss Jim Curtin said afterward. “We have become very fragile."
It’s become a weekly occurrence, and that’s shocking to see from a group that had been so resilient up until this season.
They’re now dead last in the East on both points and PPG. TFC, who parted ways with club president (and architect of the current roster) Bill Manning midweek, got their heads back above water into 8th.
9. Just ahead of them in seventh? That’d be Orlando City, who got a pair of goals from Facu Torres and a capper from Ramiro Enrique for a come-from-behind 3-1 win over the Revs – Orlando’s first ever in Foxborough.
It’s happened quickly for the Lions, who are now 4W-1L-1D in their past six games. The first three of those outings came with a new shape, the old 4-4-2 with a Y midfield that Bruce Arena used to such great effect a decade ago in Carson. The past three, though, have come in the standard 4-2-3-1 that has been Oscar Pareja’s default since basically Day 1 as a manager in MLS.
What’s changed? Well, for one they’ve at least temporarily stopped making catastrophic mistakes at the back. And for two…. Would you believe that Martín Ojeda, who was in the 96th percentile of chance creation in his final year in Argentina, and who had 10 assists in limited minutes for Orlando last year, and clearly has the best eye for the final ball of anybody on the team is actually good when played as a No. 10? Imagine!
He’s No. 11 in that graphic, starting in the middle of the “3” line in the 4-2-3-1. Ojeda’s tendency to operate in the left half-space opens up room for Torres, who wears the No. 10 but isn’t a 10 by any stretch, to come inside from the right wing and attack directly at goal.
Ojeda has 2g/2a in his past four games. Facu has 3g/3a.
I don’t know why it took Pareja so long to do what I thought was the obvious thing (way back in January I was writing about how Ojeda should be this team’s No. 10), but now that he finally has and the results are good, I can’t imagine there’s any going back.
8. NYCFC earned a road point with a semi-rotated squad thanks to a scoreless draw in Chicago.
They have been a less dangerous team over the past three games since moving Santi Rodríguez out of the No. 10 role and out onto the wing. Part of this is squad rotation during the busiest time of the year, but part of it is clearly that Nick Cushing doesn’t currently rate either Talles Magno or Julián Fernández, a pair of young wingers who haven’t been able to play their way through the rough patches (Magno seems to have been entirely frozen out) and into roles of any significance.
7. After nearly a decade in the league Jordan Morris is finally a center forward, and so far the results are very good: he’s got nine goals in his past 11 games, including the winner in Seattle’s 1-0 at Austin on Saturday night.
I’m giving Obed Vargas our Pass of the Week for making the play happen, as this ability to drive the game forward out of deep-central midfield adds a level of unpredictability and dynamism the Sounders have often lacked over the past few years:
Seattle have now won four on the trot and have lost just once in their past 10. And they’re getting healthy, as Pedro de la Vega was able to start and go 45 minutes (he was a planned halftime sub), while Morris and Albert Rusnák were rested for the first half.
Vargas has grabbed a starting spot with both hands, while fellow academy products Reed Baker-Whiting and Paul Rothrock have earned more prominent roles.
The big question mark is Raúl Ruidíaz, who missed the game with an injury. The DP legend is no longer a starter, and you don’t need a degree in reading tea leaves to suss out that he hasn’t been happy about it. He’s in the final six months of his contract. Will he accept the role of super-sub from here on out, or is there another solution coming?
Austin are now below the playoff line, 10th in the West. They travel to Dallas on Wednesday and then, after that, every single game they have left this season – all 10 of them – are against current playoff teams.
It is the hardest schedule in the league, an absolute woodchipper. I don’t see a way for them to climb back up the ladder.
6. That Dallas team Austin will be visiting on Wednesday won again on Saturday night – a fairly comprehensive 2-0 win over the Galaxy in which they damn near entirely snuffed out the visitors’ high-powered attack.
Since parting ways with Nico Estévez and giving the reins to interim manager Peter Luccin, los Toros Tejano are 4W-3L-0D, which has pulled them up to 11th in the West – just four points behind 10th-place Austin and ninth-place Minnesota (who hold the tiebreaker).
I looked into the underlying data and there hasn’t been much structural change. Dallas are still having roughly as much of the ball as before, and are defending a little bit deeper. They advance upfield at roughly the same pace, and allow the same PPDA (a rough measure of how hard teams press).
The big change seems to be individual errors. Over the first 16 games, Dallas committed a bunch. Over the past seven, not so much. Add in Petar Musa settling in and getting hot and Nkosi Tafari rediscovering who he was last year, and Dallas are a compelling bet to be a problem down the stretch.
The Galaxy have now lost two of three and looked punchless without Dejan Joveljic to lead the line. Before the Leagues Cup starts they have two home games left against teams creeping up directly behind them in the standings. If they take care of business this week they’ll have plenty of breathing room and sites firmly set on homefield advantage in the first round of the playoffs.
5. Those teams doing the creeping are Colorado and Portland, and we’ll go with the Rapids first: They had a disappointing 1-1 home draw against the Red Bulls in the Chris Armas Derby.
To put it simply, they lacked the final third incisiveness of Djordje Mihailovic, who was released to join the US Olympic team. On the left, courtesy of @MLSStat, are Colorado’s final third passing numbers, while on the right are RBNY’s:
- Passes into final 1/3: 34 - 24
- Passes in final 1/3: 103 - 56
- Passes into opp. box: 10 - 9
Ten box entries on 103 final third passes is low – they were 15 on 80 last matchday, and 15 on 93 the one before that.
The Rapids were still good in this game, and on balance, I thought they had the better of play. It’s just hard to win in any league if you’re missing your best creator, the guy who turns possession into moments of magic.
The Red Bulls were missing their version of that guy as well, as Emil Forsberg is on the shelf for a while. So this was a truly excellent point, and manager Sandro Schwarz deserves a ton of credit for mixing things up with a 5-4-1 and an extremely low block.
By the way, remember when I mentioned Roko Simic for RBNY back in January? It might be coming around.
4. Portland, meanwhile, absolutely demolished RSL by a 3-0 scoreline at home, giving the Timbers five wins in their past six, and a record of 8W-2L-2D in their past 12. This was the first time all year I’ve seen a team really rip RSL apart – just put them on the back foot and make them scramble time and time again. Watch this second goal:
That is desperation defense with no answer for what the Timbers are laying down in attack.
Manager Phil Neville deserves a lot of credit for building what’s become an outrageously fun team, as overall only Miami, Columbus and the RSL team they just stuffed into the trash are scoring more goals per game than Portland's 2.0. And over this 12-game run it’s climbed to 2.25.
The main reason for things starting to click is that the pieces in the front four all fit together (and are doing so happily). That’s meant Portland’s fullbacks, who both love to attack, can and do stay lower than they had been. That has the effect of making them a better defensive team. Which means the attackers can push forward with more gusto.
It’s a positive feedback loop, and RSL got caught in the blender for this one. Portland are up to fifth in the West on points, though still sit sixth in PPG.
3. It’s actually Vancouver who are fourth in the West in PPG after an emphatic 4-1 win at St. Louis behind more excellence from Ryan Gauld and Brian White. This game concluded a stretch in which the ‘Caps played five of six on the road, and after losing the first two of those roadies they went 2W-0L-1D over the final three, with a home win thrown in as well.
The big change after a listless spring has been, well, White and Gauld. Before this recent run, White had only been getting about 3.5 box touches per game. Over the past four games that’s climbed to five per game, which is nearly at his 2023 number (White has seven goals in that span).
As for Gauld, through the first four months of the season he was just about hitting his expected pass numbers, completing 74.7% of his attempts out of an expected accuracy of 74.8% across the middle and attacking thirds. Since then he’s completing 80.1% of his passes on 73.9% expected pass completion. He is, in other words, playing more aggressive, vertical passes, and is absolutely diming White (and Fafà Picault) up.
White has 12g/2a on the season, while Gauld is at 9g/9a. Both guys are ahead of last year’s pace, when they were arguably the league’s most exciting attacking duo.
2. Sporting KC picked themselves up off the mat a few weeks ago and, following their 2-1 win at San Jose, have now won three of four.
I am going to hold my powder on reading anything into this yet despite Sporting now sitting just seven points below the playoff line in the West. San Jose remain dead last and, at this point look like a mortal lock to claim the Wooden Spoon.
1. And finally our Face of the Week goes to Minnesota United head coach Eric Ramsay, who still seems stunned that his team figured out a way to leave the opponent’s red-hot DP No. 9 wide open on a late set piece:
Ramsay told reporters after the match that while his Loons are among the best in the league on attacking set pieces, as per internal numbers they are the very worst defending them. That was basically the entire story in what was a good 1-1 draw at Houston, a result that kept both teams just above the red line.
Sebastián Ferreira, the aforementioned red-hot DP No. 9, was the hero once again for the Dynamo. He’s now got 4g/1a in his past four games, and it’ll be very interesting to see if manager Ben Olsen figures out a way to put him and new DP Ezequiel Ponce into the same XI.
