Another matchday in the books! We’re going to go game-by-game this week, rather than picking out two big sections and spending less time on others. We’ll have a farewell to a legend, both of last year’s MLS Cup finalists laying down a marker, and a match-winner like nothing I’ve ever seen in MLS before (but one we have seen in Liga MX!).
In we go, starting with some Viernes de Fútbol:
This one was marred by one of the most gruesome injuries I can ever recall seeing in MLS, when Orlando ‘keeper Mason Stajduhar came off his line and slid into NYCFC winger Malachi Jones, who was at a full sprint. Both players were carted off with what sure seemed to be broken legs (or maybe an ankle in Jones’ case). I thought it was a clean play by both players – just wildly unlucky.
Hopefully, we can see them make a return to the field next spring. I’d be shocked if it’s any sooner than that.
On balance, the game itself played out how I expected: the Pigeons snapped out of their recent slump by mostly controlling proceedings, created a lot of chances both with the ball and against it (they’re pressing more), and exploited the defensively frail Lions. NYCFC have shown over the past month that they’re not in the same tier as the true elite MLS sides, but they’ve shown over the past three that they’re only one tier below that group.
Orlando, meanwhile, are attacking better out of their 4-4-2 “Y” midfield, but can’t stop anybody. They’re back under the red line and are likely to stay there.
This had all the makings of an utterly forgettable summer matchup between two meh MLS teams that was destined to end in a dispiriting (for both sides) draw. Then, seven minutes into second-half stoppage, this happened:
Poor Luka Gavran gets our Face of the Week.
There have been a few goals like this in MLS history, and in that tweet I undershot in saying that it happens every 5(ish) years – it’s obviously been more common than that. But late match-winners of this sort are exceedingly rare. I could only find two others that happened in the 90th minute or later, and of course one of them also has MLS ties:
That’s Matias Almeyda’s Chivas side beating Puebla late in the 2017 Liga MX Clausura on a goal by Carlos Fierro. Almeyda would, of course, go on to coach the Quakes, and Fierro was one of the guys he brought with him from Mexico.
The hosts found equalizers down both 1-0 and 2-1, then scored in the 89th and 92nd minutes for just their second win in the past two-and-a-half months. They were relentless and ruthless in pressuring the Union’s very, very questionable defense – and yeah, that’s where the Union are now. Until they rediscover the old version of Jakob Glesnes and Jack Elliott, there’s no way out.
“I know what I’ve done at the club,” Union head coach Jim Curtin said in the postgame presser. “I know the highs we’ve had at the club in the last six years. Those are great, but it’s a what have you done for me lately business. There’s always pressure... You have to try to improve and get better…
“Once we get the full slate of guys back I’m confident we’ll have a really strong group, but that’s the reality of the situation right now. There’s always pressure to do better, to find a way to get a win. Right now things are tough.”
Julian Carranza’s transfer to Dutch giants Feyenoord officially went through, by the way. We’ll see if that prompts any Philly additions in the coming window.
Montréal had a season-high 60% possession in this one, and also set season highs in passes per possession sequence and average time per possession sequence. This might just be a function of playing at home against the Union. Conversely, it might be the first seeds of Laurent Courtois' preferred style (his stated preferred style, anyway) germinating a bit.
Montréal have quietly climbed to 10th in the East on 22 points, just two back of Atlanta and Toronto. Orlando (21), Philly (20) and really the entire rest of the conference is right behind them. Nobody’s out yet.
This game finished up a stretch in which Columbus played six of seven on the road. They went 6W-1L-0D with a +14 goal differential, all while juggling a Concacaf Champions Cup run.
In short, it was their toughest stretch of the year, a test they passed with flying colors. They are up to fourth in the East (third in PPG) with at least two games in hand on the teams they’re chasing. They’ve got new additions coming in when the window opens, and Max Arfsten (No. 27 in the clip above, the guy who starts the movement) has been a developmental success of the same level as guys like Patrick Schulte or Aidan Morris.
Look at the bend on this thing:
The guy’s not right-footed!
Back to the Revs: they tried to press, and I don’t blame them for that – the last thing you want to do is let the Crew get comfy playing in the final third, especially when you’re missing Carles Gil. But man is there a gap between these two teams.
Doesn’t mean the Revs are out of it, though! Hell, another four-game winning streak could be right around the corner.
This pass map of D.C.’s passes into the final third (thanks to @MLSStat on Twitter) is one of the funniest graphics I’ve seen all year:
They’ve been a Route 1 team all year, and became only moreso once Cristian Dájome got an early (and soft, I thought) second yellow. It was just a game of long-ball second-ball from that point on for D.C.
And that’s a game RBNY are made to win, especially at home. But I thought they did a poor job of recovering second balls (their makeshift central midfield probably had something to do with that) and DP No. 9 Dante Vanzeir remains manifestly not it. If they are serious about competing at the top of the league, they need to address that spot on the roster when the window opens.
In short: This was a trap game for the Red Bulls. It’s one I think that the half-dozen best teams in MLS win. New York aren’t in that group.
Credit to D.C. for fighting, even without Christian Benteke. They, at least, seemed to recall this was once one of the league’s best rivalries.
It feels weird to say this about a team tied at the top of the Supporters’ Shield race, but: damn, Cincy needed this win.
And it’s not just the fact of the three points, coming, as they did, after last week’s disappointing home loss and in the wake of a pair of injuries to starting center backs Matt Miazga and Nick Hagglund. But it’s the fact that their lines were kept tight and the backline was clean in their distribution and they ended up posting their first shutout in a month-and-a-half. It wasn’t vintage Garys by any stretch, but this team won the Shield last year by stacking 1-0s. They needed to prove they’ve still got that club in the bag.
The other part of the win was Luca Orellano, playing as an inverted right wingback, scoring an absolute banger for the game’s only goal. He has become a match-winning weapon over the past six weeks as he’s settled in, which has lightened the load on Lucho Acosta.
Los Toros Tejanos – who played what I think was a 4-2-3-1 – have now lost two straight after a pair of wins to start the Peter Luccin era. They’re eight points below the red line out West with 14 games left, and it’s all starting to get away from them.
This one played out as expected: The Dynamo had over 65% possession and tried to methodically work their way into chances, even and especially after Ibrahim Aliyu’s early goal. Charlotte played direct basically every time they got the ball and tried very, very hard to get behind Houston’s fullbacks, but to no avail.
By the way, I wrote last week about how good Sebas Ferreira has been on a per-90 basis since entering MLS. Here he is with another match-winning play:
I’ll say again that if he doesn’t fit Ben Olsen’s game model, Houston are in a position to do themselves a world of good re: roster flexibility by flipping this guy within the league when the window opens. An open DP slot and millions in allocation cash would go a long way towards rounding out this team, assuming that Ezequiel Ponce is slated to be the starting No. 9.
Ok, onto the backlines: I’m officially going to note here that Micael is very much in the Defender of the Year discussion. So much of their offset left side in that unorthodox 4-2-3-1 Olsen puts out comes from his comfort in initiating long sequences of possession with his pinpoint (if not adventurous) distribution. I don’t think any defender in the league has been better or more valuable than him this year, and while a lot of it is “just get the ball to Héctor Herrera,” doing that quickly and accurately is basically the definition of creating value with the ball from the backline.
I think if we were going to hand out that award right now, he’d be my choice.
That said, if anybody’s got an argument against him, it’s the two guys who lined up across from him in this game. Charlotte’s got a really good defensive foundation.
Two of the best defensive teams in the league, really, but two very different game models. This was one for the tactical sickos.
Sporting played with a bit of life for one of the few times all year - Stephen Afrifa is a keeper, and that final ball from Johnny Russell was gorgeous – and were just superior in all facets of the game against free-falling Austin. I think this was pretty clearly KC’s best all-around performance of the season.
As for the Verde, who mostly didn’t show up… they’ve finally dropped below the red line and have now won just once in their past seven. That’s the kind of bad news.
Here’s the catastrophically bad news: they have by far the toughest remaining schedule in the league with 12 of their final 13 games against current playoff teams. On paper this was maaaaaaybee their easiest game of the year, and certainly their easiest remaining road game.
Three of their next four before the Leagues Cup starts are at home. If they can get five or six points from that, they’ll be in good shape to keep fighting down the stretch. Any less than that, though, and there’s probably not much of a path to the postseason.
I picked Miami to win the Shield for two reasons:
- They have Lionel Messi.
- When they don’t have Lionel Messi, they still have enough talent to do this:
I’ve repeatedly called them the deepest team I’ve ever seen in MLS, and their performance over the past few weeks without Messi, Luis Suárez and Mati Rojas, and while getting guys like Federico Redondo and Diego Gómez back to full fitness, and while missing Toto Avilés due to injury, has more thoroughly validated that view than I could possibly have hoped for.
I still don’t think they’re playing as well as either Columbus or LAFC – even with Sergio Busquets running the show from the backline they didn’t boss this game with the ball the way I think they need to. But that just makes it scarier because they haven’t hit peak form.
Nashville continue to be pretty good and more front-foot under interim manager Rumba Munthali, but they badly need to get a midfield ball-progressor in the summer window, and with Sam Surridge now lining up primarily as a target left winger (he’s pretty good there!), they probably need to go shopping for a No. 9.
The Rapids had a chance to make a statement in this game. They’ve been one of the league’s best stories this year under Chris Armas, as they’ve been able to integrate a host of new players and institute a front-foot, all-energy, attacking game model.
And look, they got thumped. 3-0 was only slightly unfair, if it was unfair at all. The Black & Gold are a much better team.
But also, I was impressed with how Colorado played for most of the first half, and then for the first 20 minutes of the second before Kévin Cabral’s needless red card. They didn’t look like a team just completely out of their depth; they looked more like a team that was figuring out what it takes to perform at the level of the best teams in the league. And taking a lump or three along the way.
Which is to say that they never dropped their line catastrophically low, and that the game didn’t truly get out of hand until they went down to 10 men.
LAFC are just a different level, though, and Mateusz Bogusz’s development is one of the biggest inflection points in the league this year. The 2023 version of the Black & Gold simply didn’t have enough firepower behind Denis Bouanga. This year’s version has a do-everything attacker who’s shown his comfort playing out of midfield, up front as a false 9 or, in this one, coming in from the wing to score a hat-trick.
Note, above, that it’s a true target man, Kei Kamara, setting up Bogusz’s third. LAFC have now outscored opponents 10-2 in Kei’s 245 minutes over the past few weeks, and it’ll be Olivier Giroud - one of the all-time great target men - playing that spot by the end of the month.
LAFC are unbeaten in nine and have one loss in the past three months.
The Timbers rallied from 2-0 down at home to win in pretty, pretty dramatic fashion – their third on the trot, which pushes their unbeaten streak to seven games. And this isn’t an aberration, as they’ve won the xG battle in five of those seven, and did so convincingly on Saturday night.
Manager Phil Neville chalks it up to (mostly) vibes, and I am not going to argue after that win.
“What I've seen over the last month is a team that, when we finish training, stay out and sit together for 40 minutes, 50 minutes, and they don't want to go off the pitch. And that's not manufactured. That's not organizing a team night out in Portland and forcing them to go – it's these players like each other, like spending time together,” Neville said.
“I always think it's a really good gauge of a team when there are friendships and bonds appearing as a brotherhood, appearing and developing. And that's more important than any system that we're going to play.”
Here is a big chunk of the good vibes:
That was basically Dairon Asprilla’s final act as a Timber - he’s headed back home to Colombia to play for Atlético Nacional this week after a pretty legendary (I am not being facetious here; cult heroes like Dairon are the stuff that club culture is made of) decade in MLS, which includes one of the most outrageous skill moves I’ve ever seen and one of the most outrageous goals in MLS history.
I will miss him. I hope, for Portland’s sake, his departure does not diminish the vibes.
For Minnesota, losers of four straight, the issue is more than vibes. The issue is that the two players at the locus of where virtually all value on the pitch culminates are the center forward and the goalkeeper, and right now they’re playing without their starting No. 9 or their starting goalkeeper, and the drop-off has been steep.
There are other issues as well. I think Eric Ramsay needs to rethink the team shape, and there’s an obvious need for midfield quality in the transfer window.
But the one-line takeaway is this is a team without its match-winners, and it’s showing.
Was I tempted to make Gabriel Pec’s gorgeous trivela’d assist on Joseph Paintsil’s opener our Pass of the Week? Of course. But thanks to my buddy Charles Boehm for finding an even better submission:
There’s been some swirling debate this week – which I took part in on This is MLS – about Riqui’s role (or lack thereof, since he was out via injury) in the Galaxy’s three-match winning streak. The simple fact is that, for as gifted as Riqui is, he’s wildly undisciplined in his movement, which often compromises LA’s shape in rest defense. That in turn makes them more vulnerable on the counter, which has been the bane of the Galaxy’s existence for a long, long time.
Sacha Kljestan started the debate last week on MLS 360, and it’s safe to say Riqui noticed:
The point Sacha made, and that both Taylor Twellman and I agreed with on Wednesday, wasn’t that Diego Fagúndez is a better player than Puig, but that the simple and structured way he’s played as Riqui’s stand-in has made things more straight-forward for the Galaxy defensively and that, at least in the short term, the team has benefitted.
So it’s worth noting that this is what Puig’s heat map looked like for the final 35 minutes on Saturday night:
He still drops deep at times, but the vast majority of his touches are in the middle channel, and many of them are in Zone 14 (he’s sometimes allergic to Zone 14 because he’d rather drop deep and orchestrate than push up and attack). And in his 35 minutes he helped LA break open a tight, 1-0 game and turn it into a 3-0 rout.
This is what the Galaxy need him to be. It’s not a swing skill, so much – it’s never a skill issue with Riqui – but a swing mentality, I guess. And it’s just as important as, say, Bogusz continuing to finish for LA, or one of the center backs stepping up in terms of orchestration for Miami, or Columbus finding the right answer to replace Aidan Morris.
If Riqui buys into a more circumscribed role for himself, he’ll be a better player and the Galaxy will be a better team, one that operates at the same level as the trio I just mentioned.
As for San Jose: I still think they’re much better than their record, but they don’t really have a d-mid, and the defense has been not great, and goalkeeper has been an open wound all year long. It’s a tough combo, and interim manager Ian Russell has his work cut out for him.
To put numbers to it: The Galaxy picked up more points in the past two weeks than the Quakes have managed all year long.
Seattle’s first half was probably their worst of the year, while their final 30 minutes was maybe their best display of the season.
That’s good. They needed no less than the full three points in this one – three points that pushed them above the red line on both points and PPG.
But if there was a moment that gave Sounders fans some real, high-level hope for the rest of the season, it was this:
That’s DP winger Pedro de la Vega (sorry there’s no replay; there was a power outage that led to massive technical difficulties with the broadcast) finally looking healthy and finally doing what he was brought to town to do: beat defenders off the dribble in isolation and get into the most valuable spots on the pitch. Seattle have badly – so, so badly – needed this dose of 1v1 inventiveness in their squad for the past two years, but de la Vega’s been literally hamstrung for the vast majority of the season.
He’s finally healthy and has worked his way into enough fitness to play 15 minutes. That little play right there was the first time in 2024 he’s looked to have real burst, and showed that top-end dribbling ability we’ve all seen only in his Lanús clips.
It he’s able to bring that week after week, the Sounders will be a good bet to continue their climb.
The Fire are bottom of the East for another week.
And finally, Brian White’s second-half hat-trick peeled Vancouver off the mat and powered a massive comeback, turning a 2-0 deficit into a massively needed 4-3 home win.
I can’t get over this goal:
“Yeah, definitely a bit of luck…I was trying to bring the ball with me,” White said. “Fortunately, it hit off my heel and went over him [St. Louis goalkeeper Ben Lundt]. Take what we can get, right?”
Ok, so he didn’t really mean it. But the third goal – the one manager Vanni Sartini called “a Brian White masterclass” – was certainly by design:
That kind of decisive movement into the soft spot between opposing center backs, done in conjunction with crisp and precise movement of the ball into the half-spaces, is something we haven’t seen a lot of over the past two months from Vancouver, who came into this game with just two wins in the previous 10. White’s last goal came at the very start of that stretch, so obviously yeah, his struggles go hand-in-hand with what we’ve all seen from the ‘Caps the past two months.
I want to note a thing: both Ranko Veselinovic and Tristan Blackmon seem to have, at least temporarily, lost their starting jobs. I don’t know if that presages a summer move (transfer or trade), but if those guys are suddenly available, I have to imagine there’ll be significant interest.
Give St. Louis credit, by the way. They fought, but are just so undermanned against even mid-table teams. The roster-build was already an issue this year, and has become more of one as injuries and absences have taken their toll.
