Welcome to September. We’ve got just about a month left of this 29th MLS regular season.
In we go:
Finally some proof of life from the Five Stripes, who went to Charlotte and put together one of their best all-around performances of the season. Yes, it was just a 1-0 win, and yes, it was mostly a solo effort that provided the difference:
But there was a pace and clarity with which they played that’s been missing for most of the season. Part of that could be the desperation of being in a fight for their playoff lives; part of it could be the effect of new DP No. 10 Alexey Maranchuk.
I’m going to borrow a scouting report from my buddy J. Sam Jones – maestro of the Kick-Off newsletter I’m sure you all subscribe to – on what he’s seen from the Russian thus far: “Good understanding of space, gets the ball off his feet quickly and the rest of the team is responding to it and following suit. Really decent chance the team as a whole is better with him than [Thiago] Almada.”
It’s the “gets the ball off his feet quickly” bit that matters here, as too often this season there’s been a ponderousness to Atlanta’s play. On Saturday that was nowhere to be found, even on sequences (like the goal above) in which Miranchuk wasn’t directly involved.
Charlotte have lacked that decisiveness for most of the summer, and are now just 1W-4L-4D across all competitions since June 30. As they’ve tried to morph from “stay compact and hit opportunistically” to “have the ball more and be dangerous with it,” they’ve lost their identity.
A brief list of the happy outcomes here for Cincy:
• The reconstituted backline with Miles Robinson in the middle of the three center backs looked promising.
• They got four on the board without Lucho Acosta, which means Lucho will have gotten three weeks of rest for his aching feet by the time he takes the field next.
• A goal from Kevin Kelsy, the big Venezuelan’s first in months.
• Another solid rep as a playmaker from Dado Valenzuela.
• 70 more minutes of integration from Niko Gioacchini.
You couldn’t have asked for much more from this one.
Montréal, by the way, are cooked. They’re playing for 2025.
Fifteen minutes into this one, with the scoreboard reading 1-0 and the possession bar reading 70-30, both in favor of the Pigeons, I was ready to call this one a trap game. Columbus had just won the Leagues Cup, and then followed it up by winning in Philly for the first time in nearly a decade – despite playing a fully rotated squad – and so of course this was the one in which they’d let their guard down.
Two minutes after I alllllllllllllmost sent that tweet, Diego Rossi equalized, and the Crew came alive. They went on to be the better team for the game’s final 70 minutes, but still needed a bit of a gift to collect all three points:
DeJuan Jones is playing as a wingback there, but in Wilfried Nancy’s system, wingbacks sometimes end up finishing one-time from within the 6. He understands the assignment more completely with every outing.
Anyway, NYCFC are a good team, and they’ve done a nice job of creating depth as the year has gone along. But there is a sizeable gap between a “good team” and the level the Crew are at right now.
Massive injury news from this one to keep an eye on: Matt Freese, who’s been the best ‘keeper in the league this year, had to be subbed off with an apparent knee injury. No word yet on the severity, but non-contact injuries always make me queasy.
I pointed out in this column, just over a month ago following a 3-1 win over Cincy, that even when the Red Bulls win, they’re still showing a penchant for allowing too much space between their lines of defense and central midfield.
Now listen to Danny Higginbotham’s spot-on commentary following Tai Baribo’s goal:
This is an ongoing concern for RBNY, who now have just one win (that dub over Cincy) in the past two months across all competitions.
Philly are very much going in the other direction. Yes, they lost to Columbus midweek, but 1) everybody loses to Columbus these days, rotated squad or not, and 2) they actually played well in that game. It was pretty obvious if they bottled that effort and brought it with them for the rest of the season, they’d start stacking wins.
Doing so in Harrison, where RBNY was yet to lose this season, wasn’t something I’d thought was in the cards. But that’s the level the Union have reached right now, as they’ve gone 6W-2L-2D across all competitions in their past 10 games, with both of those losses coming against the Crew.
They're still below the playoff line, a point behind Atlanta, and they have a very difficult remaining schedule. But still, I’d be surprised if we don’t see them in the postseason.
The Lions took care of business, sending Nashville to their eighth straight loss in regular-season play and giving themselves a bit of breathing room above the play-in fray. They’re now in seventh on 37 points, with Toronto in eighth on 33 and Atlanta ninth on 31. It would surprise me if Orlando, who are now 6W-2L-3D with a +12 goal differential across all comps since Martín Ojeda moved into the starting No. 10 role, fell back into that group.
Ojeda picked up another assist – this one via his pressing! – and now has 3g/5a in those 11 games as a No. 10. More importantly, Facu Torres got himself a brace, and he’s got at 6g/5a in that same 11-game stretch.
Oscar Pareja came to it late, but he eventually landed on the right mix in the attack.
Nashville head coach B.J. Callaghan can only dream of that kind of production from his best players. The ‘Yotes have actually shown some signs of life in terms of their ball progression and getting to good spots over the past couple of weeks, but they have been miserable in both boxes. Like Montréal, I’m pretty sure they’re cooked.
I’d expected to list D.C. among the cooked as well, but they instead rallied late for a massive, season-prolonging win up on Lake Ontario. They finished the weekend in 11th, just two points back of Atlanta.
I’m still trying to wrap my head around the timing of Toronto’s movements on this attempted build-out sequence, which led to Dom Badji’s winner:
Columbus do something close to this sequence about a dozen times a game, and the difference isn’t individual skill; it’s collective patience. The Crew use the ball to drag opposing defenders both upfield and a step or three out of position. They don’t hurry through the dance steps, but rather let the moment unfold. Their timing is precise.
Not the Reds. They’re just knocking it across the pitch like they’ve never really thought about what the point of starting possessions along the backline is in the first place. And it’s especially mind-boggling given that the guy who’s playing as the left wingback here, Henry Wingo, actually started the game as a right center back.
How are you going to play him into the coffin corner like that against a pressing team? Why are you in a hurry to do so in the first place? (I’m not letting Wingo off the hook, by the way. He’s a veteran, and he should know well enough at some point in the above disaster to just put the ball into touch and start screaming at Shane O’Neill, Deybi Flores et al. But this was very much a team-wide breakdown, not an individual mistake).
These are the kinds of cock-ups you’d expect to see from a team in the first week of March rather than the last week of August. The Reds had a chance to really create some distance between themselves and the pack against a D.C. side that has been giving, rather than receiving, gifts all year long.
Instead they’re just three points above the line, and will be fighting for their lives from here on out.
Sure, they got some luck on this particular goal. But when you’ve got the other team in a shooting gallery, you tend to make your own luck.
Miami’s lead in the East stayed at eight points, and they’re up to 2.19 ppg. The single-season record is 2.15. They’re playing for history, and it seems like the next time they set foot out on the field, they’ll have Leo Messi with them.
Chicago are now back below 1 ppg and five points below the line. This would be their seventh straight year with no postseason, one off the record set by Toronto from 2007 to 2014.
My big hope for the ‘Caps, heading into this year, was that Pedro Vite would find another gear and raise his game a level.
It hasn’t happened. The Ecuadoran playmaker has had an anonymous and frankly pretty disappointing season, with basically zero match-winning moments.
And now for something completely different:
That’s Vite’s first goal of the year, to go along with just two assists. With Brian White out and the forward pairing of Ryan Gauld and Fafà Picault effectively blanketed by the hosts, it was going to take a moment of magic for Vancouver to take all three from this one. It bodes well for their push down the stretch, and hopes of climbing into that fourth spot, that Vite found it.
As for Austin, goalkeeper Brad Stuver got on the ball a lot to start build-outs, though I’m not sure to what end. The Verde are dead last in passing sequences that end in a shot per game (9.0, which is an astonishing 20% lower than 28th-place Montréal), and it shows.
The loss drops Austin a point below the line into 10th. They have seven matches left, all against playoff teams.
Colorado survived an early Zack Steffen error to rally from behind twice in what eventually became a 3-2 win in Frisco, behind a brace from Rafa Navarro and a dramatic late winner from homegrown No. 9 Darren Yapi.
This was one of the most “defense is optional” games of the season: the teams combined for nearly 40 shots, and just about six expected goals, with both stats being split just about 50/50.
The fact it was THE RAPIDS, on the road and coming off a long, draining Leagues Cup jaunt, who were the ones pressing the issue late in a 2-2 game, tells you a lot about what this team’s become this season:
Yes, that’s a bad mistake from the normally reliable Maarten Paes. But it’s the type of late mistake Colorado’s been forcing a lot of teams into.
I’m going to crib from the excellent and essential Burgundy Wave here for what Yapi’s development means in Commerce City:
Yapi has now scored three goals in 12 appearances since opening his account in July. All three have been in stoppage time. Two have been winners. He’s doing this at 18.
“That’s the word: Mature. He’s a young player. He believes he’s got big things ahead. He’s been training well. He’s been coming into games with really mature performances. Great goal. Such an important goal for our club,” manager Chris Armas told Burgundy Wave of the young striker.
“In Brazil, when an academy product comes out and scores a game-winner for the first team, it’s called a Talisman. Yapi is a Talisman. Very happy for how he’s performing for the club,” [Rafa] Navarro added.
As for Dallas, this snapped a little four-game unbeaten run in the league, and they are now in 11th place, three points below the line and staring at two straight on the road against two of the best in the West (Vancouver and RSL).
As bright as things looked after their win last week at D.C., their hopes have now dimmed a bit.
Part of the reason those hopes have dimmed is that Minnesota suddenly look, once again, like a team that can maybe just score their way into the postseason. There are still issues within midfield and along that backline, and there are still questions about whether or not all the pieces fit together as they should. I’m not convinced, in any way, this team will be a danger once (if) they actually get into the postseason.
But Kelvin Yeboah had two goals in a great performance against the Sounders last week. And Bongi Hlongwane got two goals himself this week starting up top alongside Yeboah in a 3-5-2. And Tani Oluwaseyi’s back, and Robin Lod is still dealing, and Joaquín Pereyra should be ready to make his debut the next time this team takes the field.
Bongi’s got 9g/4a in about 1500 minutes across all competitions this year, by the way. It’s gone under the radar for whatever reason, but he’s been excellent, as he was on the night:
San Jose have not been excellent. That lost 50/50 from DP d-mid Carlos Gruezo and the ole non-challenge from Amahl Pellegrino mostly sums up their season.
I am disappointed they are not playing more of their academy kids. That could be the silver lining for an otherwise miserable year.
The Revs were complicit in their own demise:
It was a bad loss, but they now have three of their next five at home, with multiple games in hand, and everyone getting healthy. I would expect a full-strength New England side next week at Foxborough.
RSL needed this one badly – not just the win, which snapped a four-game winless skid in league play and keeps them three points ahead of the Rapids. But the shutout, which is their first in any competition since late spring.
“This is who we are. We started the game with a great mindset. We're on the front foot. We played to our mentality. We didn't decide what the opponent was gonna do,” head coach Pablo Mastroeni said in the postgame.
“We got, you know, some things to talk about. It was finishing our chances early, but we were able to overcome a really poor performance last week. It's a really sharp performance this week, and that should be our standard moving forward. So, again, it's for me, it's always about mindset. And because of the quality [we] have, it's the belief.”
I’m not gonna argue a word of that (including the finishing, which was bad).
One note: Diego Luna only completed two passes to new No. 10 Diogo Gonçalves. There will clearly be a learning curve as these two guys figure out how to mix and maximize their skill sets.
A massive win for the Timbers, and I’ll get to that in a minute. But I just want to point out this is the second time this happened to Seattle this week:
The first was on Jordan Morris’s late potential equalizer in the US Open Cup semis, which was correctly (to my eye) flagged for offside.
Seattle are a team that, against good teams, have been losing on the margins all year long. I don’t know there’s much more to say about them.
On the flip side, there’s Portland, who won this game with both Felipe Mora and Jonathan Rodríguez suspended. I’ll let head coach Phil Neville take the mic.
“I think we defended 13, 14 corners. Our shape was really, really compact. We defended duels. The two center backs were really, really good. And, we had, you know, a full team of people that knew the importance of the game, but also knew that in big games, it's big games that are decided by moments,” Neville said. “Moments of set plays, concentration and discipline.
“I thought all three phases of that was, I thought was probably our best performance of the season in terms of what it takes to win and be successful.”
The quote didn’t stop there, though. I’m just gonna put this one out there and let it breathe:
“I think what I will reiterate again is that the last two seasons we've missed out on the playoffs by one point. And last week's point, I felt was a point gained rather than a point, two points dropped. And there were people inside and outside of this football club that thought it was two points dropped,” Neville offered.
“I honestly thought it was a step closer because I think in the past, we would have lost that game. So I think we don't win tonight without coming back last week. And so, it’s four points from six from these two games. I think it's a massive, massive return.”
Somebody got sent a message.
And the league might’ve gotten sent a message in this one.
Over the past three-and-a-half months, a span of 24 games across three separate competitions, LAFC had lost to exactly one team: The Columbus Crew. Against Columbus they were 0W-2L-0D, with a -6 goal differential in those two games. Against all other comers, which includes teams in three different leagues, they were 19W-0L-3D and +45.
But Houston are the Western Conference version of Columbus:
• They are second in possession behind the Crew.
• They are second in field tilt behind the Crew.
• They are 27th in percentage off passes that are crosses; the Crew are 28th.
They get the ball, they keep the ball, they pull you apart with the ball.
Where they weren’t like the Crew was in top-end attacking quality. Columbus have Cucho Hernández and Diego Rossi. Houston didn’t, so much of that quality possession went for naught, as they struggled to turn it into quality chances.
And so Houston went out in the summer window and came home with Ezequiel Ponce, who scored the opener, and Lawrence Ennali, who did this:
That is a Denis Bouanga goal. It is breathtaking.
That was the good news for Houston. The bad news: Ennali later appeared to do his ACL. It’s a devastating blow given how dynamic he’s looked so far.
Even so, this looked like a landmark win for the Dynamo. Yes, they had beaten LAFC in the past, but it hadn’t felt like this. And bear in mind that even as they appeared to lose Ennali for the year, they got Coco Carrasquilla back – he had a 20-minute cameo at the end – after a month-long injury absence of his own.
Houston finished the weekend technically in 7th on 40 points, though they have a game in hand on both sixth-place Portland and eighth-place Seattle, both of whom are also on 40 points. And they’re just four points behind fourth-place Colorado, so nothing’s done yet in that giant mid-table, Western Conference scrum.
LAFC probably saw any slim hopes of catching Miami in the Supporters’ Shield race die on the night, and their inability to get anything at all going until they were already down 2-0 had all the hallmarks of a tired team.
They need the next two weeks off, badly.
St. Louis kept their season alive with a big 2-1 win over the Galaxy in Sunday’s matinee. This one was the complete opposite of the teams’ earlier meeting this year, in that it was a tight, tactical affair with an obvious emphasis on ball retention in high-leverage spots, as well as rest defense so that when possession was lost from time to time, it wouldn’t result in catastrophe.
And so the fact CITY – who continue to evolve in an aesthetically pleasing direction under interim boss John Hackworth – were able to force LA into two of those catastrophes they were so intent upon avoiding speaks pretty well of the team they’re becoming.
That’s sloppy-bordering-on-negligent from Joseph Paintsil, and that’s very nice work from sub Jayden Reid to lay that pullback directly into Marcel Hartel’s path (incidentally, this was Hartel’s only box touch of the game, as he continues to spend more time as a halfspace playmaker than a true attacker).
The Galaxy’s loss keeps things wide open at the top of the West. St. Louis’s win keeps their season, as mentioned, theoretically alive. They’re still nine points back with seven games to go, though, so they’ll need more results like this one to break their way.
