MLS has wandered into some alternate universe, where up is down, where cats bark and dogs greet their owners with aloof indifference.
Home teams have suddenly turned into Nervous Nellies. We're seeing late leads at home blown to smithereens at an unfathomable pace. It happened once in Round 5, which turned out to be a mere warmup. Round 6 saw Columbus, Colorado and New York all surrender late leads at their own grounds. The scene was particularly gruesome at Giants Stadium, where Juan Carlos Osorio's men carried a lead into the 90th minute against D.C. United. And yet somehow, against all odds, they managed to lose.
Columbus, the defending champs, took a two-goal lead into the 86th minute. At least Columbus didn't lose, as the Fire used a man advantage over more than 30 minutes to wear down the hosts and eventually overturn the margin, but managed only a draw. Gonzalo Segares hit for the Fire's equalizer in the 88th minute.
With the result, the champs are sliding into May winless, looking up in the standings at ... well ... everybody. Strange, yes. But that's the least of it around a league awash in aberration.
An expansion team is showing the way in the West. We haven't seen a first-year outfit gain this kind of steam since Chicago had it going on, as they say, a dozen seasons back. No one thought it could happen again, based upon a steady elevation in quality of play and general league growth and player development. And yet here we are. Heck, throw in an internet stock bubble and it could be 1998 all over again!
Seattle isn't just ekeing out the results, either. The teeming scene in the Sound is replete with wonderful soccer. Sigi Schmid's men move into supporting spots quickly and move the ball with speed as well. There is more one- and two-touch soccer at Qwest Field right now than anywhere in the league -- and who would have guessed that?
Not only is Seattle playing a beautiful brand, the level of support lavished on the soccer heroes of the Northwest has achieved wondrous levels. Averaging 29,664 fans a game, the team could well be en route to setting a season attendance record in MLS.
Elsewhere around a league apparently affected by the magic arts, we've seen steady-eddy goalkeepers go wobbly. (Or, as in one game, veteran goalkeeper Kevin Hartman managed the rare feat of touching both ends of the performance scale in one match. He went rickety for one half, then shot with ballistic speed to the other end of the spectrum with a dazzling display of second-half saves a week back against Chicago. Strange days, indeed.)
Meanwhile, rookies are scoring in bunches, as three of the newbies bent the Round 6 nets. Chris Pontius hit for No. 2 on the year for D.C. United while teammates Rodney Wallace highlighted a nice match with his first career tally on Sunday. And in Seattle, the league's top draft pick, Steve Zakuani, left no doubt about the why Sigi Schmid and Co. made him the showy first choice. He was a man on a mission against the Earthquakes late Saturday evening, generally running amuck and then netting the opener in yet another impressive Sounders FC display.
Oh, about those Earthquakes, the darkhorse darlings of MLS in 2009: uh, things aren't exactly going as expected. They have one win and just five points, despite the benefit of four matches already at home.
Then again, their point total matches the former defending two-time league champs, the proud Houston Dynamo, who just can't seem to find goal these days. They've hit for a league-low four so far. If every player on the opposing side were to suddenly sit down on the turf for 60 seconds of quiet introspection and controlled breathing, the Dynamo might just end up with a corner kick instead of a goal.
Even at the micro level, strange goings-on persist. New England, a team built on fire and desire, found itself on the rare business end of a goal-apalooza in Utah on Saturday. Never before have the Revs lost by such a sum (6-0). Nor have Real Salt Lake won by that total. In fact, all the strikes came after the break, marking just the third time in MLS history that a team has been so productive over 45 magic minutes.
And it was no accident, either, as RSL made a little chew toy of the visitors, outshooting the hapless and injury-cursed Revolution 29-6.
"I think it's very rare in a professional athlete's or a professional soccer player's life to be part of a match like that," Real manager Jason Kreis said after Saturday's outburst. "Where really almost everything that happens on our end was flawless for our team. It just doesn't happen often."
Perhaps not. Then again, in this year of raging abnormality, is it really that surprising?
TACTICAL CORNER
• You hear managers and players talk about "keeping their lines together" or keeping them "compact." That means that the line of defenders is always close to the arrangement of midfielders, and that the midfielders are never far from the strikers. It applies to the attack as well as defense. Watch Chivas USA these days for a good lesson in how it's done.
• Toronto rolled out this new 4-2-1-3 or whatever they are calling it last week. (Notice how we don't just call something a 4-3-3 or a 4-5-1 any more. In the day of specialization, it seems important to distinguish how many holding specialists or attacking virtuosos are on the field. So, now it's a 3-4-1-2 or a 4-2-3-1 or whatever. Anyway ...)
The result early last week was that playmaker Amado Guevara wasn't getting the ball often enough. Then the Canadians started finding the channels. Key to the whole thing is striker Danny Dichio's ability to hold the ball and draw defenders into the middle, and then ping it out to supporting players. He's quite good at it.
But he's also 35 years old, and players take plenty of punishment when they set up with their back to the goal. We'll see how long he holds up. (The guess here, unfortunately, is "not too long." And that's double-especially true if he plays as much as last week; Dichio went the full 90 in both TFC matches.)
• Sometimes it's not about the tactics. Frequently the scheme is right but the execution is poor. Kansas City, for one, was moving the ball into wide spots last week against the 10-man Red Bulls, albeit a little too slowly sometimes. But the service was poor, so the final product suffered greatly. It's a simple game; sometimes it's just about passing, trapping and shooting.
• In the same game, it was interesting that Wizards manager Curt Onalfo didn't bring on a true holding midfielder to replace the injured Jack Jewsbury. Kurt Morsink, who has played that role before, was available on the bench. Presumably, against 10-man New York, Onalfo assumed he didn't need a strong defensive presence. Instead he deployed Santiago Hirsig, a passing and possession specialist more than a hard tackler. Did it work? Well, the Wizards won, but they never really pressed the game and probably allowed the Red Bulls to have too much possession for a team playing a man down on the road. So maybe it was a wash.
• The Crew's Alejandro Moreno is a talented, hard-working striker, to be sure. But he's so much better when he just concentrates on being physical, being a nuisance, wreaking havoc and generally making defenders wish they were somewhere else. On the other hand, when he starts dropping to the ground and worrying too much about drawing cheap fouls, he loses something. He might indeed hoodwink a referee a time or two and draw a bogus free kick. But overall he's just less effective.
• What's gone wrong with Chicago's usually dependable stable of center backs?
Bakary Soumare, in particular, is having issues. His run-out Saturday devolved into an absolute nightmare and it won't be surprising to see Chicago make changes along the back line, at least temporarily. Soumare's evening could have been even worse, for he could have easily been whistled for a foul inside the 18 as he threw Chad Marshall to the ground and denied a scoring opportunity on yet another dangerous service from Guillermo Barros Schelotto.
• Real Salt Lake's Chris Wingert and Robbie Russell, Chicago's Tim Ward and Chivas USA's Jonathan Bornstein were among the weekend's best when it came to fullbacks getting forward and adding to the attack.
• Two prominent right-sided midfielders got back into their respective lineups over the weekend. Terry Cooke went for 72 so-so minutes against Los Angeles in his first start of 2009. And Dane Richards was causing trouble for D.C. United as he got back on the field for the Red Bulls; Matthew Mbuta had started on the right in the previous match as New York manager Juan Carlos Osorio, who has used a league-high 24 players already, continued to spread the minutes around.
Steve Davis is a freelance writer who has covered Major League Soccer since its inception. Steve can be reached at BigTexSoccer@yahoo.com. The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author's, and not necessarily those of Major League Soccer or MLSnet.com.
