10 things we learned from gameweek 24 of the MLS season
Here are the 10 things we learned from gameweek 24 of the MLS season: 1. Nat Borchers’ emotional moment Nat Borchers is the ultimate professional, a player with true gravitas and depth. He was a key cog in Jason Kreis’ Real Salt Lake for many, many years, but this last […]
Here are the 10 things we learned from gameweek 24 of the MLS season:
1. Nat Borchers’ emotional moment
Nat Borchers is the ultimate professional, a player with true gravitas and depth. He was a key cog in Jason Kreis’ Real Salt Lake for many, many years, but this last offseason, RSL decided to dump Borchers to bring back Jamison Olave and pack as many Argentine players who can’t dribble in a straight line into the team as possible.
It was a terrible decision. Thanks in part to injuries, Salt Lake has had virtual rookies in the center-back spots all year and has the worst goal difference in the league, while Borchers has gone to Portland and anchored one of the best defenses in the league.
On Saturday night, the saga came full circle. Borchers scored a 95th minute game-winner at the Rio Tinto Stadium to give his new team a 1-0 in his old home.
After scoring, Borchers sank to the grass overcome with emotion a la John Brooks in the World Cup, and was moved to tears at the final whistle with the weight of scoring the biggest goal of his career and having it amount, in his mind, to something just short of treason.
It’s hard to say whether Borchers, who was Portland’s best field player in the game and had an earlier header cleared off the line, deserved his moment. It was both euphoria and torture for a man who is usually calm and unaffected.
Borchers is a player who is impossible not to respect and admire. His goal just about ended Real Salt Lake’s playoff chase, and clinched Portland’s playoff spot. It was a great sports moment for a great sportsman; the best of what athletics has to offer.
2. So it really was that simple
Obafemi Martins returned to the Seattle Sounders’ lineup – and didn’t even play that well – and smashed Orlando City 4-0 at CenturyLink Field.
Seattle is a playoff lock. Nelson Valdez looked terrific, aided by his existing understanding with Martins from their time together in Russia, and Roman Torres next to Chad Marshall is going to be a nightmare for opposing attacks. Plus Dempsey, Alonso, hopefully at some point Marco Pappa, and Andreas Ivanschitz are all coming back or coming in as well.
The questions now for Sigi Schmid and the Sounders are more nuanced than simply, “will they turn it around?”
There’s a big question as to whether captain Brad Evans is going to play. Erik Friberg is going to play next to Alonso eventually in central midfield, and Torres is going to partner Marshall. Evans might be forced wide either to fullback or a different midfield position – a move that he is none too pleased about after having trained all year to learn how to play center-back.
Evans’ run in central defense had its downsides, but certainly its upsides too – one upside being that Seattle was very good playing the ball out of the back and building attacks through midfield. Torres doesn’t provide that option.
The other major question facing Seattle is how to get both Dempsey and Valdez jiving with Martins. The Sounders usually play some variant of a 4-4-2, but moving Dempsey wide and sacrificing his chemistry with Martins isn’t an acceptable option.
These are good problems to have, of course, especially since just a week ago Seattle had virtually no options all over the field. The Sounders are back.
3. Orlando running out of steam
The Lions were on the receiving end of Seattle’s get-well thrashing on Sunday afternoon, and it increasingly looks like Orlando is running out of ideas in a tightening Eastern Conference playoff race.
There simply isn’t enough offense outside of Kaka and Cyle Larin to compete on a week-to-week basis. The signings of Adrian Winter and David Mateos weren’t good enough – especially when Orlando made serious runs at both Chicharito and Ganso.
Combining the effects of long-term injuries to Kevin Molino and Brek Shea, and the long-term poor form of young players that this team needed to produce like Carlos Rivas and Bryan Rochez, Orlando don’t have many good options.
Adrian Heath trotted out a three-man central midfield that folded in Servando Carrasco against Seattle, while Tyler Turner has been a total disaster in place of Rafael Ramos.
This Orlando side, uncharacteristically for an expansion team, hasn’t improved over the course of the season. They’ve gotten worse. And with Montreal, NYCFC, and New England all improving, the playoffs are looking increasingly like a long-shot.
4. NYCFC saves its season
NYCFC more or less saved their season with three second half goals to beat DC United 3-1 at Yankee Stadium on Thursday night. Good thing, too. New York City’s presence in the playoff race is good for MLS, and it’s good for the neutral viewer. When this team turns it on, they are a hell of a lot of fun to watch.
This win took some luck. Had Frank Lampard not injured himself again, Kwadwo Poku isn’t in the team to deliver a bruising, brilliant, full-throttle Man of the Match performance.
If you can have one complaint about Jason Kreis this year, it’s been his underutilization of Poku – who both David Villa and Andrea Pirlo lauded after the match, and had better stay in the team even when Lampard is back.
Villa for his part netted the match winner with an absolutely ridiculous piece of skill off of a Pirlo pass that was similarly sweet. Villa has been a savior all year for NYCFC, but Pirlo turned up his play several notches in the second half after his giveaway gifted DC their first goal.
Pirlo is competitive, and he knows better than anyone else that he hasn’t been good enough since his debut against Orlando. That assist was a nice way to begin turning things around.
It’s going to be an uphill battle the rest of the way for New York City. But if they can conjure the same kind of desire they did late against United, they’ll be in it until the very end.
5. DC fails to impress
There’s really no reason DC shouldn’t win the Supporters’ Shield. They’re clearly the best team in the league’s worst conference, and they currently lead the competition.
But as that second half against New York City showed, DC needs help to win games. They need their competition to be short of its best. When NYCFC turned it on, they blew past United – and the game would have finished 5-1 if not for the outrageously good Bill Hamid in goal.
That Hamid is the most important player on the team is a worry in itself for a side that wants to win MLS Cup, but that Shield progress may be in jeopardy as well. The Whitecaps, Galaxy, Dallas, and Sporting all have a shot.
Also troubling for DC? The best part of their team, center backs Bobby Boswell and Steve Birnbaum, had plenty of trouble with Villa and Poku. Point being? The East remains wide open.
6. Missing Callum Williams
Sporting Kansas City’s stirring comeback from 2-0 and then 3-1 down to beat the Vancouver Whitecaps 4-3 on Saturday night at Sporting Park was one of the games of the season in MLS – but it wasn’t quite right.
Sporting let their British play-by-play announcer Cal Williams go at the end of last season, and replaced him with a well-liked local in Nate Bukaty.
Bukaty is a fine broadcaster, though he’s had his fair share of hiccups in his first season as Sporting’s lead man, but for a club that is usually run with such a firm grasp on public opinion and eagerness for getting the little things right, not retaining Williams was a massive letdown.
Understand that Williams’ departure had plenty do with, according to Robb Heineman, his long-term broadcasting aspirations. SKC wanted a true homer, and someone that would stick around for many years to come. Bukaty checks both those boxes.
But Williams, forever a part of Sporting lore for his place at the mic during the trophy-winning seasons of 2012 and 2013, would have eaten a game like the one on Saturday night up. He’s an exceptional talent, who is now back in the UK doing MLS games on Sky Sports alongside former Portland Timbers coach John Spencer.
Williams is getting some Premier League work too, but his ties to Kansas City remain strong both through his personal and professional life. Listening to Sporting games doesn’t feel quite right without him, and unless he was the one asking to leave, Heineman and his team did their fans a huge disservice by letting him go. Never was that more clear than during that incredible victory.
7. Red Bulls for MLS Cup
The New York Red Bulls got one of the their most impressive wins of the season on Saturday afternoon, dismantling Toronto FC 3-0 at Red Bull Arena. DP Gonzalo Veron got his first goal for the club, while a makeshift defense held up without much trouble against the likes of Giovinco and, well, Giovinco.
Don’t look now, but after all that offseason turmoil, this could be the year for the Red Bulls. Thanks to the signings of Veron and Shaun Wright-Phillips, the New York finally has sufficient attacking depth, and thanks to the unbelievable weakness of the Eastern Conference, they have the easiest path to MLS Cup of any team in the league.
DC United, an old rival, doesn’t scare anyone. TFC can’t play any defense, and it’s the same story with Columbus. New England could end up in the final reckoning again, but they’re a ways off of their best form from last year.
Jesse Marsch has the Red Bulls playing together, and playing for each other. Chemistry and spirit, unfamiliar traits for a team in this franchise, are at an all-time high.
The buzz saw style – high pressing, playing with tempo and precision – suits this group well. To say it’s been an impressive transformation from the methodical, isolationist, stop-start soccer of the Mike Petke years would be an understatement.
With Matt Miazga in the lineup, New York’s numbers are gaudy – and with two of their next three games against Chicago, they’re about to get even gaudier.
In between those Chicago games is a massive matchup with DC. If the Red Bulls win, they might realistically be favorites for a second Supporters’ Shield in three years. In any case, this side is one of the feel good stories of the season, and they should be playing into December.
8. Meanwhile in Chicago and Colorado…
If Pablo Mastroeni and Frank Yallop are still in their current jobs at the start of the 2016 season, it will be a slap in the face to both Rapids and Fire fans.
Both managers are victims of systemic problems in their respective situations – more so Mastroeni in Colorado, though there is some sympathy for Yallop too considering Chicago’s ownership situation – but both men have proved themselves incompetent too many times to be forgiven this season.
The Rapids’ regression into an over-30 team for mediocre former Championship players has been thoroughly depressing, while the Fire aren’t drawing anyone to Toyota Park in Bridgeview for a product that is nearly as demoralizing.
MLS is a good league for managers. So far, not one has been fired in 2015. The sack race is still open, and considering the kind of apathy in both Colorado and Chicago, neither Mastroeni nor Yallop is guaranteed to be gone either. For those fan-bases, that might just be the most frustrating aspect of all.
9. Avaya stadium problems
One of the biggest boosts for MLS’ attendance and aesthetic this year has been the opening of San Jose’s new Avaya Stadium to replace Buck Shaw Stadium.
Numbers wise, the crowds have been good all year at Avaya – but the atmosphere is clearly lacking. On Friday night, an 18,000 strong sellout was announced, but there appeared to be nearly as many empty seats in the arena as filled ones for the game against the Colorado Rapids. The last home game against the Portland Timbers didn’t appear to actually be sold out either.
The Earthquakes’ bad team is a problem, but merely getting people to sit down and engage with the match when the world’s largest outdoor bar is on the one end of the stadium has proved to be no small issue.
Another issue is the location of the ‘Quakes’ supporters group, the San Jose Ultras. The group, partly because of the architecture of the stadium, is situated in the upper deck, far away from the field. The Ultras, thanks to their latent hooliganism, haven’t always been on the best terms with the organization, but they’ve been put in a tough spot this season. There’s sympathy for San Jose’s other, smaller supporters groups too.
Avaya is a gorgeous facility, but it’s in San Jose’s best interest to make sure that the atmosphere improves for next season.
10. The inevitable
Most impressive win of the weekend? LA’s come-from-behind effort to win in front of a raucous crowd in Dallas behind Gio dos Santos and Robbie Keane.
Bruce Arena has finally settled on his first choice team, everyone is healthy, and although they won’t hear of it, the Galaxy are overwhelming favorites to retain the crown and win MLS Cup for the fourth time in five seasons.
