Welcome to season 30 of MLS, and season 15 of this particular column. I’m finally batting .500.
We had some big debuts, a bit of late space in Fort Lauderdale (and then some post-whistle spice on top of that), the league's newest team making history and some familiar faces in new places. Lots to talk about as usual.
We’ll start in LA, where the Black & Gold opened their season with a win.
I really liked the talent on last year’s LAFC side, so I’m still kind of reeling from how much the roster has changed this offseason. Part of that is obviously cap-inflicted – it’s hard to keep a great team together for three or four straight years in MLS – and part of it is just a fact of participating in the global transfer market. Develop a player like Mateusz Bogusz and he will attract interest from overseas, and eventually that type of interest will lead to the types of offers that no MLS team would turn down. Change becomes part of life. So it goes.
But still, there was a ton of year-over-year change beyond that (Jesús Murillo off to Juárez, Eduard Atuesta off to Orlando, etc), so it was hard to imagine them picking up where they’d left off. As such we’ve already seen some early dislocation; it’s been difficult, through two games, for the Black & Gold to play with rhythm or incisiveness.
On Saturday afternoon, in the first half of the first league game of the year, Minnesota did well to capitalize on that. They dragged the hosts upfield by playing against the ball in a low block, trading possession and field position for space to counter into. They did so by playing a 3-4-1-2 with Joaquín Pereyra underneath a pair of true No. 9s in Kelvin Yeboah and Tani Oluwaseyi.
The purpose of the 3-4-1-2 in the modern game is twofold:
- Make sure your main guy (in Minnesota’s case that’s Yeboah) is never isolated and always has a partner to play with/off of.
- Make it so that when your main guy drags center backs with him via his off-ball movement, there’s another attacker perfectly positioned to take advantage of the space that creates. Dare the opposing CBs to win moment after moment in isolation.
Point No. 2… man, this worked almost immediately, as Yeboah’s movement ripped open some space in front of goal for Tani within five minutes. And it felt like there was going to be more to come as LAFC were truly up against it.
But even with all the offseason changes, and even with Minnesota playing a formation that few teams trot out these days, LAFC know how to take a punch. In this case, instead of stumbling, they adjusted on the fly: new d-mid Igor Jesus dropped deeper and deeper, playing almost like an old-fashioned stopper rather than a modern d-mid, resulting in fewer 1v1s for the center backs to win. That allowed them to get to halftime at 0-0, and then to make some more adjustments – attack-minded adjustments – for the second 45.
They worked. Volume up:
Getting Timothy Tillman on the right side of midfield and Mark Delgado over on the left changed – really, it might’ve even fixed, long-term – the midfield balance by allowing LAFC to extend the game vertically. Tillman compresses the game with his ability in tight quarters, then makes it big with his off-ball movement. He effectively tilted the field early in the second half with his direct runs, while Delgado’s ability to win second balls and get attackers into open space has always been underrated, and was pivotal on the game’s only goal in the 1-0 win.
It all led not just to more possession, but pitch control, incisiveness and more dangerous possession, which is not something the Black & Gold had any of in the first half. And frankly, they had precious little of any of the above in their 2-1 midweek Concacaf Champions Cup loss at Colorado.
“I think having more possession this year was something we talked about in the offseason trying to improve, and I think we've done a great job of that,” head coach Steve Cherundolo said in the postgame presser. “Can you turn possession into goals? So, I am not the right coach – I am not the coach who's going to sit here and say all possession is great. If we don't score any goals… the point of possessing the ball is to be dangerous and to create chances and to score.
“So I think if we can create more chances with that amount of possession, I think that's our next step and that's progression with this team.”
It’s going to be a process, but after three halves of struggle, there were finally some hopeful signs. They’ll probably have to do it again – and do it better – in Tuesday’s CCC rematch with the Rapids.
As for the Loons, there was plenty to build on, though I am very interested in how long Robin Lod remains a sub, as Pereyra has yet to look like an effective MLS player.
Another very good team with a whole hell of a lot of offseason turnover are Houston. Again, it was largely understandable, as they got Godfather offers for a couple of their players, and probably had to move on from Héctor Herrera. But there were a few others – particularly the parting of ways with starting goalkeeper Steve Clark – that felt like a little too much.
Anyway, the Dynamo inverted LAFC’s pattern from the above blurb in that they looked good for the first half, then crashed and burned in the second. Both the crash and the burn, and the eventual 2-1 home loss to FC Dallas, were self-inflicted.
First, the good parts. The elephant in the room all offseason was: “Can the Dynamo still be the Dynamo even after the departures of Herrera and Coco Carrasquilla from that great midfield group?” And on their only goal – the game’s opening goal – we got a resounding “yes” for an answer:
That’s pure Jogo Benny-to. And the numbers…
- Passes into final third: 50 - 29
- Passes in final third: 130 - 62
- Passes into opponent’s box: 11 - 6
Those are all typical Dynamo statlines, ones that are key to their success. They also had 56 percent possession and tilted the field with it. They generated a few big chances and were effective at controlling the game with the ball. If Jack McGlynn’s 73rd-minute rocket is two inches to the right, it’s 2-1 Dynamo with 15 minutes left and all the momentum.
But as the tweet says, even if they play the same way as what we’ve seen the past two years, this isn’t really the same Dynamo team. Ethan Bartlow was replacing Micael, who was just sold to Palmeiras for a club-record fee, and it was Bartlow’s catastrophic turnover in the middle of the backline that gifted Petar Musa Dallas’s equalizer. About 20 minutes later it was Clark’s replacement, Andrew Tarbell, who went walkabout on what became Anderson Julio’s game-winner.
Personnel matters. Mistakes – even small ones, but definitely ones the size that Bartlow and Tarbell made – matter a lot. You can’t give gifts in this league, something which will be even more true next week when the Dynamo are hosting Messi & Friends for Sunday Night Soccer presented by Continental Tire.
“It's just reps, right? Time with each other and, you know, you have three guys that haven't started with each other,” Dynamo head coach Ben Olsen said in the postgame. “But what happens is, sometimes those moments, you can play a full game of quality and have a moment where you're a little naive. And, in this league, that can cost you.”
That’s almost axiomatic when playing against a team with a No. 9 like Musa, who was excellent even as the team around him mostly struggled. Dallas, of course, are rebuilding even more than Houston, with new coach Eric Quill and new No. 10 Lucho Acosta (mostly anonymous in his debut), and a new d-mid, and a new winger, and a new center back and right back and… it’s a lot. So it’s not surprising they weren’t great.
But nobody in Frisco is going to care too much about that today. They showed the ability to come back from a deficit and showed the ability to protect a late lead. As a result, they got a road win in a derby.
Couldn’t have asked for much more from the season’s first 90 minutes than that.
13. Kévin Denkey got the game’s only goal and looked the part of a reported $16.2 million man in FC Cincinnati’s 1-0 win over the visiting Red Bulls. I was just way, way more impressed with Denkey’s hold-up and combo play than I’d expected to be, and while Evander wasn’t particularly sharp, he did harvest one soul (Daniel Edelman, 59th minute).
The Red Bulls – who surprised me by playing a 3-4-2-1 – weren’t bad by any means. It’s just that Cincy, even missing a couple of key pieces (Matt Miazga’s still not quite back from last year’s injury and Luca Orellano is working towards match fitness after finally coming to terms on a new deal), had more ways to win. Barring a spate of injuries like what they suffered last year, they will be in the Supporters’ Shield race until the very end.
One note on RBNY: I thought Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting was good in his debut, though he, Emil Forsberg and Lewis Morgan seemed to kind of want to occupy the same attacking spots (consequently the team’s best moments going forward tended to involve right wingback Cameron Harper). I wonder how long it’ll take to get that sorted.
12. Denkey was the MLS record signing for a few months, right up until Atlanta inked Emmanuel Latte Lath. Special Armchair Analyst correspondent Calen Carr was on hand for Latte Lath’s debut brace in a more-dramatic-than-it-had-to-be 3-2 home win over CF Montréal. I’m going to give some excerpts from the very long text he sent me:
- Adding Latte Lath was a “hold my beer” moment after Cincy signed Denkey for a league-record fee, especially while multiple Premier League clubs were also in pursuit of him. The fact that he scored his first two MLS goals in “Plan B” ways – header on a set piece and a poacher’s rebound – vs. his more preferred intelligent movement and pace in behind is a good sign that he’s pointed north of 20 goals this season.
- The thing with spending MLS-record transfer fees (around $45 million over two windows spread across Alekey Miranchuk, Miguel Almirón & Latte Lath) is that individual quality in the absence of chemistry and continuity still finds a way to win.
- Atlanta are still short-handed without the width from fullbacks Brooks Lennon (a month or two away) and Pedro Amador (weeks away) to the preferred inverted winger setup.
- Montréal fought back twice and deserved more than what they got. They even hit the crossbar in the dying moments while up a man (Almirón will have to figure out the new 10-second substitution rule that’s been added since he went abroad).
- Nathan Saliba is a top-10 U22 player in MLS who I think is set to take another big step forward this year (scored a great goal), and George Campbell is quietly one of the best versions of modern-day MLS center backs who can defend in space and also bomb forward.
If you’re a sicko, you should move Montréal up your watchability rankings. This team’s probably not headed for 50 points, but they’re going to play a ton of fun games.
11. Our Pass of the Week goes to TFC d-mid Alonso Coello for this very nice through-ball to Henry Wingo on the overlap in what eventually became a 2-2 draw at D.C. United:
It was a good point for the Reds, who twice fought back from a goal down on the road. For D.C… growing pains. If you want to dig in more, I highly recommend Marc Machado’s feed.
10. Austin mostly controlled proceedings, but weren’t especially dangerous for the first hour at home vs. Sporting KC (and were lucky not to go down 1-0 midway through the first half when Willy Agada put Dániel Sallói through – all hail Brad Stuver!).
But they kept the pressure on, turned the screws and eventually got a deserved, late winner when Osman Bukari pushed home Owen Wolff’s corner kick service at the back post.
Sporting have now started their season with a pair of 1-0 losses, one in CCC play and this one to open up their league slate.
“You always have got to limit as many set pieces as you can against you, whether it be corners, wide free kicks, free kicks in and around your box,” manager Peter Vermes said afterward. “You're trying to limit the amount that you give, and unfortunately we did in that situation and we lose the game based on a set piece.
“We have a long way to go.”
9. The best moment of St. Louis’s scoreless draw with visiting Colorado was this bit of, s---housery from Simon Becher:
Sadly for the home fans, Henry Kessler was offside on Eduard Löwen’s original shot, so the goal was flagged off.
Becher, by the way, was everywhere – and while there will be some frustration (both from him and, I’m sure, among a certain subset of fans) that he wasn’t able to put away one of his chances, the fact he found so many is a very, very good thing. Trust strikers who find chances to eventually finish them.
“It's normally a game we win,” new St. Louis boss Olof Mellberg said. “I think we dominated most of the game. We have the stats here, it was 18-2 shots and limited them to, yeah, zero chances, basically. There were a couple of dangerous situations in the box where we defended well, but apart from that, they didn't have any chances, and we created enough to score at least two or three goals.”
Yup. Trust performances like that to eventually turn into three points.
The short-handed Rapids – missing three starters and three other rotation players – did well, on short rest, to cling to that road point. And Zack Steffen (who’s taken a lot of criticism here over the years) put together his second straight quality performance.
8. The Revs also went on the road and held onto a point, registering a scoreless draw at Nashville.
Sam Surridge, Nashville’s DP No. 9, had three very good chances to win this one. If he’s not able to deliver in those moments, it’s going to be a long season for the ‘Yotes.
7. Leo Messi rescued an Inter Miami side that had to play a man down for more than an hour after – stop me if you’ve heard this one before – Toto Avilés got himself sent off in what became a 2-2 draw with New York City FC.
The second Miami goal, a dramatic equalizer nearly 10 minutes into second-half stoppage time, was the kind of play few can make and Messi does better than anybody in the history of the game. The first goal was the kind that anyone can make… and Messi still does better than anybody in the history of the game:
The Herons will be elite as long as they can keep 11 men on the field. Avilés in the lineup makes that exponentially less likely. He’s got to sit.
As for NYCFC, they played with no DPs on the road against the Shield favorites and came away with a point. But man, this one really did feel like two points dropped.
6. We’ll start our “familiar face, new place” rundown (which I guess should’ve included Ronny Deila, Robin Fraser and Nico Estévez as well – sorry boys!) with Bradley Carnell, whose Philly side – playing the classic, Red Bull 4-2-2-2 instead of the typical Union diamond – went to Orlando and thumped the Lions 4-2 behind a pair of goals from Tai Baribo and a wicked high press.
Here’s the network passing graphic, which tells you how tight left midfielder Quinn Sullivan (No. 33) was playing to the forwards:
Orlando eventually got chances – they won the xG battle 3.08 to 1.87 – but the bulk of those came in garbage time, when they were already 4-1 down. Playing without Robin Jansson, they looked like a team that was badly in need of center back reinforcements. And Pedro Gallese, well… the Union had four shots on target, and they had four goals.
5. The Chicago Fire’s first game under Gregg Berhalter was probably the most entertaining one of the entire weekend. Chicago scored two great goals in semi-transition (Jonathan Bamba and Brian Gutiérrez were awesome), conceded two WPIOOTBGW classics, saw Carlos Terán pot the most remarkable own goal in a weekend filled with remarkable own goals, and saw the Crew eventually take control with some excellent adjustments:
- Mo Farsi dropped deeper at about the 25th minute to stop Bamba from getting in behind.
- Sean Zawadzki pressed higher, which caused Chicago all sorts of problems.
Zawadzki was great, by the way, and this performance reminded me of how good he looked before he fractured a rib last September (and, to his credit, played through it down the stretch and into the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs). If he’s full strength, and if the Crew go out and add a high-end DP attacker… man, they might not drop off much, if at all, from last year.
Anyway, back to the Fire: the fans were pretty jazzed about this performance, even with a loss. Berhalter, however, smelled a result and was pissed not to get it.
“I think the goals, basically we gave them three goals, right? That's tough. That's tough,” he said in the presser. “But the positives of it are we created a number of chances. If we limit [the errors], we're right in this game, potentially winning the game.”
I don’t think that’s wrong, but those errors have been in the Fire’s DNA for 15 years across multiple coaches, CSOs and organizational rebuilds. We’ll see if they can make progress in eliminating them by Matchday 2.
4. The final old coach in a new spot is the most familiar of all, as Bruce Arena was on the sidelines for the Quakes for the first time. And he pulled a bit of a switcheroo, trotting his side out in a 3-4-1-2 instead of the typical 4-4-2 (Bruce has used either a flat 4-4-2 or a diamond primarily throughout his career) we’ve come to know over the past 30 years.
It finished 4-0. Daniel was excellent in goal, and Cristian Espinoza was terrifying as a purely attacking right wingback. But also…
“The scoreline wasn’t fair. I don’t think that’s a 4-0 game,” Arena said. “[RSL] had a lot going against them, coming in with their game Wednesday in Costa Rica and those challenges and all of that, so as a starting point, let’s be fair about that. But our team played well. It was a good team effort, and obviously, we’re building a team that hasn’t experienced a whole lot of success, so to kick off the season with a win is great. ... But let’s keep this in perspective.”
I think that’s an entirely correct take, though 1) I really liked the protection the 3-4-1-2 gave to the center forwards, Josef Martínez and Chicho Arango, so I am more bullish on San Jose than I thought I’d be, and 2) while I am mostly giving RSL a mulligan, through two games they do look like a team that’s missing 70% of their goals from last season. And that’s scary.
3. Our Face(s) of the Week goes to Seattle center backs Jackson Ragen and Yeimar Gómez Andrade, who, uh, did this:
This was not a vintage performance from Charlotte, who were on the back foot all game and needed a Goalkeeper of the Year-caliber performance from Kristijan Kahlina to come out of Lumen Field with the 2-2 draw.
But there simply aren’t many MLS teams who could’ve taken this point, whether they played well or not. Charlotte are as good as anyone in the league at suffering against the ball for prolonged stretches and still coming away with a result, and it shows.
For Seattle, I don’t think there’s going to be any worry, just frustration. Oh, and Georgi Minoungou is a PROBLEM!!
2. The competitive portion of Vancouver’s trip to Portland – this time for a road game, not the “home” date they had in the 2024 playoffs – ended with Kamal Miller’s DOGSO red card in the 11th minute.
Ryan Gauld made it 1-0 in the 24th minute, and Pedro Vite doubled the lead eight minutes after that. By the time the final whistle sounded, the ‘Caps had themselves a 4-1 win, led by Jayden Nelson's 1g/3a.
New head coach Jesper Sørensen couldn’t have asked for more; the team’s mentality once they went up a man was ruthless and excellent, and all the more impressive given their CCC-induced travel issues. There was no “let’s wear them out”; it was pure “let’s go for the throat.” About the only issue is, given the 11-v-10 nature of the game, I’m not sure there’s anything they can take away tactically.
You can for Portland, who come out in a 3-5-2. They didn’t play a lot of that last year and it showed, and I thought color commentator Brian Dunseth neatly summed up the issue Vancouver immediately exploited.
“It will be the challenge, especially with this [new] formation that we didn't get to see enough of, with this three-in-the-back system… of tactically, how do they deal with moments that actually led to that red card?” Dunseth asked. “When a center back gets sucked up[field], how do the two outside center backs deal with recovery, recognition and moments of danger?
“It failed them in the first 15 minutes. How does that experience help them going forward as they kind of dig into the details of what they need to do better without the ball?”
We should start finding out for real next week.
1. The Galaxy were very generous hosts for the inaugural Sunday Night Soccer, as they gifted San Diego FC the first goal in club history:
That stood up into stoppage time before Anders Dreyer got another on the break for the 2-0 final. For the most part, these two teams had serious trouble converting any of their midfield possession into penetration and chances. But when they had chances to be opportunistic, SDFC – Dreyer! – were ruthless.
- For San Diego, their sterility in possession was at least partially a tactical choice as they kept their fullbacks deep – couldn’t dare let Gabriel Pec get in behind – and played two 8s instead of an 8 and a 10. All of it was very risk-averse, but I can’t blame them at all for that given the circumstances (and, obviously, the result). I expect they will become more adventurous as the weeks roll on.
- For the Galaxy, they struggled to find their midfield balance (head coach Greg Vanney was yelling at newcomer Lucas Sanabria about his positioning the entire first half), which meant they almost never got playmaker Marco Reus between the lines.
LA, to their credit, seemed to figure out how to crack the visitors apart once they hit the Tactics Free Zone™ in the final 15 minutes. Elijah Wynder, who came on for Sanabria, was a big part of that, adding both combo play and direct, off-ball running out of central midfield. Again, it was the Tactics Free Zone™ so take it with a grain of salt, but the difference was so stark I kind of wonder if a personnel change might already be in order.
Either way, the Galaxy very clearly have a problem to solve without Riqui Puig for next week, and probably the subsequent 30 weeks as well.
As for San Diego… that mid-block 4-3-3 of theirs played about as tight (complimentary) as possible, and then their DPs won the game. I honestly think that’s exactly how they drew it up. Job extraordinarily well done.
