Monday Morning MLS Minutia: Take your one shot
By Matt Hoffman
After MLS scorched the nets scoring 32 goals in a single-day, how would Major League Soccer respond? With another record breaking afternoon, a record conclusively putting the .. whatever the opposite of an explanation mark is .. on the sort of topsy-turvy season that DC United has had.
DC United managed to win a game of soccer after taking only one shot. So score one for efficiency!
The game of the weekend would be the third New York derby. This one had it all. If by all you mean hooliganism, mean-spirited tifos, and an unfit Frank Lampard. By the time he’s healthy, I have a feeling he’ll be in Manchester. Just saying.
It was a pretty exciting match despite an underwhelming start by City’s big three of Lampard, Andrea Pirlo, and David Villa. The only true scoring opportunities looked like they belonged to Tommy McNamara, a second year player selected by Chivas USA in the second round last year.
McNamara was just a step slow to get to a Lampard deflection that quite honestly took an unexpected hop. McNamara may have been fouled in the box in the 38th but didn’t get the call. Whether it was embellishment or an honest foul, I couldn’t really see on the tiny JetBlue television screen lacking HD and the reverse buttons I have become so accustomed to.
Post-match, Red Bulls coach Jesse Marsch said that the first-ever appearance of Lampard, Villa, and Pirlo in the starting lineup motivated his squad.
“Credit to Sacha [Kjestan], Dax [McCarty], and Felipe. They took it as a personal challenge, playing against players like that.”
NYCFC hasn’t weakened the Red Bulls–at least not yet. Instead, City has brought out the best of the Red Bulls. At the close of the teams’ three match set, New York is decidedly red but the derby is the closest MLS has come yet to replicating the passion spillover of some of the world’s greatest derbies.
“There’s pride involved in the city and, I’ll be straight: them being in the league has been great for the city of New York and great for the league … I’m not a New Yorker, but I went to school in New Jersey and I’ve been around New York enough in my career and seen the league and what’s been happening in the city, and I’ve never seen the city so alive with soccer.” -Marsch in his post-match remarks
Switching coasts, if there is any team that knows how to roll with a big three, it’s the LA Galaxy. They not only invented it, they for the most part perfected it. The trinity of Beckham-Donovan-Keane has nicely segued into the trinity of Keane-Dos Santos-Gerrard.
How dominant was LA’s triumvirate on Sunday? They combined for two goals off a combined eight chances created. Meanwhile they completed 83% of their passes in their 3-1 win over the Sounders.
We’ve mentioned Seattle’s swoon on these pages before. After having the league’s best record, Seattle has slumped. Not since Columbus in 1997 has a team experienced a sharper downturn of fortune.
It’s hard to believe that Seattle is not through the worst of it. With the close of the Summer Transfer Window, it’s hard to think of any team that’s improved themselves more than Seattle. Sure, NYCFC added some names (ahem, I’m just saying!), but Seattle got a nice blend of players who can contribute not only right away, but for the foreseeable future as well.
With the confirmation today that Roman Torres is now possibly joining the Sounders, Seattle’s team this Sunday against Orlando could feature six lineup changes, presumably all upgrades, from the team that only lost by two goals to the Galaxy on the road.
Seattle could very well have both Obafemi Martins and Clint Dempsey returning and playing up top. Osvaldo Alonso could also be back back in the saddle again. In addition to Torres, Sunday could very well be the debuts of both Andreas Ivanschitz and Nelson Haedo Valdez.
I love some of baseball’s advanced metrics such as VORP, i.e. Value Over Replacement Player. It’s a pretty nifty way of gauging if a high priced veteran is worth more than replacing him with a someone from the farm system.
Not just MLS, but all of soccer actually, is way behind baseball in terms of finding meaningful stats outside of The All Important One (i.e. goals).
One day someone will find an incredible algorithm to measure a player’s true effectiveness. Who knows maybe that same person or team might also figure out a way to standardize that across leagues (e.g. being a critical player for Bayern Munich > being a critical player for a fourth division Cyprus side. Yes, Cyprus has a soccer league. Just ask Shane O’Neill!)
Just getting Martins and Dempsey healthy and on the field will help the Sounders. Seattle is 8-3-0 with Martins in the lineup; 2-9-2 and without him. Meanwhile, Seattle has only won once, a 1-0 win over DC United, without Dempsey in the lineup.
Finally, we’ve long labored on Columbus’s road woes but the Crew managed to get their second road win of the season beating the Rapids in Colorado. Columbus now has managed to beat each conference’s worst team (the Rapids and the Chicago Fire) on the road. With the three points, Columbus is in third place in the east, ten points south of DC United.
With nine games left it’s still too soon to call the conference for DC, but the fat lady is gargling salt water backstage.