Steve Davis' weekly column, drilling down on five hot topics in American soccer
1. We need to talk about assists in MLS
Let’s get this on the record: I am a big believer in what fabulously in-form Sacha Kljestan has brought to the Red Bulls this year. His continued estrangement from the national team is a real head-scratcher. What follows is not about Kljestan.
Rather, it’s about his assist in the Red Bulls’ muddy, splish-splashy draw with D.C. United and about a couple of the statistician’s decisions from the rainy afternoon at RFK Stadium. Two “second” assists were awarded, one each on both Red Bulls goals. The second one, awarded to Kljestan, was particularly problematic. Most of us watching on national TV had almost as much to do with visitors’ second goal as Kljestan did.
If you view the main MLSSoccer.com highlight pack from that match, you won’t even see the passes that became second assists; that’s how relatively disconnected they were from the actual strike on goal.
Furthermore, should any assist have been awarded on this one, where the service from Bradley Wright-Phillips takes a deflection off D.C. defender Bobby Boswell? If so, then fine …
But then why wouldn’t Houston’s Boniek Garcia and teammate Cristian Maidana be credited with assists on this Ricardo Clark goal from last weekend?
And if two assists are awarded on both Red Bulls goals from the weekend, fair enough. But then why wasn’t Jozy Altidore credited with a second assistfor this sublime layoff that led to a Toronto FC goal last week? Watch the video; now that’s some heady hold-up play!
Those are just examples from last weekend. You’ll find ‘em every weekend.
Nobody is wearing tin foil hats here or hollering “conspiracy!” This is about standards being applied unevenly.
If second assists are going to come so easily, then why doesn’t Chris Tierney get an assist on this goal by Teal Bunbury? (The video doesn’t show Tierney making the pass from midfield to Kelyn Rowe, who takes a couple of little set-up touches before delivering a well-shaped cross.) Why wasn’t FC Dallas’ Carlos Gruezo given an assist here? Those are just other recent examples.
Admittedly it’s a subjective call by the folks at Opta who handle this stuff. (And who did do some waffling on this one that we just talked about.) And we certainly are talking about “first world” problems here; as news analysis goes, this ain’t exactly looking at Zika zones. On the other hand, why not get it right?
Kljestan just broke the Red Bulls’ single season assist record. He would have almost certainly gotten the mark eventually even without that dubious second assist Sunday. (A mark shared previously by a pretty good attacker, fellow named Thierry Henry.)
But if these things are going to matter to us (records, assist leadership, etc.) then let’s make sure they really do mean something, and that they are properly earned. Kljestan is having such an outstanding season, he deserves his rightful place in the books, one that isn’t going to be smudged by an asterisk in anyone’s mind.
Apply the standards evenly; it shouldn’t be that hard to get right.
2. The broken relationship between Sigi Schmid, Clint Dempsey
Credit ESPN veteran soccer writer Jeff Carlisle with the “get” of the week, a candid talk with recently dismissed Sounders manager Sigi Schmid.
Schmid more or less confirmed the whispers that the relationship between he and Clint Dempsey had reached a breaking point well before Schmid’s July 26 dismissal. The Sounders longtime manager took the high road, but reading between the lines, it does seem pretty clear that he and Dempsey were having issues.
When I spoke to Dempsey in San Jose one day before the MLS All-Star game, he told me he had not reached out to Schmid, who had been dismissed two days before. That was telling – especially when you read Schmid say that he “spoke to a lot of players after I got let go, who reached out.” None of them, apparently, were named Clint Dempsey.
Broken or strained relationships between players and managers are certainly nothing new. That said, there are “warning flag” elements here. Because when players aren’t completely “bought in” to the manager’s ongoing plan, a toxic stew is starting to brew.
Coaches coach. Players play. There needs to be a hierarchy of command and a clear delineation of responsibility. Players can disagree on usage, of course, but at the end of the day, they have to do what’s best for the entire team in the manager’s eyes. When they don’t … well, not much good is coming from it.
Dempsey’s level of interest and effort may or may not have contributed to Schmid’s ultimate dismissal; that’s difficult to say. If you watched that outright debacle three weeks ago in Kansas City, arevealing 3-0 loss where Seattle’s effort was either pitiful, or perhaps the residue of a disheartened team that was simply out of gas, the red flags were going up all over the place.
You have to wonder who, at the end of the day, is making the big decisions for a club? And if it’s your 33-year-old striker, even if it’s only through his actions –especially if it’s someone who won’t be a force on the field much longer anyway –don’t be surprised if there’s trouble ahead.
3. Calling it on Gonzalo Veron
At this point, New York’s Gonzalo Veron is a Designated Player bust. Call it. Mark it down with a Sharpie. File it.
How else to see this thing?
Yes, injuries curtailed the former Italian Serie A midfielder’s first year at Red Bull Arena. But his contribution to 2016 has been disappointing, to say the least. Suffice to say, for such a ballyhooed acquisition, spoken of so highly at his arrival into New Jersey last year, his time with New York has been a mess.
A guy who is making north of $500,000, according to the MLS Players’ Union figures (which we know can be bit misleading in places), seven starts over two years just isn’t enough.
Sunday, in a tough road match at a bitter rival, where a 26-year-old veteran would presumably be of use, was stuck to the bench. His introduction in stoppage time draw with D.C. United pretty much said it all; a guy who should be a game-changer was deployed as a late-game time kill, someone to help eat up a few more precious seconds to New York could salvage a draw.
It was the third time this year New York has lost a two-goal lead. These road draws that “feel” like losses must be getting awful old, not to mention plenty worrisome for manager Jesse Marsch. Too bad he doesn’t have a veteran leader available (talking about Veron here, of course) to help stabilize things before they get shaky, especially as trusty Dax McCarty is now on the injury shelf.
It’s certainly time for the Red Bulls to take the “L” here, not make things any worse and just let this one go.
4. Sunday interview ahead with Bob Bradley
This is what we call “cross promotion:” For ESPN Soccer Today, a radio show/ podcast that I host each week along with Marc Stein, I was able to catch up with Bob Bradley this week. For scheduling reasons, we needed to pre-record; you want to hear this one.
The former national team manager talks about the challenges of coaching in different lands (Egypt, Norway and now France, in addition to his years in the United States), about his French language skills and about whether American players and coaches still face a certain glass ceiling when it comes to jobs abroad.
He also talks about whether he’d be interested in getting back into MLS. There will be potential opportunities left and right in months ahead.
Officials at LAFC just announced that they’d like to have a manager in place by January of 2018. If that sounds like its way off in the future, well, it’s just a little more than 16 months away. Bradley lived in Southern California during his time as Chivas USA manager and as the national team boss, so he’s got ties there.
Atlanta still has a manager to hire; don’t forget that Bradley once made Carlos Bocanegra his national team captain. Bocanegra is now technical director at Atlanta United FC, which gets into MLS league play in about seven months. Plus, there will always be comings and goings in MLS, as we know; several seats right now that aren’t exactly rocks of stability.
So … well … you’ll want to hear the interview. ESPN Soccer Today is live at 9 a.m. CT on 103.3 FM in Dallas. Or the podcast is available at Soccer-Today.org, or also available on iTunes.
I’ll pull back the curtain just a little here. Bradley took over French Ligue 2 side Le Havre in mid-season last year and came so, so close to getting the Normandy region club promoted into Ligue 1. The 2016-17 campaign at its gorgeous new stadium started well this year, but then took a couple of lumps. One of them, a 5-2 loss at home earlier this week, came the day before our scheduled interview.
As we connected with Bradley, I told him I would have understood if he had been in a bad mood and postponed the chat. “That’s not how I operate,” Bradley told us, something you won’t hear on the interview. “It wasn’t a good result. But that’s football. We’ll fix it. We’ll be alright.”
5. The Little Five
5a. I know everyone is thinking that Maurice Edu, once healthy, might need to fill in once again at center back for Philadelphia. And I understand why; Ken Tribbett did look overmatched at the position in the 3-1 loss at PPL Park to Toronto. But that looks like a band-aide fix. On the other hand, a midfield of Edu screening, Alejandro Bedoya linking and Tranquillo Barnetta creating? That looks like a bunch of “Ws” waiting to happen – assuming they can find an adequate center back to benefit from all that good midfield screening.
5b. By the way, Bedoya’s second run-out with the Union certainly wasn’t a good result for Philadelphia. But the U.S. international was everywhere in this one, passing, possessing and most importantly, diligent in tracking Sebastian Giovinco. That is not easy work, and Bedoya did it as well as anyone.
5c. I keep hearing that the Galaxy isn’t getting enough from Gio Dos Santos. Perhaps; he does tend to have a few quiet matches. Then again, the Mexican international has 8 goals and 8 assists in 20 matches, which isn’t bad at all. Compare that to two DP attackers from Colorado, Shkëlzen Gashi and Kevin Doyle, who have combined for 8 goals and 6 assists.
5d. A couple of weeks ago, around the trade deadline, a bunch of us wondered Philadelphia would be that team for the 2016 playoffs. That is, the team that doesn’t have a good record, but that nobody wants any part of. Turns out, that was just flavor of the moment. The Union could still make noise, but there’s another lurking beast in the East, one that’s made up substantial ground lately with five wins in six in league play. Never mind a team that might sneak up on everyone. Everyone is healthy around BMO Field. Toronto has a favorable schedule ahead, and Greg Vanney’s bunch stands to gain momentum aplenty from it. However you label it, this is the team to fear on that side of the bracket.
5e. Jozy Altidore’s re-emergence as force and a freak of nature is a big reason why Toronto will probably win the East. He’s quite possibly been the best MLS player in August, just a big ol’ bully up front for the BMO bunch. No offense to Dempsey, but Altidore probably should have been MLS Player of the Week.
Steve Davis has covered Major League Soccer since is first kick in 1996. He writes on-line for FourFourTwo and co-hosts the weekly radio show/podcast ESPN Soccer Today on 103.3 FM in Dallas. Davis is also the radio play-by-play voice for FC Dallas on 100.7 FM.
