Steve Davis' weekly column, drilling down on five hot topics in American soccer
1. Tell me again about the “best team in MLS”
Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m reading the wrong stuff. Or maybe I’m just not that smart. After all, I was certain Brangelina was solid as high density steel; I thought it would last forever.
Either way, I keep hearing and reading that Toronto FC may be the best team in MLS. Unless this “best team in MLS” banner is flying over NYCFC. Yeah, we’re getting some of that, too. Oh, but what about the Red Bulls? They have that “best team in MLS” look at times – just not counting the five times Jess Marsch’s team has blown two-goal leads.
Meanwhile, I seem to read a lot about the flaws of teams in the West, the tactical conundrums Bruce Arena faces with mis-matched personnel in L.A., or Colorado’s inability to score or Real Salt Lake’s ordinariness. I’m reading this stuff from some pretty informed folks, too, colleagues that I respect.
Honestly, I see the same flaws at L.A., Colorado and RSL. And I see the issue at striker and in depth at Dallas, which I also hear and read about.
But I question the narrative, which tends to take on group-think attributes. That is, it echoes around and builds on itself. Here’s what I see:
I see teams at the top of each conference that are roughly similar in points per game. And I see one conference that still looks slightly ahead of the other. The West is 37-29-30 against the East this year. Translation, TFC, NYCFC and the Red Bulls have built their records against the (slightly) weaker conference.
The point is this: echoing narrative can be a powerful thing. Maybe I’m reading the wrong reports, but my reading list seems heavy on “Eastern Conference teams great, although flawed.” While the more common Western Conference narrative seems to be “Flawed, but still somehow doing OK.”
At some point, the records are what they are. And after 28 weeks, we are definitely at that point.
Oh, well … the games are good on either side of the conference divide right now, with playoff places and ordering all there for the taking.
2. “Tata” Martino for Atlanta? Hmmmm….
ESPN’s Jeff Carlisle says former Argentina national team manager Gerardo "Tata" Martino is on the short list for coaching duty at MLS expansion side Atlanta United. In fact, it says he’s“in talks” to accept the position.
No questions the man has managed at the very highest level, even if results were a bit mixed at Barcelona (in just one year in charge) and with a fabulously talented Argentine national side. His previous club assignment, Newell’s Old Boys in Argentina, was an unquestioned success.
And Martino’s pressing style will certainly ding the bell of excitement when Atlanta takes the field in just a few short months. (Especially if he gets Mexican midfielder Andres Guardado as reported; he is the kind of good, mid-level star that tends to really work in MLS.)
But consideration of Martino comes with a warning flare: assuming it’s true (and Carlisle is a very credible journalist), it happens despite the knowledge that foreign managers with limited (or zero) MLS experience have been more “miss” than “hit” in their runs through this unique league.
I’ve written about it before. So have lots of people. But this is one of those lessons that just refuses to be learned. Or maybe Atlanta United deciders, including former U.S. captain Carlos Bocanegra, just believe their choice will be the exception rather than the rule.
Here’s where we are today with the four managers who came into the 2016 MLS season with limited or no real knowledge of what works and doesn’t work here:
Patrick Vieira’s NYCFC is third in the East, arriving there thanks in no small part to three highly paid, highly prized DPs. We’ll grade that one “not bad at all.”
Adrian Heath’s Orlando City is 8th – and he has already been fired, of course. (Admittedly, it was a tough assignment, running an expansion team, as he had since Orlando entered the league to begin 2015.)
Veljko Paunović’s Chicago Fire is dead last in the East.
Owen Coyle’s Houston Dynamo are dead last in the West; like Heath, he was on his second season and, like Heath, he also is no longer with the team.
That’s it. Of the foursome of managers who lacked significant MLS experience coming into the 2016 season, two are gone, one has certainly not shined but must be graded out at “incomplete” at this point (Paunovic) and Vieira is doing OK.
But go ahead Atlanta United. Maybe Martino is the exception. If not … well, somebody’s got to finish last next year.
3. Looking closer at 20-goal seasons (hint: Who takes the PKs?)
Penalty kick goals count when we add up scoring and decide results. Of course they do. But when we’re just having fun with stats, well … we’re big kids, and we can do whatever we want with them. It’s like having desert first; when you’re an adult, you can do what you want!
Over the last five years, there have been 10 seasons where strikers hit for 20 or more goals. It’s mostly the usual suspects: Bradley Wright-Phillips, Kei Kamara, Chris Wondolowski, etc.
But let’s be playful and subtract PK goals. What we’re left with is something different:
First, we see that 20-goal seasons don’t come as easily when you aren’t a team’s designated PK taker. (Not that there’s anything “easy” about a 20-goal season one way or the other; these things aren’t just falling off the back of commissioner Don Garber’s pickup truck, you know.)
In the last five years, minus penalty kicks, these 20-goal seasons have happened just five times. Which bring us to the other thing we learn:
Wright-Phillips deserves more praise than we usually give him; two of those five 20-goal seasons since 2011 belong to the Red Bull’s high-rate hit man.
4. Robbie Keane’s declining influence in LA
Out on Planet LA (truly, a different land out there), so much of the soccer scene attention is on Landon Donovan’s return. Rightly so; it’s a great piece of theater, especially as the once-and-again starnailed the late equalizer against Sporting KC on Sunday.
Meanwhile,Giovani dos Santos is enjoying some of the best form of his career, which is saying something for the Mexican international. His numbers look terrific: 14 goals and 11 assists, which means he has directly contributed to almost half of the Galaxy’s 51 goals this year.
You know what that looks like? That looks a lot like what Robbie Keane produced the last few years around Carson, Calif. Which brings us to the fascinating, ongoing subplot around the StubHub Center, one we aren’t hearing much about: Keane’s sudden, increasing irrelevance to things around the StubHub Center.
Keane’s production this year (8 goals, 2 assists in 15 appearances) is easily his worst over five full seasons in L.A. Still dealing with more of the injuries that have reduced his season, the veteran Irish striker has scored just once in the Galaxy’s last 10 league matches.
Then we start talking about the (often discussed) similarities in Keane’s and Dos Santos’ games. Then we start talking about the fact that he’s out of contract this year (although Keane says he wants to remain in sunny Southern California.) And then we start talking about the wisdom of handing multi-year contracts (which Keane may well want) to a 36-year-old who is among Major League Soccer’s highest earners.
But maybe he’s OK with a one-year deal. Maybe he takes a significant salary reduction, which makes a new contract more palatable for the Galaxy front office. Either way, Keane’s long-standing, but now declining influence in Los Angeles is a story to follow through the season’s final few weeks.
The other possibility: the proud Irishman writes different ending to the script, changing the story in a big way. This is, after all, about the time Keane find his best self, gaining big steam down the MLS stretch and into playoff time.
5. The Little Five
5a. I enjoy fan taunts as much as the next guy, so long as they are in good humor, not tasteless, etc. So it was with Landon Donovan’s visit to Sporting Kansas City, where thefans chanted “AARP” in “honoring” the recently un-retired Donovan. Well done, I say … although perhaps we should point out a certain, critical irony hard at work here: SKC had a starter (Brad Davis) who is older than Donovan!
5b. There is such an important lesson in Donovan’s memorable strike on Sunday, easily his most important kick through two Galaxy appearances in this Indian Summer of his career: the game isn’t all physical ability. So, so much is about a “soccer brain.” It’s knowing where to be and when to be there, and having the drive and desire to get there. It’s about technique and about having the calm to perform those skills under pressure. All of that, bundled, is what made Donovan great. He can still clearly put that “bundle” to good use, even if he has to pick his spots now, surely with fewer trips to the well available.
5c. There are so many good things going on around FC Dallas: the Open Cup crown, the home grown story, Mauro Diaz’s season, coping well without Fabian Castillo (6-2-4 in all competitions since his departure), etc. But one less discussed part of the FCD success in 2016 is the great off-season pickup that was Mauro Rosales. His role initially was super sub, and that paid dividends in different ways. He didn’t start a match for more than five months. But once he did … now Oscar Pareja’s is riding him like a race horse! The 35-year-old Argentine is responding to his recent run of starts; he had two assists in Saturday’s 2-2 draw at Yankee Stadium.
5d. I just love MLS guys like Jack Jewsbury, who just announced his retirement at season’s end. A classic “backbone” guy, he has played in 348 league games (not counting playoffs, Open Cup, etc.) since 2003. Consider that Dallas’ Kellyn Acosta was 7 years old when Jewsbury first kicked a ball in MLS.) Same for cats like Davy Arnaud, Ned Grabavoy, Drew Moor, Brad Evans and lots of others. That is, rock-solid dudes who aren’t stars, but who pounded out a good, solid professional soccer career entirely in MLS.
5e. Dallas’ ability to take a breath, recover and still gain a worthy point after last week’s Open Cup triumph was admirable. But so was New England’s bounce back; we’ve seen these Open Cup losses suck the life from teams’ next MLS outing. So credit the Revs for a niceroad “W” at Montreal. And a special tip o’ the hat to manager Jay Heaps for a critical tactical tweak. Once Gershon Koffie went out to injury, the Revs had no one who could cover as much ground in the bottom spot of the midfield diamond. So Heaps tightened up the diamond a bit. Most importantly, had Lee Nguyen play a little deeper, giving more defensive help to Scott Caldwell. With Kei Kamara starting, he became the primary outlet, able to hold the ball until Nguyen could then get further forward. Sticking with the diamond midfield despite Koffie’s absence helps get more of New England’s best players (Diego Fagundez, Kelyn Rowe, Juan Agudelo, Nguyen and Kamara specifically) on the field and into their best spots, or something close to it.
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.