Steve Davis' weekly column, drilling down on five hot topics in American soccer
1. Are the days of signing over-priced DPs really over?
When it comes to picking up overly pricey players, MLS is all grown up! No more worrying about incidence of highway robbery, those bygone days of costly contracts for over-the-hill players, right? Those doggone days are over.
We know so, don’t we? Because MLS clubs, each and every blessed one, declined to sign John Terry.
Hmmm. Actually, we don’t know so. This narrative that developed last week, one that presumes MLS has grown past its troubling tendency of infatuation with brand names, just isn’t accurate.
Yes, MLS is in a more mature place than five or certainly 10 years ago, in so many ways. And, yes, there are a bunch of smart eggs in high places, so more teams are adopting sophisticated approaches to strategic roster development.
But let’s not be naïve here. Mistakes will be still be made. All manner of personnel mistakes – and some of them will still fall under “buying name brands because … well, because they are name brands.”
The “whys” are varied and involved. In some cases seats need to be sold, and even though little evidence exists that any names beyond the biggest of the biggies really do move the attendance needle – we’re talking about David Beckham and his latter day contemporaries, Cristiano Ronaldo and a couple others who run in those posh player circles – someone will get desperate and bite on one of these aging stars.
Or an owner will become enamored with the chance to rub elbows with some star of another day. Again, we are living in a day of reduced chances of this stuff, but it will happen.
Besides, teams didn’t really decline to sign Terry – they declined to sign him at a certain price. At some other price, perhaps? Maybe.
Here’s something else: Terry is a defender. Defensive DPs are still a rarity in MLS. We like our DPs to be strikers and creators, so it’s easier to take a bold stand, to hold the line, on a center back.
But when 32- or 33-year-old Wayne Rooney is offered up in a couple of years, you don’t think someone is going to bite? Even at an inflated price?
If some club’s attendance is in the tank, you don’t think they’ll take a flier on 34- or 35-year-old Ronaldo. Some technical director or coach thinks they are one star striker away from getting over the championship hump, you don’t think they’ll go “all in” during the summer window for Karim Benzema, Luis Suarez or Carlos Tevez in a couple of years, even if the sticker price does look a wee bit inflated?
It’ll happen again. Book it … and the league will survive it.
2. John Terry isn’t coming … but he would help some teams
Here’s something else to consider about Terry (who just signed a short-term deal with Chelsea, so he’s not going any further than West London): Truth be told, he would absolutely, positively help a heap of MLS teams. If you don’t think so, we may not be watching the same games.
Again, this stuff is all about relative value for the asking price. But it was surprising how many media and supporters didn’t see any value at all in Terry’s abilities.
He just made 34 appearances for Chelsea this year. Yes, this was a year of the blues for the Blues. But finishing 10th in the Premier League, certainly below expectations around Stamford Bridge, still takes quality.
Terry at 35 can still be effective, mostly because he is always so well positioned, so adept at instinct and anticipation. Put Terry in charge of the back like, positioned alongside a more athletic center back, and you’ve got brilliant soup starter for a beefy MLS defense.
Remember how good Austin Berry was in 2012 (he was MLS Rookie of the Year), benefitting so greatly by standing alongside steady German veteran Arne Friedrich? Or how Gregg Berhalter did so much to mentor a young Omar Gonzalez a few years ago?
Right now, put Terry alongside Jason Hernandez at NYCFC and Patrick Vieira’s team becomes significantly better. Or alongside promising Orlando center back Tommy Redding. Or alongside Steve Birnbaum at DC United. Or alongside, well, pretty much anybody at the New York Red Bulls – because they need center back help the way most of us need help remembering all our passwords.
Again, it’s about relative value. It’s about identifying what an individual can still offer, for a certain price, while not making allowances or overlooking blemishes because of his name. As for center backs, this will come up again with Vincent Kompany, the talented and cerebral (and yet injury prone) 30-year-old Belgian stopper. And with Per Mertesacker (31), Thiago Silva (31) and Sergio Ramos (30) and others.
Some of these guys will be well worth the ante at X price. They may not be worth it at 2X, 3X or 4X. The smarties will find the X, make sure they are OK with a mentoring role (Bonus if they mentor a homegrown type!) and the club will be better off for it.
3. Colorado’s cast of cast-offs. Where have we seen that before?
Colorado is the surprise team of Major League Soccer so far in 2016. In fact, the Rapids are about as “surprise team” as you could get in MLS. And this in such a fabulous year of soccer surprises.
Still, no one should get too carried away with any “Colorado Rapids as Leicester City” narrative. The Rapids could go unbeaten the rest of the way, fill the stadium every night and magically shorten the TSA lines at every airport in this county, and it still would not be as improbable as this amazing thing just happened in the Premier League.
But there is one interesting comparison that deserves pointing out: A bunch of the Rapids who have Colorado leading in the Supporters Shield race were cast-offs –just like the Leicester men who so brilliantly upended Premier League convention at the King Power Stadium.
Philadelphia gave up on goalkeeper Zac MacMath, who has been OK in Colorado goal, a wobbly and bobble here and there notwithstanding. (Of course, MacMath will soon be replaced in net by Tim Howard, a guy no longer wanted at Goodison Park. That’s a bit different, I suppose, but still ...)
Along the back line there’s Marc Burch, who was with Seattle previously but collected for DSG Park duty in the 2013 re-entry draft.
The best example may be Michael Azira, who has been so dependable in midfield for Pablo Mastroeni’s team after appearing in just 14 matches over two seasons with the Sounders. (Osvaldo Alonso, still among the league’s top defensive midfielders, was a big reason why.) Colorado took Azira in an off-season waiver draft.
The Rapids got Marco Pappa from Seattle for general allocation money and Sam Cronin from San Jose for allocation money. And of course, New England declined to pay the freight for Jermaine Jones. Colorado was happy to have him, and the U.S. international midfielder might have something to say about the league MVP race before it’s over.
And this deserves mention, too. Mekeil Williams, having a good season along the Rapids’ back line, was a discovery signing out of Antigua. Antigua! Who gets players out of Antigua?
4. Things can change fast in MLS. And how
You know that Portland and Columbus played in last year’s MLS Cup final, right? Of course you do.
You know something else? They might not make the playoffs. And how about them rotten apples?
Such a thing has never happened. Never have both MLS Cup finalists failed to qualify for the following post-season. It’s still early, of course. But not that early anymore.
Columbus is 9th in the East, and things might, just might, get worse before they get better for Berhalter’s team. Yes, they scooped up some player acquisition chips in last week’s high profile trade with New England, so the opportunity to go get a heavyweight forward is there. Then again, we know MLS can be a quirky place, and good scorers who made their bones elsewhere can sometimes see a big leveling off upon MLS arrival.
Or maybe you don’t remember Jermaine Defoe’s time of misery in MLS? Or Kenny “Dr. Goals” Deuchar? Or Kris Boyd, Nery Castillo, Hamdi Salihi, Luis Angel Landin, Kenny Miller, Blaisé Nkufo and … well you get the idea. There are more of them out, there, high-profile strikers who were flops in MLS. (Don’t make me remind you about a fellow we knew as Mista!)
The point is, there are no guarantees when you pluck strikers from lands afar and import them into MLS, even relatively successful ones. So replacing a 22-goal scorer, what Columbus is doing in attempting to replace Kamara, isn’t easy.
Still, Columbus will probably have an easier time of climbing above the red line that Portland, which is 9th in the West. Why? Because the West is so much better than the East right now.
The predicted contenders are, well, contending. That’s the Galaxy, FC Dallas and the Vancouver Whitecaps, who have gotten it together lately. Meanwhile, Real Salt Lake and Colorado are miles ahead of where everyone thought they might be. San Jose is doing OK, too.
Right now, Sporting Kansas City and Seattle, two teams who looked like race horses have stumbled, but everyone looks at them and sees teams that can still make trouble. So there you go … who is Portland climbing above? And do they have a chance if they continue to concede more goals than any MLS club? No way!
If center backs Nat Borchers and Liam Ridgewell cannot find their late-season 2015 form, and if goalkeeper Adam Kwarasey cannot get healthy and do his thing (ruh-row … doesn’t look like that’s happening anytime soon), Caleb Porter’s MLS champions will not make the playoffs.
5. The Little Five
5a. I see the headline, “Season debut closer for Frank Lampard” and I wonder: “Are NYCFC issues about to get better or worse?
5b. Dallas was a team that lived on set-piece goals and counter attack strikes in 2014. There was more diversity in the goal-gettin’ in 2015. Now, is the team becoming a set piece and counter attack team again? Dallas’ last five goals could be classified thusly: free kick, open play, corner kick, penalty kick, counter attack.
5c. Fan are fans, and they do the things that fans do. And that’s OK. So when fans are convinced that a certain referee is “out to get them,” or “doesn’t want us to win,” well they are almost always wrong. Still, they pay their money for tickets and such, so OK. But this! How did this happen, where a club press release criticizes a referee? That’s crazy stuff.
5d. The whole Giovani dos Santos-Copa America roster thing is just … weird. But do we have any doubts about who is telling the truth here? It makes no sense that dos Santos wouldn’t want to participate at Copa. He more or less said he desperately wanted to a couple of weeks ago on an ESPN national broadcast. Beyond all that, I have my doubts about a manager (Mexico’s Juan Carlos Osorio) who doesn’t just pick his team and then stand by his decisions. Hiding behind odd claims is just, well, kind of goofy.
5e. In Europe, officials at Manchester City and with the Belgian national team are straining to figure out why Kompany cannot stay healthy. There’s a lot of that going around, eh? So if they find answers, perhaps they can share; we’ve got one of those, too. His name is Jozy Altidore.
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.
