Steve Davis' weekly column, drilling down on five hot topics in American soccer
1. Mauro Diaz’s night in one word: brilliant
There were strong performances all over the park for FC Dallas on Tuesday as the team delivered its first silverware since 1997. But there was one unquestionably great performance, a signature master class delivered by Mauro Diaz, no doubt the best of the bunch as FC Dallas lifted the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup trophy and tore down the looming legacy of a trophy drought.
In fact, let’s expand the reach of that statement – and understand that there is no hyperbole at work here,:
There have been great performances at Toyota Stadium since the facility (that Lamar Hunt built) opened back in 2005. But there probably has never been a bigger, better one than said master class from FC Dallas’ crafty Argentine playmaker. Especially considering the night’s circumstance.
Again, Kellyn Acosta’s two-way work was critical. So was Carlos Gruezo’s usual commitment to regaining possession as quickly as possible and turning it into reliable distribution (often into Diaz). Walker Zimmerman and Matt Hedges continue to be one of pro soccer’s top center back pairings, and Maxi Urutti did what he doesn’t do reliably enough: finish chances with a ruthless efficiency, banging in two, hitting another that was ruled offside and smacking the post once.
His was close to “performance for the ages,” but it wasn’t quite what Diaz delivered. Diaz was the indomitable straw stirring this drink as FC Dallas comfortably controlled matters after an initial sketchy few minutes; the New England Revolution scored in the 6th minute on its only shot before the break.
His possession and ability to wiggle out of pressure and create space was a thing of beauty. Those passes the find that channels and eliminate helpless defenders were arriving on the regular. The raw stats are telling enough (one goal, three assists), but look at his passing chart. It will show that when he wasn’t protecting possession as if his life depended on it, he was savage in his vertical passing.
It was often a case of possess, possess, possess … then slice open the Revs back line with one of those killer balls. (He was also drawing a lot of fouls; see note “5b” below.) When Diaz wasn’t doing any of that, he was dropping deep into midfield to dictate tempo.
“Mauro’s performance tonight, it was a collection of what he has done this year,” manager Oscar Pareja said, struggling a bit to properly describe what the 25-year-old playmaker had just accomplished. “Mauro showed the heart of this club, the heart of his teammates tonight.”
2. Landon Donovan doesn’t need to be great. Not right now
Let’s be honest: Landon Donovan looked a bit old and slow in his first (and very high profile) run-out of post-retirement.
But let’s also be honest: It doesn’t matter. Not right now.
Donovan doesn’t need to be fit or sharp now for this second life to work out the way denizens of Galaxy-ville would like. He has more than six weeks to round himself into fightin’ shape and reacquire the speed of thought, which was always one of Donovan’s distinguishing characteristics, along with that signature burst of speed.
Why six weeks? Because that’s when the MLS post-season begins.
Bruce Arena’s team is going to make the playoffs. Book it. In order to somehow miss out, the Galaxy would have to completely collapse and the Whitecaps, Earthquakes or Sounders would have to darn near win out – a scenario so high in improbability that it’s not worth talking about.
So we’re looking at late October around playoff time; that is when Donovan needs to be closer to the Donovan we remember, the one who finished with such flourish in 2014, with 10 goals and 19 assists in driving the Galaxy to its third MLS Cup crown in four seasons. As for his ability to help the team improve its playoff positioning over the next six weeks: well, it’s not really all that necessary.
There is ample evidence in MLS playoffs that avoiding the knockout round and gaining home field leverage may be helpful, but is hardly essential.
The Galaxy went through the knockout round in 2012 and still won a championship. And the team claimed a 2014 MLS Cup tile – Donovan’s “final” final, or so we all thought – without benefit of home field advantage in the conference-deciding home-and-away series against Seattle.
Donovan’s next few weeks aren’t about improving himself along the way. If he helps the team get better results as he rounds into form and fitness, even better … but it’s just a bonus.
3. Was FC Dallas about to flirt with Buffalo Bills territory?
In sports, no one wants to be the Buffalo Bills, an enduring metaphor of the club that can’t win the big one, a team that gets almost to the mountain top, but just can’t plant the doggone flag. The Bills advanced to a lost four consecutive Super Bowls in the early 1990s.
As for FC Dallas: the club did earn a title in 1997, which isn’t that long ago in actual years. But in terms of growth of professional soccer in the United States, 1997 was practically the Paleozoic Era of the league. MLS today bears precious little resemblance to the 1997 version. So, that was pretty much a proverbial “different era.”
Since then FC Dallas has appeared in two other U.S. Open Cup finals, both since the club’s Frisco stadium opened in 2005. Colin Clarke’s team went to Carson, Calif., and fell to the Galaxy that year, in fact, in the 2005 Open Cup final.
Two years after that, it was FC Dallas that got to host the final. Steve Morrow’s side fell to a good New England Revolution bunch, as Michael Parkhurst, Jay Heaps, Steve Ralston, Taylor Twellman and others were in a run where they also made three consecutive MLS Cup finals. (Unfortunately for Revolution faithful, New England is now the closest MLS version of the Buffalo Bills.)
Dallas got into its one and only MLS Cup final in 2010, arriving to find bitterly cold temperatures in Toronto – in the era of neutral site finals – as they met the Colorado Rapids. That one went to extra time, and Dallas was the better team by most measures – but we know that doesn’t always add up to the final result. Colorado claimed the night and lifted its first MLS Cup.
Along the way, Dallas had failed in a few other big matches. In 2005 and 2006, Dallas had return legs and favorable positioning in second-leg playoff series against Colorado. In both cases, the Rapids advanced, leaving FCD to ask questions about what went wrong.
All of that gets wiped away from the white board now. Yes, there is still much to play for around Toyota Stadium. But Tuesday’s win goes a long way to erasing a legacy that no one wants. The pressure of that one, at least, is off for now.
Chicago Fire (without a trophy since 2006), you are on the clock.
4. Bradley Wright-Phillips deserves an exalted place
I sometimes go back and forth on how highly to regard Bradley Wright-Phillips. I have always liked the Red Bulls striker, not just as a player, either. He’s a class act and a “giver,” someone always trying to help his club while being a stand-up individual along the way. So that’s the starting point.
From there, I sometimes I think he’s a good player who won the “time frame” lottery, that he has benefitted spectacularly from two wonderful playmakers. His early years with the Red Bulls came in the time of Thierry Henry, from whom he received a steady and heady supply of set-up service. (Not to mention all the defensive attention teams paid to the French international.) Once the sand ran out in Henry’s hourglass, along came Sacha Kljestan, still in the “prime of his career” window.
Kljestan had 14 assists last year. In most MLS seasons, that gets you “top 5” among league leaders, which isn’t bad at all. In some years, that gets you the assist-leader crown. And how does he follow that? With 15-and-counting for the 2016 season.
Wright-Phillipsis among the top beneficiaries. So, yes, the Red Bulls English striker has had a lot of help.
Now here’s the other side of this argument: The man’s prodigious scoring sure isn’t all Henry and Kljestan. As they say, “You still gotta score ‘em.” And boy does he.
He had 27 goals in 2014, equaling a league all-time high.
He had 17 last year and already sits on an 18-goal season this year (with five matches remaining). That gives him 62 goals over a three-year stretch (again, five matches remaining). That’s the best three-year run yet in MLS, topping Chris Wondolowski’s 61 from 2010-2012. Raul Diaz Arce cobbled together a three-year window of 56 goals beginning in Major League Soccer inaugural season. Robbie Keane, surely among the best strikers ever to walk an MLS field struck for 55 between the 2013-2015 seasons.
So, raw numbers-wise, the argument for Wright-Phillips as one of the best MLS strikers (ever, that is) is getting easier to put together. Either way, it’s a heck of a story considering this guy came into MLS as the younger, far less heralded brother of English international Shaun Wright-Phillips.
Then there is this: while everyone else around Red Bull Arena seemed a little too “OK” with yet another pair of points dropped last weekend, Wright-Phillips was having none of it. As the Red Bulls saw yet another two-goal lead evaporate, a habit that has become chilling to Red Bulls fans for its maddening regularity, everyone else preached patience in the system.
Meanwhile, said Wright-Phillips: “It’s a pattern, and it’s unacceptable. It’s rubbish." He went on, speaking of “schoolboy errors,” but you get the gist.
They might need a little more of that around Red Bull Arena.
And for me, that tips the balance. Wright-Phillips deserves his place among the MLS greats.
5. The Little Five
5a. Related to the above item on Wright-Phillips: He once talked to Marc Stein and I for ourESPN Soccer Today show on the morning of a match, and was happy to do so. Contrast that to players who refuse to talk even the day before a match, for a league that can still use all the publicity boosting it can get. (There are more of those than you might think.) And by the way, Wright-Phillips scored a hat trick that very afternoon, a few hours after speaking to us live on match day. Clearly, it didn’t hinder the man.
5b. In addition to everything above on Diaz, consider that he was fouled eight times Tuesday. Eight! The most fouled men in Major League Soccer get hacked, shoved or held around three times a game. (Diaz, in fact, leads in fouls suffered by average at 2.8 a game.) So to be fouled eight times is to go through a lot.
5c. I spoke to MLS commissioner Don Garber at Tuesday’s Open Cup final in Frisco. There wasn’t much “newsy,” not in our chat nor in a round-table with several other journalists. But this was interesting: I asked Garber about further playoff field expansion as the league grows to 22 and then to 24 teams. Garber is a smart guy, and he almost always has quick answers. On this one … he hesitated. He doesn’t have the answer to that question, he said. And when pressed, he said this: “I think we have the right formula down now. There is enormous pressure to qualify [for the playoffs]. … I think we have to take a look at how it plays out over the next couple of years. The good news is it’s not something we have to decide today.”
5d. This is a total guess: it sounds to me like Garber would perhaps like to keep a slightly lower percentage of playoff qualifiers, while maybe there are owners who lean toward a larger playoff field. Again, that’s reading tea leaves. Said Garber: “We have to make our playoffs more valuable to our fans and to our teams. But we’ve got a lot of stuff on our plates right now.”
5e. MLS is making a great choice in de-emphasizing the Expansion Draft. If you look at most of the expansion drafts, one year later one of two things has happened: the guys are mostly gone, or the club kept too many of them and, partially as a result, had to fire their manager. Seriously, if you protect 11 and then retain your Generation Adidas and homegrowns, pretty soon we’re talking about the 15th, 16th and 17th guys on the roster, at very best. I suppose you can build a little bit of depth on your new roster with those guys. But it’s really just “a little bit.”
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.