Steve Davis' weekly column, drilling down on five hot topics in American soccer
1. Fewer games usually equals playoff success. Usually …
National soccer writer Brian Straus once dug up some pretty compelling numbers on the physical toll for MLS clubs competing in concurrent competitions. Long story short, teams carrying the weight of extra matches in CONCACAF Champions League or U.S. Open Cup (or SuperLiga back in the day) generally fared worse in MLS playoffs than teams with more rest.
It certainly makes sense, especially before Major League Soccer launched an emphasis on beefing up depth in the middle part of its rosters through selected financial mechanisms (“targeted allocation money” and “general allocation money,” etc.)
So it went in 2015, when Real Salt Lake, LA Galaxy, Seattle, D.C. United and Vancouver all participated in that year’s CONCACAF Champions League group phase. Meanwhile, Sporting Kansas City and Philadelphia played the maximum number of U.S. Open Cup matches.
In the MLS Cup playoffs, none of those teams advanced any further than conference semifinals. (The “final four” from the 2015 MLS Cup playoffs was Dallas, Portland, New York Red Bulls and Columbus.)
Well, here we are in 2016, the post-season set to commence Wednesday. Portland, Sporting Kansas City, Vancouver, New York Red Bulls and FC Dallas have jumped the added CONCACAF hurdles this year. So, four additional contests for those clubs. Plus, Dallas hiked the added Open Cup miles, with five more contests en route to the trophy. (New England did, as well, but Jay Heaps’ Revs didn’t make the MLS Cup playoffs.)
So, history says FCD has one foot on a banana peel here, eh? Well, maybe.
Because FCD might, just might, be an outlier here, more “exception” than “rule” on this one. Why? Simple …
It would seem logical to conclude that the added wear and tear of additional matches slowly degrades physical performance, which hinders playoff success on the back end of these long, draining campaigns. It’s also logical to conclude that these added minutes – not just on the field, but while jumping the hoops of planes, trains and automobiles – exacts a greater toll on older players. So, you see where this is going, right?
FC Dallas is a lot of things; “older” isn’t one of them. In fact, Dallas is the youngest of this year’s 12 MLS playoffs teams. (It’s the youngest of all 20 MLS clubs, period.) Have a look at this terrific chart by compiled by ESPN’s Jeff Carlisle. It shows each MLS team’s average age weighted by minutes played in 2016. Dallas is the youngest at 25.8 years old. (For anyone who knows how Oscar Pareja has assembled his team around home grown signings and younger players in general, that Dallas would be the league’s youngest team is about as surprising as finding coffee at a Starbucks).
None of this is definitive, of course. These are just more factors to be considered – and certainly some dandy knowledge to drop during tonight’s MLS watching with friends or family.
2. THE key number for MLS knockout round matches
When MLS clubs put playoff positioning in their sights, the priorities are pretty clear – and with good reason.
First, clubs fight hard to finish No. 1 or 2 in the conference, treating themselves a first-round bye and artfully dodging that early knockout contest.
Short of that, finishing 3rd or 4th is critical; those team host this wearing and worrying single-elimination match. And this isn’t just conventional wisdom; there is a mounting body of evidence that home field doesn’t just matter in that opening round, it matters a lot.
Home teams are 10-2 in single elimination matches since 2010. In fact, a road team hasn’t won since 2012, which means home sides have won six in a row heading into Wednesday’s matches in Toronto and Los Angeles.
In the following round, when the series adopt a home-and-away format, history shows a pretty fare edge for higher seeds (who host the return leg decider). But the edge pretty much disappears for the conference finals (also a home-and-away series).
3. Can a low seed advance into MLS Cup?
Two of the lowest seeds did once advance into MLS Cup. It happened in 2012, when Houston was 5th in the East and the L.A. Galaxy was 4th in the West.
Can it happen again? Could, say, a 5th or 6th seed in either conference – with two additional teams now in the field, 5th and 6th are the lowest seeds – earn a berth in the Dec. 10 final?
Sure they could. But it’s not likely. And it probably would not be completely random if it happened.
First, consider the stat from above (about home team success in the knockout round). So, look for three or perhaps all four off the lower seeds to be eliminated straight away.
Second, even if they advance, they have to play again this weekend. Yes, they’ll play at home, but they must travel to get there. In other words, if higher-seeded Seattle or L.A. win this week in the West, they stay at home, sleeping in their own beds, with the appropriate Sleepnumber setting and favorite nighttime tea and such, and then play again at home on the weekend. So they get a home game against a team that must travel.
If lower-seeded Real Salt Lake or Sporting Kansas City pull off the mid-week upset, they must travel to get back home before meeting the rested higher seed.
Then there’s this to consider: when lower seeds have advanced in past years, it really wasn’t that much of a surprise.
Best example: there just weren’t many shrieks of shock when the 4th-seeded Galaxy survived a knockout round match and marched to a title in 2012.
That’s the year Bruce Arena’s team started 3–8–2, and looked pretty raggedy along the early way. But Omar Gonzalez got healthy and stabilized the back line. And that’s the year Robbie Keane showed everyone that he knew how to kick things up a notch at playoff time. (Keane had five goals and the Galaxy’s final six regular season matches.) Landon Donovan was productive, as usual, with 9 goals and 14 assists that year. The Galaxy finished on a 13-4-4 run, which is darn good.
And Houston? How did Dominic Kinnear’s team bully its way from 5th seeded afterthought to a place in the MLS Cup final? Well … Dominic Kinnear. We can debate about cause and effect as he has slipped, perhaps, in everyone’s ranking of MLS coaches. But at the time, the guy sure knew his way around the MLS playoffs; he was appearing in an MLS Cup final for the fourth time in seven years.
The point is this: lower seeds can, in fact, push their way into the MLS Cup final. But they are outliers – and the exercise in predicting who might become an outlier isn’t advanced math. A team like Real Salt Lake, Montreal or Philadelphia, clubs with little momentum at the moment, seem highly unlikely to be playing in early December.
A team like Seattle, with man-on-a-mission Nicolas Lodeiro and with a record of 8-2-4 lately? That wouldn’t be such a shocker.
4. Time to solve the tactical conundrums – including FC Dallas’
Its make or break time, so everyone has to get it right. Not just mostly right, but 100 percent, ain’t-no-doubt-about-it right.
That’s no problemo for a few teams. The Red Bulls and Colorado Rapids, for instance, have a clear picture of how they want to line up and attack the playoffs, perhaps just with maybe just a little adjustment here or there. In Colorado, for example, maybe Pablo Mastroeni plays a little switcheroo between Shkëlzen Gashi and Dominique Badji – one goes outside, one plays as a higher positioned striker – but the essential shape and personnel aren’t changing.
But not everyone sits so pretty. Quite a few playoff qualifiers still have tactical or personnel conundrums to solve. You would think an 8-month regular season would be time aplenty to sort out all scenarios – but you’d be wrong. The issue, obviously, is that this stuff is fluid. It stays fluid due to arrivals and departures, and because players drift in and out of form. And, of course, because of injury.
In Seattle, manager Brian Schmetzer must figure out how to handle Andreas Ivanschitz’s injury. Play him or replace him? And if Ivanschitz isn’t ready, is the better replacement Christian Roldan or Brad Evans? And once that choice is made, how do those players (and the specific characteristics of those individuals) affect the tactical and personnel choices around them?
In Los Angeles, Bruce Arena has spent a year trying to identify his best arrangement – and the unpredictable availability of Steven Gerrard and Robbie Keane have made things particularly difficult.
We could go down the list; most teams would be one it. But does any bunch have a bigger, more important decision than FC Dallas? At Toyota Stadium, the Supporters' Shield winners must replace playmaker Mauro Diaz, which could mean significant alteration of roles and essential team structure. The options probably include:
- Slip Mauro Rosales into Diaz’s “No. 10” role and retain the team’s 4-2-3-1 arrangement. It’s a risk, because the 35-year-old attacker has been used almost exclusively out wide in 2016. It’s a tough time to “experiment.”
- Slip Kellyn Acosta into the Diaz’s spot. Pareja deployed the young U.S. international there a couple of times this season, but it’s clearly not Acosta’s best spot.
- Move into a 4-4-2, which Pareja has used at times when Diaz wasn’t available. Even then, who plays out wide? Is it Rosales, who can assist with possession and who is probably the team’s best crosser, but who surely won’t last as long and can’t do the defensive tracking as reliably as someone younger? Use Acosta there? Or Ryan Hollingshead or Tesho Akindele? If it’s one of them, the runs are reliable but possession suffers, so that changes the passes Dallas’ central midfielders look for.
- If the 4-4-2 is the way to go, who is the second forward? Is it Akindele, who has been there before? Or Michael Barrios, who has as well? Or even a serious wild card, Carlos Ruiz? And if that’s the case, wouldn’t that alter Maxi Urruti’s positioning?
On it goes. One move creates a cascading effect, forcing twists and tweaks elsewhere. Obviously, this stuff goes on over 34 weeks, so it’s nothing different in that way. On the other hand, there is a huge difference now:
If managers get it wrong in Week 10 or 20 or 30, they might blemish playoff positioning. Get it wrong in playoff time, and they just may wreck their team’s post-season chances.
5. The Little Five
5a. Wish I could remember who pointed this out on social media and then appoint proper credit. Apologies. Either way, someone noted that FC Dallas’ Urruti has won an MLS Cup, a Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup and a Supporters' Shield (and qualified for Champions League quarterfinals) over 12 months. That’s quite a year.
5b. Best chance for a lower seeded road to team to manage the upset over the next two days? Easily, its Sporting Kansas City over Seattle. (Yes, I’m saying this after proclaiming Seattle as the best chance for lower seed to advance.) For SKC, Benny Feilhaber has come alive lately. And if they can possibly get a little more from Graham Zusi …
5c. Read this quote from Michael Bradley, from this story. This is why the longtime U.S. international has always been one of my “go-tos,” one of my favorites in terms of seeking informed, impassioned opinion: “There are all different types of games. You can play games at a World Cup like we did in 2010; the third game of the group against Algeria, where you feel like four years of work is going to play out in 90 minutes. You can play an Italian Cup final, Roma versus Lazio in Stadio Olimpico, where honestly I have never felt that much tension in a stadium before in my entire life. You can play a playoff game in Montreal for a club that’s never been in the playoffs and feel the weight of the club’s history. You learn from all these experiences and games. Some go well, other’s less so, but they are why you play – to have the opportunity to play in big moments when people are watching that would give anything to be in your spot. That’s what it is all about.”
5d. FC Dallas meets Arabe Unido in the CONCACAF Champions League quarterfinals in late February and early March. It’ll be a weather challenge on both legs. Average low in Dallas at that time of year: 39 degrees. Average high in Panama at that time of year: 89 degrees. That’s a 50-degree swing!
5e. On my media ballot for MLS awards, Matt Hedges was MLS Defender of the Year. That said, perhaps the best, single individual day from an MLS center back I watched in 2016 probably happened Sunday at the StubHub Center. It was from Jelle Van Damme, the Galaxy’s Belgian international (who was second on my ballot). Consider that center backs might stack up 14 or 15 defensive interventions on a good day. Van Damme had 25. On another day, facing a lesser center back, FC Dallas probably gets a goal or two rather than the (ultimately sufficient)0-0 draw at the StubHub Center.
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.
