Montreal with huge tie vs Club America at Azteca for CONCACAF Champions League final

Well, the hed pretty much says it all.  The Impact scored early in the first half and then held on to the lead for the remainder until, in the 89th minute Mexican international Oribe Peralta headed in a corner to tie it up.  Based on CONCACAF's away rules, this gives the Impact the advantage going into the return leg in Montreal as a scoreless game will result in an Impact win, away goals being weighted slightly more than home goals.

In any case, here's the official MLS recap.  For a good laugh, the comments section deserves a quick skim; there are some very angry and delusional Club America fans.  The USMNT U23's 3:0 spanking of Mexico last night cannot have helped the matter.  

What's the Matter with the Timbers? Orlando City SC 2:0 Portland Timbers

One might easily be forgiven for assuming that, after last week's sound and convincing drubbing of erstwhile Western Conference table leaders FC Dallas, the Portland Timbers would have seen Orlando City SC, an expansion side after all, as an easy mark at home, and would accordingly have taken to the pitch with a great deal of hunger together with a marked determination to earn another resounding victory.

Unfortunately, one would be mistaken in so doing.  In fact, by all accounts, for reasons that are not readily apparent --we will speculate on them a bit further down-- the Timbers did the opposite, and aside from Darlington Nagbe and a handful of isolated instances in other players, the Timbers seem to have not shown up to play at all.

But maybe that's not right either; while they did look quite poorly for much of the first half, the Timbers didn't look completely impotent and in fact, to the contrary, managed several decent looks at goal in spite of their apparent lack of passion.  During the second half they looked a bit more lively and did dominate possession, but again, there was no real heart in their performance and it was badly marred by stupid mistakes, chippy play and a general lack of execution in the final third of the field.   

One idea might be that the horrific and completely arbitrary refereeing threw the boys off so that they didn't know which foot to stand on.  While it's true that referee Kevin Stott, whatever his antecedents may be, proved himself deeply incompetent and, perhaps even worse, totally inconsistent, one has to think that by the time players reach this level of play, they will have encountered any number of terrible refs and accordingly ought to be capable of handling the situation.  For their part, the Lions certainly were, even if it is arguably the case that they got the better of the abysmal officiating.

As for Stott, I think we can all agree that he has no business at this level of play, South African antecedents or no, and that he really ought to stick to teaching math to middle-school kids.

Another possibility is that the Timbers were, sad to say, a bit star-struck at the prospect of playing against Kaka', a man who must have figured as a childhood idol to much of the roster, but if this is what happened, it's a new development since in past years they have shown no signs at all of being star-struck by the presence of players such as Thierry Henry or David Beckham, both of whom are easily Kaka's equal in terms of international stature.

Complicating the matter is the fact that with the exception of a specific central midfielder who will remain unnamed for the shame that's in it, no single Timber played that poorly and what really bit them in the ass is that none of them played very well either, with the exception of Darlington Nagbe who continues to redeem himself from last year's lackluster showing.

A final possibility (aside from the idea of alien intervention, lizard people and the like) is that the Timbers, while competent, just don't really have their shit 100 percent together in the absence of Diego Valeri and team captain Will Johnson and that in consequence, when faced with wildly inconsistent officiating, they kind of lost their heads and gave away the first half; and while they were able to pull it together for a better showing in the second, it was still rather uninspired play.  (This last leaving aside the evident fact that for whatever reason, former Timbers and current Lions goalkeeper Donovan Rickets appeared deeply motivated and managed two improbable saves in the second half: does Rickets have hard feelings toward Portland?  I couldn't say, but he certainly played as though he had something to prove.)

Anyhow, the whole thing amounted to a pretty disgraceful performance.  I don't claim to have the answers, the above are merely guesses.                   

Frank Deford is an Asshole; Why even the Elitists at NPR are wrong about MLS

Actually, in all fairness, I have zero evidence that Frank Deford --longtime Sports Illustrated stalwart and NPR contributor-- is in fact an asshole and for all I know he's just a regular friendly dude who happened to badly strike out --pardon the baseball metaphor-- in his recent NPR screed on MLS. 

But here's the thing; Deford is supposed to be a sort of "elder statesman" of sports journalism, he's dignified with a regular spot on NPR --a demographic not necessarily known as a bastion of sports fandom-- where he regularly portrays himself as possessing sage-like insight into what's really going on in the world of professional sports.

And maybe he does possess such insight.  I don't know.  What I do know is that like so many of his colleagues, he is deeply ignorant where soccer is concerned, and far from tackling the subject of MLS with anything like penetrating insight, what he did in the above piece is to trot out virtually every tired old platitude about why nobody cares about MLS that we've all been hearing for the past 20 years.

The magisterial Deford holds forth at a library in Connecticut.  Photo; Wiki commons.

First, he treats us to the old canard about how Latino fans are somehow going to save MLS from irrelevancy by raising it to new heights of popularity.  Whether he is completely oblivious to the fact that this is a model that was abandoned back in the 1990's, or he is simply ignoring it, the fact remains; MLS has recognized for at least a decade that Latinos in the US don't give a shit (or at least not in numbers that matter) about MLS because time-zones being virtually the same in North vs South and Central America, there's no reason for them not to continue to follow their home teams, which is what they overwhelmingly tend to do.  

Did Frank not get the memo that in recent years cities like Montreal, Portland and Vancouver (none of them especially well-known for having large Hispanic populations) got new MLS franchises while Chivas USA, the poster child for MLS's efforts to appeal to Latinos, was driven from the ranks as the unclean abomination it basically was?     

In critical thinking, Frank, we call that a "straw man" argument.

Next, Frank moves on to the idea that soccer can never become mainstream in the US because it's not American and Americans really only like things that are American.  Right.  Go America!  I don't know whether to laugh or be offended.  Maybe I'll do both.  Frank, you are showing your age good buddy.  While there are plenty of Americans who, as you suggest, are insular, clannish and ridiculously patriotic, I would argue that most of us, or at least half of us, aren't, and that whatever the root of soccer's popularity issues in the US may be, they are not, as you and the legions of meat-head internet warriors would have us believe, related to the fact that soccer isn't American. 

Frank's next point (and I think this is probably his strongest, though it says something for the quality of his arguments since it's still quite weak) is that European league play is widely available on US TVs and that it enjoys much higher ratings than MLS and that therefore, I guess, MLS can never hope to catch up.  However, he says this immediately after stating that MLS has an average attendance of 19k per game, completely glossing over the fact that watching a game of "footy" with your pretentious asshole roommate who studied in Sheffield for a term, is completely different from watching a live match at a real stadium with thousands of other passionate fans.  

Maybe Frank has never actually been to a live MLS match?  (If I had the means, I would cordially invite him here to Portland for the full and proper experience, but alas, I do not.)  This is the impression I get.  Either way, surely he understands that there is a visceral difference between supporting some hypothetical team on the other side of the world --with which you have no real connection-- and actually going to your home stadium and cheering live with thousands of others.  Whatever the attractions of the big European leagues may be --and no one can deny that they attract by far the best talent in the world-- they can never compete with the experience of being at a live match.

Frank wraps it up by invoking USMNT coach Klinsmann's recommendation that top US players should play in Europe, as if this is somehow a final nail in the coffin of his condemnation, never mind the fact that the same could easily be said of players from Brazil, Argentina or whatever other non-European powerhouse country one may choose to name.  

So let me get this straight Frank, your argument is that because top Brazilian players will probably develop into even better players in the European leagues, as I think everyone acknowledges, Brazil will therefore never have an international presence in soccer?  

Do you not see how stupid this makes you look?  

As others have pointed out, your problem, Frank, is that you are old and are no longer looking in the right direction.         

        

Thorns get New Kit

In an item of potential Portlandish interest, the Portland Thorns rolled out their new kits yesterday.  Stumptown Footy has a pretty good piece on the subject and even though I have yet to attract any readers, I encourage their ghostly and hypothetical counterparts to head on over there for some Thorns love.  

Whitecaps 2:1 Timbers in Farcical Display of Incompetence at BC Place

If it were possible to have a moment of silence in writing, I would have one now, for all of you unfortunate bastards who, like myself, are so benighted as to be Timbers supporters.

As I have written before, it would be one thing if the Timbers were simply terrible; a disgrace of a side along the lines of last season's Chivas USA --completely demoralized and largely playing, each man not for the team, but rather, for a shot at continuing his career in some kind of hypothetical future-- but this is emphatically not the case at all.

In fact, to the contrary, the Timbers have executed the neat trick of looking great not only on paper, but also on the pitch, for the majority of their four matches thus far this season.  This has had the unfortunate effect of raising the hopes and aspirations of Timbers fans in a way that a genuinely bad team would not, and as such, I would argue that the continual mixing of brilliance with resounding incompetence is that much harder to take.

But anyway.  But nothing.  But at least Darlington Nagbe is obviously one of the best players in all of MLS. But I swear, the Timbers reunited with Diego Valeri and Will Johnson will destroy.

Well, so we are told.  It's hard to believe right now.











 

Minnesota United announced as next MLS expansion team

Not sure how auspicious this is for the Republic FC's chances, but it's great news if you like soccer and live in the upper Midwest.  This means we have LAFC, Atlanta and Minnesota United as definite expansion sides, with Sacramento Republic and Miami as possibilities for the last slot.  I have a hunch that Garber and the boys, possibly with a push from David Beckham who is allegedly involved in Miami's potential ownership group, are going to go for Miami as being a much larger market than Sac, even though there is a pretty strong argument to be made that soccer fans in Miami, most of whom are immigrants from Latin America or the Caribbean, already have teams that they follow and aren't really interested in MLS, but that could just be my bias speaking.  Anyhow, this from the nice email MLS sent out earlier today:

Major League Soccer announced that Minnesota has been awarded an expansion team that will begin play in 2018. The new club will be owned by a Minnesota ownership group led by Dr. Bill McGuire, and the team will play in a new soccer-specific stadium in downtown Minneapolis. 

"We are proud to welcome Minnesota to Major League Soccer," MLS Commissioner Don Garber said. "The ownership group's commitment to soccer and the community, the area's growing millennial population and the region's rich tradition of supporting soccer at all levels in Minnesota were key indicators that this was the right market. The passionate soccer fans in Minnesota will soon have a world-class, downtown soccer stadium that will serve as the home for the new MLS team and become a destination for marquee international sports events. 

As for Minnesota FC's elegant crest, seen here in it's current NASL incarnation, for copyright reasons MLS is obliged to change it.  If the past is anything to go on, I expect that they will "cartoonize" it and in general, try to make it look as inauthentic and garish and blatantly commercialized as possible.  

Portland Timbers 0:0 Sporting Kansas City

Another draw is not what any of us wanted.  It's hard to be enthusiastic about a hard fought match in which the Timbers looked good, but once again, failed to get the job done against a side that, while certainly not a pushover, very much did look as though it was ripe for a solid beating.

Since this is so, let us start by focusing on the positive aspects.

There are a few things that the Timbers continue to do right;

• Nat Borchers and Liam Ridgwell continue to gel, forming what I think any objective person will readily admit is one of the most formidable backlines in all of MLS.  
• Darlington Nagbe is still by far one of the finest offensive players in the league.  While he's not quite up to Diego Valeri's ability in terms of making plays down the center, there's no reason to think that he won't be up to great things as the season progresses, especially once he has Valeri to play off in the wings.  
• Diego Chara is back, and how do I know?  Because he got a yellow card tonight and so long as Chara is getting yellows, we all know that he's wreaking havoc across the midfield which, after all, is basically why we hired the guy in the first place.  Chara is the soccer version of an anarchist; he doesn't care about the rules and if you want to go toe to toe with him, by god, win or lose, by the end of the match you will know you've been in a fight.
• Jack Jewsbury.  Say what you will about Jack's lack of pace, but the guy is solid and generally capable of doing what he was hired for.  Add to that his ability on set-pieces --hands down, he's better than Valeri on corners-- and what you have is an old Timbers stand-by who is is still very much worth a shit.    

That said, on the downside, we have a series of complaints that, all else being equal, are basically fair game here.  A list of them might look something like this:

• What do you mean with your gaudy players like Darlington Nagbe or Fanendo Adi who, for all their skill cannot seem to get their shit together for a single goal?
• How do you expect us to believe in you when you seem to be incapable of playing to your real potential in the absence of Johnson and Valeri?  

And finally, if you can't get your shit together to win these early season matches in the absence of Valeri and Johnson, how can we expect you to get the job done once your two big-name players come back from injury?


That said, in all honesty I think the Timbers are doing alright.  A slow start, so long as it does not include any losses, given the lack of Johnson and Valeri, is actually pretty auspicious.

What we are looking at is a well-oiled side that's used to playing under a single coaching system and that by any reckoning should, once reinforced by the presence and skills of its two primary play-makers, kick serious ass for the rest of the season.