MLS Week 22: Up, Down, & Holding Steady

by user The Manly Ferry

Let’s begin with the results from Week 22 of Major League Soccer’s (MLS) season; as always, the home team comes first and MLS’s in-house match report is embedded in the score:

DC United 2 – 5 Los Angeles Galaxy
Red Bull New York 6 – 0 Real Salt Lake
Chicago Fire 1 – 0 Colorado Rapids
Chivas USA 3 – 2 Houston Dynamo
New England Revolution 1 – 0 Columbus Crew
Kansas City Wizards 1 – 0 FC Dallas

I started poking around reports on this in the morning, apparently before ESPN’s pundits got up the power rankings for the current week. But a look at last week’s edition seems pretty instructive: for instance, anyone think DC United and FC Dallas will top this week’s effort (well, missed one; still, count me truly baffled by DC’s continued hold on the top spot)?

So, who’s up, who’s down, and who’s holding steady? In the order in which they played:

1) DC United: DOWN. What was rumored is now official: DC United is in a funk. For all the talk of fatigue and injury, neither condition is unique to the DC area; things are tough all over. They could get tougher if the talk of "peaking early" gets inside the players’ heads and causes them to play stupid. It’s also worth noting that coach Peter Nowak described this as a "wake-up" call; we’ll see that again. And we’ll see shortly whether something deeper isn’t at work.

2) Los Angeles Galaxy: UP. But not as high as one might think. While it’s too early to confirm that the Galaxy is poised to make a mockery of the league’s playoff structure for the second year running, they’ve certainly done better since Frank Yallop took over the post. Yes, Steve Sampson is cancer. More to the point, though, pounding on DC United a month and half ago would have been something else. But Los Angeles, along with another team out East*, bear watching - and closely.

3) Red Bull New York: HOLD. This has all the markings of a freaky, freaky night - and not just because Edson Buddle scored a hat-trick. In fact, this game, along with DC United’s blowout loss, points to one of soccer’s anti-statistical quirks: it can take only one game for, 1) Edson Buddle’s scoring record to look much better than it is, 2) DC’s defensive statistics to collapse, and, 3) Red Bull’s goal differential to go from positive to negative, even this deep in the season. This result means nothing...unless, of course, the next three go the same way. But don’t bet on that.

4) Real Salt Lake: DOWN. This call could prove to be a stretch. As with DC, some of Real Salt Lake’s players refer to some phantom positives that could come out of this whuppin’ – even if they call this one "a little smack in the face." My gut tells me this one will get in their heads. For whatever reason, I smell a turning point.

5) Chicago Fire: UP.* Whatever’s going on, these guys are playing very, very tight stuff. Whatever was said about statistics above, one looms large here: Chicago has scored nine and given up one goal over the past five games. As Kyle McCarthy, who pulls together weekly wraps of the league’s results over on USSoccerplayers.com wrote:

"Look out for Chicago. In a conference full of mediocrity, the Fire may just be hitting stride at the right time as they notched their fifth win on the trot at the weekend."

For what it’s worth, Chicago’s one of two teams folks ought to watch; the LA Galaxy is the other.

6) Colorado Rapids: HOLD. The only constant for Colorado this year: the Jekyll and Hyde routine. They’re as strong at home (8-2-3) as they are weak on the road (1-7-2) (LINK). After that, there’s not much of a story. The bad news comes with the fact that, given the 13 home games versus 10 road games, they likely have more "Hyde" than "Jekyll" ahead of them.

7) Chivas USA: HOLD. By most accounts, Chivas USA dodged a major bullet in the form of a late penalty that wasn’t called. On the other hand, this was one of two games I caught all or part of this week and, for all Houston’s possession (more later), Chivas looked considerably sharper going forward. New player Jesus Morales looks pretty dang swell as well.

8) Houston Dynamo: HOLD. And that’s not necessarily a good thing. Coach Dominic Kinnear’s late-game freak-out constitutes all the excitement coming out of Houston these days, because it ain’t comin’ from the Dynamo. During the game, Chivas repeatedly doubled up on right-sided midfielder Brian Mullan and Houston simply had no answer. Translation: Brad Davis, Dwayne DeRosario – someone - needs to make the opposition pay for the double-teams or Houston’s going to stagnate. OK, DeRosario actually did, so it appears someone else needs to step up.

9) New England Revolution: HOLD. And a big, fat hold at that and in a bad spot. Sure, the weather sucked, but the reality is the Revolution scraped by the worst team in the league at home. The play was beyond sloppy, the goal marginally better, and many of the stars – particularly, Taylor Twellman and Steve Ralston - looked confused and out of sorts. It’s possible that Columbus getting reduced to ten men saved their butts; credit Andy Dorman for keeping his head in the event leading up to it, or this game could have looked very different. All in all, New England has very, very little time to make their 2006 remotely resemble their 2006. This observer, at least, ain’t seeing it.

10) Columbus Crew: UP. Yes, this is another stretch. But the Columbus Crew no longer looks like a USL team that mugged the "real Columbus" and snuck onto the field in borrowed uniforms. And Duncan Oughton seems like the place to look for answers as to why (yeah, that’s McCarthy…again). A run for the post-season remains doubtful, but they at least look like they’ve got the potential to make life hard on someone else.

11) Kansas City Wizards: HOLD...for now. Without having seen this game, it’s hard to say what it all means. But momentum has to start somewhere and a result against one of the league’s (alleged) elite teams, could be the place. And that would be…

12) FC Dallas: DOWN. Apart from confessing no direct knowledge of the game, it’s becoming difficult to ignore the stank in Dallas. Simply put, they can’t score, which constitutes a crime given the talent at their disposal. It’s getting to a point where it seems downright stupid to bet on the teams who start strong in MLS.

Well, with a slate of four games ahead on Wednesday, looks like we’ll all know a bit more by then.

Date

Tue 08/29/06, 5:54 am EST