One of the smaller sacrifices of the regionalized MLS scheduling necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic was the dramatic decline of inter-conference games. While an unavoidable casualty of the need for shorter travel with less exposure risk, it was nonetheless a bummer to do without matchups like the fun cross-coastal matchup taking place between LAFC and NYCFC at Banc of California Stadium on Saturday afternoon (5 pm ET | UniMás, TUDN, Twitter with English audio).
Players and coaches enjoy the changes of pace that less-familiar opponents and trips offer. And people like us who think, talk and write about the sport get the chance to compare and contrast interesting projects like the younger clubs in what are far and away the league’s largest two metropolitan areas.
Most MLS types would consider these two of the league’s “big clubs,” status they’ve attained not with age or tradition but the scope of their resources and ambitions. The wealth of their ownership groups and their disinclination to moderate expectations – on both results and aesthetics – have allowed them to elbow their way onto more or less level terms with the MLS originals across town in a matter of months and years rather than decades, and both marched into 2021 with realistic MLS Cup hopes.
Both the Black & Gold and the Cityzens have built their identity on intricate, proactive possession play. That’s generally an enjoyable combination, both for their fans and neutral viewers. With both squads relatively close to full health and freed from the “six-pointer” dimension of intra-conference games, I hope and expect that all adds up to an open match with high tempo and an aggressive mentality in both directions under the SoCal sunshine.
“It's always going to be a challenge when you're playing against a team of their caliber,” said LAFC midfielder Mark-Anthony Kaye on Thursday. “[NYCFC] do bring different ideas, different ways of trying to play their football, so they'll be an interesting test for us.”
Both clubs also rank in the top 10 in MLS in salary spending, according to the MLS Players Association documents released earlier this month. And that was before New York City completed the signing of Brazilian starlet Talles Magno, who isn’t fully fit but could make his debut off the bench in Los Angeles, according to NYCFC coach Ronny Deila – as could his countryman Thiago Andrade, a winger signed in April but only now eligible for selection thanks to a slow-moving visa process.
At ages 18 and 20, respectively, Talles and Andrade underline their new club’s shift to the model LAFC embraced from their birth (albeit with the prominent exceptions of linchpins Carlos Vela and Maxi Moralez): Focusing much of their resource outlays on younger acquisitions capable of both quick impact in MLS and sell-on potential beyond.
The Angelenos’ Uruguayan winger Brian Rodriguez is already out on loan to Spanish side Almeria at present, with a purchase option that will reportedly kick in automatically should the club successfully push for promotion to La Liga. Diego Rossi and Eduard Atuesta will follow suit at some point; the question is when, not if. Kaye, too, maintains European ambitions of his own.
Taty Castellanos, City’s in-form dangerman up top, is a comparable case even though he just signed a new long-term contract, as is Jesus Medina, his accomplice at the heart of many of NYC’s best attacking sequences. It's not hard to envision youngsters on both sides like James Sands, Andres Jasson, Diego Palacios and Jose Cifuentes moving across the Atlantic eventually, too.
This new aspect of MLS life is much more than a financial or asset management question. It’s also an intriguing layer of complexity for clubs like these to manage, demanding balance and foresight on the part of leadership, imposing a sort of ticking clock on even the most attractively-built teams as the likes of Deila and LAFC boss Bob Bradley work to reap maximum success amid fleeting time windows and restless players and agents.
Over the past three years Bradley, Vela, Kaye & Co. have treated us to some of the most stylish, entertaining soccer in recent MLS history, and Deila’s brief time in New York has offered glimpses of rich potential, too. But the truth is that we just don’t know how long any of what they’ve built will last.
Rossi’s eventual sale could fundamentally change LAFC. Talles could well show enough quality this year to make his NYC stay a short one. An untimely injury here or there can destabilize an entire group. Even just one particularly dispiriting rivalry loss to the Galaxy or Red Bulls can badly disrupt hard-won belief and rhythm.
COVID-19 has made matchups like this one all too rare, and even the most beautiful MLS projects – like Patrick Vieira’s City, to name just one – can pass all too quickly. Don’t miss too many.
