We’ll start, though, with a Chicago Fire side that got a much-needed win on Saturday, and what Gregg Berhalter’s project is starting to look like:
So let’s talk about the Chicago Fire, who got their first home win of the Berhalter era with a 2-1 result over Atlanta United on Saturday afternoon. It was what’s become a typical Fire performance: they threw numbers forward with something approaching reckless abandon from the jump, mostly couldn’t take advantage of it, and conceded what looked like a back-breaking equalizer for what was sure to be another draw and more lost points.
But this time, Rominigue Kouamé pushed forward late on a near-post run for a pullback from an overlapping fullback (who’s actually a converted winger) to give the Fire all three points. That snapped a six-game winless skid and at least partially buried the frustration of last week’s scoreless draw and the week before’s 7-2 humiliation at Nashville.
This is some textbook “disorganizing the opponents with the ball” that Berhalter has always loved his team to do:
The Fire have done a lot of that this year. What they haven’t done as much is finish those chances off.
“Up until now, we haven't [won at home] and you just have to focus on the next game. And in particular, I think this week that we had with, you know, after the Nashville game, moving into the week where Orlando, we got a red card, we hung out and we fought,” Berhalter said on Saturday. “We had the Open Cup, we cruised through that, and then to win this weekend, it shows a great response from the group.”
That’s coachspeak for “phew,” which is understandable. The Fire have been one of the most wildly up-and-down teams in the league this year, with that six-game slide belying some good soccer, but the 7-2 loss showed how fragile they could be.
Here’s why:
Two-and-a-half minutes from the opening whistle! That’s how long it took Berhalter’s side to throw eight men (count ‘em, I’ll wait) fully into the attack. This is a sequence during which there was a fullback underlapping and a d-mid setting up shop in Zone 14, ahead of the ball, just because.
Lose the ball there and you’re asking your center backs to make a big play in emergency defense. Chicago’s center backs have had A LOT of moments where they haven’t made those plays, and it has been brutal watching at times.
Audentes fortuna iuvat though, right? Because 10 minutes after that literally every field player is 35 yards (or less) from goal, pinning Atlanta in and ready to call Alexey Miranchuk’s handball in unison:
Hugo Cuypers, who finished the weekend tied for the Golden Boot presented by Audi lead (and who leads the league by a mile in xG), converted the penalty. He's liking things this year after a tough 2024.
“The whole structure is better. I think you see, even when the results are not with us, the whole team still feels confident in the way we play and we stick to our principles,” Cuypers said post-game. “I think that's the biggest difference.”
That difference is why the vibes remained good after the 7-2 defeat, and why the Fire – who are second-to-last in the East in both goals allowed and expected goals allowed – are happy to keep playing in search of a 4-2 win rather than a 1-0 scoreline. And it’s allowed them to work a crop of homegrown players into the rotation, including breakout midfielder Sergio Oregel and 16-year-old center back Christopher Cupps. They are finally reaping the rewards of being based in one of the talent hotbeds of North America.
“We know our style,” left back Andrew Gutman said in the postgame. “We know how we want to play. It doesn't matter who's playing in what position. We're always going to play how we want to play.”
I think, in the long term, that’s what the Fire needed. There’s a clear vision now, and that vision lets them take risks with a purpose, even if the outcome isn’t always what they want.
Atlanta feel like they’re the polar opposite. Endless crosses, no coordinated off-ball movement, no clear build-out philosophy. They are now on a six-game winless skid of their own and have just two wins all season.
Seven points below the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs line in May is not “season’s over” stuff, but they desperately need the week ahead, with a trip to Austin on Wednesday and then a visit from Philly next Saturday, to be a good week. Because things can start slipping away pretty quickly once the games pile up.
My favorite games are ones where there are two really good teams with completely different philosophies, with both determined to impose that every single week. No quarter asked, and none given.
That’s what we got from Columbus’s trip to Philadelphia, with the Crew (MLS’s premier possession team) trying to methodically control proceedings and the Union (MLS’s premier all-gas-no-brakes pressing team) trying to run them right off the rails.
Armchair Analyst special correspondent Calen Carr was on the sticks for that one, and I’ve enlisted him to give the full tactical rundown:
While much of the attention rightly went to Dániel Gazdag’s return to Chester, it was the “my way vs. your way” tactical battle between Bradley Carnell and Wilfried Nancy that made the 2-2 tie between top-of-the-East teams even that much better.
The first half saw the Union’s box midfield frustrate a Columbus side that seems mostly impervious to pressure. Carnell’s narrow, 4-2-2-2 structure sent numbers at Darlington Nagbe and Dylan Chambost while the center backs, Jakob Glesnes and Nathan Harriel, released well from the backline to force Gazdag and Aziel Jackson to drop deep to get on the ball instead of finding space in the pockets. And while the Crew continued to probe centrally, their best moment came after halftime when Chambost ceded the middle to overlap wide, where he then found a great cross to Max Arfsten on the far side to equalize:
While most clubs hold their No. 6s in central areas, Nancy encourages Chambost (who has the most mileage of any player in MLS this year) to make movements like this to adapt to a narrow Union shape and drag 10 players to one side to leave one alone – in this case, Arfsten – to put in the dagger.
Carnell has also weaponized his twin 6s but in a different way. Jovan Lukic and Danley Jean Jacques are not so quietly becoming the Union’s best chance creators (all due respect to Quinn Sullivan for picking up his seventh assist of the season for their opener) through a mix of the press, combination play at full pace, and as of late, the ability to pick the right pass or finish themselves. It was Jean Jacques’ deep run and 1v1 duel that set up 19-year-old homegrown right back Frankie Westfield’s smash winner (hahaha nope! – what a way to score your first MLS goal though). It is Jean Jacques’ fourth match in a row (three wins and a draw) with a goal contribution.
That said, I couldn’t help but hold my thoughts in the dying moments of this one on this being the first convincing loss for Columbus this season (remember, their 1-0 “home” loss to Inter Miami was in front of 60k+ in Cleveland in a match they thoroughly dominated but couldn’t finish). Sure enough, in the last 30 seconds Sean Zawadzki crept in past Kai Wagner on a corner (kudos to Diego Rossi for the flick header) to remind everyone why this team is consistently fighting for silverware.
It’s a painful lesson for Carnell’s squad in a litmus test that four months ago no one thought they had the ingredients for. The fact they mostly passed against easily one of the best teams in MLS over the past three years – one that just bought Philly’s best player – is a testament to how far they are ahead of schedule.
13. The Galaxy traveled to Harrison for a rematch of last year’s MLS Cup. Greg Vanney changed the team’s shape – he went to a 4-4-2 diamond, which his Toronto FC teams regularly played – in a desperate attempt to find any kind of life for his side.
The seven-goal loss has happened several times before, but the 12-game winless streak to start the season? That’s brand new, never-been-done stuff.
There’s nothing to say about this team other than that it’s all gone wrong in every conceivable way.
For the Red Bulls… was this an aberration? A 90-minute kickaround in the park against opponents who have more or less checked out, or an indication that the emphasis Sandro Schwarz has put on building via possession is taking hold?
I don’t know. I just feel like it’s dangerous to read too much into this one either way.
12. The reason the Galaxy stand alone in that 12-match winless streak to start the season is CF Montréal went to the Bronx and left with all three points thanks to a 1-0 win over New York City FC, courtesy of a Prince Owusu blast.
Montréal are playing a pretty classic 4-4-2 under interim head coach Marco Donadel, trying to shape the game into winnable moments rather than a prolonged back-and-forth. They’re doing relatively well with it – they could’ve had that first win last weekend against Philly if they’d caught a couple of breaks – so this shouldn’t come as too much of a shock, especially since NYCFC are just a different, and vastly inferior team without the injured Keaton Parks running things in central midfield.
“When Keaton Parks is not available for us, we have to do some homework to shape our midfield,” is how head coach Pascal Jansen put it, and if anything, he’s understating it. Parks is the one who tilts the field, which allows Maxi Moralez to play as a true No. 10. When he’s not out there, Maxi doesn’t really get on the ball in good spots, which in turn sort of dislocates the entire attack.
11. There are few things in MLS right now funnier than Minnesota United doing this every single week, no matter who they’re playing:
Such was the case in their 4-1 win over a suddenly slumping Inter Miami. The Loons have built the entire plane out of set pieces, counterattacks and long throw-ins. What even is possession?
For the Herons, there is always plenty of defensive blame to go around, and right now head coach Javier Mascherano is feeling the wrath of supporters. But let’s point the finger at Jordi Alba this week. Obviously he completely shuts off on the second Minnesota goal – that one’s easy to see – but his work on the opener was actually worse. Noah Allen had covered for him and done well shuttling play into the corner, so all Jordi had to do was take up the left center back role and chill in that channel. Contain the play. Instead, he goes walkabout and Bongi Hlongwane scores the goal from the exact spot where Jordi should’ve been.
Jordi! Stop!
Just an insane lack of discipline from a legendary player who should know better, and whose status makes him undroppable. I’m emphasizing that for a reason, as it’s something Mascherano needs to have a long think about with a Sunday Night Soccer presented by Continental Tire derby against Orlando City coming up next weekend.
10. Toronto FC got their second win of the season with a 2-0 at home over visiting D.C. United, thanks to a diving header from Lorenzo Insigne and a D.C. own goal.
TFC head coach Robin Fraser opened his postgame comments with a heartfelt “f--- yeah!” which probably tells you something about the relief he and his staff are feeling.
I don’t blame him, as wins have been difficult to come by. But the Reds, who were in the first game without center back Nicksoen Gomis (out the rest of the season with an Achilles injury), have become a decently tough team to beat. Since March 29, they’ve lost just twice and conceded just four times in seven outings. Between that and the development of young players like Theo Corbeanu and Kosi Thompson, it feels like they’re heading in the right direction both tactically and philosophically.
United didn’t play poorly, but it continues to be Christian Benteke or nothing in front of goal.
9. Orlando took a 2-0 lead by the 33rd minute of their home date with New England and had given it back by the 44th. They took a 3-2 lead in the 55th minute when Martín Ojeda completed his hat trick – just the second in the team’s MLS history – but gave it back in the 85th minute of what was a pretty wild 3-3 draw down in central Florida.
The first Revs’ goal, which came from Alhassan Yusuf pushing forward cleverly during a good string of possession, broke Pedro Gallese’s shutout streak at 563 minutes. That was the sixth-longest in league history.
So what happened?
- Orlando’s 4-2-3-1, which shifts to a 3-4-2-1 in possession, is good at getting numbers behind the ball but requires the center backs to make plays on the front foot.
- Putting two true center forwards up against those center backs basically makes every sequence a zero-sum game.
Since the Revs have shifted to that 3-4-1-2 of theirs they have done a really good job of boiling everything down to “Hey, can you stop Carles Gil and our forwards? Bet.” And even when Orlando were up 2-0, and in the midst of that record shutout streak, they could not.
“It was pretty challenging to be honest because Gil is\] a really good player, a really good number 10, his left foot especially,” is how d-mid [Joran Gerbet put it, before really putting his finger on how New England’s structure causes problems.
“He goes pretty far from my zone, so I have to come out from my zone, which is pretty hard for the center back because I leave a lot of space behind me.”
If you’re gonna stop the Revs (who are now unbeaten in five) these days, you have to solve for that.
Orlando, of course, will be tasked with stopping Messi & Friends next weekend.
8. And if you’re gonna stop RSL you have to solve for Diego Luna, who’s started to vibrate at a frequency few players in the league can match. FC Dallas were the better overall team in the sides’ 1-1 draw at Toyota Stadium, but Luna did this, so RSL got a point:
That’s four points from a successful three-game road trip for the Claret-and-Cobalt. It hasn’t been pretty, but this is starting to feel like a Pablo Mastroeni team a little bit.
Dallas’s lone goal came from an incredible solo effort by Anderson Julio, but this team is still trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Head coach Eric Quill changed his shape at halftime (from a 4-4-2 to a 4-2-3-1), and while you could argue it gave them better attacking moments, I’m not sure the shape gave his side the pitch control they were looking for.
The good news for the hosts? Both Petar Musa and Paxton Pomykal returned from injury.
7. San Diego showed their adaptability, simply capitalizing on the St. Louis backline’s penchant for self-destruction to walk out of town with all three points thanks to a 2-1 win.
Nothing about this was los Niños at their best – they had a lot of possession and weren’t able to do much with it until the hosts became too generous – but the sign of a good team is the ability to go out on the road and come away with a result even when they’re not really humming.
Olof Mellberg once again crammed his XI full of center backs, this time starting four of them, with the wrinkle being they man-marked the visitors for 90 minutes (St. Louis usually play zonal). Once again it didn’t work, and in what I felt was a pretty predictable way:
Josh Yaro gets caught thinking zonally for a split-second there, then tries to recover and close Milan Iloski down. But he’s too late and Iloski uses Yaro’s desperation against him, then that’s all she wrote.
St. Louis are now on an eight-game winless skid and have conceded eight goals in their past three games. The wheels are coming off.
6. Seattle’s season has gone in the other direction, as they’ve been one of the league’s best teams over the past month after a tough start. This time it was a relatively ho-hum 3-1 win in Houston behind another Danny Musovski one-touch finish and two very nice team goals that Albert Rusnák got onto the end of.
The good for Seattle:
- Musovski’s production is finally matching his underlying numbers, which means they can take their time getting Jordan Morris back.
- Brian Schmetzer has come to understand that Rusnák and Jesús Ferreira are not meant to play together.
- Pedro de la Vega has looked very much like a DP when healthy this year.
- New signing Ryan Kent has looked even better.
The big, flashing warning sign:
- They stink at defending set pieces.
That one’s weird! The Sounders have been one of the league’s best on restarts for a long, long time.
Houston probably feel hard done by with Femi Awodesu’s red card (which came after he’d scored his first-ever MLS goal getting onto the end of, yes, a set piece). I’ll leave that up to Andrew Wiebe on Instant Replay.
5. I’m going to borrow a line from my buddy Arman Kafai in summing up Austin’s 2-1 loss at Cincinnati, in which the visitors – who mirrored Cincy’s shape by playing out of a 3-4-1-2 – were not bad at all: Their performance against Cincinnati was fine; players like Evander change games and that’s what you saw.
It’s not helping though that they’re now leading the league in goals scored under expected at 7.4 though.
Brandon Vazquez and Myrto Uzuni are both culpable. Osman Bukari, who’s been in and out of the starting lineup (justifiable), is culpable. You go out and spend that money on players who are supposed to win you games, and when they’re doing the opposite, it’s very tough to scrape together a workable blueprint.
Evander (1g/1a) is doing that, he being what he has been gives Cincy the cushion they need to figure out how all the pieces fit together most optimally.
It’s still a work in progress, but they’ve won six of their past seven and are atop the Eastern Conference.
4. Santiago Moreno, take a bow:
And a happy Mother’s Day to Santiago Moreno’s mom (and all moms!) after that one, which was the only goal in Portland’s 1-0 win over visiting Sporting KC.
This goal was the culmination of an opening 10 minutes in which Portland built from the back, patiently possessed the ball, and kept the visitors under constant pressure. It was really good soccer of the sort Phil Neville has been asking for all year long, and his team has taken clear steps toward delivering in meaningful ways.
Did their level drop after the goal? Yes. Did they have some trouble killing the game off with the ball? Yes. But this was still meaningful progress toward becoming a team that can do damage in more than one phase of play.
The last two goals Sporting have conceded have been bikes, by the way. They’re another team making progress, though it’s coming only in fits and starts.
3. Are we hitting the crisis point yet in Commerce City? It feels like the Rapids should be feeling some level of desperation after a pretty dispiriting 2-0 home loss in which they mustered almost nothing in the second half (they went down 1-0 just before the break when DeJuan Jones got his first for San Jose).
They’re now winless in four, and the switch to a more direct, transition-oriented 4-4-2 has maybe tilted too much toward conceding both the flanks and central midfield over the past two weeks. With Zack Steffen’s form regressing towards, if not necessarily to the mean, the margins have gotten thinner, and too often Colorado have found themselves on the wrong side of them.
To be fair, this was probably San Jose’s best all-around performance of the season, and their third strong overall showing in a row. Their ability to get both wingbacks involved (Jones’ goal was assisted by Vítor Costa, the left wingback) since shifting to the 3-4-2-1 has made them devastating.
2. Borrowing a line from my guy Charles Boehm: “Grimly hanging on to a 2-1 halftime lead, the XI collectively dropping deeper and deeper while the pressure dials up as the second half ticks away... that's LAFC football.”
To be fair to LAFC, they came damn close to finding a winner several times in the final five minutes of what ultimately became a 2-2 draw. To be fair to Charlie, his assessment was 100% correct for the first 40 minutes of the second half.
So:
- Credit to LAFC for taking a 2-0 lead in the first place.
- Credit to Vancouver for fighting back to equalize via a Brian White brace.
- Credit to LAFC for being really well prepared for the Vancouver build-out triangles that have gashed open virtually all comers since February (the LAFC midfielders in particular were hyper-aware of their cover-shadows).
- Credit to Vancouver for finding another way to get on the ball, get control of the game, and get their goals (subbing on Ali Ahmed, who provided a needed dose of verticality, was crucial).
This result doesn’t really change how I feel about either team: the ‘Caps are the best side in MLS, and once they get to full strength they’re going to be utterly terrifying.
LAFC are very good and getting better, and maybe even deserved a win in this one – Yohei Takaoka was heroic in the 90th minute. But to be the team they want to be, they need more comfort and incisiveness on the ball.
Really good game, though. These teams were really going at it.
1. And finally our Pass of the Week goes to Alex Muyl, who showed a bit of prescience with this backheel flick to Hany Mukhtar:
Jacob Shaffelburg added a banger of his own just a few minutes later to give the ‘Yotes all three points with the 2-1 home win, which was not, in any way, a vintage performance. Nashville, at their best, have been capable of some flowing, back-to-front movements that are Crew-esque. Charlotte, for one, did a good job of shutting that down without the ball, but also did really good work of moving the game around and dictating tempo with the ball.
“It’s a game we should have won and we’ve given the game away today,” is what Charlotte head coach Dean Smith said afterward. And while I don’t necessarily agree with that, in the bigger picture I think it’s a positive step towards being a more dimensional team overall.
By that I mean they got thumped by the Crew last week, in what I’d consider a structural, process-based loss. This week the structure was better and the process was good – they just switched off twice and got punished for it.
Cold comfort in the middle of what’s become a three-game losing streak, I’m sure. But info that’s worth filing away after they looked so helpless a week ago.
