A few more teams punched their Audi MLS Cup Playoffs tickets, a few more punched their tickets to Cancun. The Pigeons finally got some revenge for the Red Wedding, and the Sounders quietly keep marching along.
Only a few matchdays left, which means we know these teams inside and out. Let’s dive in:
First LAFC won the US Open Cup, 3-1 at home over Sporting KC after extra time. That was Wednesday.
Then they went on the road for a cross-conference, heavyweight clash (feels a little late in the year for one of those, to be perfectly honest) and came away with the full three points thanks to some quick combo play on David Martínez’s opener, and then Denis Bouanga doing Denis Bouanga stuff on the eventual game-winner.
Cincinnati haven’t been great at home, and they’re still trying to sort through their XI after a summer of injuries and acquisitions. But a 2-1 win there with a rotated squad during the heat of the stretch run? Regular-season wins don’t get too much bigger.
“It shows a lot of character and mentality in the group. It also shows where the team's and individual player's priorities lie, namely, for the team and for the club,” manager Steve Cherundolo said afterward. “And just the words I just shared with the boys, I felt not an ounce of selfishness tonight, and championship teams have to have that. They also have to have quality, which we have.”
I think things are pretty much all right now for the Black & Gold. They’re not great – they’re playing nowhere near as well as they did for the bulk of the summer, from mid-May to late August – but the five-game tailspin that took up much of September is in the rearview.
The 4-3-3 isn’t, though – at least not yet. Cherundolo had his team in a 3-4-2-1 (or a 5-2-3, or a 3-4-3 – call it what you want since they’re all variations on a theme) both on Wednesday and in this one, and when the results are what they were, there’s not much impetus to switch back.
But Cherundolo smartly is keeping both clubs in the bag.
“We're all still trying to find a way to not have games be so close, to finish teams out, to figure out exactly how to play in both formations and exactly when,” Cherundolo said in the postgame. “So there's still plenty of learning and improving to do in the next couple of weeks.
“But I think first and foremost, our biggest priority is to get healthy and fresh.”
Here’s the network passing graphic from the win, and you can see why the formation is tough to put a name to. One wingback (Kike Olivera, on the right side) stays high and wide, basically a pure attacker, while the other (Open Cup hero Omar Campos, No. 2 on the left) plays more the role in a more traditional way.
The wingers, meanwhile, (Nos. 19 & 30, Mateusz Bogusz and Martínez) tuck inside, taking turns acting as either a second forward or a playmaker. After spending half a year learning the role, Martínez has become a regular and is now up to 4g/2a in 433 minutes across all competitions, with the vast majority of those minutes coming over the past two-and-a-half months.
That is key in keeping Bouanga and Bogusz – the unquestioned starters – fresh. And if those guys are fresh, then LAFC are scary again.
Cincy… I’ve written the same thing every week for months: they’re still finding their way with so many new faces, something that’s going to be tougher following Chidozie Awaziem’s injury in this one.
Here’s another concern:
- In 2022 Obinna Nwobodo had 5.67 progressive passes per game on 85% accuracy. Both were in the 67th percentile (which is fine given Cincy’s game model).
- In 2023 Nwobodo completed 4.67 progressive passes per game on 85.4% accuracy. Still 67th percentile accuracy, but down to 48th percentile in volume.
- This year he’s down to 3.87 progressive passes per game, still on 85.3% accuracy.
Part of this is Pavel Bucha taking up a bigger load in orchestrating things than his predecessor, Junior Moreno. Part of it is this, though:
(Shouts to Joe Lowery for that clip).
Nwobodo’s been off. When he’s off, it’s hard for Cincy to be the team they need to be in order to beat the A-Tier contenders.
So, uh, I stand by the sentiment behind this tweet:
New York City FC spent a ton of money on guys like Agustín Ojeda, Jovan Mijatovic last winter, which came on the heels of having spent a lot of money on guys like Julián Fernández and Mounsef Bakrar last summer, and while it’s still early-ish yet, right now they’re looking at an 0-for-4. And over the course of the nine-game winless skid, they brought into Saturday’s Hudson River Derby in Harrison, the big issue for this team had been their inability to get their wingers – guys like Ojeda and Fernández – into high-leverage situations in and around the box.
It turns out, though, that my timing probably could’ve been better. The Pigeons freaking annihilated the Red Bulls by 5-1, a result that’s got fans on the East side of the river calling it “The Blue Divorce” (admittedly a better tag than my suggestion), and they did it by getting both fullbacks (Kevin O’Toole on the left side, Tayvon Gray on the right) super high and super involved.
Oh, and it was Andrés Perea tucking in from the left, not Maxi. Not a choice I’d have made in a million years, but it turned out to be the exact right gameplan from under-fire boss Nick Cushing.
“Yeah, I think we had a game plan tonight of how we knew we would create goal chances, how we knew we would threaten them, and, you know, we missed out on one of our most important [players, suspended No. 10 Santiago Rodríguez],” Cushing said afterward.
“So you have to find the balance, and you have to find the, you know, the solution. And for us tonight was to go with Alonso Martínez, Andrés Perea and Hannes Wolf, three players that are incredible at attacking space.
“And I knew that Red Bull were going to jump on the side, it was going to be winger-fullback, and they like to go hard and really try and regain that ball. And, you know, you've got two choices: You can kick it, or you can play the way you want to play. And when it wasn't coming, there was a real opportunity there, into Tayvon in behind, into Tayvon, into Maxi.”
Gray had a goal and an assist in his best game as a pro. O’Toole had one assist but was a part of two other goals (including Gray). RBNY never adjusted.
That was one part of how NYCFC dominated the derby. The other was by giving the Red Bulls a dose of their own medicine, right from the jump:
Alonso Martínez is now up to 14 goals on the season, in a touch over 1250 minutes. He’s overperforming his underlying numbers by a lot, but even if he was only chugging along at his exactly npxG underlyings, he’d still be in the 97th percentile among forwards – ahead of Luis Suárez and Christian Benteke, or goal machines like Dejan Joveljic, Chicho Arango and Cucho Hernández.
NYCFC host Cincy on Wednesday and Nashville next weekend, then finish up on Decision Day at Montréal. Are they fully back? I’m not sure. But I don’t think they were ever quite as dead as they looked during that nine-game, two-and-a-half -month winless skid. Even if a lot of their young talent remains buried on the depth chart.
What would Red Bull head coach Sandro Schwarz give for $20 million worth of investment in his squad? I suppose there is some amount of silver lining in the fact that one DP (Dante Vanzeir) scored and another (Emil Forsberg) made his return after almost four months out injured.
But this team looks to be in a full-on tailspin, with no wins in almost two-and-a-half months across all competitions. But hey, they did officially qualify for the playoffs this weekend, for a 15th-straight season. That's the longest streak in professional, outdoor, team sport history (I know, it's a mouthful of qualifiers, but still) in the US. So I guess that makes this another successful year!
They finished the weekend sixth in the East, even with their neighbors on points but behind on wins (the first tiebreaker; goal differential is second) and just two points ahead of seventh-place Charlotte.
12. As for that Charlotte side… Inter Miami have been trying with all their might to re-open the Supporters’ Shield race for one, and for two they now have zero margin for error if they’re to break the single-season points record set by the 2021 Revs. That’s the upshot of a disappointing 1-1 home draw with the Crown, who have found something over the past two outings after a prolonged slump of their own.
Back to the Herons: their older guys are starting to look a bit old:
Even so, they should’ve won this one – they doubled up Charlotte's xG and Luis Suárez's late miss was, indeed, unbelievable. But Miami’s lack of field coverage at multiple crucial spots can make them easy to play against (at times) in a way other top teams aren’t.
Credit to Charlotte for taking advantage, and then doing just enough to hang on to the point.
11. Miami left the Shield door open with that draw, but Columbus refused to walk through it, taking a draw of their own at D.C. United. It finished 2-2, with Christian Benteke bagging a brace and extending his MLS Golden Boot presented by Audi lead over second-place Bouanga to three, while Cucho Hernández registered 1g/1a.
These guys have been the two best 9s in the league this year, and play the role in completely different ways:
2-2 was a fair result as the Crew have struggled over the past three weeks to control games the way they do when they’re at their best.
They are up to 43 games over the past 7.5 months across all competitions. It’s been a lot.
10. CF Montréal took care of business in the second half of their 3-0 win over visiting San Jose. Josef Martínez got a brace, Bryce Duke a pair of assists and Caden Clark put up 1g/1a. It’s a trio of attackers that almost feel Mad Libbed together, but they have shown undeniable chemistry in a limited sample size.
It’s Clark – a onetime elite prospect who’s been adrift for years – who’s benefited most, as he essentially gets to play as a second forward in Laurent Courtois’s 3-4-2-1 (or 3-4-1-2) with Josef as a pure No. 9 and Duke more of a 10. Clark’s now got 3g/3a in his past four games. In his previous two years, he had 1g/3a over nearly 2000 minutes for four teams across three leagues.
It’s awesome to see a rebirth like this, especially when the player in question is just 21.
The Quakes officially clinched their record fifth Wooden Spoon, and are on track to set a new record for defensive futility. Currently they’ve conceded 72 goals; the single-season record of 75 was set by that miserable 2019 FC Cincinnati side.
9. Those Reds, coming off a hard-fought midweek Canadian Championship loss at Vancouver, went to Chicago and took a 1-0 lead. They couldn’t make it stand up, though, as they conceded a mountain of possession over the final 15 minutes that Jonathan Dean eventually turned into an 84th-minute equalizer for the 1-1 draw.
Chicago are eliminated. TFC’s final two games are both at home, against the Red Bulls on Wednesday and then the finale vs. Miami next Saturday. They’re the only team that doesn’t play on Decision Day.
I’m guessing three points would be enough to get them in, though even a full six points wouldn’t clinch since both Montréal and Philly can get above 43 points.
8. Of course, if Philly were going to go over 43 points, you’d think they would have won at home against an Atlanta side that has looked mostly dead for weeks (months? years?) now. But it was actually the Five Stripes who played the better ball in this one, getting the fullbacks high to pull apart the Union’s midfield diamond and earning a deserved late-ish equalizer from Saba Lobjanidze.
That goal, and the 1-1 final, kept Atlanta’s playoff hopes alive (and badly damaged 9th-place Philly’s – their remaining schedule is brutal), but I want to point out an item of growing concern:
Alexey Miranchuk has had his moments, but they’ve been few and far between. And overall, across this still very small sample size, he has not looked like the kind of No. 10 to elevate an attack, or even stitch it together in any meaningful way. I’m not saying to panic, but I am gonna point out that we’ve already seen one high-scoring Atalanta sub (Luis Muriel) come to MLS as a presumed starter and fall flat on his face.
I am not watching this.
Philly, as mentioned, are still in ninth, but are staring at trips to Orlando and Columbus before hosting Cincy on Decision Day.
“It's gonna go down to the last day, for sure, for all these teams pushing to get in. And we've put ourselves in the situation where we're still in control of our own destiny, but at the same time, our margin for error is very, very small,” manager Jim Curtin said. “And, you know, not taking those extra two points tonight, makes it a little bit more challenging. There's no question about that.
“Still played some decent soccer for stretches, but at this stage, no one remembers the amount of chances you create. They only care if it's three points, and tonight wasn't good enough.”
Atlanta, along with D.C., are on 34 points, with their hopes flickering, but alive for another matchday.
7. New England and Nashville are technically in the same boat – fading hopes, but still technically alive following the Revs’ 1-0 win over the visiting ‘Yotes, courtesy of an 86th-minute winner from right back Brandon Bye, who’d snuck into the box unmarked to head home as the game devolved into the Tactics Free Zone.
I was not wild about Nashville head coach BJ Callaghan’s decision to go back to the 4-4-2 diamond in this one, as I thought it played right into the hands of a Revs team that’s really only dangerous when they can get their fullbacks forward.
“When we had the ball in possession, we wanted to stretch their diamond out side to side. I feel like you saw in the goal, that happened a little bit. So, that was something that we talked about at half time,” Revs assistant Pablo Moreira, who was deputising with Caleb Porter suspended, said afterward. “Blair Gavin, assistant coach for us, he does an excellent job in terms of really breaking down that first half. We had some keys going into halftime that we saw, that he showed on video, that we were able to kind of exploit, so that was big for us.”
Nashville finished the night in 13th place on 33 points, with the Revs two points back in 14th, but with a game in hand. Both teams need to win out in order to have any realistic hope of a place in the postseason.
6. Orlando went to Frisco and drove the penultimate nail into the coffin of FC Dallas’s 2024 season, and did it the way they’ve been doing it since mid-June: put your best players into their best spots, wind ‘em up and let ‘em go.
I love this coordinated movement up the left side to get playmaker Martín Ojeda on the ball in the half-space before he sprays it out to left back Rafael Santos on the overlap:
Crosses are, by their nature, low-percentage propositions. But when you’ve got five runners in the box, the defense chasing shadows just a little bit and a fullback with enough time to pick his head up and find an angle, you’d best whip that sucker in.
“I thought it was a clear idea that we had with the players during the week after our [loss] in Columbus, that we wanted to have more domination of the ball and more compromise, and trying to look for the spaces with personality,” head coach Oscar Pareja said afterward. “That was our compromise with the players. I think that’s what I saw on the pitch. I saw them moving everywhere and providing support to their teammates when they had the ball. Our line of passing was very correct, the occupation of the spaces as well. So, we had a very complete half.
“And the second half, we had periods where we showed the same and we could probably score a fourth goal.”
Orlando are finally up to fourth in the East and, with the way they’re playing (four wins in five; 9W-3L-2D in league play since mid-June), are a very good bet to stay there, no matter how good the Pigeons looked in Harrison.
As for los Toros Tejanos… that is pretty much that. They’re eight points back of ninth-place Portland, so they’d need to win out and hope the Timbers only take one point from their final three games.
Not gonna happen, but Peter Luccin should get the full time job anyway.
5. St. Louis inflicted a bit more pain onto Sporting KC, winning the final Der-B-Que of the season by 3-1, though with results elsewhere they were officially eliminated.
Their 2024 Post-Mortem will be coming soon. Sporting’s was published last week after their loss in the Open Cup final.
4. I’m giving Sebastian Driussi our Pass of the Week for this assist on Guilherme Biro’s late equalizer in Austin’s 2-2 home draw with RSL:
There hasn’t been a lot to cheer about around Driussi this year – that’s only his third primary assist of the season, and the body language has been bad, and the tweets (or retweets, anyway) have been cryptic. But this was a little reminder of who he can be when things are good.
Even with that, Austin’s season is basically done. They’d need to win their final three, have Portland lose their final three, and make up 20 goals in the process. Big changes coming this winter, surely.
For RSL, the late, dropped points, coming after they’d taken a 2-0 lead, continued a brutal run of form. Since mid-July they’re 2W-4L-3D in league play. During that time they’ve got a -8 goal differential from the 70th minute onward, the worst mark in the league. Over the first 22 games of the year, they were +9 from the 70th onward, which was tied for the best mark in MLS.
The numbers that jump out as an explanation:
- In those first 22 games of the year, RSL put 45.4% of their shots taken in the final 20 minutes of games on frame, which was the second-best mark in the league, and produced a respectable .113 xG per shot.
- In the subsequent 9 games, RSL have put 22.5% of their shots taken in the final 20 minutes on frame, which is 27th in the league. They’ve been good for .057 xG per shot, which is dead last by a mile.
Sometimes the answer is just personnel: “Our second-best attacker got sold and our best attacker still isn’t himself because of the injuries” is an adequate explanation for the Claret-and-Cobalt’s struggles.
RSL are still third in the West, but time’s running out on them to rediscover the form that made them front-runners for much of the year. And with just a two-point lead over Colorado and Seattle, homefield advantage in the first round is pretty clearly on the line.
3. A very solid point for Evander-less Portland in Vancouver despite a rough start to the game:
It finished 1-1.
The Timbers’ attackers figured out real quick that they couldn’t let Tristan Blackmon step through pressure and switch the point of attack like that – he didn’t complete another one all game long, and without both those switches of play and Ryan Gauld (he sat this one out, dinged up as he was from the CanChamp final on Wednesday), the ‘Caps struggled to generate consistent danger going forward.
Still, head coach Vanni Sartini was more happy than sad and was probably right to be given how poorly Vancouver had played their past couple of times out.
“I’m happy that the performance from today was actually much better than the last two games in LA and against Toronto,” Sartini said. “I’m just pissed we didn’t win.”
Vancouver are seventh in the West, two points up (and with a game in hand) on the Timbers, who dropped to ninth despite the good road result.
2. The Timbers are down in ninth because Minnesota United suddenly can’t stop winning, and they can’t stop winning because new DP No. 9 Kelvin Yeboah can’t stop scoring. As per MLS Communications, Yeboah became the fourth player in league history to score in five of his first six career MLS matches. As per me, he’s our Face of the Week because he scored his first of the night with his face:
Yeboah had two on the night, and has seven in six games. The other new DP, Argentine playmaker Joaquín Pereyra, got his first assist. The Loons crushed Colorado, 3-0; it was not that close, and Yeboah was central to all of it.
“Kelvin, seven goals in six games. Can he keep a goal-per-game pace up? Let's hope so,” head coach Eric Ramsay said in the postgame presser, which he opened by (correctly) calling this his team’s best performance of the year. “He's certainly been exactly what we really hoped he would be, a real reference point number 9, someone that really pushes the culture, and I think we've now got a really good thing going with how it feels day to day. The energy and the level of commitment from the group. And he's played a really big part in taking that to the next level.
“So, beyond the goals he defends really well. He stays really well connected to the team. He sets the pressure really well. He's a very disciplined player. So, as much, of course, as I hope the goals continue, I also hope that side of the game continues because that's arguably as important for us.”
Colorado have suddenly lost two of three. Both their games this week are at home, though they’re against first-place LA on Wednesday and a surging Sounders side next weekend.
1. And finally, only an outstanding performance from Steve Clark and a few friendly interventions from the woodwork kept it close in Houston’s eventual 1-0 loss at Seattle. The Dynamo couldn’t get anything going through midfield, and with Ezequiel Ponce and Latif Blessing both out with minor knocks on top of the long-term injuries to Héctor Herrera (hopefully back by Decision Day), Lawrence Ennali and Nelson Quiñones (back in 2025), they just never threatened.
Houston’s final three games are home vs. New England on Wednesday, then at St. Louis on the weekend before hosting the first-place Galaxy on Decision Day.
The Sounders, who got the game’s only goal via Paul Rothrock, have kept the bit in their teeth and are still charging, boasting a 10W-2L-2D regular-season record since mid-June.
Their final three games are at Vancouver on Wednesday, at Colorado next weekend, and then home vs. the Timbers on Decision Day.
If everything in the West feels up in the air – everything behind the Galaxy, anyway – that’s because it still is.
