Steve Davis' weekly column, drilling down on five hot topics in American soccer
1. Buyer beware: old players come at a cost
Big stars sell seats in MLS. Or so the conventional thinking goes; you might get some push back on that now. This isn’t 2007, after all.
Big stars do sell shirts. That one’s probably true – and at $115 a pop, that’ll put some revenue meat on them MLS bones.
But when it comes to splashy stars in MLS, you know what else they do? Sometimes they create serious headaches for managers, and we don’t need soccer savants to tell us why: by the time a brand name dude arrives into MLS, the tick-tocking clock has driven them into their golden years. Their level of performance is frequently declining.
If you look around MLS right now, age and age-related issues are hammering some clubs.
As much as Didier Drogba’s arrival super-boosted the Montreal Impact last year, he’s become a serious liability this year. That’s not my opinion; the Impact’s record (with an increasingly significant sample) is better without him, and it’s not really close. The Impact when the big Ivorian starts: 3-7-8. The Impact when he doesn’t start: 8-3-3.
That’s a serious “tell.” And not really a shocking one. He’s 38 and increasingly immobile, his “threat level” falling fast. Sure, he can still score here and there. But when he’s not “foxing in the box,” he kills the Impact, which simply cannot defend from the front.
The Galaxy may still make noise as the playoffs approach; all that experience does mean something come squeaky bum time. Then again, they may just fade meekly. If the men of sunny So Cal do, age will be among the top reasons.
Bruce Arena’s team went 1-3-2 down the stretch last year, fumbling away favorable playoff positioning and then getting dumped out of the post-season in just 90 minutes. Were they too dependent on guys like Robbie Keane and Steven Gerrard, whose age issues can become exacerbated on the back side of a long season?
Furthermore, is it catching up again? Could be. Arena’s men have lost two in a row at the worst possible time. (And a cranky Keane hasn’t talked to media in a month.)
Saturday in Dallas the Galaxy tried a 4-4-2, leaving Gerrard and Jeff Larentowicz out-numbered in the middle by Dallas’ usual 4-2-3-1. But here’s the real kick in the head: Between Gerrard and Larentowicz, their combined age is 69. Remember, that’s for two players.
The combined age of the FC Dallas midfield trio (Mauro Diaz, Carlos Gruezo and Kellyn Acosta) was 67. For three of them!
That’s not even a fair fight. Dallas couldn’t put the Galaxy away, but it’s little wonder Oscar Pareja’s men were mostly in charge, clearly the better team as the Galaxy managed just one shot on target and zero corner kicks. (In fairness, the Galaxy’s best player Saturday was 35-year-old Ashley Cole. So, there’s that.)
Elsewhere, 38-year-old Frank Lampard had been swatting away at the critics, definitely proving some of us wrong while scoring regularly through the summer for NYCFC. Then he did what older players do: they get hurt more often.
In Seattle, Clint Dempsey is done for the season. The Sounders are clearly surviving OK without him, moving steadily from their dark place into the sunshine above the red line. But everyone in the Sound would clearly rather have their 33-year-old talisman. (Mostly they just want him to be a healthy human being, of course. But the point remains the same.)
Obviously, no one saw heart issues coming. Still, there’s no denying that players entering their mid-30s are more susceptible to absences.
Here’s the point: as the league matures, the smart clubs will be less and less enamored with “names,” more and more attracted to quality players who can contribute beyond their brand appeal. They won’t sell as many $115 shirts, but they’ll be better in the long run.
2. Summer additions paying off – and where they aren’t
Seattle midfielder Nicolas Lodeiro could sit on the bench chewing beef jerky for the rest of the year, and he still would have done enough to justify his summer addition at CenturyLink Field. Clearly, he’s been among the best summer “adds” in MLS history.
But he’s not the only one showing how prudent summer roster tweaking can pay dividends.
How good has Patrick Mullins been for D.C. United? With 7 goals in 11 starts, he’s been a man on a mission at RFK Stadium. And the two-time Hermann Trophy winner is a big reason why Ben Olsen’s team, looking like dead ducks in the Potomac just a few weeks ago, is now unbeaten in five and winners of three in a row.
For the other side of this summer addition coin, see “Vancouver Whitecaps.”
Carl Robinson’s team was treading water in the summer, hanging in the playoff hunt but clearly in need of its own Patrick Mullins. Who did they get? Giles Barnes, who had a good run at Houston early in 2015 but hasn’t gotten out of second gear since.
Sunday, in a game Vancouver had to win to keep its thread-thin playoff hopes afloat, Barnes was invisible. The contrast was stark between what Barnes was bringing on one side and what 15-year-old phenom Alphonso Davies was delivering on the other.
The Whitecaps needed offense, down a man and still in desperate need of a goal in a 1-1 match. Off the bench came … Andrew Jacobson? Jacobson is a solid holding midfielder, but if he’s your “offensive spark” something has gone wrong on the roster.
And Barnes? He has no goals and one assist in seven starts (plus one other appearance off the bench). He looks like a summer “panic buy,” something to fill the void when Fabian Espindola’s acquisition went sideways. Either way, these choices matter. The Whitecaps surely would take a summer “do-over” if they could.
3. Orlando eliminated … and that’s a good thing
Orlando City SC tumbled out of the playoff picture with a home loss Sunday and, even though I know it hurts the hefty legion of Lions supporters, that’s probably a good thing. Yes, it is – so long as they are playing the long game here. As they certainly should be.
Of course everyone tries to make the playoffs in MLS. You know the old saw: “Just get to the playoffs and anything can happen.”
But as MLS continues to develop, that’s going to be less and less true. With added collective stability comes added predictability. To wit:
Did anybody seriously look at Orlando City, with its offensive potential so absurdly undermined by its awful defending, and see a team that could be a legitimate MLS Cup threat? If you did, well, please see me after class.
No, a club with 5 wins in 16 home matches, a team on pace to allow 60+ goals is certainly not a team about to “hit its stride” in the post-season or anything like that. So, honestly, what’s the point of chasing a playoff dream?
Of course, as long as they were technically “in” the post-season chase, manager Jason Kreis probably owed it to his team and its passionate fans to try. But don’t you think the Lions still-new coach is secretly happy he can now more properly go about the reclamation project?
They desperately need better defenders and a more suitable screening midfielder, but complete turnover of the back five would be somewhere between difficult and impossible. So Kreis has hard-but-vital choices ahead. Who goes and who stays? Think about that and about what he said after Sunday’s match: “I think certainly you’re going to want to go into the off-season feeling as if I’ve given everybody a chance, I’ve given everybody an opportunity to be critically evaluated, because we will have to make some difficult decisions going into this off-season."
Translation: he needs to see players and combos … and there’s not a minute to waste.
As the club preps to inhabit its new downtown stadium, the attack is good enough, especially if they can hold back the Cyle Larin pursuers. Like every position on every club, it can always use reinforcing. Meanwhile, the defense needs fixing something fierce. (Tippy top priority: find a partner/ tutor for 19-year-old center back Tommy Redding!) Best just to get on with it. Honestly, it probably would have been better to lose playoff possibility two games back. Now the Lions have just two games to go – and they certainly didn’t need to waste a minute chasing some playoff run that was destined to collapse before it even got started.
4. Houston Dynamo with the ball: a chaotic mess
Meanwhile, in Houston, Wade Barrett’s “sorting out” looks entirely different. At BBVA Compass Stadium, he’s dug the Dynamo halfway out of its hole through greater attention to defense. It’s a good start – we talked about it in Item No. 3 last week.
But here’s the deal with the Dynamo: while Barrett has the team much better positioned without the ball, this team is a big ol’ mess when it actually gets the ball.
Look at the picture (left). Count the Dynamo men in the frame. This is after the Barrett’s boys have had the ball for a couple of passes.
You see seven men in orange. Seven! That means all but two of the Dynamo field players are in an area of approximately 30 x 30 yards. As offensive spacing goes, that’s a fiasco. And this isn’t some isolated incident. Against NYCFC on Friday (a 2-0 loss), every possession was a cringe-worthy sequence of haphazard movement (or none at all), poor choices and poor touches.
Houston’s completed passes (352) and passing percentage (69) were both lowest among all home teams in Week 30. For comparisons sake, most home team’s completion rate was around 80 percent.
And zero shots on target? Even if you’re playing on Mars, that’s a big red flag. Failing to get a shot on target in a home match? That’s ridiculous.
Yes, general manager Matt Jordan has to help Barrett with better players. There really isn’t an area of the field where they couldn’t use an upgrade. (Even at left back, where DaMarcus Beasley has been a soldier, but he’s 34, about to be out of contract and been available for just 21 games this year.)
The roster is like a big string of Christmas lights just pulled out of storage: it needs a whole lot of untangling. Better players, however, won’t help if they can’t get into a better attacking shape.
5. The Little Five
5a. Related to the age issues discussed above: The LA Times’ story on MLS travel blues is a talker, for sure. It’s worth discussing. But this part made me chuckle. Two of the examples of travel trouble were Ashley Cole and Alan Gordon, both of whom had back issues after long flights. Well here’s the thing: Gordon is 34! And Cole is 35! There was another example of Landon Donovan being cramped in a middle seat; well, he’s 34. The point is this: discussion of this story needs context in a lot of different ways – including the fact that throwing more money at every MLS concern cannot be the answer. To this specific point, the context is this: In 2016, MLS is a league where older players may not enjoy the travel required. So, make roster choices accordingly.
5b. Before we get off the Galaxy (and stop picking on their old guys) we do need to say this: With the exception of a couple of swell Gerrard long-distance passes early Saturday, the Galaxy’s two most incisive entry balls in the final third came from Donovan. Like FCD playmaker Diaz, Donovan still sees passes that most players simply do not. One of those will create a goal before his encore stint with the Galaxy is done.
5c. Related to the Vancouver Whitecaps item above: Pedro Morales has 24 goals and 22 assists in three years. But take away his 15 penalty kick goals and his numbers (9 goals 22 assists over three seasons) look far more ordinary. Toss in that ridiculous, needless elbow that got him ejected Sunday, and it’s harder and harder to justify his $1.2 million salary and DP slot. (Especially when much-cheaper Christian Bolanos was the better midfield attacker Sunday.)
5d. If you haven’t seen Davies play, do yourself a solid and get on that. (Or, let the lads from Extra Time radio tell you about the Whitecaps’ 15-year-old livewire winger.)
5e. Hard to get a read on whether Sam Allardyce really is a candidate to be Minnesota United FC’s boss. But in a way that’s beside the point. The league, with Tata Martino now eligible to join the next MLS manager’s pickup game, has grown to the level where reports of Allardyce interest doesn’t sound one bit wacky.
Steve Davis has covered Major League Soccer since is first kick in 1996. He writes on-line for FourFourTwo and co-hosts the weekly radio show/podcast ESPN Soccer Today on 103.3 FM in Dallas. Davis is also the radio play-by-play voice for FC Dallas on 100.7 FM.