MLS Week 6
by plaid_pants (2017-04-11 19:05:03)
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My choice for goal of the week is not Giovinco from the slick Altidore backheel. Of note on that play, it was Giovinco's first goal of the year and he celebrated with just about every person on the team except Altidore. Smells like trouble of the Higuain-Kamara variety to me.

My choice for goal of the week is Sporting KC's Gerso after a slick move in midfield by new US citizen Dom Dwyer and a perfect through ball by Roger Espinoza. Gerso uses a left footed inside out shot to go near post from the right side of the box. Very nicely done. (I can't figure out how to HTML embed from the Streamable website and this goal hasn't hit youtube yet, so you'll have to click the link below.)

Back to Toronto for a second. Altidore reminds me of Kenny Cooper. I think he should be played as a wide target man on top of a fullback. He doesn't seem to handle being posted up by central defenders. I am reminded of this because in the Portland-Philadelphia game, Oguchi Oneywu was the first center back to give Fanendo Adi a hard time this season. Both are big guys and Gooch held his own. The Timbers responded by letting Adi roam wide to the left where Nagbe plays. Blanco came in from the right, looking like a poor man's version of Giovinco, and Oneywu had a harder time keeping up with the quick waterbug movement of the little guy.

Orlando handed the Red Bulls another defeat despite New York looking pretty decent. Tyler Adams is supposed to be the next hot thing at midfield for the US under 20 crowd, so much so that New York traded Dax McCarty. It seems like that one piece of the puzzle has thrown them just a bit out of sorts to start the season. Orlando, without Kaka, have the best two-striker tandem in the league in Kyle Larin and Carlos Rivas. Those guys are fun to watch like it is 1995 in the Premier League again.

Salt Lake managed a 3-0 win for their new coach in the snow against Vancouver. Vancouver is just reeling now. Two years ago, I thought coach Carl Robinson was a hot commodity, but now he has a tough task to get Vancouver back on track. He opted for a 3-5-2 formation for the first time I have ever seen Vancouver line up that way. It wasn't the three defenders that was the problem. The game was remarkable in that the midfield battle of 3 against 5 was completely dominated by Salt Lake with Beckerman, Mullholand and Rusnak. The Vancouver midfield completed maybe 80 passes all game long. It was ugly.

I watched all of the Atlanta-Toronto game. How does Atlanta manage to hire Tata Martino who won a group in the 2010 World Cup with Paraguay and coached Barcelona in 2013? How does an expansion team field a roster with Parkhust, Mears, Larentowicz and have a trio of Latin attackers so good that Kenwyne Jones is relegated to a 80th minute substitution. Jones is the equal of Kenny Cooper who started at striker for the Timbers in their expansion season. Having said that, Toronto pretty much won the midfield battle in this one. Atlanta are pretty much a vertical team. Opponents are going to learn to sit deeper and keep things in front of them. This game had end-to-end moments like basketball, and that was where Toronto got hurt.

The MLS still has some weird results. Just when it looks like a team is down and out, they pull off an improbable win. Based on this phenomenon, I predict Vancouver to beat Seattle by 3 goals, Philadelphia to beat New York City by 4 goals and Montreal to beat Atlanta by 2 goals this coming weekend. All three are playing home, are bottom of the table and the rumblings have begun - sounds like a sure thing.



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