Is effort more valuable than talent in MLS?

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/mar/23/is-effort-outperforming-talent-in-mls-soccer

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Kendall Waston proves his worth as Whitecaps crash the party

Back in August 2014 when the Vancouver Whitecaps picked up Kendall Waston, head coach Carl Robinson gave the press some very brief boilerplate on what his team had gained with the 6ft 5in Costa Rican defender: “Kendall is a big, physical, aggressive centre back who has a nose for the net.” What Robinson didn’t mention, or perhaps didn’t know at that point, is Waston’s “nose for the net” can also be extremely valuable in confusing opposition defences in set-pieces, as he proved on Saturday in the Whitecaps’ 96th minute winner against Orlando City.

While the Uruguayan goal-scorer Octavio Rivero picked up the accolades for his glancing header from what looked like a routine time-wasting free kick taken by Pedro Morales, it was Waston’s charging run into the centre of the action that drew Aurelien Collin’s attention, giving Rivero the time and space to score his third goal in as many starts.

Vancouver, perhaps aware of the threat of Kaka playing in front of 30,000 rabid home supporters, opted to sit deep and rely on dead balls or lucky counters against Orlando, reflecting the zeitgeist of a league which produced three scoreless draws this weekend. Though luck certainly played a part in the Caps’ win – the 19 year old Canadian draftee Cyle Larin in particular carved out a few dangerous chances for Orlando off the bench in the second half — Vancouver’s centre-back pairing of Waston and Diego Rodriguez looked mostly comfortable handling Kaka and company for most of the night.

Orlando City will have one or two fairly strong beefs however with the result, particularly with a Kekuta Manneh’s two-footed challenge on Collin that almost certainly should have earned a red card in the 65th minute. Not that Robinson will apologize for his team’s blunt approach. “Every manager will want to win comfortably and three- or four-nil,” he told a Vancouver radio station after the match. “But in this league that doesn’t happen.” RW

Are the LA Galaxy a marked team at home?

Following a determined performance by the Houston Dynamo in their 1-1 draw with LA on Saturday night, Galaxy and US national team defender Omar Gonzalez made a prediction after the Galaxy moved to 1-2-0 at the start of the season:

“I feel like a lot of games are going to be like that this year, where teams come here and just put in a lot of hard work. They want to beat the champion, and we have to be prepared to meet that intensity and maybe, hopefully, overpower them with our own intensity.”

Robbie Keane meanwhile, who scored in the third minute after nutmegging Nathan Sturgis on his way to goal, showed some “intensity” of his own for the reporters post-match, angrily complaining about his team’s defending on the corner that led to Sturgis’s equalizer in the 11th minute.

Yet Keane should know that even champions sometimes need to score twice. Though LA came close several times in the second and took nine shots total to Houston’s six, Owen Coyle’s Dynamo — who equalized from a corner in the 11th minute — combined luck and hustle on their way to a decent away result against a sometimes sloppy LA.

So is Gonzalez right? Is their failure to beat the Dynamo proof that Galaxy are a marked team at home? Los Angeles had a 12-1-4 record at home last season, on their way to winning the MLS Cup. The Galaxy have always enjoyed flagship status in MLS, and teams not named Seattle Sounders have long been wary of leaving a ton of space for the likes of Keane, Gyasi Zardes and Stefan Ishizaki to thread the needle at StubHub. It’s hard to see on the evidence so far how that has changed this season. Though LA looked below their best, they were, in truth, only a few wonderful stops by Houston goalkeeper Tyler Deric away from a hard-fought, win. Not time for the Galaxy to panic yet. Set-pieces happen. RW

New York Red Bulls show signs of life after Henry

After last week’s New York City FC spectacular, with its 40,000 plus at Yankee Stadium, its announcement of league-record breaking merchandise sales, and the dream home start by David Villa et al, New York Red Bulls kicked off their first home game of the season with a fair amount to live up to.

Not to mention a fair amount to live down to. The Mike Petke saga simmered into the opening moments of their game against DC United, as the home fans briefly set aside their two-decade animosity for their rivals to chant their former coach’s name.

It was almost possible to forget that the intrigue around the new reality of two New York MLS sides ultimately involves actualy games of football. DC certainly looked guilty of forgetting that in the first half at Red Bull Arena on Sunday, as they turned up and ambled around the field in the manner of 11 strangers who’d showed up on one of the Groupon deals that have historically helped swell the numbers in Harrison.

But New York, to the credit of new coach Jesse Marsch, and the players who seemed to have quickly bought into his methods, did show up, and in a very coherent manner. High pressure and quick counter-attacking was enough to push DC aside, as Bradley Wright-Phillips scored a route-one goal, then turned provider for Lloyd Sam to smash a second inside the near post in the second half.

Wright-Phillips didn’t have a shot on goal in the Red Bulls’ first game in Kansas City, but here he held the line, moved well to go wide and central and rotate his runs, while the men behind him also ran with industry and purpose. Dax McCarty was formidable all game in midfield – combining with the willing Felipe to distribute forward and throw his body into the fray to help out his defense. He looked a liberated presence compared to the effective but subdued figure he cut patching up Petke’s sophomore team in the second half of last season.

It’s still brittle progress of course. And without Thierry Henry to dig the team out of trouble with a moment of genius, we’re yet to find out what this team can do under real duress. Yet speaking to the Red Bulls players after the game it was almost possible to discern a sense of relief that the spotlight is on the blue half of New York, while the region’s incumbent side figure out together what they might become next. GP

Dallas have made yet another bright start (maybe)

A combination of the huge territorial area the league covers combined with the fact that the playoff system tends to be forgiving of slow starts means that the early weeks in the league can resemble watching the opening 100m of a 400m race and trying to guess the shape of the field for the home straight.

Northern and Eastern teams tend to start with road-trip heavy schedules to warmer climes, or off weeks, while it seems that every year of late, regardless of pre-season expectation Dallas start strongly in the Texan heat, and the game becomes one of wondering if this season they’re for real.

Three games and three wins is too small a sample size to give too much credence to yet another early Dallas lead in the Supporters Shield standings. But the most recent win, secured on the road in Philadelphia in a snow-delayed game on Saturday afternoon (so much for the Texan heat shaping their ascent), was squarely part of a narrative that started to take shape last season, and which was one of the most intriguing subplots of the 2014 playoffs, despite the away goals exit to Seattle.

Dallas scared Seattle with their energy and movement on each others’ behalf during that playoff series last year and they were unlucky to be squeezed out. Basically the young team shaped by Oscar Pareja is for real, and Fabian Castillo and Mauro Diaz, should they remain uninjured, will be real forces in the league.

Castillo’s speed on the outside was causing Philadelphia all sorts of problems on the hard ground on Saturday afternoon, while Diaz’s drive, whether from deep, or from just behind Blas Perez up front, made him a constant handful for the Union to pick up.

It was no surprise that Diaz was involved in the turning point of the game — though perhaps the manner was unexpected. Philadelphia had held their own in the early stages, with a five man attack at times as they swarmed forward, but were never the same after Zach Pfeffer’s elbow crashed into Diaz on a late tackle, earning him a straight red card. It was a stupid decision by Pfeffer, and from there, against a side of Dallas’s quality and workrate, the exercise was largely one of damage limitation.

So Dallas left Philadelphia out in the cold and going from an unbeaten start to contemplating two points from a possible nine. Dallas meanwhile have sprinted clear to the only 100% record in the league and with an intriguing reprise of their match up with Seattle to come next week. Perhaps that’s when we’ll start to see just how well each team are running the bends of this year’s race. GP

New England thankful for nothing

Just like 2014 New England’s season has started with a goal drought. Three games in and the Revs are yet to find the net, despite an improved performance in terms of creating chances against Montreal.

Some of that may have been down to a hangover for the Impact after their Champions League heroics in midweek. Though a rather more significant factor in the Revs’ improvement on Saturday afternoon was Hassoun Camara’s second yellow for needlessly dragging down Lee Nguyen some 40 yards from goal, just after the hour mark.

Montreal bunkered as New England pressed and stuttered in attack for the rest of the game, but this was more the drifting New England side that lost nine in a row in the middle of last season than the marauding side that finished the season with a surge to MLS Cup. Lee Nguyen in particular is still clearly ring rusty, and looked lightweight and anonymous without the drive of Jermaine Jones pulling players out of position to make room for him.

Jones will be back soon of course, and the Revs should start clicking in offense again. But as it was they may have left Montreal with a glass half-full attitude. New England may have failed to score again – and against 10 men at that – but a definite plus was the fact that a defense that had had alarm bells ringing after their opening two games did not concede.

And that’s significant for New England — many of the plaudits that came their way after the arrival of Jones last year concentrated on him being the missing piece for their midfield and attack. Perhaps the analysis might include mention of Scott Caldwell’s conservative midfield positioning, but very often the defense was treated almost as a given.

And perhaps given Jay Heaps’s past life as a defender, the fact that he’d treated said defense as a priority when taking over as head coach meant that the later cohesion of the midfield and attack was always going to appear more pronounced. But right now it’s perhaps a bigger deal that the Revs’ defense did their job rather than the fact the attack failed to do theirs again.

The departure of AJ Soares for Europe has accelerated the move of Andrew Farrell from right-back to center-back: a position he hasn’t played since college. Inevitably there’s a learning curve to that, and Heaps could have done without Farrell’s mentor at center-back, Jose Gonçalves, picking up a red card against New York City last week, something that kept him out of the Montreal game.

With no Gonçalves, Montreal should have expected to get more joy from a New England defense that had conceded five unanswered goals in their first two games.

But the center-back pairing of Farrell and Darrius Barnes held out and for Heaps, contemplating the rather limited options he has at the back, that’s definitely something. GP