This seems correct to me also based on the evidence of my eyes, but the graveyard of MLS teams whose fans have said that sentence is so well-populated. Another goal or two would make me feel a hell of a lot better.
I’ve been beating this drum for a while. This is a weaker Liga MX field than normal (no Super Classico clubs, no Monterrey clubs, no reigning champions Atlas) and there is no random cup-winner representing the US. If not now, then never.
I wasn't all that impressed by Leon. Seattle was missing multiple starters and Leon had one or maybe two chances, but Frei took care of those. I didn't watch the NYCFC game, but the pundits were impressed with them. Though apparently their opponent hit the bar in the 93rd and that would have decidedly changed things.
I didn’t catch much of the NYCFC match, but I did watch Comunicaciones defeat Colorado in penalties. They had a great performance considering they were a man down in blizzard, but a Guatemalan club might be able to catch a team like the Rapids in their first meaningful matches, but an in-form NYCFC should be expected to beat them given 180 minutes.
Pumas have been pretty disappointing this season, while the Revs were the Supporters' Shield winners last year for most MLS points before being a bit disappointing in the playoffs as their diamond got exposed. The Revs should be there or thereabouts this season as well as one of the top teams in MLS although they'll take a hit in the summer when Matt Turner leaves for Arsenal and Adam Buksa likely gets picked up by somebody in Europe.
Shiiiiit, didn't even realize they won the Shield last year. MLS really needs to ditch the MLS playoffs, so that more focus goes to the Shield. US Open Cup already covers domestic cup competition. With 28 clubs though, they may have to adopt a J-League closed pro/rel system.
The Shield is weird now because the league doesn't have any sort of balanced schedule so it doesn't mean anything particularly standardized. I do like the idea of somehow balancing a schedule so we can have actual meaningful league titles, but running away from playoffs as all other American sports run towards "more playoffs, fewer meaningful regular season games!" is not gonna happen.
Ditching the playoffs = an absolute metric f-ton of meaningless regular season games.
Yeah, in Euro leagues you have the title, qualifying for the Champions League, the Europa League (and now the Conference League), and avoiding relegation, so usually there's a small number of teams that don't have something to play for until the very end. I'd love to see them get to 40 teams and split it into 2 divisions of 20 with pro-rel between them, but until then, without playoffs 3/4 of the league would have nothing to play for the entire second half.
My pipe dream is to manufacture a balanced schedule. For the sake of making the math easy, imagine a 36-team league. Split into three 12-team division and play everyone in the division twice = 22 games.
That was a great play by Montero to earn that.
And proceeded to make four subs at the hour mark and nearly collapse, but they squeaked by on away goals after losing this leg 4-2.
Pretty unfair for NYCFC to advance on away goals when they got to play both matches away, but rules are rules I suppose.
