With the new season upon us, it is time to start a new thread.
The New Guys
The league has expanded from 20 to 22 clubs this year with the addition of the creatively-named Atlanta United and Minnesota United.
Atlanta has made a big splash on and off the field. Backed by Falcons owner Arthur Blank, the club's technical director Carlos Bocanegra has made the highest-profile managerial hire in league history in Tata Martino. Atlanta has assembled a strong-looking cast of quality South Americans led by their biggest money signing, Paraguay's Miguel Almirón. They've also been aggressive in absorbing the top local youth club Georgia United, which has given them access to Georgia United's bumper crop of talent that is coming through. Atlanta has already signed a couple of academy players including two current US U17s. One of them, winger Andrew Carleton, is particularly well regarded. Off the field, Atlanta is going to be a behemoth, having already sold over 30,000 season tickets. In expansion chatter over the years, there was always a large amount of fan doubt about Atlanta's potential as a pro soccer market. We were very wrong.
Many expect Atlanta to do better than most expansion teams and are predicting that they will make the playoffs. That's certainly a possibility, though I think people often underestimate the importance of team cohesion in a league that (sort of) has a salary cap.
Minnesota has taken a different route. For starters, they are a continuation of an extant NASL club with an established fanbase. They have taken a much more low-key approach to roster building and have assembled a mix of decent foreign signings, solid domestic players, and some NASL holdovers. Most predict that they will finish last in the West, a forecast that I can't disagree with. Minnesota will experience the usual cohesion problems of an expansion team and I don't see the high-end talent to compensate. Ex-Orlando and current Minnesota manager Adrian Heath has traded for Orlando's Kevin Molino, a Trinidadian attacker, who he views as a centerpiece. Molino was productive in 2016 and will need to be at least as good in 2017 for Minnesota to have any success.
The Hometown Team
The Revs are considered a small-time and unambitious club in MLS, thanks entirely to Bob Kraft, who may not be the shittiest owner in the league (thanks, Chicago), but just about everybody would agree that he's in the bottom quintile. It's an organization that just doesn't expend much money or effort and that does not take pains to hold its GM Mike Burns or manager Jay Heaps accountable. The club did recently add another assistant coach (Carlos Llamosa) who has scouting duties....which I believe is the entirety of the scouting department
Although I think the Revs are severely underperforming their potential on and off the field, I think they could be alright in 2017 following some recent disappointments. After reaching and losing a record 5th MLS Cup final in 2014, the Revs have backslid two years in a row. In 2015, the Revs were knocked out of the playoffs in the first round and last year they missed the postseason entirely.
Nonetheless, there is some good talent on the team particularly in the midfield and at forward. The defense was a major liability in 2016, so the Revs have added a couple of center backs in Slovenian Andrea Delamea and Ivorian Benjamin Angoua. A big challenge is that Heaps tends to be slow to change tactics when things aren't working and the Revs endured a very long slump before Heaps finally went to a 4-4-2 diamond that sparked a good run of form that proved to be too little, too late.
Kei Kamara, Juan Agudelo, and Lee Nguyen remain a formidable trio of attackers, even if it will be tricky to find a way to get the most out of all three of them at the same time. Kelyn Rowe, Diego Fagundez, and Scott Caldwell are all good players in the midfield. The Revs will also need a good year out of Ivorian DM Xavier Kouassi, who signed a pre-contract for the 2016 summer window, then tore his ACL.
The biggest questions going into 2017 for me:
1) Can Kouassi be a difference-maker? If not, can Caldwell hold down the fort as a DM amid a bunch of attack-minded midfielders?
2) How much of an upgrade are Delamea and Angoua?
3) Kamara, Agudelo, and Nguyen are all at their best if they are among the two most advanced attackers on the field. But there are three of them. So how does Heaps manage to get the most out of these guys?
(Doyle wrote about #3 in an article today here, with a particular focus on Agudelo)
I don't think the playoffs are out of the question, but it's hard to see them going far.
The Rest of the League
SB Nation has an extensive season preview here.
Matthew Doyle divides the 22 teams into four tiers with projected starting lineups here.
SI roundtable here.
MLS preseason predictions are a mug's game. I could be talked into making just about any prediction. But in any case, last year's finalists Toronto and Seattle are expected to be good. The teams that are widely predicted to suck are Minnesota, Houston, and San Jose. The East seems particularly difficult to predict and there isn't consensus on who the bad teams will be, but the most-mentioned names are probably Chicago, Orlando, New England, and Philadelphia. One of the teams on the "shitty" list last year was Colorado, who went on to amass the second-highest point total in the league, so go figure.
Some random notes that come to mind:
Personal soapbox note:
The retirement league label was always bullshit, but this offseason made it clearer than ever that most clubs in the league are investing in younger players. There's a steady inflow of (hopefully) good-value talent from Latin America as well as a smattering of European players. Last year's regular season conference winners Dallas and NYRB triumphed despite two of the smallest payrolls in the league. They eschewed big-name players (a new thing for NYRB, typical for Dallas) and benefited from the products of their academy. Both have further loaded up on academy players this year. I think we're starting to see some other clubs make some moves to imitate parts of this model, although it takes time. LA and RSL are going to have to rely on contributions from their academy and other clubs like KC are making aggressive moves to build up their academy infrastructure.
The New Guys
The league has expanded from 20 to 22 clubs this year with the addition of the creatively-named Atlanta United and Minnesota United.
Atlanta has made a big splash on and off the field. Backed by Falcons owner Arthur Blank, the club's technical director Carlos Bocanegra has made the highest-profile managerial hire in league history in Tata Martino. Atlanta has assembled a strong-looking cast of quality South Americans led by their biggest money signing, Paraguay's Miguel Almirón. They've also been aggressive in absorbing the top local youth club Georgia United, which has given them access to Georgia United's bumper crop of talent that is coming through. Atlanta has already signed a couple of academy players including two current US U17s. One of them, winger Andrew Carleton, is particularly well regarded. Off the field, Atlanta is going to be a behemoth, having already sold over 30,000 season tickets. In expansion chatter over the years, there was always a large amount of fan doubt about Atlanta's potential as a pro soccer market. We were very wrong.
Many expect Atlanta to do better than most expansion teams and are predicting that they will make the playoffs. That's certainly a possibility, though I think people often underestimate the importance of team cohesion in a league that (sort of) has a salary cap.
Minnesota has taken a different route. For starters, they are a continuation of an extant NASL club with an established fanbase. They have taken a much more low-key approach to roster building and have assembled a mix of decent foreign signings, solid domestic players, and some NASL holdovers. Most predict that they will finish last in the West, a forecast that I can't disagree with. Minnesota will experience the usual cohesion problems of an expansion team and I don't see the high-end talent to compensate. Ex-Orlando and current Minnesota manager Adrian Heath has traded for Orlando's Kevin Molino, a Trinidadian attacker, who he views as a centerpiece. Molino was productive in 2016 and will need to be at least as good in 2017 for Minnesota to have any success.
The Hometown Team
The Revs are considered a small-time and unambitious club in MLS, thanks entirely to Bob Kraft, who may not be the shittiest owner in the league (thanks, Chicago), but just about everybody would agree that he's in the bottom quintile. It's an organization that just doesn't expend much money or effort and that does not take pains to hold its GM Mike Burns or manager Jay Heaps accountable. The club did recently add another assistant coach (Carlos Llamosa) who has scouting duties....which I believe is the entirety of the scouting department
Although I think the Revs are severely underperforming their potential on and off the field, I think they could be alright in 2017 following some recent disappointments. After reaching and losing a record 5th MLS Cup final in 2014, the Revs have backslid two years in a row. In 2015, the Revs were knocked out of the playoffs in the first round and last year they missed the postseason entirely.
Nonetheless, there is some good talent on the team particularly in the midfield and at forward. The defense was a major liability in 2016, so the Revs have added a couple of center backs in Slovenian Andrea Delamea and Ivorian Benjamin Angoua. A big challenge is that Heaps tends to be slow to change tactics when things aren't working and the Revs endured a very long slump before Heaps finally went to a 4-4-2 diamond that sparked a good run of form that proved to be too little, too late.
Kei Kamara, Juan Agudelo, and Lee Nguyen remain a formidable trio of attackers, even if it will be tricky to find a way to get the most out of all three of them at the same time. Kelyn Rowe, Diego Fagundez, and Scott Caldwell are all good players in the midfield. The Revs will also need a good year out of Ivorian DM Xavier Kouassi, who signed a pre-contract for the 2016 summer window, then tore his ACL.
The biggest questions going into 2017 for me:
1) Can Kouassi be a difference-maker? If not, can Caldwell hold down the fort as a DM amid a bunch of attack-minded midfielders?
2) How much of an upgrade are Delamea and Angoua?
3) Kamara, Agudelo, and Nguyen are all at their best if they are among the two most advanced attackers on the field. But there are three of them. So how does Heaps manage to get the most out of these guys?
(Doyle wrote about #3 in an article today here, with a particular focus on Agudelo)
I don't think the playoffs are out of the question, but it's hard to see them going far.
The Rest of the League
SB Nation has an extensive season preview here.
Matthew Doyle divides the 22 teams into four tiers with projected starting lineups here.
SI roundtable here.
MLS preseason predictions are a mug's game. I could be talked into making just about any prediction. But in any case, last year's finalists Toronto and Seattle are expected to be good. The teams that are widely predicted to suck are Minnesota, Houston, and San Jose. The East seems particularly difficult to predict and there isn't consensus on who the bad teams will be, but the most-mentioned names are probably Chicago, Orlando, New England, and Philadelphia. One of the teams on the "shitty" list last year was Colorado, who went on to amass the second-highest point total in the league, so go figure.
Some random notes that come to mind:
- LA Galaxy is going through a big transition post-Arena and it looks like they are going to double down on youth. To make a rough analogy, they may end up being the NYRB to LAFC's NYCFC when their cross-town rival starts play in 2018. The Galaxy are rarely not good, but I could see them being mediocre at best this year.
- DC was awesome down the stretch in 2016 and has made some nice moves in the winter and they are considered to be a dark horse in 2017. Once the flagship franchise in the league, I have gotten very used to DC being perpetually mediocre and unexciting to watch, but that might change this year.
- NYCFC looks like a fun attacking team. Their games with the Revs are all going to be 4-4 draws.
- I'm not going to do the research, but anecdotally it seemed like there was a real growth in tactical diversity last season. The league had become a largely 4-2-3-1 league, but now we're seeing some 4-3-3s, some 3-5-2s, some 4-4-2 diamonds, a 4-2-2-2, a 4-3-1-2.
- Stadium update:
- Orlando will open their new stadium this year
- DC just did the ground-breaking ceremony for their long, long, long-awaited stadium.
- Minnesota will play at the University of Minnesota stadium until their own stadium opens in 2018
- Atlanta will play at Georgia Tech until moving in with the Falcons when their stadium is ready in July
- The only clubs without a favorable long-term stadium situation are New England and NYCFC. Getting DC done was the big one, though, because at least the Revs and NYCFC owners control all revenue streams at their current digs.
- Early hot seat list:
- Dominic Kinnear (SJ)
- Jeff Cassar (RSL)
- Jim Curtin (Philly)
- Veljko Paunovic (Chicago)
Personal soapbox note:
The retirement league label was always bullshit, but this offseason made it clearer than ever that most clubs in the league are investing in younger players. There's a steady inflow of (hopefully) good-value talent from Latin America as well as a smattering of European players. Last year's regular season conference winners Dallas and NYRB triumphed despite two of the smallest payrolls in the league. They eschewed big-name players (a new thing for NYRB, typical for Dallas) and benefited from the products of their academy. Both have further loaded up on academy players this year. I think we're starting to see some other clubs make some moves to imitate parts of this model, although it takes time. LA and RSL are going to have to rely on contributions from their academy and other clubs like KC are making aggressive moves to build up their academy infrastructure.