First off, I offer my apologies to those who were expecting The Wins Column to be out yesterday. Sometimes, the battle I wage with university is far too consuming.
Second, I would like to give a shout out to my MLS Fantasy Soccer Manager friend, Sebastian Le Toux of the Philadelphia Union. After earning 10 points in Round Two and eight in Round Three, Le Toux put up a paltry two points in Round Four. After making me regret not captaining him for two weeks in a row, he was once again at the centre of my frustration this week.
I took a one week sabbatical from FSM, and dropped from around the top 6,000 participant range to top 10,000 territory. And for the third week in a row, I regretted not captaining Le Toux. My captain this past week, Jairo Arrieta, scored only one fantasy point. I have learned the hard way that ignorance most certainly is not bliss.
Sebastian, you are my captain this round. Go out there and kick Chicago’s butt.
Because I swear, if you don’t, your face and the chair I am sitting on will become quite familiar with one another.
Alright, enough of that spiel. Here are two big thoughts following Round Four of the Major League Soccer season.
1. The 2014 MLS MVP will be Latino
I know I said I wouldn’t go back on my season predictions until the All-Star break, but with the way things have started out, I need to abandon the Titanic. And this painful process of admitting defeat has to start with one of the big predictions.
Tim Cahill will not be the 2014 MLS MVP. I still think that the New York Red Bulls will find themselves in MLS Cup contention by season’s end, but from what I’ve seen so far the Red Bulls are nothing when Cahill, Thierry Henry, and Jamison Olave are not all on the field together. This, for a bunch of 30-somethings consisting of a World Cup-bound player and two men who refuse to play on turf, does not happen very often.
So who do I like now?
I have very quickly learned that not even having backup options (in this case, Graham Zusi and Eddie Johnson) would save me from disappointment. So for my updated pick, I give you a laundry list of players who have performed well. Funny enough, all of them are Latino.
Federico Higuain (Columbus)
Mauro Diaz (Dallas)
Pedro Morales (Vancouver)
Javier Morales (Salt Lake City)
Mauro Rosales (Chivas)
Pardon the pun, but I hope that Maur/Mor options will give me a better chance at guessing correctly. If you really want me to narrow things down, I’ll chop the bottom two.
Higuain is both the scorer and the playmaker on a Crew side that has surprised people. Diaz looks like the second coming of David Ferraira, the 2010 MLS MVP, down in Dallas. Morales has done an exceptional Xavi Hernandez impression to start the year, and will reap the benefits of a fast, trigger happy Vancouver frontline.
I refuse to narrow down this list any farther. And I refuse to include Le Toux in the discussion. But I hope that you will all pray for my updated predictions to come through. Any more botched guesses and I will have to say goodbye to this gig.
The regular refs suck
Maybe “suck” is a bit harsh. “Taking out all the pleasure I get out of watching the beautiful game” is more accurate.
I watch the highlights of every match on MLSsoccer.com each week. Never before have I seen so many red cards (many of them straight) and so many penalty kicks given in a single weekend. Just when I thought there couldn’t be any more, the officials caught me off guard and continued reaching into pockets and pointing to painted dots on the ground.
Before I go further, it has to be acknowledged that the players really are meeting the refs halfway on some of these calls. Andrew Wenger’s straight red, for example, was a pretty obvious one in my opinion.
But the massive amount of sending off and spot kicking has a similar effect on the game as the huge number of stoppage-time goals (which, for the record, made a triumphant return this weekend). It becomes the expected, and not the good expected we think of when Zlatan Ibrahimovic or Luis Suarez step onto the field. It’s the bad expected, like what an Accrington Stanley supporter might get when they draw Chelsea in the FA Cup.
It has to stop. The game is so much better when the majority of goals are scored from the run of play or from a non-penalty kick dead ball. The game is also better when teams aren’t left scrambling to sign the ball boy in order to have a full game day roster.
Attendances across the league were down this past weekend, largely due to the rainstorm that seemed to simultaneously hit every single major American city. Soon enough, attendance numbers could stay down. I wouldn’t pay to see a team start playing in the last five minutes, and I’m not shelling out just to watch a penalty shootout between reserve players either.
That’s all for this week’s Wins Column folks! My hope for next week is that there will be some happier topics to discuss.
But don’t put that down as a prediction. We all know how those end up.
Cheers!
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