2022 MLS Season Previews: Chicago Fire FC, LA Galaxy, Toronto FC
/We’ll be publishing three team previews every weekday until the MLS season opens on Saturday, February 26, 2022. You can find all of them here!
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Chicago Fire FC: Thwomp drop from Heitz
By Kevin Nelson
Missing the playoffs eight of the past nine seasons effectively cast a malaise over the Chicago Fire entering the 2022 offseason. That ineptitude has not been for a lack of spend from owner Joe Mansueto given the fifth-highest guaranteed compensation in that time. How those dollars have been used lies the problem and technical director Georg Heitz has decided to dramatically shift where those resources are allocated. Eight of Chicago’s ten highest paid from 2021 now play elsewhere and the Fire are in the midst of a significant rebuild only softened by the fact that Inter Miami cornered the market on insane roster turnover this year. 59.5% of the Fire’s 2021 minutes return, 3rd lowest in MLS, from a team that disappointed by finishing 21st in non-penalty expected goal differential.
The majority of the turnover has occurred within an attack that generated the 2nd-worst g+ in the opponent’s half. Despite ranking 6th in the league in shots, Chicago had the worst shot quality in MLS and the offense finished in the bottom ten in NPxG accordingly. Two primary components, and possible detriments, to that unit were designated players Robert Beric and Ignacio Aliseda. The pair had the 2nd and 3rd worst g+ above average on the roster, respectively, and both have departed Chicago. Unfortunately, the attackers viewed favorably by g+ were also victims of the mass exodus with winger Przemyslaw Frankowski moving to Ligue 1 late last summer and Alvaro Medran having a club option declined. Before leaving, Medran’s diagnosis that “there are things that need to change from top to bottom” was a damning summary in support of the sweeping changes on the horizon.
While the Spanish midfielder ultimately became a sacrificial lamb to his own assessment, Heitz’s makeover provides some validation to those words and the starting front four for the Fire will be completely composed of new additions. A U22 initiative slot was used on the 18-year-old Jhon Durán to be a presumptive first choice winger while Kacper Przybylko was bought from Philadelphia for $1.15 million in GAM to replace Beric. Przybylko may only present a lateral upgrade over Beric but that move created the roster flexibility for the aforementioned two DP spots now vacant, and those have truly been the vessel of transformation for the attacking group. Mexican winger Jairo Torres comes in with a fairly proven track record for a 21-year-old after more than 5,000 Liga MX minutes and the Young DP brings dangerous pace to the flank. But for all his promise, Torres’ signing pales in comparison to that of Xherdan Shaqiri.
The Swiss international, well known for outrageous goals and having the exact body type of Thwomp from Super Mario, enters MLS with every intention of indulging Chicago’s worst tendency of taking bad shots. A career average of 20.7 yard distance per shot makes Shaqiri one of soccer’s foremost lovers of teeing it up from deep, but he’s proven more capable of converting than anyone the Fire have ever had. He provides an exciting upgrade for an offense desperately in need of one and every expectation is that the Fire will center their attack around him. His time with Stoke City represents the closest approximation for Shaqiri as a true focal point and his performance during those three seasons are reason for optimism. Shaqiri was unable to elevate Stoke City to an above-average attack (let’s be honest, only a handful of individuals on the planet would be capable of that) but produced at an impressive level nevertheless. In his final season there in 2017-18, Shaqiri ranked in the top quartile of most offensive statistics such as expected assists, shot creating actions, progressive passes, and passes into the penalty area among attacking midfielders/wingers despite Stoke City only possessing at a 41.3% clip.
Whenever and wherever Shaqiri has played, his per 90 production strongly indicates he has been a great offensive weapon. But the question that remains is just how much he’ll be on the field. That final campaign with Stoke was the last time he truly had a stranglehold on a starting spot after three seasons as a primary substitute under Jurgen Klopp and six months with Lyon. Twenty-seven starts in last four years could be disregarded as a mere side effect of playing for a team of Liverpool’s caliber, but it also speaks to Shaqiri’s history with muscle injuries. A series of strains has forced the attacker off the field for nearly a full calendar year since leaving Stoke for Liverpool in 2017, and it’s fair to question how durable he’ll be when thrust back into an exhaustive role.
Chicago must find the proper balance of effectively managing minutes to sedate Shaqiri’s penchant for pulling muscles while simultaneously needing him as the fulcrum. When healthy, his ability to be that offensive engine at multiple positions throughout the attack presents a plethora of lineup permutations that could shake out. However, Shaqiri will be able to focus his efforts centrally at the moment as head coach Ezra Hendrickson has shared “the plan right now is to use him as a 10.”
Hendrickson is a part of Chicago’s turnover en masse in his own right as he embarks on his first season leading the Fire. The longtime assistant is familiar with success in MLS after a decade-plus on the benches of the Seattle Sounders, Los Angeles Galaxy, and Columbus Crew but this will be his first experience as the man in charge. 2022 will start to answer whether he’ll inherit a style resembling the defensive pragmatism of Sigi Schmid or attacking verticality of Caleb Porter, or if he’ll define an identity independent from his two former bosses. Hendrickson has indicated he intends to use a 4-2-3-1 formation in his first deviation for former head coach Raphaël Wicky, who used a four-man backline for less than 50% of last season.
Adding a rookie head coach on top of all the roster churn widens the margins on Chicago’s range of outcomes even further. If Hendrickson can hit the ground running and coalesce a talented yet unfamiliar roster, the Fire could push for a playoff spot. Alternatively, the fit could take longer than hoped for and the offseason could prove too defense-negligent after exclusively adding veteran center back Rafael Czichos to a shaky backline, even supposing goalkeeper prodigy Gabriel Slonina goes ‘supernova’ from the get-go. If Shaqiri’s calf intermittently detaches from the bone on top of that, the bottom could fall out. Even if Year 2 of this rebuild is when it all comes together, the Chicago Fire are going to be more entertaining in 2022 than they have in a while, and that’s a win in itself.
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LA Galaxy: Cabral that and a bag of chips
By Ian L.
“The league needs the Los Angeles Galaxy to be good.”
- A number of people that get up in my Twitter mentions
“The Galaxy are just being ambitious. You’re only angry about it because you’re jealous.”
- The same people all up in my Twitter mentions
“ ”
- These same people at the end of every season over the last half decade
The Los Angeles Galaxy have become MLS Manchester United
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the current plight of the one of the world’s most famous soccer groups, Manchester United are, well, not great. Oh, but they sure used to be. League titles on the reg. Deep Champions League runs on the reg. Bringing in the world’s best players on the reg. They were a monolith at a time when few others existed. Now, they desperately cling to their history of relevance in a bid to remain in the conversation while barely managing to hang on to the top four places in the league.
On a cold, sleepless night in December, the LA Galaxy will be visited by three ghosts. The ghost of MLS past will be a two-headed abomination equal parts Bruce Arena and Bill Belechik. The ghost of MLS present will be a weeping Chicharito, and the interim ghost of MLS future will be a wizened, shackled Dom Kinnear pointing chillingly towards the San Jose Earthquakes as a franchise to emulate.
A formerly great team that dominated a market with few competitors, who are no longer even the most relevant team in their own zip code? Add in the Chicharito, Zlatan, and David Beckham connections, and it’s just too close for comfort. I only bring this up to mock the Los Angeles Galaxy. There was no other reason for this comparison other than being mean. Let’s continue.
The Los Angeles Galaxy were BETTER in 2021 than they were in the COVID-shortened season (that really shouldn’t count) of 2020. Yet slightly worse than they were in 2019 when they really weren’t very good, but were still better than they were in 2016 and 2017 when they were awful. So, it hasn’t been a great time to be an LA Galaxy fan really.
Let’s remember that time the LA Galaxy literally had Zlatan and still weren’t good
Ok, let’s all take a second and remember that. Remember that? Good. Let’s move on.
Ahem, back to the task at hand
And if you’re an LA Galaxy fan that’s come here seeking comfort in the underlying numbers or some sort of promising upwards trend, you’re not going to get either from me. The Los Angeles Galaxy’s museum of soccer may still well be that, but it isn’t the dominant force competitively it once was. Back in the day, the LA Galaxy were kind of the only game in town when it came to acquiring a higher tier of talent. They found a lot of success through brute force and financial muscle back when other teams weren’t interested in that particular path to glory. Now that other people have worked out the whole ‘spend money on players’ bit and are doing a damn better job of it, it’s not a great well to try and go back to. It is, however, the only well on the property at the moment so you know what they say about dry wells and other holes you find yourself in: Keep digging. And dig they shall.
Cometh the hour, cometh Douglas Costa. This is a very exciting signing for people who sort of forgot about Douglas Costa between the last time they saw him on TV in 2017 and when he showed up on the Galaxy’s Twitter last week.
Douglas Costa was not terribly long ago, one of the most intriguing wide attacking talents in the world. He was a full international with 31 caps (for Brazil! A nation known for being very good at this sport) and a six-time title winner with Bayern Munich and Juventus. It’s a bit hard to determine what exactly happened to Douglas Costa that explains his path from the UEFA Champions League to showing up in Major League Soccer as the 10th or 11th most exciting signing in the league, and probably the third most important for his team. As best as I can tell, being healthy isn’t one of his strengths:
According to transfermarkt.com
If you’re a fan of a team that’s hoping for Douglas Costa to remain healthy, this does not bode well. Between this and moving four times in the last two seasons, you could make a pretty compelling case that Costa hasn’t really had the opportunity to settle anywhere in the last few years, so it’s kind of hard to judge his performances. This is an argument you’ll want to make if you enjoy the Los Angeles Galaxy, because his few performances don’t seem to be terribly good.
I’m not going to sit here and act like I’ve done a deep dive of Douglas Costa’s performances in the Brazilian first division. In fact, the only advanced data that I could locate for that league indicates a return of about 6.5 xG+xA over 2080 minutes, which isn't terrible. It’s really stupid to do one-to-one comparisons between leagues, but I’m going to have to work with what I’ve got here and say that comes out to about 0.31 xG+xA per 96 minutes. The most similar player I can find statistics-wise from last year is Benji Michel of Orlando. So, not bad by any stretch, but also probably not what you’re looking for in regards to production from a designated player.
Will this be better or worse in MLS? I have no way of knowing. And with such light data, I’ve been reduced to looking at five minute skills/goals compilations on Youtube. It’s generally not a great way to scout because it ignores ~99% of a player’s actions in favor of highlighting only their best moments. Even with that caveat, I’m not super blissed by what I’m seeing. If this is the top end of what we can expect from Douglas Costa, you’ve got a player who can still do an eye-catching turn of skill to beat a man, but after that tends to hit a wayward cross or pass or get run down rather easily. There are moments here, and of course there are for a player of his pedigree, but while anything can happen, I am going to err on the side of caution and say that I have some concerns about this signing. I’d normally say that we should give the Los Angeles Galaxy’s recruitment staff the benefit of the doubt, but they have not in any way earned that, so I’m not going to.
Douglas Costa compared to other Campeonato Brasileiro Serie A Attacking Players. As you can see, he’s at best pretty middle-of-the-road here. So, I don’t know fam… if hope springs within let it spring, I guess, but I’ll just be over here doing a concern face.
Any good news?
There is! The Galaxy moved a lot of dead wood in the offseason:
Out:
GK - Eric Lopez
D- Niko Hamalainen
GK - Justin vom Steeg
M - Jonathan Dos Santos
F - Kai Koreniuk
F - Augustine Williams
D - Daniel Acosta
D - Oniel Fisher
F - Ethan Zubak
D - Daniel Steres
M - Sebastian Lletget
Not a lot of eyebrows will be raised for 90% of these moves, but Jonathan Dos Santos, Daniel Steres, and Sebastian Lletget were all contributors that will be missed to varying degrees.
On the whole, Jonathan Dos Santos’ time in Los Angeles has to be considered pretty underwhelming. He wasn’t BAD by any stretch, but he had his ups and downs and overall profiled as a pretty average DM in a world where there are no shortage of those that can be acquired a hell of a lot cheaper.
Daniel Steres, on the other hand, will be missed more than people realize. Plaudits have never really flowed in his direction, but Daniel Steres is a really solid MLS center back that’s existed exclusively in a fairly dysfunctional defensive unit. In other words, he should have no trouble adapting to life in Houston (rim shot).
Steres is 31 years old now, so hardly at the beginning of his career, but you have to think that sending him away for a third-round pick and retaining a portion of his 375k salary wasn't worth a very decent roster guy. Maybe he wanted out. Again, I’d love to give the Galaxy the benefit of the doubt, but they do not deserve it.
Lletget however, I do understand. While Lletget was a good player perhaps a bit miscast in the LA’s midfield, he was costing the club nearly one million dollars a year. Whether it was his fault or not, I don’t think anybody can blame the Galaxy for thinking that maybe it’s time to try something else, and they got a very decent haul in return for him. Fare thee well, Da Boi. I’m sure Bruce will somehow turn you into the next Zico.
As for the ins
More good news here. Marky Delgado is good! Statistically, he profiles pretty similarly to Dos Santos, and he’s a few seasons removed from his best campaigns, but he’s presumably just now entering his prime and I think Vanney can get him back there again. Ravoleson was one of LA’s brighter spots last season and sitting him next to Delgado is going to make a very competent midfield pairing.
Also good? Chicharito. Well, last year, Chicharito was very very good. If you break things down per 96 minutes, Chicharito had one of the league’s best xG+xA. We’re talking better than Castellanos, Bou, Gil, Ruidiaz, Martinez, and Mukthar.
This up-and-down is kind of what I remembered from Chicharito last season. When he was having a game, he was having a damn game, but then sometimes he just wasn’t there at all. The big hole in the middle there is from the unfortunate injury and that slowed down not just Chicharito’s big comeback season, but the Galaxy’s as a whole.
A downward trend like this isn’t really unusual to see, but you can definitely see where the bottom fell out a bit. Even the slight resurgence at the end wasn’t enough to bring the Galaxy back above the playoff line.
So that begs the question of whether or not Chicharito can be the Chicharito we saw him start to be last season. This brings me to the yearly question mark over all players like Chicharito. The benefits of having another season and another preseason to adapt to MLS and to gel with his teammates vs. the potential decline through the normal course of aging. No matter how good of a player you are, this is a thing that happens. Unless you’re Zlatan, but you know, we already did that one. So, while Chicharito was electric at times last season, he’s still a bit of a question mark to me. The Galaxy were a very cross-heavy team last year, and there are very few people in the business who do better at getting on the end of those than the little pea. As long as the service is good (imagine me side eyeing Douglas Costa right now), Hernandez should still be expected to contribute at an individual level. The volume of that contribution will depend on how well the unit performs. As always, we can only wait and see.
Outlook
If you notice, most of this article has been discussing the attack, and that’s because with regards to the defense, there just isn’t that much to say. It wasn’t great last year, and moving your arguably best defender and replacing him with nobody probably isn’t going to improve that.
Even so, the ceiling for this team is reasonably high. There’s too much talent here to think otherwise. That being said, I would be very surprised if the Galaxy were back to their conference- and league-winning ways. The floor is the floor as a lot of their high-priced talent is on the older side, and players on the older side seem to have a higher probability to be on the hurt-er side, and if your best players are hurt, your team tends to be bad. So realistically, let’s shoot somewhere in the middle. Anything less than a playoff spot will be a failure, and even though it’s still early in Vanney’s tenure, some very uncomfortable questions will start to pop up. Let’s say, I don’t know, fifth or sixth place? I think fifth place would be really good for this team.
The LA Galaxy: First to fifth or sixth or something. I like it.
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Toronto FC: Bob’s building without a budget
Writing a season preview for a season like this one is a weird task, when faced with a club like Toronto. Your long time coach and technical director in Greg Vanney, who guided the vision of the club, first team down to U-13s, leaves. He is replaced with a branch from the Red Bull tree in Chris Armas, in line with general manager Ali Curtis. It was a new direction, new promise, utilizing the academy, pressing, pace.
Chris Armas lasted 11 games with a whopping 5 points. Ali Curtis finished the season. The team, rooted to the bottom of the standings, save for a Cincinnati-shaped Wooden Spoon planted firmly under their feet. It was about as bad a year as anyone could have possibly envisioned. Bright sparks Ayo Akinola and Ralph Priso suffer season ending injuries. Ex league MVP Alejandro Pozuelo plays less than half the available minutes. Jozy Altidore finishes another season with less than 1000 minutes played. Shiny new DP Yeferson Soteldo dribbles a lot and always looks vaguely dangerous but just never quite puts it together in a meaningful way.
Then comes Bob Bradley. Bob Bradley can really coach. And you’re back where you started 2021, new direction, new promise, utilizing the academy, pressing, pace.
Areas for Improvement
The biggest gains that Toronto FC and its faithful can hope to see next year, aside from the roster turnover, are on the tactical side. Bob Bradley’s LAFC just destroyed league xG tables every year. There’s a more thorough breakdown of what 2021 looked like for LAFC here, but there are some key takeaways already from Bradley Sr.’s messaging in preseason.
Bradley’s LAFC were demons on the press in 2021. I wrote about it a lot in the article above, or, look at this handy dandy table. Lots and lots and lots of pressing.
Bradley has repeatedly mentioned the intention to build counter-pressing principles into his players in Toronto so far, so it will be interesting to see how this translates.
In possession, TFC have some talent and they have some really good fits. LAFC were all about zone 14 and the half spaces. Again, from before “LAFC led the league last season in passes attempted, completed, and progressive passes into zone 14. They also led the league in g+ per match generated in zone 14. When you plot LAFC’s high g+ value passes (greater than 0.025 g+) into and out of this magical dangerous pocket, it’s easy to see why. Vela and Rossi often drifted inside from their respective halfspaces, receiving between lines to attack the center of the pitch.” Toronto might not have Vela and Rossi, but they do have Pozuelo and they do have a diminutive Italian who seems to like those kinds of areas.
This shows the MLS team with the best G+ difference in each of the 30 zones on the field, attacking from left to right.
But Pozuelo and Insigne aren’t the only players who like to play this way, as Jonathan Osorio is another player who loves to play in “windows.” Osorio shows up as an 89th percentile midfielder for progressive passes received. A lot of those are showing up between lines, receiving on the half turn, then driving forward. These sorts of movements are what really made Mark-Anthony Kaye, Latif Blessing, and countless other tweener 8/10 midfielders excel so greatly in Los Angeles. It makes me half wonder if we might see Pozuelo in midfield more often than not.
Building without a budget
It is strange to call Toronto FC a team “without a budget,” because it’s not really true, but as far as the salary cap goes, TFC are woefully in the hole. Yet somehow they’ve started to dig themselves out. The sale of Richie Laryea and trade of Marky Delgado provide a much needed $1.35M in GAM, while the trade of the third overall pick and Dom Dwyer for a paper clip 50k in GAM gets the Reds off a reportedly very large raise. The beneficiaries of the Medieval Feudalism that is the allocation order, TFC racked up another $575k for trading down to spot #14 and giving up an international slot. Assuming the heavily rumoured departures and buyouts happen (peace to Jozy Altidore, a legend), TFC are about $1.9M over the cap and haven’t even come close to filling out their roster.
Toronto FC cap sheet, with some assumption on free agent salaries and option amounts. $2M is a good estimate of how far past the cap TFC are. Squad info consistent.
There are zero “natural” fullbacks at the club after the sale of Laryea and impending departure of Auro and Kemar Lawrence, and since moving on from Delgado, there are five players who could play center midfield, depending on what you want to call Pozuelo. Any player TFC adds to fill these roles just pushes them further and further over the cap, but needless to say, they definitely need to add if they want to be back competing for MLS Cups. They have mostly addressed the gaping wound that was their CB corps last year with free agent acquisition Shane O’Neill, signing former University of Toronto darling Lukas MacNaughton, and swapping DP Yeferson Soteldo for Mexican National Teamer Carlos Salcedo. However, because so much of their GAM is going towards buying salaries down for roster compliance, TFC are in a bit of a bind if they want to trade for talent within the league, so expect most of their acquisitions to come for free, or from outside MLS. So far, Jacob Shaffelburg and Jahkeele Marshall-Rutty have occupied the starting fullback roles in what has been a winning preseason. Marshall-Rutty trialed with Liverpool and Arsenal this offseason as a right back. Fabrizio Romano has already thrown out a "Here We Go" for Genoa hybrid left back - left center back Domenico Criscito, but he most likely won’t join until the offseason.
Notice that Toronto FC are only bringing back a whopping 56% of their minutes from last year. Regardless of Toronto FC’s broader ambitions to fill out this squad, though, Bob Bradley is going to have to utilize the academy more than Perez did for the majority of last season. Both Jahkeel Marshall-Rutty and Jayden Nelson are highly touted young players with moves to Europe fairly likely (both trained with a host of top European clubs over the offseason), while Ralph Priso is maybe the only true ball winner at the club anymore. Either way, it sounds like Bradley is pretty excited to work with that clique of the squad based on his conversation with Grant Wahl:
“So anyway I enjoy the give and take with young guys. Jayden Nelson told me Raheem Sterling. So I thought, okay, that’s fair. If we can help you, and again, in different moments when we show him video, whether we pick Raheem Sterling or whether we pick [Serge] Gnabry, whether we pick [Leroy] Sané, it doesn’t matter. It’s just giving him some ideas of how certain players that have similar characteristics go about things. We showed our team a little bit of the way Liverpool steps up before one of our recent training sessions. And I was making the point to some of our attackers that when [Mohamed] Salah and [Sadio] Mané and [Roberto] Firmino go after people, they really go after them in a hard way. And you don’t see Salah just standing out on the right side doing nothing. And the next day in training, Jayden did it a few times. And that was awesome. So I enjoy that part of the work.”
Insigne
A lot of what this season looks like in Toronto is going to depend on what the team looks like after the arrival of a new small Italian attacker in Lorenzo Insigne. There isn’t really a tonne to say until we figure out what team he is actually walking into, but the guy has been the complete creative hub for one of the best teams in Serie A for almost a decade. He’s probably going to be pretty good here.
Like I said, pretty good all around final third star, AND he tries to defend maybe sorta kinda!
At the same time, he is a career xG under-performer with real shot selection issues (0.06 xG/shot is the free-est of free triggers) and he is definitely already in decline as a shot getter. Insigne’s 0.2 NPxG per 90 minutes according to our friends at FBRef via StatsBomb is about half of what he was getting during his peak. Peak Insigne Napoli were also a better team than Napoli today, but he is about to turn 31, it matters. The club and fans alike might not feel great about the back end of this deal unless he really clings on as a passer and creator, but I think the first two years will be a hit.
This preview might be rendered completely useless by Week 3 when Bradley Sr. has decided for slow methodical possession play and no pressing under any circumstances, but either way it looks set to be a lot of fun.