Heading into Toronto on a snowy December day in past years may have had visitors buzzing about the state of BMO Field’s snowy pitch in preparation for an MLS Cup final. For now, there is just roster talk. Roster talk, and manager talk. Enter Bradley. Not the old Bradley we’ve come to know and love, but the even older Bradley who is new to us.
Read MoreWe’re publishing three team previews every weekday until MLS First Kick on April 16th (THAT’S TODAY!). You can find all of them here.
Today we’re looking at three teams which have all approached their roster construction and team-building in completely different ways.
Read MoreWay back in May, American Soccer Analysis broke out our fancy new model, Goals Added, as a way to help us evaluate what is actually going on during the innards of a possession that drives chance creation. As John Muller so aptly put it, “Thanks to expected goals, we’ve gotten good at valuing shots, but shots won’t tell you much about the ninety-plus-minute scramble that produces just 26 total chances over the course of your average MLS game and maybe three goals if you’re lucky. Shots make up about three seconds of action for every four minutes of soccer. Grading the sport on that alone is like assigning GPA based on how well students walk across the graduation stage.” Goals Added gave us the chance to see how much the water carriers and the ball winners and the zone movers actually impact things, beyond just looking at your fancy DP strikers.
Read MoreBob Bradley came in with something to prove in 2018, the franchise’s first year. In interview after interview, he reminded folks that he skippered Chicago Fire to the double in 1998, the club’s first year of existence, winning both MLS Cup and the US Open Cup. Bob had similar ambitions for LAFC, and his ownership built him a team - with Carlos Vela and Walker Zimmerman and Eduard Atuesta and Laurent Ciman - that got pretty close in both 2018 and 2019.
Read MoreIt’s hard to feel, well, anything really about how LAFC finished in 2019. You don’t exactly feel sorry for the MLS juggernaut that came to conquer all and lay claim to ‘greatest MLS team ever’, but didn’t. Carlos Vela and Bob Bradley seemed so cocksure and full of swagger that their inevitable comeuppance at the hands of the Seattle Sounders was almost satisfying for MLS neutrals. For LAFC fans, it would certainly be disappointing if they hadn’t be treated to so many other wonderful delights in the 2019 season. Ricky Bobby / Ron Burgundy / More Cowbell United earned Supporters Shield on the back of an outrageous record-setting 72 point season, and they did it with a record-shattering Goal Differential of +48. The previous mark of +41 had been set by the LA Galaxy way back in 1998. Their star player won the MVP award while breaking the goal scoring record, as Vela found the net an outrageous 34 times. And all that, in just their second year of existence. So if 3252 members are looking for tea and sympathy amongst other MLS fans, they ain’t gonna get it.
Read MoreGrowing up as a Manchester United fan, I have been fortunate enough to have seen some brilliant attacking players, but amidst a bevy of exciting talent one man stood out as a different kind of goalscorer – a comparatively unheralded striker from Mexico: Javier Hernandez – more commonly known as Chicharito.
The fascinating part about Hernandez’s game was how he scored those goals. Chicharito is the ultimate goal poacher, a real throwback to the earlier decades when strikers were meant to sit in the box and score goals – nothing else. While Ronaldo et al., often created their goal scoring opportunities with their ability to move with the ball, Chicharito’s skill was moving without the ball. With his ability to, somehow, always be in the right place at the right time, Hernandez has made a career of tap-ins and intuitive finishes. In fact, all 52 of his goals in the Premier League have come from inside the box.
Read MoreRecords are fun. Recognizable numbers like 56 (game hitting streak - baseball), 100 (points in a game - basketball), 2,000 (rushing yards - football), 61 70 73 (home runs - baseball) give everyone something to root for and an easy way to track the greatest games or seasons of all time.
For a long time, MLS had 27. In the inaugural 1996 season, Roy Lassiter scored 27 goals, and no one was able to match it for a decade and a half. But then a man named Wondo hit the figure in 2012, Bradley Wright-Phillips did it again in 2014, and a seemingly very angry young man named Josef Martinez obliterated the mark with 31 goals last season.
Read MoreLAFC aren’t just good. They are a force.
They have 1.43 Expected Goal (xG) differential per game. No team in MLS history has had more than 1 xGD/game since 2013. LAFC’s xGD is only 0.12 fewer than Atlanta United’s and Red York Red Bulls’ COMBINED. Granted, we haven’t finished even half of the schedule. Things may change comes the last part of the season when LAFC slow down to prepare for the playoffs. But for now, you are witnessing the best team MLS has ever produced. They don’t just beat you, they obliterate you.
The Supporter Shield is as good as gone; our prediction model gives LAFC 76% to win the league. But MLS is about the playoffs. In the new single game format, you only need to get lucky once. Every team has weaknesses. You just need to find those cracks.
Read MoreIt finally happened! I got one right last week! I did! I was doing a sarcasm and lo and behold I got a take dead on. ANALYSIS! Yes Atlanta and Cincinnati did in fact turn out to be a low scoring affair between two evenly matched sides. It feels like six months ago I was called a straight up hater for raising my eyebrows at De Boer’s most recent entries on his resume, but now discussing whether or not he knows what he’s doing is the take du jour. What can I say folks? I was bashing FDB before most of you had even heard of him. I have it on vinyl.
Read MoreLos Angeles Football Club was, according to points total, the best expansion side in the history of Major League Soccer. They’re hoping to improve on that in 2019.
2018 in Review
LAFC’s 57 points surpassed the 56 earned by the 1998 Chicago Fire and the 55 by 2017 newcomers Atlanta United. They scored the second most goals all-time of an expansion side, with 68. By all accounts, it was a very good debut season.
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