We’re publishing three team previews every weekday until MLS First Kick on April 16th. You can find all of them here.
Today we’re looking at three teams that had disappointing 2020 seasons, but each for completely different reasons.
Read MoreFans who like their soccer with a dash of philosophy will want to follow the Philadelphia Union this season. It was Aristotle who said, “the whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts,” and it will be the Union that put that wisdom to the test. The Union are coming off their best season by all measures including goal difference, expected goal difference, points and recording their first playoff win. Sporting Director Ernst Tanner responded by letting three productive players go because they didn’t fit the style of play. His replacements have less compelling CVs but arguably fit better into the target shape. If the Union are going to take another step forward it will be because Tanner has channeled his inner Aristotle. Otherwise, the Union might slide back into the decade long mediocrity they suffered previously.
Read More“Dumpster fire” has several meanings, most of them fairly parallel, but it’s rarely used to describe something dull enough to feel like it’s taking weeks, maybe even months off your life. “Life-sucking” sums up FC Cincinnati’s 2019 season tidily as anything. You never knew quite what would happen when the whistle blew, but you understood it would hurt and that you wouldn’t enjoy it. Even down the stretch when they dialed back the defensive incompetence, they rarely won. All in all, it was…unpleasant.
2020 can’t be that bad, surely. I don’t know that, obviously, but I literally cannot think of a way that Cincinnati could be worse on all sides of the ball than in 2019. But let’s see if we can’t find some ways.
Read MoreFC Cincinnati’s life in MLS started in 2019 with a roster build that received a near-universal side-eye. The year ended with the team grasping for scraps of dignity (rough translation: losing every hand in a game of strip poker on a very, very cold day). The 2019 season would see Cincy take disturbingly credible runs at the league records so awful that they looked like they’d haunt the teas that set them for year to come, maybe decades – e.g., DC United’s 2013 record for single-season losses (24) or Orlando City SC’s 2018 record for goals allowed (74).
Cincinnati took only one of those records – the new high-low bar for goals allowed is 75! – but, sweet baby Jesus, did their season die a brutal death and with abundant co-morbidities. Long scoring droughts ruthlessly paired with defensive meltdowns throughout the 2019 season (e.g., a 1-5 road loss to Orlando, a home loss by the same score to Toronto FC, or the 1-7 mid-season loss at Minnesota, aka, The Game that Stabbed Hope Over and Over and Over and Over and Over and Over and Over).
So, what the hell happened? What went wrong, I mean besides “so many things, more than the hairs on your back”?
Read MoreThe Union faithful have been donning their Sherlock Holmes deerstalkers this offseason. They been dealt a small handful of clues to answer some pretty big offseason questions. Was their 2018 season really their best ever? What became of Borek Dockal? What new tactics will new GM Ernst Tanner ask Jim Curtin to employ? How did they actually land their biggest signing ever in Marco Fabian, and what does this all mean for 2019?
So let’s begin our tour to unravel these not-so-elementary mysteries, my dear Dr. Watson….
Read MoreIs this the year that the Philadelphia Union break through? That is the big question on the minds of the Union faithful. In their nine seasons the team has reached the MLS Cup playoffs three times and matched that with three US Open Cup Final appearances, but they’ve collected a record of 0 wins and 6 losses in those pivotal moments. Generally speaking they’ve been outclassed in these games as well, allowing 13 goals and scoring just 4. Are these results just the growing pains of a new franchise or is something else going on?
Read MoreAt 40-1 to win the MLS Cup the Philadelphia Union aren't extreme underdogs, but they aren't the darlings of prediction season either. The Union made just one significant signing this offseason as they gave cap space to the Chicago Fire in exchange for David Accam, who replaces the departed Chris Pontius. The Union lost two other reasonably important contributors in Oguchi Onyewu and Roland Alberg, and that pretty much sums up the offseason for the Union, and the reason why there is no buzz about the team.
But the unthinkable does happen in the world of soccer.
Two years back Leicester City caught the soccer world by storm by winning the Premier League after oddsmakers put their title hopes at 5,000-1. They did it with exceptional defense and a rigorous commitment to the counterattack. With the acquisition of Accam, the Union could potentially set up in a similar fashion and might just be the unthinkable surprise of the season. Here’s how.
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