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Welcome to week 26 of our staff column gathering news, insights and highlights from around Major League Soccer.
In the field, San Jose earthquakes have every reason to be optimistic even after the 1-1 draw at home against Nashville. The Quakes are in the realm of the West playoff race as they near the end of Luchi Gonzalez’s first season and are building a strong foundation for the future.
Off the field, the Quakes have lagged behind. And this according to their owner.
This past week, owner John Fisher spoke to ESPN about his next club, baseball’s Oakland Athletics, in an article detailing how that franchise came to the brink of moving to Las Vegas. In the article, Fisher cites the dilapidated condition of the A’s’ Oakland Coliseum as a major factor in the move; he believes larger revenue streams through a Vegas move (or a new Oakland stadium deal, which fell through) could fund a more competitive team.
ESPN’s Tim Keown correctly points out that similar promises were made before the Earthquakes’ PayPal Park opened in 2015. They weren’t kept. The team has yet to host a playoff game at that stadium, having qualified just twice since it opened. The club is consistently ranked in or near the bottom third of MLS on the payroll.
Keown also writes that Fisher said PayPal Park “is already outdated compared to newer MLS stadiums — he mentions LAFC, Saint Louis AND Austin – and lacks the capacity and premium seating that drives the kind of revenue needed to compete for championships.”
PayPal Park opened with a final construction bill of about $100 million; almost every MLS stadium that has opened since the beginning of 2017 it has cost from 200 million to 1 billion dollars and for buildings of similar size. Austin’s Q2 Stadium only holds about 2,000 more than PayPal Park. For CityPark of St. Louis City is 4,500 more; For LAFC, it’s even 4,000.
Check out those three organizations and the ownership groups of other recent expansion parties for further clues as to what’s working in the MLS these days. Austin, St. Louis and LAFC (along with most of the other newcomers who launched in or after 2017) have owners who invest seriously in the infrastructure around the players on the field. Fisher, according to his own circular, did not. It raises the uncomfortable question of whether he could try to replicate the A’s move to MLS, which has sounded open about potentially adding a Vegas team in recent years.
People around the team say Fisher attends most Quakes games and is regularly involved in team operations. He is a Bay Area native. This makes the hypothetical optics even stranger, although A’s situation suggests that they would be somewhat realistic as well.
If Fisher tried to bring his nomadic ideas from baseball to the MLS boardroom, it would be an almost unimaginable match of deja vu. It hasn’t even been two decades since the original San Jose Earthquakes relocated, reintroducing themselves as Houston Dynamo in 2006. If another iteration left town, it would be an expensive and heartbreaking football retreat with Fisher playing Lucy and Quakes fans as Charlie Brown. Of course, if MLS is dead set on finding its way to Las Vegas, there’s a much less cynical sequence to achieving that goal.
– Jeff Rueter
Goal of the year?
Lionel Messi did not play inside Inter MiamiIt drew 1-1 in Orlando this weekend, but his compatriot Luciano Acosta made as good an impression as could be had Cincinnati ANTI Charlotte.
Feast your eyes. There’s a good chance this will be the MLS Goal of the Year.
It’s been a good week for Cincinnati and golazos, me Alvaro Barreal getting Puskas a rare nomination for an MLS club (though not in the MLS game).
(As long as you’re in the mood for beautiful goals, definitely check it out full playlist of Puskas claims if you haven’t yet)
‘Chaos Game’
Generally, MLS matches played in miserable conditions end up being a completely unwatchable, or positively uneventful, mess. The five or six thousand fans who braved 35 mph winds and sideways rain at Audi Field on Saturday night certainly got the latter.
The weather has somehow gotten even worse, but this match is extremely entertaining, let’s go pic.twitter.com/UkP4p2TWtd
— Pablo Iglesias Maurer (@MLSist) September 24, 2023
In the outer bands of a tropical storm, DC United and New York Red Bulls played one of the most entertaining games of the MLS season, a 5-3 Red Bulls victory that dealt a major blow to United’s ever-dwindling playoff hopes.
New York’s five-goal performance on Saturday night matched their total in their last eight games. And they weren’t hard-earned goals – United’s defense was atrocious on Saturday night, especially in certain tackles. They conceded two goals off corners, “slow, stupid goals,” as DC coach Wayne Rooney put it.
6️⃣ goals in the first 45 minutes.
Cameron Harper makes it 3-3 on the eve of the first half. #RBNY pic.twitter.com/qy4WMShKtt
— Major League Soccer (@MLS) September 24, 2023
“We entered the game knowing that we had to win”, the midfielder Russell Canouse said. “Just a game of mayhem. Lots of mistakes. It’s one of the most frustrating games of my career with the situation we’re in.”
New York’s second goal also drew the ire of United’s players and especially its manager. The goal came from a free kick behind the DC midfielder Chris Durkin made what was at worst minimal contact with the Red Bulls defender John Tolkien in the box.
Rooney has been an outspoken critic of the MLS referee since he joined the league as a player in 2018, and has also been critical of the way VAR has been handled during United’s games this year. On Saturday, the call against Durkin was never sent for review by the center umpire.
“I’m tired of talking about the officials, to be honest,” Rooney said after the game. “(Chris) tried to get out of the way, it’s clear their player is looking for a penalty. It has been consistent all season; they don’t seem to be doing the proper checks on calls against us, for whatever reason. I don’t want to sit here after we’ve lost a game and bring it up… Again, I’ve asked (PRO Director of Referees) Mark Geiger about that. It is stubbornness, I believe, to admit that they are wrong. We have had it all season. We are really not asking any favors from the officials.”
After all, United will be almost entirely to blame if they miss out on the post-season this year. The club has the fifth-highest payroll in the league and has no room to complain about their late-season schedule, which has mostly been made up of teams at or below the playoff line.
United haven’t made the play-offs since 2019. The writing feels very much on the wall at this point.
“Tonight obviously makes it harder for us,” Rooney said, “but we keep going.”
–Pablo Maurer
Saliba attracts interest abroad
CF Montreal’s recent history of moving young midfielders to Europe may soon continue. After Montreal shipped out the then 20-year-old central midfielder Ismael Kone to Championship side Watford in December 2022, aged 19 Nathan Saliba could follow suit.
Multiple sources indicate Athletics Saliba is attracting interest from clubs in Belgium and Scotland, who have regularly pursued Saliba in his debut MLS season.
Despite his young age, Saliba has become one of the most pleasant surprises north of the border this season. Saliba was slow out of goal this season but has since established himself as a reliable, deep-lying central midfielder who can distribute the ball well and break up opposition attacks with his pressing ability. Sources said it is Saliba’s consistency and maturity as a teenager that has consistently attracted the interest of foreign clubs.
Montreal is in a bid to grab one of the Eastern Conference’s final two playoff spots, though that wasn’t helped by Saturday’s 4-1 loss at Atlanta United. Throughout that push, however, Saliba has become a regular. He has appeared in Montreal’s last 19 games, starting 13. As a result, he has quietly gotten the nod for the veteran Victor Wanyama in Montreal’s midfield recently.
European clubs are not the only ones considering Saliba’s progress. He could be in line for the national team call-up in October.
“(Saliba) is a player we’re looking at,” Canada interim manager Mauro Biello said. Athletics. “The new players are, for sure, part of the plan.”
– Joshua Kloke
The state of the playoff race
With another two-game week behind us, most MLS teams have three, four or five games left in the regular season. This point in the season brings games with more excitement thanks to the increased stakes; even after the expansion of the playoffs this season, that amount has remained visible.
Montreal has paced itself at a 42-point pace despite owning the second-worst goal differential in the East; only need 40 or 41 points to clinch the final conference spot.
MINNESOTAA third straight loss puts them firmly on the outside, with a record worse than any other Western team (well, besides Colorado). FC Dallas has found its stride on a four-game unbeaten run as Austin FC blew a 3-1 lead to draw 3-3 at home against Galaxy. Suffice it to say that every team in the West has a lot on the line these past few weeks. Well, except for Colorado.
– Jeff Rueter
Three good reads
• Away from MLS, USWNT legend Megan Rapinoe left the field as an international player for the final time on Sunday. Meg Linehan and Steph Yang collected some really great stories about Rapinoe (that were fit for public consumption) from her close friends, teammates, colleagues and coaches.
• Drop one for the Colorado Rapids and Toronto FCMLS Seasons 2023 Both teams were mathematically eliminated from playoff contention this weekend meaning the offseason is off to an early start for both. Tom Bogert walks through what happens next Rapids here AND TFC here.
A strange thing
A rematch of an exciting MLS Cup 2022 would have thought to be the highlight of this weekend. Instead, Philadelphia UnionThe LAFC game fulfilled the rest of the dichotomy Pablo wrote about above in his DC-Red Bulls recap: A 0-0 snoozer that was so action-free, the official Moment of the Match was… this:
Hope you had a better weekend than Steve Cherundolo. See you next time.
(Featured photos: Darren Yamashita and Aaron Doster, USA Today Sports)
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