FC Dallas has played 11 games while the Los Angeles Galaxy has played only 7, and everyone else in the league is somewhere in between. So you can't really accurately say it's one-third or one-quarter of the way into the season.
But if there was one way to divide up the season, the first part of the year without international duty stripping clubs of players could serve as the first half/third/quarter or whatever spin you want to put on it.
I'll put the one-third-of-the-way-into-the-season spin on it, seeing as how MLS clubs will be affected by the Gold Cup, Copa America and the Under-20 World Cup. Yes, summers are always busy around the world but don't let that stop MLS from loading up on the schedule during June and July.
With that, here are asterisk-free rankings, perhaps the last time this season we won't be saying 'Well, if they'd have had their big international player they surely would have gotten at least three more points.'
1. Kansas City (6-2-1). Scored combined seven goals in wins at New England and versus New York; will have to overcome loss of Eddie Johnson, though.
2. New England (5-2-3). Shutout at home, but could have done better.
3. New York (5-2-2). Looks like Angel can't do everything on his own.
4. Colorado (4-3-3). Herculez a scoring machine; defense needs to get tighter.
5. D.C. United (3-3-2). Didn't overwhelm me on Saturday.
6. Chivas USA (3-3-2). Saturday's game at Chicago will be first for club without Jonathan Bornstein since October 2005.
7. FC Dallas (5-5-1). Sometimes, this club looks just plain average.
8. Chicago (4-4-2). Encouraging win at home.
9. Toronto FC (3-5-1). April woes squarely behind club.
10. Houston (3-5-1). Avoided early burial with win over FC Dallas.
11. Galaxy (1-3-3). Excuses piling up on poor 2007 performance.
12. Columbus (1-3-5). El Mellizo should have brought some of his teammates as well.
13. Real Salt Lake (0-3-6). June 4 and RSL still doesn't have a win? Yikes.
4 comments:
Bueno, Luis.
This is much, much better than last week, though I still feel like Colorado should be punished for losing to TFC after being slotted first in your vaunted hierarchy last week.
I'm sure we could quibble with the 5 through 8 slots, but suffice it to say, this seems very reasonable to me.
I still think RBNY is the class of the league, but they've got lots of work to do on that back line and certainly don't deserve anything higher than 3rd this week.
BTW, RBNY is 5-2-3, not 4-3-3...
Thanks for the heads up.
I think right now it is clear who the bottom three are (Galaxy, RSL, Crew) and the top three (New England, New York and Kansas City) so I guess the rest of the teams are just trying to sort out the middle.
You'd have to look at the losses for Gold Cup to see who could solidify that number four spot or even jump into the top three but I think it's pretty wide open right now in that regard.
Also have to give some consideration that the KC/NY match was marred by a pretty silly red card relatively early on. I think right now NE would be 3rd not 2nd.
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