Defending MLS champions, tops in the Western Conference, playing well even when missing stars for national team duty, tops in SuperLiga, and runaway winner of our poll - the Houston Dynamo lost this weekend to the worst team in the league, Real Salt Lake.
Does this validate Bruce Arena's take that the league is a "crapshoot"?
I'm going to agree with Arena a little bit - but I'd say mostly that the league is working as designed - to create competitive teams across the board.
Little differences can then become deciding factors. I'd picked FC Dallas to be the team affected by SuperLiga fatigue, but it turned out to be Houston who succumbed to that - and playing at altitude probably didn't help, either.
Plus, Real Salt Lake is hitting its annual improvement phase, which coincides perhaps with other teams taking them lightly.
I like the competitiveness in MLS, but some people complain that they feel the league is so wide-open that it seems almost random.
Any thoughts?
2 comments:
I think that the parity in MLS is what keeps a number of soccer fans living in America from watching and supporting this league.
Interesting result, but I wouldn't read too much into it about the parity or competitiveness of MLS. I do think, however, that the stability (in terms of personnel) of team has a lot to do with its performance -- Dynamo, United, Revolution, FCD all doing very well and all being very stable... conversely, Real, Galaxy, and Toronto routinely pay the price for not having built a stable team... Wizards, Crew, Chivas, RBNY are all in the middle of the pack, both in terms of results and in terms of stability.
Anyhow, too many factors in the loss to RSL: fatigue from National team and Superliga games, the altitude, the pitch (several players "lost their footing", including, apparently, Wade Barrett on the play leading to the lone goal), the absence of De Rosario, the surprising substitution of Holden (an MF) by Jaqua (a FWD), leading to an unusual 3-forward scheme with Mulrooney/Clark running the show in the middle, still no Brad Davis, etc.
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