Just three games remain in the Audi 2024 MLS Cup Playoffs. Conference Finals are this weekend.
Let’s go!
- WHEN: Saturday, November 30 | 7:30 pm ET
- WATCH: Apple TV - MLS Season Pass
- WHERE: Inter&Co Stadium
I’m pretty thoroughly on the record now about how much I like the way Orlando have played since Martín Ojeda was moved to the No. 10 spot midway through the season. The litany of data that says they’re a top-five team in the league since that switch – everything from points per game to xG differential to expected threat, etc. – is long and compelling, as is the eye test.
Don’t let their finishing issues fool you; they’ve controlled three out of their four playoff games thus far.
The Red Bulls are, in many ways, the opposite side of that coin, as they spent most of the second half of the season playing miserable soccer with just two wins in four months. But they got Emil Forsberg back, Carlos Coronel on a heater and Sandro Schwarz to channel his inner Jerry Yeagley with some true grit-’n-grind, playoff ball.
What we’ve seen from Orlando City so far
Just a lot of good, mostly mistake-free soccer. That’s how you concede exactly one goal over four playoff games, and while some of that is a bit of overperformance – the good version of Pedro Gallese has shown up this autumn – it’s not all that.
In a lot of ways, this team reminds me of the late-2010s Seattle side that won two MLS Cups and went to a third by just coming out in a bog-standard 4-2-3-1, limiting variance and trusting the match-winners to win the matches. There’s not a lot that stands out in the data. They just do everything well and almost nothing poorly, and as long as Gallese and center back Rodrigo Schlegel are keeping their heads, they don’t really shoot themselves in the foot.
The issue for them right now is what’s happening in front of goal. They’re creating chances well enough, save for that second game in Charlotte. Here’s what’s happening with those:
Orlando have created these types of chances (Ojeda making inside-out runs and Facu Torres coming to the back post) for fun since July.
How you think this game will turn out comes down to what you think of Torres, Ramiro Enrique, Duncan McGuire and Luis Muriel: Are these guys bums who are gonna keep missing, or are they due?
What we’ve seen from the Red Bulls so far
We’ve talked all year long about how Schwarz has evolved the Red Bull game model into something a little more adventurous with the ball. Then they got beaten to a pulp by New York City FC two months ago, and Schwarz evolved again:
I’m not gonna knock it! When your goalkeeper’s on one and all three of your DPs are firing, why bother with concepts like “the beautiful game” or “having a midfield” or “completing passes?” Turn it into a contest of first-ball, second-ball, and turn that into a contest of high-leverage moments. Then count on your guys to win those moments.
Do I think they’ll have to play better against Orlando than they did against NYCFC last weekend? Yes. Even with Torres, Ojeda and especially McGuire mostly misfiring, I don’t think you can give up chances like that to this group of Lions. I’m also not confident that their ability to win second balls against a rabid midfield duo of César Araújo and Wilder Cartagena will translate as well as it did against the Pigeons.
But RBNY have a formula that’s working. They’ve won in Columbus and won in Queens. They will not be shaken by playing in Orlando.
What will decide the game?
Those second balls in midfield. If Araújo and Cartagena are vacuuming them up, I feel like Orlando will crack the code in semi-transition.
Who’s more likely to advance?
Orlando. I think Torres is due for a big one, and there’s no time like the present. Plus Coronel has to regress at some point, right?
- WHEN: Saturday, November 30 | 10 pm ET
- WATCH: Apple TV - MLS Season Pass
- WHERE: Dignity Health Sports Park
Maybe defense doesn’t matter? I guess I’m stupid for having thought that for most of my life, but here the Galaxy are, clear favorites to win their record sixth MLS Cup despite conceding 50 goals in the regular season and repeatedly showing down the stretch that they couldn’t be trusted with a lead.
They are so talented and so, so much fun to watch.
Or maybe defense does matter! I guess I’m stupid for questioning that in the above two paragraphs, because here the Sounders are, a clear threat to grind the Galaxy into dust and then host MLS Cup with a chance of winning their third MLS Cup despite lower-level match-winning talent than the true heavyweights in the league.
They are so well-structured and tactically sound, and so, so much fun to watch (if you’re that kind of sicko).
What we’ve seen from LA Galaxy so far
They are just flying. The record for most goals in a single postseason is 17, by Toronto FC in 2016. The Galaxy have played three games and are already at 15.
How have they done it? Well, let’s listen to head coach Greg Vanney:
“The way we play is to be aggressive and to be bold and to take risks and to go for it. We're not a ‘hang out, sit back, be conservative’ [team]. That's not the way we do it. We go and we live with the consequences at the end of the day. We react when situations don't go well and we go for it when we do.”
Ok, and here’s a picture that speaks a thousand words:
That’s from American Soccer Analysis’s database, which goes back a dozen years. The gap between Riqui Puig’s passes per 90 minutes and second place on that list is as large as the gap between second place and 50th.
I just want to make the point that Gabriel Pec is one of the most exciting wingers we’ve ever had in this league, and it’s not entirely out of bounds to think he could be the guy who surpasses the recently-broken transfer record set by Thiago Almada. Sacha Kjlestan speculated, on MLS Wrap-Up last weekend, that $25 million sounds right. Pec’s that kind of talent.
Joseph Paintsil has 14g/11a across all competitions, is in the prime of his career and cost nearly $10 million. Dejan Joveljić… 19g/8a in less than 2,200 minutes. That’s comparable to Luis Suárez’s per-90 production. Marco Reus is here, too.
But it is Riqui’s team. Everything runs through him.
More Vanney:
“That's something that, as a coach, I had to adapt to a little bit. You know, maybe it's not exactly how I saw the position on paper,” Vanney said after his side smoked Minnesota in the Western Conference Semifinals.
“What we've learned with Riqui is how to give him the right spaces to allow him to move around because he's unplayable when he's on the move. And it's so hard if you try to mark him and chase him around because he is so mobile and he's so quick. So a lot for us, it's how to not put him in the box. But for other guys who are playing with Riqui, it's to understand how to best be effective and to allow his movements to take place and to work off of those things.”
In the first six minutes of that win over the Loons we got the full Riqui experience: an outrageous trivela’d through-ball to set up Pec’s opener within 30 seconds, and an unnecessary midfield turnover to set up Kelvin Yeboah’s equalizer five minutes later.
The Galaxy, earlier in the year and definitely last year, might’ve crumbled. This version of the Galaxy scored five more goals. They took 17 shots; as per Opta, 12 of them were “big chances.” That is outrageous. OUTRAGEOUS. Riqui was at the heart of most of them.
This team belongs to him in a way that we’ve rarely seen in MLS history. Or maybe never seen? The closest I can think of is the Marco Etcheverry-era D.C. United sides, or maybe the Guillermo Barros Schelotto-era Columbus Crew sides. But neither of those guys hunted touches the way Riqui does.
Anyway, the Galaxy’s attack is the irresistible force in these playoffs.
What we’ve seen from Seattle so far
The Sounders’ defense is the immovable object.
It’s not really as simple as that – Stefan Frei had to bring out one of his very best performances in a career filled with them to drag his side past LAFC last weekend – but man, sometimes a good binary is the way to go. Seattle have few weaknesses in terms of midfield turnovers, or sloppy rest defense, or occasionally inattentive individual defenders that the Galaxy do. They also have (with all due respect to Albert Rusnák and Jordan Morris, both of whom are very good players in this league but neither of whom is truly elite) only a fraction of the attacking firepower.
When they’ve survived it’s been by controlling the pitch without the ball. When they’ve thrived it’s been by controlling the pitch with the ball, and then using that pitch control and Morris’ relentless, underrated off-ball movement to create just enough room in the half-spaces to get Rusnák time to find a fullback on the overlap, or for Paul Rothrock to sneak inside to curl a shot towards the back post.
Anyway, I’ve kept thinking about this sequence from that great win over LAFC:
There are several moments in here where I think, against the Galaxy’s midfield and defense, some of those line-breaking passes lead to chances. But there is also that loose touch from Rusnák – even the most well-drilled teams have a few – that leads to the LAFC counter. And right now, if you have those against the Galaxy, it means you’re picking the ball out of your net.
I’ve come to really love this Sounders team, though. Cristian Roldan has been amazing since being moved to the 6 full-time, and if there’s one guy you’d trust to track Puig, both in terms of brains and energy, it’s him. That leaves a lot on Obed Vargas’s plate, but Obed’s shown he can handle as much as anyone wants to throw at him. Jackson Ragen’s been brilliant in central defense (CALL HIM UP NOW, POCH!!!), as has Yeimar Gómez Andrade (though he's dealing with an injury). This defense didn't flinch against Mateusz Bogusz and Denis Bouanga; it won’t flinch against Pec and Paintsil, either.
And Brian Schmetzer… man. He’s got that 4-2-3-1 club in the bag, but when he needed to take out the 3-5-2 last week, it looked like he’d had his team playing it all year.
What will decide the game?
They’ve played three times this season. The Galaxy won the first 1-0 on an early Pec goal. The second was a scoreless draw. Seattle brutalized LA 3-1 in the third – two set-pieces and a goal off a throw-in – in a Leagues Cup knockout round game in Seattle.
I like the individual talent of LA’s backline quite a bit, John McCarthy has become a very good goalkeeper in this league, and Edwin Cerrillo (VERY underrated) is doing his best Roldan impression out there. Still, should Vanney dial back the attacking ethos just a bit and start Mark Delgado over Reus in central midfield for this one?
I am old enough to remember the last time the Galaxy came into the playoffs this balls-to-the-wall, committed to the attack. It was 1998. I am also old enough to remember how that one ended against a defensively resolute, mistake-free, meat-grinder of an opponent.
Whether Delgado starts or not, the Galaxy will open themselves up. And if they concede once, twice… doesn’t matter. They will keep attacking. It’s who they are.
Who’s more likely to advance?
If the Sounders were fully healthy I might pick them. But Yeimar limped off with 20 minutes to go last weekend. Nouhou was home sick. Rothrock didn’t even dress, and Rusnák wasn’t particularly effective after missing the second Round One game against Houston with an injury of his own.
The Galaxy are fully healthy, and are fully committed to who they are as a team. I am skeptical of their rest defense, and the fact that they’ve scored just twice in three games vs. the Sounders this season’s not nothing. By the way, that TFC team who scored 17 postseason goals back in 2016? Their season ended with Frei making the biggest save in MLS history.
But the Galaxy haven’t lost in Carson all year. I have spent this year finding and listing the reasons they can’t win MLS Cup. They have spent the past 270 minutes showing me all the reasons they will.
