Analyzing the week 15 MLS matches
There will be only three MLS matches this week due to the international break. Here’s what to expect in each one.
MLS week 15 features only three matches due to the FIFA international window, which includes a series of important World Cup qualifiers on almost every continent as well as a slow trickle of Gold Cup rosters for this summer. Why MLS continues to play regular season matches on this weekend we don’t know, but each of the six teams forced to play this weekend will be hit hard by international absences, and will have to compensate by rotating lineups and looking deep into their depth charts.
It’s a fairly well-established fact that Toronto have the best depth in MLS at the current moment — or, for that matter, in league history. The amount of serviceable backups and future starters their academy and scouting departments have provided makes their depth superior to every other team in the league, easily. But they’re not scheduled this week; we’ll get a close look at six clubs’ ability to do the same thing that injury-riddled and tight-scheduled TFC had to do earlier this year: replace consistent starters and find winning production outside of core players.
Saturday’s slate begins with the Chicago Fire hosting Atlanta United (4 p.m. ET on Unimas), continues with the Montreal Impact traveling to face Sporting Kansas City (8 p.m. ET on TVAS in Canada/MLS Live in the US) and finishes with a juicy Western Conference matchup — FC Dallas and the Portland Timbers, at 10:30 p.m. ET on MLS Live.
Here’s what to expect:
Atlanta United at Chicago Fire
Of the six teams playing this week, it’s safe to say Atlanta and Chicago will be the least-affected teams by international call-ups. The Fire will be missing just one player, starting defensive midfielder and USMNT backup No. 6 Dax McCarty, while Atlanta will be down backup No. 9 Kenwyne Jones (Trinidad and Tobago) and likely Miguel Almiron, who will be with Paraguay for their June 8 international friendly in Peru but is expected to return for Saturday’s match. So for the most part, we can talk about this game without qualifiers for missing players.
Atlanta went to Vancouver last week and got beat by set pieces, losing 3-1 on three corner goals. Going cross-country and losing is generally a fine, no-reason-to-panic result in this league, so ATL come into their match in Chicago with about the same level of confidence they did before that game, which can pretty much be summed up as, “hey, we’re pretty good once we start playing favorable games.” Also, Almiron has been setting the world on fire since he lit up the Dynamo a few weeks ago, something I wrote about last week. That helps.
Put simply, Atlanta rely on their trifecta of versatile attackers to run all over the place in the final third and try to put defenders on their heels. Relying on deep-sitting midfielders to close space behind them, Almiron pulls the strings for Yamil Asad, Hector Villalba and to a lesser extent Julian Gressel. They’re fast, free-flowing and forceful around the goal, naturally resulting in some higher scorelines.
Without Almiron, their ability to find final balls and draw defenders would go down significantly, and could force Gressel to play creator a bit. This falls into Chicago’s hands, who will be weakened in deeper midfield without McCarty, a guy that plays a crucially important role in organizing and covering the space in front of the backline. Bastian Schweinsteiger will not cover much space, and neither will Juninho. Dax does work in Chicago.
By simple man-mark logic, Almiron would be able to have some fun facing an immobile Chicago team without their organizer. Without him, Atlanta will play through the wings more than usual, and could see some possible chances go wanting with a workhorse box-to-box guy like Gressel forced to be a primary creator.
The Fire had the most frustrating week of any MLS team last week, including Real Salt Lake, who lost 6-2 and 5-1 to conference rivals. Playing on national TV in Orlando, Chicago somehow were unable to score a goal despite playing a man up after the 26th-minute and two men up after the 66th-minute, resulting in the most exciting 0-0 draw ever. Despite 21 total shots and 66 percent possession, Orlando rode the adrenaline of their raucous crowd to an exhausting point.
I’m surprised Veljko Paunovic didn’t break something on the bench watching his team blow a 65-minute power-play like they were the Washington Capitals. Nemanja Nikolic, the MLS Golden Boot leader, took four shots, put three on target, and walked out of Orlando without a goal. That’s a debilitating way to draw, and one that will not vanish from the minds of those players any time soon.
The good news for them is that they get to play at home against Atlanta, where they have six wins and a draw in seven games. Expect Atlanta to sit somewhat deeper than usual, after the Fire had so much trouble generating attacks with the field condensed.
Montreal Impact at Sporting KC
When you look at Montreal’s starting XI on Saturday, you’ll probably see a lot of French-Canadian-looking names that you may not recognize. That is to be expected, because the Impact will be hit very hard by call-ups and injuries.
Starters Blerim Dzemaili (Switzerland), Ambroise Oyongo (Cameroon), Patrice Bernier (Canada) and Laurent Ciman (Belgium) are on international duty, as are super-sub Anthony Jackson Hamel (Canada) and backup center-back Wandrille Lefevre (take a guess). In addition, starters Hernan Bernadello, Jean Yves-Ballou Tabla and Matteo Mancosu are out injured. They’re pretty weakened.
That means speed-demon Dominic Oduro may very well start up top, with Ignacio Piatti shouldering basically the entire attacking load in the absence of their only two ball-controlling, forward-thinking midfield creators (Dzemaili and Bernier). This might have to be a coming out party for Adrian Arregui, a 24-year-old who arrived on loan from Argentina in February, if Montreal are going to get any sort of production from the space between the forward (Oduro) and the defensive midfield (Marco Donadel).
Beyond that, it’s hard to predict. Maybe Shamit Shome gets a chance if Mauro Biello feels bolder than Callum Mallace. Who knows at this point? We do know that they’re on the road against a quality Western Conference opponent, so they may end up settling for another loss and rebounding next week. Not ideal for the Eastern Conference’s cellar-dweller.
Sporting should feast on Impact B, but let’s remember they have their own share of absences. Roger Espinoza is injured — he would have been with Honduras anyway — and half of their clean-sheet-machine backline, right-back Graham Zusi and center-back Matt Besler, are off with the U.S. The first-choice backup for Besler, Kevin Ellis, is also out injured.
Hopefully we get to see US U-20 success Erik Palmer-Brown get a shot next to current MLS Defender of the Year Ike Opara. If not, it’s rarely seen 22-year-old Amer Didic, who has yet to make an MLS appearance. SKC are thin at center-back.
They have spots filled everywhere else (Saud Abdul-Salaam, a quality starter and, in my book, the best trade asset in the league, will replace Zusi), so we’ll probably see standard Sporting: play a high-line, occasionally press energetically, leave Dom Dwyer stranded a lot until eventually he does his own thing and scores, or Gerso suddenly transforms into Piatti and scores a hat-trick. Whatever happens, one team usually finishes with zero goals — that’s happened in 12 of their 15 games.
SKC should win this game and not allow a goal, if history and common sense serves us right. Given that this is MLS, though, it will probably finish 4-2 to the Impact just to mess with us.
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FC Dallas at Portland
This will be one you’ll want to watch, folks. This is a clash of Western Conference heavyweights whether Portland want to admit they’re one or not, even though both teams will be weakened by, you guessed it, international call-ups.
Dallas will be without livewire No. 8 Kellyn Acosta, All-Star center-back Matt Hedges and his injured All-Star partner, Walker Zimmerman, attacker Tesho Akindele, and versatile defender Maynor Figueroa. Arguably the best non-starter in MLS right now, Victor Ulloa, will start in place of Acosta, and young guys like Walker Hume and Aaron Guillen have a shot at playing center back.
Portland will have to replace starting attacker and USMNT starter Darlington Nagbe and defensive midfielder David Guzman, who is with Costa Rica. Darren Mattocks, a backup speed option, is questionable. Expect Diego Chara to drop into defensive midfield and somebody like Ben Zemanski to slot in for Guzman. Dairon Asprilla, by most accounts, is Nagbe’s replacement.
These two teams played in late April in Dallas, a 2-2 result in a game that could have signaled a shift in the Western Conference balance of power. Portland were a goal-scoring juggernaut at the time, but have since cooled and were falling fast until an all-too-necessary 2-0 home win over 10-man San Jose last week. Dallas laid a beating on RSL in week 14, but like the Timbers’ victory against the Earthquakes (it was 0-0 until a Darwin Ceren red card), it’s hard to take too much from that result.
Expect this game to be decided by Portland’s ability to exploit FCD’s lack of depth in central defense — a problem for them since Zach Loyd left in the offseason — and Sebastian Blanco’s ability to create something. Don’t be surprised if Blanco, up to this point a disappointment, pulls off a Roland-Lamah-against-RSL-like breakout hat-trick at some point in the next month. Why not against Dallas, who, like Salt Lake last week, will be very shorthanded defensively?
Lamah, who put up three on the Justin-Schmidt-at-right-back experiment last week, will obviously come in with the hope of at least somewhat replicating that performance. Forward Cristian Colman also falls into the “disappointing attacker who arrived in the offseason” category, so expect him to come in hoping for a performance that validates his signing. I wouldn’t be surprised if Oscar Pareja gave him a start next to Maxi Urruti in a 4-4-2 with Akindele out.
Magic unicorn and medical anomaly Mauro Diaz, FCD’s No. 10, has made two sub appearances since returning from a torn ACL, an incredible feat considering he was expected by many to be sidelined through summer. If he starts, it would make my week. I doubt it, though.
Dallas will play a low-block 4-4-2 and try to counter through Lamah and Michael Barrios. That will be hard without Zimmerman and Hedges, but on the road against a team like Portland, it may be their best option. Pareja will likely be happy with a 0-0 draw, which very well might end up happening. It would be classic FCD to shut out a top attacking team on the road without two of the best center-backs in MLS, and it would be classic Portland to accumulate 30 shots, put five on target and walk out with zero goals.