MLS week 23 preview: A look at the biggest summer transactions
Taking a look at D.C. United’s activity, new DPs and more from a wild MLS transfer deadline day as we preview MLS week 23.
The MLS summer transfer window closed on Aug. 9, ending the flurry of moves that took place at the beginning of the week. Storming back up the standings on the back of summer deals was popularized by Seattle and D.C. last season, and those were two of the teams who will look to accomplish that in 2017 after bringing new player(s) in.
A lot of moves were made in the last month, too many for this article’s purpose. So, as we get ready for MLS week 23, we are looking at some of the biggest transactions, with a focus on the most recent ones, and how the active clubs will be affected. Here we go:
Houston sign playmaker Tomas Martinez and center-back Philippe Senderos
The Dynamo’s resurgence this season has come thanks to a solid identity and team culture put in place by Wilmer Cabrera and the presence of offseason signings AJ DeLaGarza, Adolfo Machado, Juan David Cabezas, Romell Quioto and Alberth Elis. They play their deep-sitting 4-3-3 every week with the goal of freeing their attackers as much as possible, mercilessly ripping teams apart in barnburner home games and grinding out low-scoring draws on the road. Sitting on 34 points after picking up their first road win at RFK Stadium and then surviving in Utah with a 0-0 draw, their sudden reformation has them ahead of rival FC Dallas in the standings.
Their primary weakness going back to the dreary days of Owen Coyle was their lack of a creator, and that continued to hurt them as ball-winning, ground-covering No. 8 Alex was pushed to the position by Cabrera. His ability to combine in the box and hit long diagonal switches has helped him pick up 10 assists, but he hasn’t been creating in high enough volume, and those talents could be better used as a box-to-box mid.
Clearly, the organization knew this, and they spent some money to correct this weakness. 22-year-old Argentine attacking midfielder Tomas Martinez was signed from Portuguese club Braga as a Designated Player, joining an already young and energetic club. This allows Alex (one of the Dynamo’s best players) to play his best position, and gives the striking line of Mauro Manotas, Quioto and Elis a true No. 10.
In addition, they signed Senderos two days before the deadline as a veteran central defender. Senderos, 32, speaks six languages (including, helpfully, Spanish) and played in three World Cups for Switzerland. He also spent seven years in the Premier League with Arsenal, including missing the entire “Invincibles” season with a fractured foot. He will be a veteran presence who’s been there before, as well as a rough-and-tumble kind of defender: in his debut for Scottish club Rangers last year against fierce rival Celtic, he was sent off.
Houston host San Jose this weekend. It’s not clear whether either will play.
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Minnesota United add a squadron of players
Minnesota, this year’s expansion ugly duckling who can only look enviously at Atlanta’s massive success, are one of the least talented teams in MLS, and went out to change that this summer with a number of shrewd signings. They brought in talented USL striker Brandon Allen on loan from the Red Bulls, 22-year-old Scottish winger Sam Nicholson, New Zealand-international defender Michael Boxall, and third-string goalkeeper Alex Kapp.
None of these are game-changing signings. But they bring stability and some semblance of depth, something Minnesota had absolutely none of going into June and July. They won’t sniff the red line, and they’ve got some ways to go before they can (maybe sign some DPs and start an academy), but at least they won’t get blown to shreds when Sam Cronin or Francisco Calvo or Christian Ramirez aren’t starting. Progress.
D.C. United spring to life
It had been a quiet first few months of the season for sinking D.C. United, who have been rocked hard by crucial injuries and come to the tough realization they might have overperformed in the second half of last season. They’ve had no defensive midfielder to speak of, Steve Birnbaum has significantly and inexplicably regressed, depth in attack behind the injury-prone trio of Patrick Mullins, Patrick Nyarko and Luciano Acosta has been sparse, and they have started to leak goals in the past few weeks after going a while scoring almost zero.
They’ve signed three players of varying skill levels in recent days: American winger Paul Arriola for a large amount of cash, 19-year-old Bolivian stiker Bruno Miranda, Hungarian-international winger Zoltan Stieber, and, as reported by the Washington Post’s Steven Goff, 22-year-old American defensive midfielder Russell Canouse.
At the same time, they’ve been having a fire sale of current players. Seattle-native attacker Lamar Neagle went to the Sounders for a fourth-round SuperDraft pick (otherwise known as literally nothing), former starting center-back Bobby Boswell went to Atlanta for a 2019 third-rounder in a cap-clearing move and it is apparently likely that MLS veteran winger Sebastien Le Toux is ready to depart as well.
Spending money appears to be something they were willing to do, considering they (for whatever reason) wanted Dutch d-mid and card-machine Nigel de Jong and (more reasonably) wanted to pour money on Chile starter Gary Medel, who wound up choosing richer Turkish club Besiktas.
By all accounts, this is a lost season for DCU. But it is a good opportunity to clean house and see what they have in younger players, as well as pick up momentum before entering their new stadium next year. Kofi Opare will get a chance to start in central defense with Boswell gone, and by getting rid of Neagle and, presumably, Let Toux, they will get looks at Arriola, Miranda and Stieber.
Crew, LA, LAFC sign DPs
Three high-profile Designated Players have come into the league in the past couple of weeks, two courtesy of the LA clubs. The Galaxy brought in Mexican-international and brother of Giovani Jonathan dos Santos to play in central midfield, LAFC, next season’s splash-making expansion team, signed El Tri star Carlos Vela, and Columbus, famous for their ridiculous glut of wingers, brought on (you guessed it) DP winger Pedro Santos, a teammate of Martinez at Braga.
For the Galaxy, it forces Sigi Schmid to make a tough decision on Jermaine Jones, a big personality who would probably be better suited on the bench. Vela is LAFC’s first DP, and while he doesn’t have a team yet, he does have a coach, and they might not be the greatest match.
Santos joins Justin Meram, Kekuta Manneh and Niko Hansen on Columbus’s weirdly deep winger depth chart, which was even deeper until Ethan Finlay was traded after weeks of speculation to Minnesota, who have made it their mission to take the “bizarre package of wingers” title away from the Black and Gold.
The Galaxy also could see star center-back Jelle Van Damme leave. Van Damme’s young kids are in Belgium, and as he talked about on the ExtraTime Radio podcast, it has been hard for them to live so far apart. If he were to leave, Daniel Steres and David Romney would likely be the central defensive pair, and that is … not good.
Seattle add their summer signing
The Sounders, unlike last season, are in no danger of missing the playoffs, and they’ve seen their MLS Cup hangover wear off recently as key players have started trickling back. But there has been a weakness in their increasingly-predictable attack, and they appear to have solved it with the signing of winger Victor Rodriguez, a Spaniard who played last season for now-relegated La Liga side Sporting Gijon.
Signed using Targeted Allocation Money, Rodriguez has been a fixture throughout La Liga since 2012. Derlis Gonzalez, a potential DP playing for Dynamo Kyiv in Ukraine, apparently will not be going to Seattle.
Three previews
New York Red Bulls vs. Orlando City (Saturday, 7:30 p.m. ET)
We’ve talked about the Red Bulls a lot recently, but Orlando have been active and interesting of late, so we’ll take a look at this match.
OCSC added a DP five days before the close of the transfer window, 27-year-old Peruvian-international Yoshimar Yotun. Yotun won the Swedish Allsvenskan last year with famed club Malmo FF as a starter, and he is one of Peru’s top players, starting at the 2011, 2015 and 2016 Copa Americas. Named twice the Peru domestic league’s best left-back in 2012 and 2014, Yotun is listed as a midfielder on Orlando’s roster, and primarily played on the left wing for Malmo, per Transfermarkt. Also, he’s been playing in central midfield for his national team.
He seems to be pretty versatile.
For Orlando, he could end up filling any of these roles, considering all of those positions are major needs. Most likely, he ends up at left midfield, considering his ability to play the position in a 4-4-2 and the creativity OCSC desperately crave (he picked up 15 assists compared to three goals in Sweden). If the Lions had about three more center-backs, we could be talking about a 3-5-2 with Yotun at left wing-back.
Whether he plays against NYRB is unclear (you’d think he would, considering they signed him on August 4). Most likely, though, he won’t solve all their problems. They don’t generate enough attack from the flanks — even with Yotun, Kaka can’t do it for 90 and Donny Toia probably isn’t starting-caliber in MLS — they are disorganized in central midfield — Cristian Higuita won’t commit to a No. 6 role and Antonio Nocerino is too old and immobile — and they did not sell Cyle Larin, so they will roll with the Dom Dwyer-Larin partnership up top. That does not work.
It’s hard to imagine playoffs are on Orlando’s horizon. A win over the Red Bulls would go a long way toward changing that opinion, though.
Toronto FC vs. Portland Timbers (Saturday, 6:00 p.m. ET)
Last week, Toronto FC walked out of RFK Stadium with a 1-1 draw. Inexplicable, considering D.C. United played more than 45 minutes with 10 men, and that TFC are so much more talented than DCU it’s not even funny.
That’s the second weird 1-1 draw Toronto have had in the last few weeks, after they failed to beat mediocre Colorado at home earlier in July. Despite this, they remain firmly atop the Eastern Conference and Supporters’ Shield standings, and with pretty much everybody back (except Steven Beitashour), they should be primed for a final run of domination to secure their second trophy of the season.
Portland visit BMO Field on Sunday after using VAR and a Diego Valeri golazo to beat LA at home on national TV. The reasonable analysis would be that Sebastian Giovinco and Jozy Altidore will run rampant around the Timbers’ struggling backline, but who knows. Maybe Roy Miller gets an early red card, Valeri scores a free-kick or something, and the match finishes 1-1, to the bewilderment of everybody.
FC Dallas vs. Colorado Rapids (Saturday, 8:00 p.m. ET)
Dallas increased everyone’s concern about them by a lot last week when they lost 3-1 in Philadelphia a week after falling apart against Vancouver, losing 4-0. Two weeks ago it was a normal MLS anomaly and something that’s happened before, but when it happened again, you could feel the collective worrying of the Frisco faithful.
They’ve dropped the ball recently on the defensive end, something they rarely have done since 2014, and their hit-and-miss counter strategy based around Michael Barrios and Roland Lamah has faltered. Mauro Diaz’s impact hasn’t been completely felt yet, and this recent string of bad results may have permanently knocked them out of contention for a Shield repeat.
When you’ve started losing and are looking for a way to get out of a hole, playing at home against the Rapids has generally been effective as a cure. Either that, or it’s a classic MLS trap game. Tough to tell.