MLS week 27 review: The situation in Dallas and more

FC Dallas are falling fast, and if you’re an FCD fan, it’s time to worry. That and a whole lot more after MLS week 27.

At this point in the MLS regular season, about 13.5 teams are seriously in contention for the postseason. Some of those are fighting for first, some for a knockout round spot, some for a home playoff game, and some for any playoff opportunity. The Montreal Impact, after their disastrous loss in New England on Saturday, make up that half. About 8.5 clubs are done and looking forward to 2018.

Things are getting interesting. Especially so for FC Dallas, who are in the midst of a massive implosion:

Idle Worship

Atlanta United finally debuted their beautiful new field, Marcedes Benz Stadium, on Sunday in front of a dedicated (i.e. NFL defectors) national TV audience and former president Jimmy Carter. They faced FC Dallas in a marquee matchup of fringe playoff contenders — the fact this game could be classified as a battle of “fringe contenders” is mind-boggling, and something I honestly wish I didn’t have to say.

The Five Stripes dominated, entertaining to a classic Tata Martino degree and nabbing a 3-0 victory. This puts them three points ahead of Montreal for the Eastern Conference’s sixth spot, with two games still in hand and a legitimate opportunity to advance as far as fourth given the amount of games they have remaining. For the first time in a long time, Martino put out a first choice XI.

A lot has gone wrong for FC Dallas, who once were a top-two team in the league and leading the race for Western Conference No. 1. The reigning Supporters’ Shield champions have not won since their July 29 4-0 home loss to Vancouver, which at the time felt like a random MLS anomaly and something that they have done before. Now, it could be looked at as the beginning of the end for this iteration of one of MLS’s most well-built clubs.

They remain in sixth in the Western Conference, still looking likely to qualify for the postseason given San Jose’s raw road struggles and their game in hand. However, they’ve clearly been overtaken by rivals Houston and Sporting KC, which seems sudden and maybe even premature, but hard to argue. They’ve been bad:

Plenty of things to unpack in terms of why they’ve plummeted so suddenly, but we’re going to look specifically at the Atlanta loss, which showcased everything that’s gone wrong pretty well.

Dallas played a 4-2-3-1 with Mauro Diaz starting and pretty much the usual everywhere on the field. Except, of course, left wing, where versatile defender/midfielder/good guy Ryan Hollingshead got the start ahead of big-money offseason acquisition Roland Lamah (in the 18) and Oscar Pareja favorite Tesho Akindele, who subbed on for Hollingshead in the second half.

In theory, it makes some level of sense to play a defensive-oriented guy on the wing against a team good at attacking on the flanks. But I’m finding it hard not to think deeper about this and come to the conclusion that Lamah — who has eight goals (seven of which came in three games) and three assists in his thoroughly disappointing debut season as the Fabian Castillo Replacement — is out of favor. Especially after Akindele was chosen as the attacking sub ahead of him.

It’s safe to say FCD struck out with their offseason signings given Cristian Colman’s curse, Hernan Grana’s sudden terrible performances and the lack of defensive depth just now coming to the forefront. That’s one good reason for why they’ve stunk it up recently.

Atlanta got out on the front foot early, seeing a penalty-kick denied by the VAR, and forced Jesse Gonzalez into a lot of action. Gonzalez would finish with nine saves, almost all of them falling under the “dive/parry/tip/charging off the line” category. Leandro Gonzalez Pirez got a foot on a set piece in the 14th-minute and gave ATL the lead.

An entertaining and hectic first half ended 1-0, with both teams getting opportunities, although the hosts had more. Still, it was promising for FCD, with Pareja sounding somewhat pleased in a halftime interview and the team looking organized and capable of striking on the counter. But that hope quickly evaporated literally seconds into the second half, as star center-back Walker Zimmerman (who has had a bad run of form that is not helping his USMNT prospects) inexplicably turned it over in his defensive half. 2-0 home team.

At halftime, defensive midfielder Carlos Gruezo was pulled for Victor Ulloa. Gruezo, a key member of the Ecuadorian national team and not long ago (maybe still) a candidate for a big European move, has regressed this season, and while he did have an early yellow against Atlanta, it’s hard not to notice him being subbed off early without an easily discernible injury. Also, Pareja did say they were getting overmatched in central midfield in that halftime interview.

The rest of the second half could not match the first in intensity and entertainment, but it did feature a third goal, going to Atlanta left-back Greg Garza in a beautiful team move. The marking of Garza by Grana and Ulloa was perhaps the most worrying element of FCD’s disastrous performance.

They stood there and looked at each other as Garza ran behind them at the back-post and tapped in the sealer. Teams that are in-sync and have chemistry generally do not do that.

FCD’s best players have been seriously struggling. Diaz never found the game. Kellyn Acosta has been off (and invisible) since the Gold Cup. Zimmerman and Hedges just haven’t completely shown up. Maxi Urruti has scored just once since their winless streak started. Michael Barrios has been better than some of his teammates, but he’s never been a player who can do it by himself.

On the brightside, Gonzalez has been great.

They did not make the right moves in the offseason, Pareja has not found a tactical answer, some personnel decisions have been bad (how are Maynor Figueroa and Atiba Harris still being picked over Reggie Cannon), individual performances have been rough, and whatever team chemistry and cohesion they had left seems to have gone away. Not that Pareja’s lost the locker room, but I wouldn’t say he has a firm grasp on it either. Rumors surrounding Urruti and Barrios going to Argentina probably don’t help.

These developments were not expected, even if flaws in Dallas’s design became evident as the season rolled on, but they should be super, super troubling for FCD supporters. Their championship window seems to be quickly closing, as this group has not looked capable of doing it, and some level of rebuild could be necessary this offseason.

Disappointing to see even from a neutral’s perspective, given the considerable advances the organization has made in Homegrown development.

Saying that, do not start circling the vultures over their corpse just yet. They still have one of the league’s best coaches and a development academy churning out talented players in a system possibly ranking as the league’s best. Their current roster is still stacked with talent, with plenty of sell-on potential in Zimmerman, Gruezo and others. They could go on and win MLS Cup and make me — an FC Dallas stan and owner of a Mauro Diaz jersey — eat my words.

I have my doubts, though.

Awards

The best team in the league: Toronto FC, who are simply too good. After demolishing San Jose at home 4-0, they’ve won five straight matches, all by multiple goals, and sit nine points ahead of NYCFC in the Supporters’ Shield race. It is safe to say that the “race” can no longer be considered that. Congratulations on your double, TFC.

With six games still left to play, Toronto also firmly clinched a playoff spot, if that is of concern to anybody. Sloane Stephens’s boyfriend, aka Jozy Altidore, scored two against the Quakes.

The worst team in the league: Colorado Rapids, who shocked the Houston Dynamo in Houston with a stoppage-time Dominique Badji winner. This is emblematic of serious Dynamo concerns, which I wrote about here.

The Rapids are still bad and remain the league’s worst no matter how hard D.C. United try. Under interim coach Steve Cooke, Colorado junked the game up as much as possible, a classic “heart and grit” Pablo Mastroeni strategy that was supposed to be left behind when Mastroeni was fired. In fairness, the Rapids have no attacking personnel, so it’s hard to be attacking, but we haven’t seen a ton of the promised attacking intent since their longtime park-the-bus guy got the boot.

Random result of the week: Colorado’s 1-0 win over the Houston Dynamo. Given that I already talked about the Rapids, I was hoping to put a different game here, but I just can’t come up with anything else. A last-place team with a total of two points on the road should not beat a competitive conference opponent that had taken 30 of 36 possible home points.

This is the definition of ridiculous MLS result. The Dynamo have consistently shown up either in the “random result” or “predictable result” section since we started giving these awards, and this stat is an interesting reason why:

Predictable result of the week: San Jose’s lopsided defeat against TFC, which was too easy to predict to pick any other game. The Quakes are still in real playoff contention, but in the Chris Leitch era, they had taken points from just one of six road games, a not-actually-that-impressive 3-0 win in LA last week.

They never really had that much of a chance at BMO Field. In fairness, though, they looked on something close to even footing with Toronto for the first 25 minutes or so with a new-look 4-2-3-1 formation, before Andrew Tarbell produced a grand howler on a cross and gave Victor Vazquez the opener in the 26th-minute. After that, Toronto simply passed the ball around and occasionally hit the gaps they wanted to, scoring three more en route to a dominant victory.

800 passes is a lot of passes. San Jose had no clue how to distribute the ball from the back-to-front as the game went on, so they let Michael Bradley and Marky Delgado pad some stats for 90 minutes. They now have three of their next four and four of their last six at home, games they probably have to win to overtake Houston or FC Dallas in the playoff race.

Their goalkeeping woes need to go away for that to happen, and they need to figure out what is going on with their backline, which struggles to distribute and too easily gets pulled apart for bad goals. They are starting to feel more and more like a 2018 or 2019 team.

Attacker of the Week: Miguel Almiron, who contributed two assists to Atlanta United’s win. ATL were utterly dominant, pressing effectively and building into space with efficiency not seen elsewhere in MLS. Almiron is the ringleader, with his on-ball runs into space, creative through-balls, and awareness of passing patterns and attacking movement.

Biggest result of the week: Vancouver outshoot Real Salt Lake 3-2 at Rio Tinto, which effectively sinks RSL’s last glimmer of playoff hope and elevates the Whitecaps all the way up to the top of the west on points per game (CHECK). Matias Laba’s season-ending injury has somehow not killed them, and they continue to grind out results any way possible, using set pieces, emergency defense, ruthless finishing, and smart team-specific game-plans from surprisingly-savvy manager Carl Robinson.

They are outperforming their Expected Goals, per American Soccer Analysis, but that seems to be the plan: scrap results out of nowhere and take advantage of every scoring opportunity. Their games are generally not pretty — with exceptions, like their most recent win — but they have snuck up on the rest of the conference by rarely faltering: in their past 10 games, they’ve lost just twice.

And, don’t forget, they still have games in hand on everyone else. Look for this team, as untalented as they comparably are on paper, to be a potential spoiler for the clubs we thought would rule the west.

Goalkeeper howler of the week: Andrew Tarbell against TFC. Mr. Tarbell made this job easy this week:

Tarbell, a second-year Clemson product, is currently starting over one-time USMNT contender David Bingham in San Jose. Bingham had been struggling mightily, but Tarbell, while he’s showed some good, has been easily worse. He has absolutely no clue how to deal with balls in the air, constantly looking confused and out of place when the opposition sends in crosses, and this is not the only goal the Quakes have allowed because Tarbell failed to adequately deal with ball in.

This was a weakness of Bingham’s as well, so this is partly on the coaches to actually practice this crucial goalkeeping skill.