MLS week 28 preview: 5 underappreciated players who could have a major effect on the playoff race

In this week’s MLS weekend preview, we go through five players you may not know about and discuss why they are key to the MLS playoff race.

To start MLS week 28, the New England Revolution put out the worst half of sports I have ever seen, and the worst 90 minutes of soccer I’ve watched live since Brazil against Germany in 2014. Playing on Wednesday in Atlanta, they gave up four goals, two penalties, two red cards, and accumulated zero shots for a 4-0 halftime deficit, eventually falling 7-0 for the biggest single-game domination in MLS history:

New England bombed in the worst possible way, and it’s possible we won’t see an MLS team beat another MLS team this badly for a long time. It was utter humiliation for Jay Heaps and co. in an absolute must-win for their mostly-already-dead playoff hopes. Atlanta justifiably ran up the score and put the Revs so far deep in a hole we may not see them come out until 2018.

ATL have significant goal differential and goals scored advantages now, crucial tiebreakers in a tight Eastern Conference race. They’re at home against another incompetent front office that’s built a backline incapable of defending anyone in the disaster that is Orlando City SC on Saturday, with the largest crowd in MLS history expected.

The Revs travel to Kansas City for an 8:30 p.m. ET matchup with Sporting KC. Jay Heaps should be fired by now, but he’s still in charge because the Krafts don’t care and New England have plummeted from a cup contender to an unmitigated disaster. An unmitigated disaster, it should be noted, with all sorts of talent.

Some other thoughts on the league ahead of week 28:

Don’t Take The Money

As the playoff race starts to take shape, and teams gradually start to get weeded out, we have a better idea of what November soccer will look like. We know the key guys of the top teams — the Giovincos, Villas and Valeris of the world — and we know their key contributors: Dax McCarty, Cristian Roldan, Adolfo Machado, Alex Crognale and Yamil Asad, just to name a few. Today, we’re looking at the guys who may be underappreciated but will play important roles in their team’s championship chase, even if they don’t contend for best XIs or in some cases start every week.

Here’s our top five:

5. Aly Ghazal (Vancouver Whitecaps)

The MLS Western Conference is a big mess of streaky, underperforming teams of various shapes and sizes, opened up by Seattle’s slow start and FC Dallas’s fall off a cliff, so just like last year, it’s fertile ground for a scrap-it-out counter-attacker to rise to prominence. Colorado of 2016 set the standard, and this season Vancouver is taking the mantle. A “just wait til they play their games in hand” team for the vast majority of the season, they rose from a team fighting along the red line to a third-place contender with a real chance of beating out their Cascadia rivals for first.

They score a lot on set pieces, defend well and take points on the road, relying on tall center-backs, creative speedsters who can run in space (a la Christian Bolanos, Cristian Techera and Yordy Reyna), and back-to-front organization. At the heart was Argentine d-mid Matias Laba, who grew into one of the league’s best No. 6s. But Laba tore his ACL in mid-August, leaving him out until next spring, and forcing the Whitecaps to quickly find a backup from outside the league. That guy was Aly Ghazal, a 25-year-old Egyptian international formerly of C.D. Nacional in Portugal’s top division.

Ghazal (understandably) needed some to acclimate to the league over his first couple of weeks, and just recently made his first start in Vancouver’s 3-2 home win over Real Salt Lake last Saturday. He went 90, and while I can’t say I watched the game, Whitecaps blog Eighty Six Forever wrote that he had a “fantastic debut,” so I’m inclined to believe he won himself another start over another recent d-mid signing, Nigerian Nosa Igiebor.

Vancouver depend heavily on their defensive midfielder in their midfield-condensing system, so whoever plays there will be possibly the most important player on the field for them. Laba was their Sam Cronin, and now we see if Ghazal can adequately fill in.

4. Brandon Vincent and Matt Polster (Chicago Fire)

Chicago’s Supporters’ Shield chances left the dock a while ago, and it seems like an eternity since we were handing out praise for them during their midsummer Nemanja Nikolic-fueled run, but they seem to have snapped out of the five-game losing streak that likely dropped them down a tier in the ever-changing MLS rankings.

Coinciding with losing skid were injuries to starting full-backs Brandon Vincent and Matt Polster. In the 15 games Polster started this season, Chicago are 9-3-3, and in the 20 Vincent started, they are (W-D-L) 11-6-3. Their impact can not be overstated.

Vincent has improved vastly in his sophomore season, despite a slower start, and Polster won the right-back job in May and has not looked back. Each provide unique elements, with Vincent developing into one of the top defensive left-backs in MLS and Polster adding constant overlaps, calm distribution in possession and a threat to cut inside. The Fire have their flaws, but it’s become clear how much they rely on their full-backs.

3. Larrys Mabiala (Portland Timbers)

The Portland Timbers are first in the west, hanging on with a road win over David Villa-less NYCFC last week, and are finally settling into a bit of a rhythm after a whole lot of ups and downs for most of the season. Their supremely talented attack has especially looked more cohesive and less hit-or-miss, led by top-tier MVP candidate Diego Valeri’s incredible streak of seven straight games with a goal.

Still, their weakness is their defense, which has given up 45 goals, by far the worst of Western Conference playoff teams. Larrys Mabiala, a native of the DR Congo signed in June, starts at center-back and generally has been fine, average enough to relieve him of serious criticism but not quite good enough to be praised like other newcoming center-backs.

Portland simply need results, and while their star-studded attack will get a lot of the attention, their backline has long been their weakness, and it is Mabiala at the heart of it. He needs to play well, not average, for the Timbers to contend for a championship.

2. Jeff Larentowicz (Atlanta United)

Atlanta have all sorts of games in hand, and they embarked on a ridiculous seven games (six at home) in 20 days stretch on Sunday in their dominant win over FC Dallas in the opening of Mercedes Benz Stadium. They murdered the New England Revolution midweek on Wednesday, playing an identical lineup despite a big rivalry coming up on Saturday.

Their relentless press and general “cover every area on the field all the time” strategy employed by Tata Martino is already makes for concern about player fitness, and this applies especially to older veterans like Michael Parkhurst and Jeff Larentowicz, past-their-prime everyday contributors who are relied upon to make things tick in central defense (Parkhurst, 33) and defensive midfield (Larentowicz, 34).

Larentowicz is a key cog in a midfield tasked with covering the space behind Atlanta’s foursome of dynamic attackers, defending alongside Carlos Carmona and leading possession-happy ATL’s distribution from the back. He of almost 30,000(!) MLS minutes, his presence is key to Atlanta’s tactical shape and discipline.

1. Ricardo Clark (Houston Dynamo)

One of a few Western Conference teams likely built for 2018 and beyond, Houston have ridden strong early home performances to a relatively comfortable spot inside the red line, at one point enjoying a week in first. Performances have regressed with an abnormally high rate of international absences and Wilmer Cabrera’s weird, obsessive insistence on squad rotation, but their talented cast of Latin American attackers and Juan David Cabezas’s solid performances in defensive midfield have kept them in contention for home playoff games.

Their primary flaw is their inability to create opportunities with the ball at their feet, something that should be solved by bringing South American No. 10 Tomas Martinez in from Portugal’s Braga. The puzzling thing, though, was that Martinez did not start last Saturday in a horrible 1-0 home loss to Colorado, not because he was not yet prepared to be an MLS starter, but because Alex (a very good No. 8) was considered a superior No. 10 to Martinez.

A lot is wrong with that, and is one thing I will criticize about Cabrera’s mostly-successful debut season.

Whatever you think about that issue, the likely scenario is Ricardo Clark maintaining his starting box-to-box role and keeping one of Martinez or Alex on the bench. The Dynamo need to improve in possession in order to put themselves in good playoff position and then make a run in November. Clark, a 33-year-old former d-mid, is going to have be more of a ball-mover and efficient forward distributor than he has been over the past couple of years.

Three Previews

What you need to know about three of the more interesting games from the upcoming week:

Vancouver Whitecaps vs. Columbus Crew SC (Saturday, 7:00 p.m. ET)

The Whitecaps moved to the top of the Western Conference with a routine 3-0 home win over Minnesota mid-week — one of their games in hand on the rest of the conference — and will get a chance to defend their place at home on Saturday against Columbus, who be feeling Atlanta nipping at their heels right about now.

As written above in the first section of this preview, Vancouver have expertly taken advantage of the west’s epic decline, erasing their 2016 futility and slowly climbing up the table. That midweek home games against a lowly club like Minnesota United have become easily dispatchable is a promising sign for a team like the Caps, who suffer from a clear talent deficiency compared to some rivals. They showed more depth than even Atlanta did on Wednesday.

Theoretically, home matches against cross-country-traveling clubs like Columbus should also be put down with relative ease. But the Crew are fighting hard for their place, seeing Montreal’s games in hand, and they are very much in contention for higher spots. They’re feisty, fast, and intent on passing the ball really deep in their own end, which will force Vancouver to do something they’re not accustomed to: press.

Kekuta Manneh, in his return to British Columbia, could exploit a Caps team vulnerable to leaving guys out of position in an unfamiliar shape.

FC Dallas vs. Seattle Sounders (Saturday, 8:00 p.m. ET)

I suggested that the locker room could be falling in Dallas in last week’s review column while looking at their loss in Atlanta. I think I was wrong:

This will be an interesting storyline to follow for the rest of the season.

Seattle should be competing for the top spot in the conference, and will now have to do it without Jordan Morris, who suffered a hamstring injury against LA last week and will be out for several weeks. That should mean some time up top for Will Bruin, and time on the wing for TAM-level midseason acquisition Victor Rodriguez, who’s been nothing more than fine in his 200 minutes so far.

San Jose Earthquakes vs. Houston Dynamo (Saturday, 10:30 p.m. ET)

This game might just be a must-win for San Jose, currently in seventh and a point behind Dallas, who have a game in hand. A road win would be golden for Houston, both to eliminate a playoff rival and to avenge a disastrous 1-0 defeat at home to the worst team in the league, Colorado.

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It very well could be the most important game of the week. Key for the Dynamo will be starting Tomas Martinez, as written above, and generating more chances from possession. San Jose got worked last week in a 4-0 road loss to Toronto, but they looked good for an early stretch in a new-look 4-2-3-1 formation. We’ll get to see if they stick with that at home or if they go back to the 3-5-2 heavily reliant on central midfield rotation that they were using before.