MLS Week 29: What happened, and what now for eliminated teams?

What went wrong for every eliminated MLS team this season and where they go from here, plus more from Week 29.

MLS Week 29 had its share of playoff consequences. Montreal picked up a huge 5-1 win over Philadelphia, adding to the intrigue of the Eastern Conference race. Toronto FC, who need to go on a Seattle-like winning streak to have any chance at the postseason, stomped on the LA Galaxy’s playoff odds with a wacky 5-3 win. Real Salt Lake could have jumped to third in the West had they been able to hold onto a 1-0 lead at home against Minnesota.

But today, we’ll focus for the last time on the teams who have no shot. We’re counting seven teams as definitively out: San Jose, Colorado, Minnesota, Houston, LA, Chicago and Orlando City. Here’s what happened with all seven, and where they go from here:

San Jose Earthquakes

San Jose lost 5-1 this weekend to Sporting KC and it never was close. The Quakes’ problems are rooted in management, both in coach Mikael Stahre, who has yet to put out a coherent game-plan or real tactics, and general manager Jesse Fioranelli, who has whiffed on most of his major signings.

They have neglected to play Tommy Thompson and Jackson Yueill for most of this season despite having nothing to play for since May. (Yueill got some minutes against SKC and was good). San Jose have an argument for being the worst-run organization in the league, and it’s too bad, because they had a lot of hope coming into this season.

I picked them to finish fourth in the Western Conference, thinking that some of the successful players from last year would stick around and that they’d continue playing fun soccer. Instead, they’ve played fun soccer only in that they leave a lot of gaps open for opposing teams.

Colorado Rapids

In contrast to the Quakes, no one thought the Rapids would be good. I picked them to finish 10th, and it looks like that was optimistic — they’re six points back of 10th-place Minnesota after they folded at home against Atlanta United on Saturday. They lost 3-0 and looked resigned to a loss from kickoff.

The 4-4-2 diamond has been successful at times after they traded for Kellyn Acosta, but they still can’t defend well.

They struggle to generate penetration with the ball. Part of that comes from the personnel — they’ll need to upgrade Dillon Serna’s position at the top of the midfield diamond — and part of that comes from coach Anthony Hudson’s unwillingness to organize his team to any respectable degree.

Minnesota United

The Loons grabbed a 1-1 draw in Utah and thought they had scored a winner late on, but it was controversially reversed by VAR and they settled for a point, a favorable result considering the instability in deep midfield that plagued them throughout. New signing Fernando Bob, whose name is among the best in MLS, hasn’t solved much.

Minnesota not having good defensive midfielders is a tradition as old as March 2017. If they’re ever going to figure out how to sustain success, it’s going to come with an actual number 6. They can take solace in the presence of Darwin Quintero, a player worth building a team around, and the calming of some of their backline woes in recent weeks.

Houston Dynamo

It’s possible the Houston Dynamo would not be languishing 15 points out of the playoffs if Juan David Cabezas hadn’t gone down with a Kawhi Leonard-level mysterious groin injury 15 minutes into the season opening win over Atlanta United. Cabezas, the anchor in defensive midfield, has missed almost the entirety of the season. His 45 minute reappearance in Saturday’s 4-1 win over Portland will be too little, too late for this season.

Their front three of Alberth Elis, Mauro Manotas and Romell Quioto is enough to score a bunch of goals every year, but Wilmer Cabrera has to generate more consistency out of the three. They also have to get younger in defense.

LA Galaxy

I wrote about the Galaxy back on Sept. 6, before manager Sigi Schmid stepped down and Dominic Kinnear took over. The gist: LA can’t defend and it’s going to cost them a chance at contention with Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

They again proved they can’t defend in that 5-3 loss to TFC, in which Zlatan scored a golazo only he can score for his 500th career pro goal. That loss encapsulates the state of the Galaxy perfectly.

Chicago Fire

No team in MLS is worse off right now than the Fire, who are staring at a third last-place finish in four seasons and have successfully alienated all of their supporters groups, to the point that they were humiliated on national TV by the lack of noise at Toyota Park. They took a couple weeks off in the middle of the season to go to Munich for Bastian Schweinsteiger’s tribute match, in the midst of a dumpster fire of a season.

Things have gotten so bad that Schweinsteiger is playing center-back consistently because Veljko Paunovic doesn’t trust anyone else to do the job. Needless to say, the aging center midfield legend routinely gets roasted. Paunovic and the front office have spectacularly frittered away all the fan trust they earned by being good last season.

Orlando City SC

Orlando, creeping up on the all-time single season goals against record, gave up four more in an ugly 4-0 loss to Chicago on Sunday. I had OCSC in the playoffs at the beginning of the season, but the core they assembled of Sacha Kljestan, Justin Meram and other recent acquisitions has flamed out magnificently. Meram’s been traded, they’ve yet to make progress on defense and manager Jason Kreis was fired.

New hire James O’Connor has been tasked with turning the ship around, and so far, nothing has really worked. He hasn’t been able to get them to play any kind of proactive soccer, and the roster needs an overhaul for next year.

Awards

The best team in the league

Atlanta United had no trouble with the Colorado Rapids and roll on in a Supporters’ Shield race that increasingly looks like it will fall to them. The Red Bulls dropped points at home to an energized D.C. United team, requiring Bradley Wright-Phillips to save them multiple times, and NYCFC has been in a downward spiral.

Andrew Carleton got in off the bench for Atlanta. Tata Martino can’t make the mistake he did last year, when he ran his star players into the ground. On the road on Wednesday in San Jose, at least two of Miguel Almiron, Josef Martinez, Leandro Gonzalez-Pirez and Jeff Larentowicz should sit.

The worst team in the league

The Quakes’ ugly loss to Sporting KC came at the hands of Felipe Gutierrez and Gerso Fernandes, who combined for three goals and four assists in the 5-1 win. SKC proved they have the attacking firepower to launch goals on inferior opposition. If they can sustain something close to that level against better teams, they could finally win some playoff games in a wide open Western Conference.

With FC Dallas settling for a 0-0 draw at home against Columbus, Real Salt Lake narrowly escaping a home game against Minnesota with a 1-1 tie and LAFC failing to take three points against New England, SKC moved into first-place again. It’s possible that the six playoff teams are settled out west — unless you believe Vancouver can overtake Portland or Seattle — but the order is impossible to guess.

Predictable result of the week

So as not to take the easy way out, I went with Seattle’s ninth straight win, rather than the Atlanta thrashing of Colorado, the high-scoring shootout between Toronto and the Galaxy, and San Jose’s latest bottoming out. The Sounders extended their MLS record with a hard-fought 2-1 road win against the Whitecaps, securing the Cascadia Cup.

Seattle do everything fundamentally correctly, with an error-avoiding defense, an elite goalkeeper and a tight, flawless tactical shape. They have the appearance of a high-floor, low-ceiling team, but have proved to be the polar opposite of that this season. They’ve reached their highest, MLS Cup-caliber tier.

Random result of the week

Houston’s 4-1 home win over the Timbers was what we expected the Dynamo to be doing all season. Alberth Elis and Timbers Killer Mauro Manotas bagged goals, breaking out of their prolonged slumps, and Portland struggled to deal with Houston’s speedy counter-attacks.

It’s too bad the Dynamo haven’t been able to bring out this version of themselves more often, because when they do, they’re one of the most fun teams in the league.

Goalkeeper howler of the week

Orlando’s Joe Bendik had a rough first touch against the Fire:

That was somewhat of a difficult back-pass, but Bendik should’ve just booted that one clear first-time.