It's Heineken Rivalry Week, and it's the start of the stretch run. These games are huge.
Let's dig in:
1. Starman
The biggest story in the league right now is what the LA Galaxy are doing to a string of hapless victims. Over their last 10 games they're 8-2-0 with a +20 goal differential, and as Steven Gerrard and Gio Dos Santos have become increasingly comfortable, the Galaxy have become increasingly potent in attack and increasingly adept at full-field manipulation in possession.
Part of that is just having more talent to put on the field, and an underlying structure that makes it easy for new arrivals to fit in. And another part of it is that Juninho has adjusted his own positional responsibilities on a game-by-game basis, sometimes staying deeper as a No. 6 and nothing more, and other times drifting from sideline to sideline to encourage overloads.
This is the network passing graph from LA's win over NYCFC last week. The position of each circle represents the aggregate position of that player's touches over the course of the game, while the thickness of the lines connecting the players indicates the volume of passes exchanged, all measured with Opta stats:
Juninho is No. 19. And that's not where he usually plays.
It makes sense to see that kind of overload against the Light Blues, who start a teenaged left back who looks mostly out of his depth against good attacks. The Galaxy picked at that scab all game, combining for multiple goals down their own right side and subsequently leaving Sebastian Lletget - No. 17 above - to go 1-v-1 in isolation down the left. Both ploys worked.
I think Juninho will go back to his No. 6 role in Friday's California Clasico at Avaya Stadium (11 pm ET; UniMás), against a Quakes team that's much more defensively sound than NYCFC. However, it bears mentioning that the good chances San Jose have given up lately have all come from flank overloads. Alvaro Saborio missed this. I wouldn't bank on Robbie Keane or Dos Santos doing the same.
I'll also be watching... I really, really like the Quincy Amarikwa vs. Leonardo match-up for the Quakes. Leonardo's biggest fault as a defender is that he comes off his line to make challenges a step late, so forwards who have good close control and the ability to hold the ball with their back to goal give him fits.
Amarikwa thrives in that exact situaiton. If San Jose are going to win this one, it'll be because Amarikwa dominates that match-up.
Also, Chris Wondolowski wrote in The Players' Tribune about being a Jedi who can make defenders forget he exists. It's worth a read.
2. Heroes
What's Toronto FC's best lineup?
Yeah, you don't know the answer to that. And I don't know the answer to that, and at this point in the season, that's a big, fat, honking problem. We've seen the diamond, we've seen the flat 4-4-2, we've seen the 4-2-3-1 (which worked pretty well last week, but that is just one data point).
Here is the issue with TFC: They have two DP forwards who are both best as true forwards. Both Sebastian Giovinco and Jozy Altidore can play on the wing, but neither really should. So that limits Greg Vanney & Co. to variations on a 4-4-2, or bust.
The next problem then becomes what happens on the defensive side of the ball. Here's what New York Red Bulls coach Jesse Marsch had to say about the TFC front line a few weeks back:
We showed a lot of video on Giovinco, we felt that he was a major percentage of the job tonight. Luis made a great play in the box that was aggressive, confident and the right play. Our backs stood him up for the most part but he was still dangerous at times for the most part. We knew that his and Jozy, their work rate isn't the best so we knew that we could find the game a little bit.
That last sentence is coachspeak for "We know that they won't pressure our backs directly into turnovers, or even add the sort of token pressure that forces our distribution into bad spots. It is easy to build from the back against Toronto."
And the knock-on problems occurring from that are obvious.
The Reds will make the playoffs, and they will be favored against a Montreal team that, on Saturday (4 pm ET; TSN | RDS2 | MLS LIVE) will be without Didier Drogba and Ignacio Piatti.
But don't just watch the scoreline. Watch if Seba & Jozy make it hard for the Impact to pick their passes. That'll tell you if Vanney is getting through to his DPs and has been able to fix a year-long problem.
I'll also be watching... Donny Toia. A former attacker who was signed as a Homegrown player by RSL four years ago, he's now become a reliable and relentless left back. There are still rough edges to sand down, but his improvement curve has been impressive.
3. Under Pressure
Seattle and Portland fans like to go on about how theirs is the best rivalry in the league, and is always the biggest game, and so on and so forth. We've all heard every bit of it, right?
Well, I'm going to feed the fire: This meeting on Sunday (4:30 pm ET; ESPN | ESPNDeportes | WatchESPN | TSN2) is the biggest game of the weekend. Using Monte Carlo simulation numbers, a Sounders win bumps their already precarious playoff chances up to about 50 percent. A Sounders loss, however? That knocks them down to just under 17 percent, while bumping the Timbers up to 95 percent.
So this is the biggest game between these two teams since the 2013 postseason. And given that no postseason this year in Seattle would probably mean regime change come November, this game might be even bigger than that playoff series from two years ago.
Let that sink in for a minute.
And now some more happy news for the visitors:
I've been expecting Seattle to pull out of this nosedive all summer. If they don't manage all three points in this one, it's no longer a nosedive: It's a death spiral. And the ground is rushing up to meet them pretty damn fast.
I'll also be watching... Central midfield. With Diego Chara suspended I kind of expect Caleb Porter to turn to Jack Jewsbury, but Jewsbury has been overrun - both physically, and simply failing to track runners - the last few times he played in the middle. Of course with the lack off offensive punch Seattle generate from central midfield, that might not be as much of an issue in this one.
4. Young Americans
D.C. United are tired. They've looked it for a while, and when they walk into Red Bull Arena on Sunday (7 pm ET; FoxSports 1 | FoxDeportes | FoxSportsGO | TSN2) it will mark their seventh competitive match in the month of August. That includes trips to Panama and Canada, and games against teams from four different countries.
And truth be told, they've held up damn well, winning four of the six games. They've basically punched their ticket back into the CONCACAF Champions League quarterfinals, and maintained their lead in the Eastern Conference. The fact that they haven't really looked "great" shouldn't detract from the fact that they just keep grinding out results no matter who, it seems, they toss into the lineup.
I will still argue that goalkeeper Bill Hamid is the most important player on the roster, but I'd also argue that Perry Kitchen is maybe only a half-step behind him. Kitchen's field-coverage is and always has been exceptional, but this year both his passing and ability to receive the ball under pressure have improved immensely:
Kitchen is all over that sequence, moving into the right spots and playing quick, accurate balls into every quadrant of the field. Only a poor control from Chris Rolfe brought D.C.'s run of possession to an end.
Crucially: This is how a 4-4-2 midfield (what United play) can pull apart a 4-2-3-1 midfield (what the Red Bulls play). Chicago - most notably Mikey Stephens - gave a lesson on that in midweek, and Kitchen has shown this year that he can do much of the same from a distribution standpoint, while remaining one of the league's best destroyers.
I'll also be watching... Anatole Abang, perhaps? I thought RBNY's midweek loss to Chicago was screaming out for the young target forward, who instead remained on the bench. Against a D.C. team that tries to coax opponents into cross after cross after cross, he'd be a valuable asset for the hosts.
One more thing:
All these games are big, and a big win is nice. But there's still two months of the season left, so celebrate responsibly.
Happy weekending, everybody.
