This is the point in the season where the guys who call the shots for sub-playoff teams – I'm going to be nice and not call them "no-hopers" – should and often do try new things as a way of building toward the following year. Maybe it's a tactical or formational switch, or maybe it's a promising youngster getting a run-out. Maybe, on the other end of the spectrum, it's sending a well-worn veteran to the bench in preparation for a generational rollover.
Either way, just playing out the string is not an option. A team in any sport doesn't exist just in a 12-month vacuum; what's picked up one year is usually carried over into the next.
But let's face it: The real drama is in the fight at and above the playoff line. So let's start there:
Use What I Got
For two months the Chicago Fire had/have been riding the struggle bus. Their free-flowing, attacking nature had deserted them at the start of summer, as did their finishing touch, as did their previously solid-to-good defense. It was a slump compounded by a few key international absences, compounded by a regression to the mean in front of net by Nemanja Nikolic and David Accam, compounded by injuries to fullbacks Brandon Vincent and Matt Polster.
Fullbacks are the forgotten, undervalued men in modern soccer pretty much everywhere (remember when Barcelona let Dani Alves walk? How'd that work out for them?), and that may have been the case here, too. Vincent and Polster were both really, really good this spring, though in slightly different ways. Vincent is a little bit more of a classic fullback in that he stays wider, only uses the dribble to take space that's offered, and swings in a vicious cross. His passing and reading of the game have both improved markedly from his rookie year to his sophomore season, and everything about how he plays is good and reliable and no-frills. You can see that he's a defender who just sort of naturally ended up as a fullback.
Polster is the more modern animal in that he's a midfielder who's been converted to fullback, and it shows. He'll happily slip inside deeper and earlier in the play if he thinks his team needs numbers there, and his distribution is much less linear than Vincent's. Most of all, though, Polster loves to push so high he actually gets in front of the ball, and then once he has it on his foot, he drives into the box:
Chicago won 1-0 at Montreal on Saturday, handing the Impact their second straight loss and snapping the Fire's own four-game losing streak. With all due respect to Bastian Schweinsteiger and Johan Kappelhof, Polster – who went 90 in his return from injury – was the best player on the field. They're now 10-3-2 when he plays, and 3-6-3 when he doesn't. Fullbacks are important.
Let's not just get hung up solely on the on the attacking influence, though. The real reason Polster stood out is because he was left isolated with Ignacio Piatti for big chunks of the game and did not end up in a coffin. Piatti is the grim reaper in those situations. Old fullbacks have, I'm sure, campfire stories they tell about the Argentine maestro coming for them out of the blue, spinning them like a top and then leaving them for dead.
On Saturday, though, he never was able to get around the edge, didn't complete a single successful dribble on the outside, and was repeatedly forced to play square or backwards. He eventually abandoned the flank entirely and drifted inside:
Piatti being Piatti, he still nearly stole Montreal a point, first by ringing the post and then, deep into stoppage, when he pounced on a loose ball in the box after a throw-in. But both those moments came in "team defense" situations, and what really defined the game even before Deian Boldor's 50th-minute red card was Polster's ability to neutralize Montreal's best player in said player's best spot. It was as commanding a two-way performance as I've seen from a fullback all season.
This doesn't mean everything is ok with Chicago. Montreal were short-handed without Samuel Piette, Blerim Dzemaili or Laurent Ciman, and one good win doesn't erase two months of listlessness. But "Are the Fire in danger of falling out of the playoff race?" is no longer a real question, and with Polster back and Vincent back (he played a cameo minute at the end, and should be good to go from the start next week) there's reason to hope that things in Bridgeview will start looking more like they did in April, May and June.
Struggling Man
Give credit to FC Dallas: They came into Saturday's home match against the Red Bulls on a six-game winless skid, and without a cadre of international players in key spots, and with some sniping in the press from star striker Maxi Urruti, and they nonetheless got after it.. They'd been without injured Mauro Diaz, who returned, and rumors of a San Lorenzo swoop for Urruti and Michael Barrios are very real, and then, 37 minutes in, rookie Jacori Hayes (who'd been having a pretty nice game to that point), got himself a deserved red card.
It took only six minutes after that for RBNY to do this (volume up for analysis):
Armchair Analyst: #RBNY continue to worship at the altar of the third-line pass pic.twitter.com/wA23t8Y65L
— Matthew Doyle (@MattDoyle76) September 3, 2017
But Dallas fought back. And then they went down again, and then they fought back again. They walked out of Frisco with a 2-2 draw despite playing a man down for 53 minutes, and despite having to come back twice, and Oscar Pareja is right: It was a remarkable performance.
"Let's talk about that effort. Let’s talk about that energy. Let’s talk about that pride that the FC Dallas players showed tonight," Pareja offered. "Let's talk about the will to overcome the circumstances. Let's talk about the character and responsibility of this group of players today despite the circumstances and despite the things we cannot control."
Pareja was mostly referencing the red card and international absences there, but I'm also certain he was giving this quote for his players to hear. There are teams in this league who, in time of struggle, have quit. We've seen players – like Fabian Castillo last year – just force their way out. There remains a real possibility that this Dallas group, just one year after posting the best season in franchise history, could just collapse in upon itself and fall apart.
Right now, Pareja's holding them together, and for his efforts got a resoundingly professional performance from a group that had been sleepwalking for a couple of months. Urruti didn't score, but he was relentless; Barrios was the best player on the field (and Victor Ulloa's long, accurate, Michael Bradley-esque switches to free him up are one of the reasons I feel like he should be starting); Diaz wasn't spectacular, but routinely got on the ball and brought peace to the game when RBNY were threatening to overwhelm.
Dallas aren't out of the woods yet. They've dropped down to sixth in the West in PPG and have mostly crapped away their games in hand. Things could still go bigly wrong.
Saturday, however, was a performance to build upon. The winless streak continues, but there's still life left in FC Dallas. They haven't gone away just yet.
Sitting In Limbo
Any time you tie the league record for assists in a game, you win Pass of the Week. Here's a slice of Lee Nguyen's virtuoso performance in New England's 4-0 mauling of Orlando City (volume up for analysis):
The Revs are only four points back of the playoff line in the East, but Atlanta United have two games in hand and eight home games left. The Revs have just four home games left, which means they'd have to A) sweep those games, and B) probably get seven or eight points from their remaining four road games to make a real push.
New England have three points from 13 road games so far this season, so it's not gonna happen. It's also not quite clear what the future holds for this group, who are not particularly young at any spot on the field anymore, and who haven't shown the ability to string together a season's worth of consistency.
But Saturday was a worthwhile reminder of just how much talent resides in Foxborough. If they do go for an offseason teardown and rebuild, they will have suitors and the ability to create real cap and roster flexibility.
House of Exile
In a battle of bottom-dwellers, LA got just their second home win of the season by pounding the disorganized Rapids 3-0 at StubHub Center in Saturday's nightcap. Romain Alessandrini was magnificent, and Gyasi Zardes got his first goal of the season, and I'm sure this was cathartic for the Galaxy and their fans. It certainly looked that way for Zardes, who gave us our Face of the Week:
That is a man with a significant, 374-day long wait/weight lifted off his shoulders.
No one in the league has as much at stake, personally, as Zardes does over the next two months. As it stands right now, LA are going to go out this season and use their hoarded TAM and GAM to buy a center forward. He has to convince them otherwise (or at least convince them that whoever they buy is going to have to fight for the job come January).
That's not as outrageous a proposition as it seems. Throughout Zardes's career he's scored a goal every 174 minutes when playing as a No. 9, and assisted on one every 350 minutes. Pro-rate that to a 34-game season and you end up with about 17 goals and 8 assists, and yes, in the one season he played almost exclusively as a center forward, he scored 16 goals and added two assists in about 27 games worth of minutes.
He'll probably have to bag five or six more in LA's final eight games if he's to have any real future as a starting forward for this team, or really in this league. It feels like a long shot, but it's something I'm certain the folks in LA are keeping an eye on.
And if it doesn't happen? "Gyasi Zardes, right back" is a thing we may all have to wrap our heads around.
