If they’d stuffed any more action into Week 21, you’d have to put a knee on top of it to get the thing zipped shut.
There were 40 goals (several of them spectacular), five red cards and,
despite the scoring deluge, some sensational goalkeeping.
A handful of young players made splashes, two veterans produced
virtuoso performances and two teams saw their league-leading unbeaten
streaks halted in dramatic fashion.
There were also three CONCACAF Champions League games (MLS went
three-for-three), and the first round of national-team call-ups from new
US coach Jurgen Klinsmann (MLS got nine).
Let’s see if we can squeeze it all in.
All Good Things…
It’s hard to believe now, but Sporting Kansas City were 1-6-3 as
recently as June 9, when they stumbled to the end of their 10-game,
season-opening road trip.
That was also the day they opened their sensational new stadium,
Livestrong Sporting Park, and everything changed: Peter Vermes’ men
rescued their playoff hopes, launching an unbeaten run that stretched to
14 games with this past Wednesday’s impressive 2-0 win over Real Salt
Lake.
(Well, almost everything changed: One holdover from the season’s rocky
start is the club’s penchant for drawing red cards. Kansas City players
saw red in games in March, April—twice—and June while struggling through
their monster road trip. This week, SKC played two games and picked up
two more reds.)
On Saturday, SKC were minutes away from extending their streak to 15
and vaulting into a tie for second in the East with Philadelphia. But as
the game clock neared 90, Seattle midfielder Mauro Rosales
appeared—hands on hips, cape flapping in the wind—to score a goal and
set up Lamar Neagle for another to deliver an improbable, thrilling win
for the visitors.
The LA Galaxy saw their unbeaten streak stopped at 14 as well when they
were blanked 3-0 by Portland at JELD-WEN Field on Wednesday.
Three days later, Portland went on to tie San Jose 1-1 on Kenny
Cooper’s first goal since April, while first-place LA rebounded to clip
Dallas in a Western Conference showdown. David Beckham had two assists
as LA recovered from Hoops winger Marvin Chávez’s lightning-strike,
ninth-minute opener, getting goals from Omar Gonzalez, Juninho and Mike
Magee to win 3-1.
Playoff Prospects
Despite the loss, FC Dallas remain very much in contention for the
playoffs and the Supporters’ Shield. Their Western Conference brethren,
the defending MLS Cup champion Colorado Rapids, are 11 points off the
pace for the Shield, but if the playoffs started today, the Rapids, who
have won four of their last six, would be in as a wild-card. That would
suit them just fine—they came from back in the pack to win it all last
year.
SEE THE LATEST PLAYOFF STANDINGS
Colorado’s current hot streak has been fueled by their new strike duo
of Sanna Nyassi and Omar Cummings, who teamed up for the second goal in a
2-0 win over Columbus on Friday. Winger Brian Mullan opened the scoring
with a sizzling strike into the top corner 10 minutes after halftime,
and ’keeper Matt Pickens made a huge save on Andrés Mendoza in the 74th
minute to preserve the lead.
While the Western Conference leaders firmed up their playoff prospects,
the defending regular-season champs in the East, the Red Bulls, saw
theirs downgraded from probable to questionable after a 3-0 shellacking
at Rio Tinto Stadium. It was the second straight lopsided loss in the
West for New York (after a 4-1 defeat to Colorado in Week 19), and kept
them winless in their last five.
If the decline in form weren’t bad enough, the Red Bulls lost
midfielder Jan Gunnar Solli and goalkeeper Frank Rost to quadriceps
injuries during the game.
Goalfests
The Red Bulls remain in the playoff picture, but they are starting to
feel the heat from teams below them in the East, including Houston, who
are just two points behind and have a game in hand, and D.C. United, who
got three goals from former Red Bull Dwayne De Rosario to salvage a
wild, controversial 3-3 draw against Toronto on Saturday.
Both DC keeper Bill Hamid—who received his first national-team call-up
on Thursday—and coach Ben Olsen were sent off in the back-and-forth
affair. Hamid plowed into Eric Avila in the seventh minute, and Olsen
vehemently protested Toronto’s second goal, scored in the 69th, while DC
were making a substitution and play wasn’t stopped properly. The result
left DC at 6-6-9, just three points behind New York (6-6-12).
Making his case for the Player of the Week award alongside DeRo was
Vancouver Designated Player Eric Hassli, who bagged his ninth and 10th
goals of the year, along with his first assist, to lead the
always-entertaining Whitecaps to a 4-2 demolition of revamped Chicago,
who saw their playoff hopes dim further as they fell to 2-7-13.
Stealing the Show
This was a week in which major signings such as Pável Pardo, Sebastián
Grazzini (Chicago), Carlo Costly (Houston) and Milton Caraglio (New
England) made their MLS debuts. And while Pardo scored a crucial
equalizer in his first MLS game, lifting the Fire into a 1-1 tie with
Philadelphia this past Wednesday, and the others showed flashes of
quality, none of those veterans matched the debut of 16-year-old Diego
Fagundez in New England.
The Home Grown Revs product, who recently finished his freshman year of
high school, came into the game in the 66th minute, with New England
trailing Chivas USA 2-0. Two minutes later, he drew a penalty kick that
Shalrie Joseph buried. With four minutes remaining, after Chivas had
gone up 3-1, Fagundez gave New England a chance, scoring his first MLS
goal to make it 3-2.
(Alejandro Moreno scored two goals for Chivas, and Dan Kennedy made two terrific saves to preserve the Goats’ win.)
Fagundez wasn’t alone in the youthful heroics: RSL’s 17-year-old
midfielder Luis Gil scored his first MLS goal, blasting a 25-yarder past
New York’s Frank Rost, and Philadelphia’s Jack McInerney, who turned 19
on Friday, celebrated the occasion with a goal and a solid performance
in Philadelphia’s 1-1 tie with Houston on Saturday.
Orr Barouch, 19, scored an 80th-minute consolation goal in Chicago’s
4-2 loss at Vancouver, and 19-year-old Gershon Koffie scored the
Whitecaps’ second goal in that game.
Finally, while last week’s results favored both the Eastern Conference
teams and visiting teams, those outcomes were reversed in Week 21, as
the West went 5-1 against the East and home teams were 6-2-4.