Sporting KC the Supporters’ Shield frontrunners

Until Saturday not many (other than Guardian eagle-eye Richard Whittall) had noticed the rise of Sporting KC’s rise in the Western Conference. With MLS’s flashbulbs currently trained on the LA Galacticos and their box-fresh DPs, Peter Vermes’ side have strung together seven wins from their last 10 games. That so few had clocked it suited them just fine, as their recent good form continued with an enthralling 4-3 comeback win over table-toppers Vancouver. But the problem with enthralling 4-3 comeback wins over the table-toppers is that people tend to notice.

In fact, Sporting KC will take their place in the league’s historical record – with Vermes’ side becoming only the second team to have ever come back from two goals down after 80 minutes (DC managed it in 2003). So why are they seen by so many as little more than outsiders in both the Western and Supporters’ Shield standings? Lurking just four points behind DC United with four games in hand, it’s time they were considered frontrunners.

The success of Sporting KC can be found down the spine of their side - arguably the strongest in MLS. Midfield dynamo Benny Feilhaber is an MVP candidate with eight goals and 12 assists this season, with Matt Besler also underlining his stature as one of the league’s best centre-backs. And while Dom Dwyer has struggled to rediscover his 2014 form this season his goal against Vancouver proved the catalyst for a momentous fight-back.

Sporting KC’s season has been more settled than victory over Vancouver was, with Vermes’ having lost just four times in 2015. Although there has been a shift in the team’s dynamic, trading some of their defensive resolution for an added edge in attack (they haven’t kept a clean sheet in their last five games, but have scored seven in their last two). Wins against Toronto FC and the Whitecaps have been something of a coming out party for SKC.

KC’s campaign could be decided over the four-game road stretch they will embark on from next week – with Vermes’ men playing two midweek games over the next three weeks as they play fixture schedule catch-up. Maybe by the close of that stint their position in the table will reflect their true position in the Shield race.

Seattle’s luck returns with Obafemi Martins but DC ship three

Eight losses and only two goals in their last nine league games tells its own story about just how important Obafemi Martins is to Seattle Sounders. Martins’ absence through injury in that period, and the parallel loss of Clint Dempsey to suspension, international duty and now injury during part of that period had turned Seattle from potential Shield winners to a team hoping their strike duo would be back in place before they fell out of the playoff spots.

Martins and some of Seattle’s old swagger was back on Sunday night, as the striker got two goals in a 4-0 defeat of 10-man Orlando City, whose own talisman Kaka was a negligible presence. Seattle didn’t even miss Dempsey too much as further reinforcements, in the shape of new signings Nelson Valdez and Roman Torres, had solid debuts – Valdez getting on the scoresheet. Seattle may now look forward to a run-in that’s rather more in the spirit of their start to the season.

DC United, meanwhile, saw their luck catch up with them. Coming into Thursday night’s match against NYC FC, the team had gone down by two goals early in successive games only to rally for victories that kept them clear at the top of the Eastern Conference.

The visitors actually took the lead at Yankee Stadium, from a Saborio goal that started from an uncharacteristically poor Pirlo pass. But that was as good as it got for DC, as they shipped three second half goals en route to a 3-1 defeat — with Pirlo making up for his earlier error with a precisely scooped pass to split two defenders and allow David Villa to score the second.

Either side of that goal Kwadwo Poku made one for Tommy McNamara and scored one himself, as the young box-to-box midfielder continued to make a compelling case for his place in a midfield trying to integrate Frank Lampard. Lampard sat out this week’s game through yet another injury, while the steadily improving Poku contributed his team-leading seventh assist of the season. He’s making it hard for his coach to drop him, no matter how storied the replacement.

New York City are running out of games to make the playoffs in their inaugural season, but they were good value for their win in the second half as DC looked decidedly ordinary. DC remain a puzzling team. On the one hand they seem to have the kind of character that suggests they never believe they’re beaten. On the other hand they’re capable of switching off for periods in games that leave them vulnerable to their narrow margin for error in those same knockout situations.

A frustrated Ben Olsen has been trying to stop his team from sliding into complacency, but they failed to heed the warning in the Bronx. DC’s luck has caught up with them — will the chasing pack in the East be next? GP

Robbie Keane masks LA Galaxy’s underlying problems

If Robbie Keane were a first-born, he might feel a little overlooked, given all the cooing paid to the LA Galaxy’s new arrivals over the last month or so. But the Republic of Ireland striker grabbed some crayons and drew all over the walls of Bruce Arena’s kitchen on Saturday evening, stomping his feet and screaming for attention with a double-scoring performance in the Galaxy’s 2-1 win over FC Dallas.

Of course, as the league’s incumbent MVP it seems peculiar that anyone would overlook Keane – however, with Steven Gerrard and Giovani Dos Santos nowpeering out from the club’s billboards along Hollywood Boulevard, Keane is no longer regarded as the star attraction. Although as he showed against FC Dallas, such an assumption is an unfair one.

Gerrard has settled quickly as a kingpin of the Galaxy’s new-look starting lineup, with Dos Santos marking his debut with a goal last week. Yet it is Keane – with 10 goals in his last six appearances – who has been behind LA’s summer resurgence. So why isn’t the Irishman considered alongside Sebastian Giovinco, or even Benny Feilhaber, as a contender for this year’s MVP award?

Is it simply that with the 35-year-old already holder of the accolade, the MLS collective consensus wishes to crown a new sovereign? Is Keane suffering the same fate as Presidents seeking a second term, finding that appealing to people you’ve already won over can be difficult?

Giovinco probably edges out Keane as the best player of 2015: the Atomic Ant has carried Toronto FC more mightily than, well, an ant. But with 66 goals from 100 MLS outings, and 17 in just 20 games this term, Keane is well on his way to become a great of the league. He might already be one.

With Keane the hub of their attacking activity, the LA Galaxy are surely MLS Cup favourites, although Arena has a few boxes to tick before the post-season. On his debut last week, against the Seattle Sounders, Giovani appeared a natural fit as the foil to the Keane. But in Frisco the Mexican looked a little more uncomfortable, not seeing as much of the ball despite providing the assist for Keane’s match-winner.

There are also fleeting concerns at the back, with FC Dallas’ goal just after the half-hour mark coming from the Galaxy’s defensive slackness – and Donovan Ricketts’ not totally convincing goalkeeping. Their backline still needs to settle with Omar Gonzalez back involved. But with Keane arguably playing the best soccer of his career, Arena needn’t be too concerned.

Toronto pressed back into the pack and a test of nerve

The game between the New York Red Bulls and Toronto was supposed to be a battle for second place in the East, and after last week’s completion of the season sweep over New York City, the Red Bulls might have been forgiven if the intensity had dropped for the visit of the Canadians.

Instead the midfield trio of Felipe, McCarty and Kljestan largely nullified the threat of Giovinco and co, with their familiar pressing game causing problems all night in a 3-0 victory that leaves the Red Bulls well within touching distance at the top.

Losing a battle for second place might sound like a luxury problem for a Toronto team at this stage of the season, given the team’s historic inability to ever reach the playoffs, but despite the prodigious goalscoring and general creativity of Giovinco, in his MVP-worthy year, this is a team that remain prone to shooting themselves in the foot.

And it happened again in New York. New signing Herculez Gomez, whose nous and poaching ability should make him a worthy acquisition, spoke after the game of his frustration at not being able to take advantage of tiring opposition when he came on as a second half substitute. In another match, New York’s pressing game might have fatigued them by that stage – but in this one, Toronto’s errors kept gifting turnovers to the opposition and Gomez was introduced against a confident rather than exhausted New York defense.

Perhaps it was a function of yet another round of tinkering with the back four for Toronto, though New York too were fielding a back line that featured Carl Ouimette, Connor Lade and Anthony Wallace, who would not be first choice players in a first string Red Bulls side. Yet while the Red Bulls may have added Shaun Wright-Phillips and Gonzalo Veron in recent days, their recent six game unbeaten run has been built in part on unexpected contributions from their depth players.

The moneyball (moneybull?) approach has put New York to the edge of the Supporters Shield picture, when you look at their run-in and games in hand — and the clash with DC on 30th August should make the Eastern run-in look very interesting. Toronto meanwhile have gambled with big money over the last two seasons and anything less than a playoff run would be seen as an embarrassing failure.

Luckily for them they have that runaway MVP contender in Giovinco, who has changed many games for them this season, if not Saturday’s, but even there there’s a note of historical caution. The 2013 Chicago Fire had the MVP in Mike Magee, but even his goals weren’t enough to get the Fire into the playoffs.

That was after a terrible start to the year for the Fire of course, and Toronto have not been terrible at any stage this year — they’ve just never threatened to build serious intimidating momentum. And with New England having pulled out of their tailspin to start racking up points again, it’s hard to see where the vulnerable teams in the Eastern playoff race are. Toronto had a chance to briefly edge clear of the chasing pack on Saturday. They didn’t, and their history makes what comes next a big test of their collective nerve. GP

A ghost of successes past picks a bad week to haunt RSL

When Jason Kreis left Real Salt Lake after going within a penalty kick of winning the 2013 MLS Cup, the team and style he had built in Salt Lake had already begun to fray, if not break apart, as a team of solid contributors begun to push against the salary cap.

Yet for a while after Kreis’s departure the plane seemed to be flying itself, as the bootroom-style appointment of Jeff Cassar started with a long unbeaten streak running into 2014, and the club seemed poised to bear the fruits of a signing and player development policy made with continuity in mind.

But after a slower run in last year, RSL were mauled by LA in the playoffs and since then have looked as indistinct as they have done in years. Some of that is to do with the switch from their patented 4-4-2 diamond to a 4-3-3 formation, which Cassar believes is better suited to the best of the current personnel. And some of it is to do with the shifts in that personnel. One time front paring Fabian Espindola and Alvaro Saborio are now playing in DC; Jamison Olave is still at the back, but only after a diversion to New York to win a Supporters’ Shield; the unsung dynamo of the midfield, Ned Grabavoy, is now lining up with Sebastian Velasquez and Chris Wingert under Kreis, at NYC FC.

And then there’s defensive colossus Nat Borchers, now playing in his beard’s spiritual home of Portland. And on Saturday night, deep into injury time, it was the prodigal Borchers who popped up to head home the winner for the Timbers over his former colleagues, in a win that left Portland tucked comfortably into the playoff spots in the West — the type of position the perennially consistent RSL teams used to occupy.

Not this year though, and not this week. RSL’s hopes of a playoff spot largely depend on the faint hope of Seattle’s slump continuing past the reunification of the Dempsey and Martins strikeforce in the race for what looks like the last vulnerable playoff spot.

And with Martins back and scoring on Sunday night, small wonder RSL look to have taken a leaf out of the book of the team that beat them in the 2013 US Open Cup final, DC United — whose Cup win was the one bright spot amid a record-breakingly bad league campaign. RSL have been fielding near full strength teams in both Open Cup and Champions League campaigns this year, but were bounced out of the former at the semi-final stage this week and must now see out the group stage of the Champions League against the stark backdrop of a dwindling league campaign. It’s been a bad week, regardless of the signing of designated player Juan Manuel Martinez from Argentina.

Borchers didn’t celebrate his goal on Saturday night, by the way, out of respect for his former team mates. It still seems uncanny seeing him and many of his other former colleagues in other teams’ colors, but it’s stranger still watching the current RSL being quite so adrift. GP

Weekend results

New York City 3-1 DC United

San Jose 1-0 Colorado

NY Red Bulls 3-0 Toronto

New England 2-0 Houston

FC Dallas 1-2 LA Galaxy

Sporting KC 4-3 Vancouver

Real Salt Lake 0-1 Portland

Seattle 4-0 Orlando

Philadelphia 3-3 Chicago Fire