2019 MLS Eastern Conference Rundown

Started a mini project last week. The target was to gather as much info on each player in the MLS Eastern Conference and use that info to evaluate each team ahead of the 2019 season. All done. Atlanta United is going to be the team out front this season.

Preseason Team Grades, to date:

A
Atlanta United
Toronto FC
Columbus Crew

B
New York Red Bulls
New York City FC

C
Montreal Impact
DC United
New England Revolution

D
Philadelphia Union
FC Cincinnati
Chicago Fire
Orlando City

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How did I get here? I've spent the last couple weeks working through each rostered player in Major League Soccer's Eastern Conference. I now have in my possession a mini-dossier on every player on each team. Player vitals (height, foot, birthplace, sign date, former club/team, etc), Football Manager 19, FIFA 19 and WhoScored player ratings and player value.

I used this information, along with last year's rosters, to create a best XI and bench (18) for each team. Here's how that looks.

		Player Ratings (avg)		TransferMarkt Value (000)
	Team	Starters	Bench	Starters	Bench
1	ATL	71.0	66.7	$ 66,429	$ 14,484
2	TFC	70.5	65.4	$ 25,027	$ 3,502
3	NYC	70.5	64.6	$ 16,303	$ 4,470
4	DCU	69.7	56.6	$ 21,934	$ 2,990
5	NYR	69.7	64.9	$ 20,192	$ 3,745
6	MTL	69.6	65.2	$ 13,410	$ 4,876
7	CLB	69.3	66.2	$ 24,671	$ 4,180
8	NER	68.7	64.5	$ 13,278	$ 5,115
9	PHI	68.2	56.5	$ 9,933	$ 5,529
10	FCC	68.1	64.3	$ 11,420	$ 4,790
11	CHI	67.8	63.7	$ 17,022	$ 3,955
12	ORL	67.2	62.2	$ 10,365	$ 3,309

The chart is sorted by "Starters."

Here's a list of top rated players (median rating -  FM19, FIFA 19 and last observed WhoScored). A rating of 72 and greater means the player is in the top 8%.

Rating	Name	Team
79	Wayne Rooney	DCU
79	Sebastian Giovinco	TFC
77	Miguel Almirón	ATL
77	Ignacio Piatti	MTL
76	Josef Martínez	ATL
76	Michael Bradley	TFC
75	Maxi Moralez	NYC
74	Kendall Waston	FCC
73	Saphir Taider	MTL
73	Marcelo	CHI
73	Luciano Acosta	DCU
73	Alexander Ring	NYC
73	Bastian Schweinsteiger	CHI
73	Fanendo Adi	FCC
73	Brad Guzan	ATL
72	Bradley Wright-Phillips	NYR
72	Alejandro Bedoya	PHI
72	Bacary Sagna	MTL
72	Nemanja Nikolic	CHI
72	Ebenezer Ofori	NYC
72	Gonzalo Martínez	ATL
72	Dax McCarty	CHI
72	Pedro Santos	CLB
72	Russell Canouse	DCU

Where players in the projected starting X1's fall, out of all 319 individuals evaluated:

Team	Top 25%	Top 25-50%
ATL	9	1
DCU	7	3
NYR	7	4
TFC	7	4
MTL	6	3
CLB	6	5
CHI	5	1
NYC	5	6
FCC	4	6
NER	4	7
PHI	4	7
ORL	3	6

When looking at the strength of starting XI's, I can also tell which teams have specific needs. This means a team has a position that is lacking a quality (average and above) starter.

Number of Important / Critical Needs:

Total	Team
6	CHI
5	ORL
3	FCC
2	MTL
2	NER
2	PHI
1	ATL
1	DCU
1	NYC
0	NYR
0	TFC
0	CLB

It's the positional holes that sink a teams season. Chicago and Orlando are way behind, at the moment. Add on that, three of these teams are in critical need of a starter. Orlando City, FC Cincinnati and DC United.

TEAM VALUES

Atlanta is tops in everything across the board. Most notably, Transfer Market values. The $66 million for their starters is easily double the next closest team. The seven players they carry on the bench is worth more than FIVE starting XI's.


There are still some moves to be made like Miguel Almiron, Kaku and Sebastian Giovinco, but for the most part, this is the way things will land by season start in March.

Value ($ millions) : Name
23 : Gonzalo Martínez (ATL)
17 : Miguel Almirón(ATL)
11 : Josef Martínez (ATL)
9 : Wayne Rooney (DCU)
9 : Ezequiel Barco (ATL)
7 : Sebastian Giovinco (TFC)
6 : Zack Steffen (CLB)
6 : Jozy Altidore (TFC)
5 : Nemanja Nikolic (CHI)
5 : Alejandro Romero Gamarra (NYR)
5 : Héctor Villalba (ATL)
4 : Gyasi Zardes (CLB)
4 : Lucas Rodríguez (DCU)

That's it for now. Next steps: I want to start adding where the player played as a youth and how long - also, do some work with salaries in relation to my evals and values. I'll continue to update these teams as the offseason moves along.

Thanks for reading.

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LINK TO EACH INDIVIDUAL TEAM PROFILE
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Preseason Look: Montreal Impact

Preseason Look: NY City FC

Preseason Look: DC United

Preseason Look: Orlando City

Preseason Look: Chicago Fire

Preseason Look: Toronto FC

Preseason Look: New England Revolution

Preseason Look: NY Red Bulls

Preseason Look: Philadelphia Union

Preseason Look: Atlanta United

Preseason Look: Columbus Crew

Pre-Season Look at FC Cincinnati

Crew Rd 32, KC Shut Crew Down

Sporting KC abruptly end the Crew hot streak in Columbus (photo: Sam Fahmi, Massive Report).

1ST HALF
Both sides started off in a test type mode trying to figure out the other side. Sporting proved to be the more evolved team and figured it out first.

After a quarter hour of KC went up of a Graham Zusi cross to Ike Opera right in the six yard box. Agustin Viana was laying on the ground with an apparent injury but camera angles would later show him peaking up to check the play.

The quality of Zusi's cross ultimately made Viana's decision to stay down look bad. Bad play by Viana (he popped up after the goal) but a goal was deserved as KC found plenty of space behind Trapp and Tchani all half.

2ND HALF
Coming out of the locker room Sporting dropped eight back and stayed disciplined. It was very similar to how Seattle beat the Crew with 10 men about a month ago.

Because of their style, Columbus has no answer for team with a defensive posture. Dominic Oduro had no space to break free and Federico Higuain was jammed in the middle.

The Crew ended up only getting two total shots off from open play all game. The other 10 shots came from set pieces.

The game ended with an exhausted and frustrated Crew side.

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GAME OVER, THOUGHTS

• Sporting played the Crew smartly as Columbus basically has only two cards to play in attack:

1. Through balls that get behind the defense (Oduro's speed)
2. Set Pieces

• KC took care of both of those things. They shut the Crew down almost in total.

• Tchani and Trapp were playing on top of each other all night. This comes after three games were they kept good spacing in holding roles. This was more do to the way KC played and them not knowing how to work around it.

• Nobody on the Crew played terrible, KC just are better at more things.

• Federico Higuain seemed to pick up an injury early on but stayed in the game and slowed him.

• To many it might appear simple what KC did to the Crew but it always amazes me how many teams do not prepare for each opponent. KC prepared and executed. It should be appreciated.

• Columbus only has a week off than two matches against NE to finish up the schedule.

The offseason has basically started for this team.