Take Gun...Don't Shoot Foot

These are the voyages...

Or, winning, how can Major League Soccer flourish going forward?

The simple answer: Get the lawyers together. Get the owners together. Get the best soccer minds together. Put them all on the next Virgin Galactic shuttle scheduled to blast into space. Set the shuttle's controls for indefinite orbit.

Don't bring them back until they write a new set of guidelines for the operation of Major League Soccer.

Things that MUST be included within Major League Soccer's revolutionary, incredibly simple, new enterprise (Think, Enterprise, the spaceship. "North American Soccer: these are the voyages of the soccership Major League Soccer. It's fifty-year mission: to explore strange new, never before witnessed in North America, worlds of competition, to seek out the testicles of Major League Soccer's owners and start a new footballing civilization. To boldly go where no North American soccer team owner has gone before...no holds barred competition between Major League Soccer clubs, their owners and most importantly: rosters full of the young, diverse, melting-pot faces of the North American universe.)

And now, the rules:

1. The League offices will no longer dictate what players each club can sign.

2. The League offices WILL dictate the salary cap.

3. If there must be designated players, the limit will be (2), not more than (2), not less than (2). The number shall be (2). (2) Shall be the number.

4. The League will continue to expand until there are enough teams for a closed, two tiered league with promotion and relegation. (All you big business, oh-so-realist, apologists, stuff it. Soccer is a sport for the players, the people and there are no kings or queens in soccer. The owners can grow a pair and compete, just like the players do every day. Bunch of megalomaniac sissies. Nice job up to this point, though.)

5. The league will have unfettered access to all teams' financial dealings, in order to keep owners from floating off into space.

6. There will be no more allocation process.

7. The new salary cap will be no less than $6,000,000 per team (This will more than likely triple in seven year's time, as the next TV deal should be in the $500,000,000 per year range).

8. If teams want to sign only 25 players (this should be the league minimum), so be it.

9. If teams want to sign 40 players (this should be the league maximum), so be it.

10. Every team will have at least 15 North American born players on their first team roster.

In summary: Take the next step. Get the clubs and owners competing. Build rosters
around the North American born player, there's millions of them and they're good, really good. And get the owners competing. Did I say "get the owners competing?"

Chicago 1 - 1 Columbus

Crew and Fire played to a draw last night. The match was a surprisingly pleasant one in comparison to most of the matches the Crew play in Bridgeview, Ill. Speaking of ill, it might have been even more pleasing had I not been suffering from food poisoning yesterday (and still recovering today).

With that, I missed putting up my predictions which I'm pretty bummed about but 'tis what it is. To make myself whole, I'm going to update the prediction table.

UPDATED PREDICTION TABLE
Before each match I usually review match picks from the outlets below to get a general feel for who is favored in the match. I find it a valuable outside perspective on the team this way. If you look at the right hand column of this site (desktop version) you see that I do that quite a bit.

In parentheses is how many correct picks in last 10 Crew matches.

55% (7) COLUMBUS DISPATCH
55% (6) WHOSCORED.COM
45% (6) MLSSOCCER
45% (4) WIN DRAW WIN
41% (6) GOAL.COM
36% (4) BET365
36% (4) HOME TEAM
23% (4) TABLE POSITION
--% WV HOOLIGAN
--% MASSIVE REPORT

• Graham Ruthven for WhoScored.com and Adam Jardy, Dispatch beat writer for the Crew are my top two at picking Columbus matches. Both being above 50% is borderline astonishing.

• MLSsoccer.com's "pick em" feature (where I take the consensus of the group) and betting tip site Win Draw Win are not far behind.

• Home Team and Table Position lagging tells me that Crew results have been inconsistent this year. I expected them to pick up steam as the season wore on but the Crew haven't really found a rhythm yet. That plays out here as the can't win more at home nor bet those below them on a regular basis.

Drain Bamage and Lajor Seague Moccer

Or...MLS is a physical league with exciting, end-to-end, fast, athletic games.

How do you like your soccer, futbol, or (gag) footy?

Do you enjoy seeing full-speed, head-on collisions? Do you like the occasional cleats-up, full-blooded tackle? Maybe you thrill to the sight of tone-setting midfield messages delivered from an angle kindly described as "mostly from the side."

Maybe you prefer to see teams move the ball smartly from the back, through the midfield, to the attacking third. Perhaps a well organized defense, which most often wins possession by goading teams into poorly chosen passes, is your French Tickler.

Perhaps lightning fast counters make your pupils dilate and your heart go pitter patter. Do you stand and shout whenever the goalie's fingertips miraculously push the ball wide of the post?

Probably, each of the above in-game occurrences twists your synapses at least a little bit.

But, what of the above most-popularly defines Major League Soccer's style of play each week?

The average "I don't watch MLS"/Euro-snob/Full of BS/"I define my level of intelligence and self-worth by my negative attitude towards American soccer and its horribly inept, not able to walk and chew gum at the same time players" classifies Major League Soccer on the evolutionary timeline somewhere around troglodyte.

The casual fan simply states "MLS is okay. It's getting better. Why does it take so long to get out of the stadium parking lot after the game?"

The more dedicated MLS fan gravitates to "Major League Soccer is fast, maybe a little too fast. It's rough, maybe a little too rough. It's athletic and a little sloppy, but it's getting better."

The dedicated fan would be the winner of the "Describe Major League Soccer" competition. The dedicated fan has seen the leaps, stumbles, valleys and peaks of North America's top league. The dedicated fan sees the light within the game, the immensely talented young American players sprinkled throughout MLS. While the dedicated fan cringes a little when a game goes the way of undefined head-scratcher, that same fan simultaneously smiles and worries at the thought of where MLS is headed.

The dilemma for those of us who follow MLS is this: will the league persist with the idea that fast, strong, athletic and bordering on an insanely level, take little risk, playing field (see Larry Johnson's post a couple of days ago) is the way to go. Or, will Major League Soccer (more precisely, the individual clubs) truly grasp the underlying golden calf of American soccer? The millions of youngsters knocking the ball around almost every corner of the United States.

These kids are good. Good like, way better than the average kid playing ten or twenty
years ago.

Many of the prognosticators out there bemoan the rapid expansion of Major League Soccer. The anxiety, rightly, springs from the idea that there is not enough talent to go around and that with each new team added to the league, the product suffers. Two options exist to fly right past the worry that the product in Major League Soccer stadiums is suffering. Significantly increasing the salary cap is the most obvious solution. The less obvious solution is trusting the young American player.

I vote for both, and I believe the next three to five years will see the clubs within Major League Soccer look more like their brethren overseas.

With the advent of a new TV contract (almost $100 million/year) and team academies producing more and more of the newest additions to team rosters, the proof of Major League Soccer moving away from physical, fast, athletic play to a more mature and cultured game is starting to be seen. The transition will speed up over the next few years.

If Major League Soccer can hold tight and keep from shooting itself in the foot with all the new money flowing in, the next step (in about seven years) will be quite wondrous to see.

Around about 2020/2021 Major League Soccer should have at least 24 teams and possibly more. The next TV contract will dwarf the one just signed. By 2020/2021 Major League Soccer team rosters should be spilling over with proven American talent on par with some of the best leagues in the world. If you haven't had a chance to go out and see the youth players in this country lately, do yourself a favor, go watch some academy games. Hell, go watch some kids play in the park on the weekend. There are truly talented youngsters all over this country.

Hopefully, in seven years time we won't be talking about Drain Bamage and Lajor Seague Moccer or how excitingly physical, fast and athletic our league has become. Hopefully, and take note right now (it's going to happen), a number of the best players in the world will be American kids.

Chart: Crew Passing Summary

No question that this year the Columbus Crew have topped the league in passing accuracy and ball possession (which go hand-in-hand because possession is tracked by number of passes and not actual clock time).

If you hover of each circle it should give you individual player minutes (also the size of the circle), % pass accuracy and average passes per game. The black dots are league averages. You'll notice that the Crew have players above most league averages save a few midfielders (Speas, Meram and Finlay slightly below).

Passing: Per Game and Accuracy | Create Infographics

Some other callouts; Crew forwards are mostly around league averages here (just that goal getting thing we need to look at). Ultimately, this just shows that most of the Crew players are performing At or Above league averages, with only a few exceptions.

Berhalter has been impressively successful in this category, which is why I'm looking at it here. There is certainly much more to look at when evaluating a individual player but I think most of it starts here for this Crew regime.

Final callout is Wil Trapp. He's the one on the upper right.

"We Had a Chance to Win" - Every Coach in History

Crew Head Coach (and Sporting Director, because it seems we must say that) Gregg Berhalter recently stated something of the curious kind that Mr. Adam Jardy rightly and keenly picked up on in his "Covering the Crew" blog over at Dispatch.com.

“There are very few games – actually I can’t think of one game where we didn’t have a chance to win the game,” Berhalter said after Monday’s training session at the Crew’s facility in Obetz.

Not sure if Berhalter is a mad genius or more just a thinker of a man with recording device in front of him. There's probably only a few people that have actually watched each Crew match this year and fewer still that know enough about the sport to say, "hey dude, yer wrong"

Looking at it that way, he's a mad genius.

For me, the Jury is deliberating on the the genius part, but what is undeniable to me is the Berhalter the Thinker side of things. Has the Crew been in most games this year? Yeah, okay. Sure they have. But you could also say that about Robert Warzycha coached teams the past few years as well.

Did you know that only three teams have lost more than half their games by more than one goal this year? I guess now that I write that, it seems pretty abstract. Even still. That'd be New England, Chivas USA and the godawful Houston Dynamo. Everyone else keeps it pretty close (which is the point of bringing up the abstract).

Major League Soccer is designed to do just this, so no real surprises here. Does make it boring as shit though. This is something I've thought a lot about over the past few years. Do I really want things to be close every year? Do I want a Warzycha and McCullers to have a chance each year? For you NFL fans... do you want a Mangini or Shurmur with a shot each year? How about those Cavs fans out there and Mike Brown. Byron Scott? Are you willing to look past and accept failure because the happen to be coaching in the city you happen to live in?

It becomes more of an philosophical type question if you continue down this path. Do YOU - as a person whose identity is so wrapped up in city - want to believe you have a chance to win a championship year in and year out no matter the incompetence or do you want to see your favorite sport played at the highest possible level, excellence and hard work rewarded.

It's an argument that reminds me of the famous Jacques-Louis David painting "The Death of Socrates." I was learned (rightly or wrongly) that it was Socrates pointing to the Divine. All the gods, or singular god, that he believed in. It was meant to be defiant. Stating that the purpose in life was to that of something higher, something not of humankind and that striving for the divine was the purpose in life.

Continuing with art history course, with Raphael's "The School of Athens" you again see this theme as Aristotle walks with Plato, both trying to reason whether or not that greatness was with the divine and not as reasoned here on earth.

What isn't unanswered - is that most of what teams in MLS strive for - is not anywhere close to what Socrates, Aristotle or Plato wrote about. No. MLS is looking more to build the perfect cheap labor. That TV stand you find at Walmart or Target - because you are willing to settle.

From this standpoint, there is something that interests me. It is that this Walmart / Target model is based on your willingness to settle for crap products. High sales good. Low... bad. They also look at customer satisfaction, though. Can't sell things that fall apart, right?

NET PROMOTER SCORE

Or NPS. I like the idea. Throw out the average scores (close games) in favor of just the bad and good. In soccer I see it as the 1-0 or 0-1 or Draw type games. The close ones that Berhalter talks about. NPS tries to quantify that by just taking the low and high. Lose big, win big. Toss the rest. Let's look at who has done that then.

Who has won more by two or more than lost, per match played. I use a percentage as the "promoter". It's the percentage of more +2 games won as overall games played.

Team	2+ Loss	2+ Win	Diff in 2+	Games Played	"Promoter"
L.A. Galaxy	0	4	4	18	22.2%
DC United	1	5	4	19	21.1%
Colorado	2	5	3	20	15.0%
Sporting KC	1	4	3	21	14.3%
San Jose	0	2	2	18	11.1%
Toronto FC	1	3	2	18	11.1%
Seattle	2	4	2	19	10.5%
FC Dallas	1	3	2	21	9.5%
Real Salt Lake	2	3	1	20	5.0%
Philadelphia	2	3	1	21	4.8%
Portland	2	2	0	21	0.0%
New York RB	3	3	0	20	0.0%
Columbus	3	2	-1	21	-4.8%
Vancouver	2	1	-1	20	-5.0%
Chicago Fire	2	0	-2	19	-10.5%
New England	7	4	-3	20	-15.0%
Montreal Impact	6	2	-4	20	-20.0%
Chivas USA	7	2	-5	20	-25.0%
Houston	10	2	-8	20	-40.0%

Not sure where this gets you, true reader (track it for yourself over here). Consider it the anti- "we are in most games" coach speak quote you always hear. This (like NPS metric) throws out those games and treats them as not important. The point is to be better than your opponent, not the same.

What is above are teams that win more by two goals then lose. Seems a good measurement of quality this far into the season, I guess. At least to me. Might not be Socrates, Aristotle or Plato but it's what we got here in Columbus.

Finlay Goal, Crew Win

Ethan Finlay might not of dragged the Columbus Crew to a victory yesterday, but he did score the winning goal in the sucker... Justin Meram's sublime touch (his first of the match, I think) providing the assist. Finlay is in some sort of rare form for a Crew player. Five goals and two assists in less than 800 minutes is some rare territory that I'll have to figure with over the new few days.

In the meantime; Ethan Finlay. A player in full form (he is getting close to league tops in goals plus assists with over 450 minutes played). A rare thing here in Columbus. Soak it in.

NPG+A* per 90 : Name (Team) Minutes
1.18 Clint Dempsey (SEA) 839
1.10 Fabian Espindola (DC) 1,222
1.00 Robbie Keane (LA) 1,439
0.92 Maximiliano Urruti (PDX) 786
0.91 Dominic Oduro (TOR) 494
0.88 Chad Barrett (SEA) 510
0.88 Obafemi Martins (SEA) 1,329
0.85 Kenny Cooper (SEA) 744
0.83 Fanendo Adi (PDX) 647
0.82 Thierry Henry (NY) 1,528
0.82 Joao Plata (RSL) 1,104
0.81 Luke Mulholland (RSL) 995
0.81 Brad Davis (HOU) 890
0.80 Mauro Diaz (DAL) 676
0.79 Ethan Finlay (CREW) 795

* Non-Penalty Goal + Assist

Podcast: Red Cards in Helltown - Episode IX

Rick Gethin and Larry Johnson go over the latest in soccer news here in Central Ohio.

00:34 HEADLINES
• Manchester United 7 vs LA Galaxy 0
• The other Manchester 4 vs Sporting KC 1
• Friendlies place in MLS season, Short vs Long Term
• DaMarcus Beasley to Houston Dynamo
• Summer window in the world of MLS
• Sporting KC "national training center"
• Sporting as a "club" with a mission statement!

14:10 COLUMBUS CREW NEWS
• Looking at trends, 1-2 Crew win (2nd in a row)
• Praising Ethan Finlay, in form
• Postgame Gregg Berhalter comments, notes
• Roster stability leading to results, chemistry
• The "intangibles"
• When to tinker with lineup
• Team building
• Hating on fighting for playoff spot... average
• Berhalter has the mind for tops in East
• Transfer window notes
• Jermaine Jones, back to MLS?

37:50 MLS HEADLINES
• ...more Jones
• Columbus as a destination
• Seeing a lot of good players on one team
• Crew players learning to play on there own
• Frank Lampard signing for MLS side NYCFC

51:35 QUICK HIT, WRAP UP
• Intangibles!
• Full year college soccer schedule
• Ian Thomson's piece (link)
• Aligning the schedules...

Predictions: Crew Rd 21, Revs Away

The Columbus Crew are up in New England today to take on the Revs at Gillette Stadium. Kickoff is 7:30 PM EST. Weather looks pleasant - clear and 70s.

GAME NOTES
CLB: Look to feature similar lineup as last week, Bedell up top
CLB: Parkhurst homecoming of sorts (drafted, played for Revs)
CLB: Haven't won on the road since March 30 (vs Seattle)
NER: Lost last 3 at home after winning previous 4
NER: 7 game losing streak overall
NER: Looking for answers, loaned away DP Jerry Bengtson

PREDICTIONS
Percentage listed is picking Crew games only. Sorted in descending order.

55% COLUMBUS DISPATCH ... COLUMBUS CREW
Beat writer Adam Jardy's lean has gotten seven Crew matches out of the last ten correct. "The Crew has proved that it does not back down from a road challenge," he says this week.

55% WHOSCORED.COM ... COLUMBUS CREW
0-1 for the Crew is the prediction from Graham Ruthven, "The Crew have a great chance to string together two straight MLS wins against a freefalling Revolution side."

45% GOAL.COM ... NEW ENGLAND
Pick is based off probably about 3 votes on the reader interactive section. It's been this way for a few weeks now. Goal.com has been very light on some of the MLS coverage, not hard to blame, interest is light. Attendance though.

45% MLSSOCCER ... (no picks yet)

45% WIN DRAW WIN ... COLUMBUS CREW
Crew favored. 45% of the Your Votes and Medium Stake on 0-1 away win.

40% BET365 ... NEW ENGLAND REVS
Fairly normal home odds this week 23/20 Revs (12/5 draw, 23/10 Away).

40% HOME TEAM ... NEW ENGLAND REVS

25% TABLE POSITION ... NEW ENGLAND REVS
Despite the horrid losing streak, Revs still atop the Crew in PPG.

--% WV HOOLIGAN ... (no pick)

--% MASSIVE REPORT ... (no pick)
Head on over to MR to get the latest from Patrick Murphy and his notes form recent practices / match preview.

MY PREDICTION

New England in is that familiar sports journalism area I like to call THE ZONE OF FUTILITY. I'm thinking about naming all these things because it's hard to explain how incredibly boring most of it is. What is THE ZONE OF FUTILITY? It's when you have a team on a bad run and writers just start talking about when the last time they had a bad run was and crank out a piece. I suppose it's fine, gotta write something, right?

Anyway, that's where the Revs are now and all their fans are now being subject to losing streaks of years past. This one is sort of special though and while long streaks like this do pepper result maps in MLS over recent times, they don't happen much. When they do, they are usually snapped after 6,7,8 games or so.

The Revs will eventually snap the streak and facing a below average Crew at Gillette is perfect opportunity. When I can't convince myself the Crew is a clear favorite alarm bells start going off. The Crew aren't here but if they play disciplined and frustrate the Revs early they will win.

Easier said than done however as a young and inexperienced group haven't performed well on the road this year and don't have a win since the opening month of the season.

We shall see. One thing is for certain - the pitch is fake.

12 Hours The Wrong Way

Well, the Crew aren't going the wrong way. In fact, it was great seeing the team play with intensity and effort against Crystal Palace last night. It's also great to see the Crew work in some of their local players (and homegrowns) into the senior team.

Guys like Wil Trapp and Josh Williams have carved out places in the starting lineup with their local team but you also see Darlington Nagbe, Michael Nanchoff, Eric Brunner and Justin Morrow make it as MLS regulars elsewhere. Ohio has proven the ability to manufacture talent. As the sport grows in the US (not just MLS) it will be those that can tap into it that will keep there noses in front.

On top of a wise investment it's also a great story to tell the rest of the world.

What isn't a good story (nor a wise investment) to tell the world is the summer friendlies MLS insists on playing and the older European big name players the league insists on over paying for.

ELEVEN TO ONE

There are not enough excuses in the land of unicorns and rainbows MLS lives in for a 7-0 evisceration that Manchester United put on the LA Galaxy last night. The game ended sometime after midnight eastern time so many didn't know of the shocking result until morning.

Not to be over looked last night was also the 4-1 Manchester City result over Sporting KC. This one was a bit closer but ultimately ended one sided.

Both games were broadcast to a larger TV audience. ESPN carrying one and Fox Sports 1 the other. What this means is that many of the new soccer fans in the US gained post Brazil were tuning in to see MLS get steamrolled, thus cementing and confirming perceptions that the league is inferior to other leagues in abroad.

Were points at stake? No. But it is ignorant to say they were meaningless. Not only was the regular US soccer crowd watching, but all the new post-World Cup news ones were as well.

THE OTHER PERCEPTION

Inferiority might dog Major League Soccer but the number one perception the league has had almost since the beginning is that of being a "retirement league." One confirmed to the larger masses this morning, when 36 year old Chelsea legend Frank Lampard was announced as NYCFC's most recent signing.

So when you add up the events of the twelve hours from when KC kicked off verses Manchester City to when MLSsoccer.com (the league's corporate site) promoting Lampard's signing this morning the sum is the same as it has always been.

The English side of me barely gets excited for Frank Lampard's arrival in MLS. Were you to pin him down, I think Frank is more excited about hanging out in NY next year just as much as he is playing a couple more competitive years. Not sure what going to be left of him after a short stint in Australia (not confirmed yet) while he waits for 2015.

Ultimately, at the end of today's announcement, I felt like MLS took a couple steps back and not forward (big steps, if you consider post World Cup attention). This isn't so much a knock on MLS or Lampard (or his father, since I used his pic up there). For folks that live in a MLS city, there is plenty to follow and like about the league but things like last night's results and today's signing only perpetuate stereotypes across the rest of the country (...and world).