inter miami has done a pretty good job of winning no matter who has been starting this season.

USMNT should have tried to hire this other Argentinian Martino...

man wtf happened to RSL?
I know they got rid of gomez and savarino but even still they are just beyond words bad all of a sudden.

also is it just recency bias or are LAG just consistently not good in the 1h and elite in the 2h?

Non-Pen G+A per 90:

1. Messi 1.83
2. Suarez 1.32
3. Martinez 1.28
4. Acosta 1.04

This Martinez fella for NYCFC must be having quite a season to be in the same stratosphere as the 2 GOATs.

interesting. soon-to-be 26 year old costa rican winger. played in costa rica for several years before moving to lower league belgium. nycfc plucked him out of the 2nd division after a solid 15 scorepoints in 2000 minutes season, and he has 14 in 1000 this year. kind of want to say it's a fish on a heater situation based on his history, and the fact that he has 0 goals in 13 for costa rica, but there's something there with this guy. obviously, if he's outperforming everyone but messi and suarez.

i wouldn't read too much into it

there's a massive amount of scoring variance in soccer in addition to limited samples and vastly different player usages and coaching philosophies

ie he could simply be playing in a system that funnels him the ball and anyone in that spot would be scoring


furthermore, costa rica infamously plays an extremely defensive version of soccer where they basically park the bus and hope to score on the counter or bank the point in a tie or try to win in pennos in an elimination game


regarding the variance - 3 of his goals happened in a 10 minute span where he came on as a substitute late in a game they were already winning and thus the opposition was going full on attack to which he didn't have too many defenders to content with when he got the ball in a forward position


it seems he's being used exclusively as a striker with nyfc whereas other teams other used him as a winger, costa rica has been utilizing him as the central striker but he's part of a group of 3 up front so the touches in the box are distributed more to others

nyfc does a 4-2-3-1 which funnels him the ball up front whereas costa rica does a 3-4-3


but he seems pretty good, he's scored well over his entire career and at 25 is just entering his prime, given he was sold for 400k and then nyfc got him as a free transfer this year it does seem like a good bit of scouting on their behalf

whitecaps playing lag ..... til the galaxy signed marco reus

actually, he's like 5 years older than i thought he was, so this makes sense


also lafc apparently signed the also very old olivier giroud, wild stuff


retirement league confirmed big time back

2' Langoni L. [NER]
34' Borrero D. (Yusuf A.) [NER]

revs with a 2-0 lead on messi fc!



oh, right

lol at the lag game.
I can only imagine the day when mankind invents the technology to accurately keep track of time and not just let games go for as long as the ref feels like it.

This was the last weekend of the season apparently...these things get forgotten with weeks of international breaks...

also wow at unleashing Messi late to run up the score vs......New England Revolution? Umm, ok, I guess he needed this practice for the lol MLS playoffs?

90+11 is tite tite tite


i guess we goin to lolcanada for the lolwildcatr round. makes sense

oct 22: atlanta fc head to montreal to visit their old pal josef martinez. i was gonna say glgl playing in montreal outdoors in late october, but i just checked and the forecast is 25 celsius and sunny. thank o'brandon

oct 23: cascadia derby with the timbers coming up the i5 to hand vancouver whitecaps their latest indignity, probably. wouldn't even be their 1st home playoff loss to portland lol

winners play miami and lafc, respectively

others matchups:

columbus v nyrb
cincinnatti v nyfc
orlando v charlotte

seattle v houston
salt lake v minnesota lakers
lag v colorado

ny vs ohio in the east, and til it's a 7-hour drive from charlotte to orlando? potrland/vancouver is actually the closest matchup this round. wild


and what is this best-of-3 bullshit? idk, but i guess it means more games, and playoffs is as good as mls gets, so bring it on i guess

Montreal goes 5-1-1 in their last 7 so salvage a playoff spot, and they're playing without a single DP. They have 1 DP in Wanyama, but he's so bad now that he doesn't even play. I guess Saputo got his wish of backing into the playoffs without spending anything. Doesn't matter anyway as they're playing the Sacrifical Lamb Cup for the right to get fed to Inter Messi.

R1 best-of-3 sounds horrible. At most, you should do a 2 match tie, but 3 in soccer is overkill. Makes zero sense not to do multi-match rounds in the Conf SF and Conf F if the Conf QF is multi-match. Either all should be single-elim or all should be 2 match ties.

oops, the timbers/whitecaps game is in portland. that's much worse. wiki had it the other way around last night. bastards


yeah making the playoffs while getting ~nothing from dps actually is kind of impressive, but hopefully they spend a little next year. and hopefully wanyama's contract is finally over lol

welp
good thing they didn't put this one on tsn i guess...


do the fightin impact have one big comeback in them?? probably not

it's happening??


edit:

sources confirn

Damn, all that for nothing.

speaking of pointlessly doing things ..... WHITECAPS. 1-0


ryan gauld, who else? worth every penny

brian + ryan show. 2-0


scoring too early? probably, yes

ryan god chippy for 3-0


[?] real life

as we all predicted...

Caps ghana ship this

I have to admit, I have no idea what is going on in the MLS playoffs other than Inter Messi won their opening first round match tonight.

this is the official playoff bracket for any one who is interested:

https://www.mlssoccer.com/competitio.../2024/bracket/

lol, not impossible but yeah probably not. hopefully they don't get embarrassed by lafc though. a home win would be nice


only 2-1, but a ~3.12-0.85 xg beatdown. might check out the highlights at some point to see what all those chances were about


colorado @ la galaxy tonight, was considering checking some of that out, but it's not on tv so guess i won't

interesting schedule with 2 games each for the next 3 days

halftime in la, galaxy up 1-0. was gonna say that the stats are borked showing the xg at 0.05-0, but given that the goal attempts are 1-0 maybe it's legit. lots of passing from the galaxy, 75% possession, but nobody trying to score. anyway check out joveljic's 1st half goal if you want to see what a 0.05xg bink looks like (maybe)


edit: 3-0 on 0.07xg? yeah this has to be ****ed

another 5-0 game lol

and why did puig play the whole thing? rapids should have taken the opportunity to kick his ass, especially since lag had the ball the entire time. 2.66-0.02 xg, rapids finally managed 1 lame goal attempt. thanks for turning up

orlando's entire offense seems to be get the ball to facundo torres. anyway they're up 1-0 on a facundo torres goal