Thierry Henry’s magic moments are key to Red Bulls form
It’s a modern sports cliche, particularly in the post-Moneyball era: if the regular season is all about skill and team-building and good process, then the playoffs are a glorious crapshoot in which luck, desire and moments of individual brilliance conquer all.
DC United fans learned this the hard way after watching their coach Ben Olsen pull off the turnaround to end all turnarounds in the regular season, only to see everything melt away in seconds after Péguy Luyindula’s second-half away goal effectively ended the tie on Saturday afternoon. Meanwhile New York continue to play their ageing French trump card Thierry Henry in a season in which MLS’s soon-to-be-retirees continue to rage against the dying of the light.
Not that Olsen didn’t prepare the troops well for New York at home after going down 2-0 in the first leg at Red Bull Arena. He encouraged his team to play patiently but incisively against a Red Bull side capable of some brilliant counter-attacking, especially with Henry pulling the strings behind the streaky Bradley Wright-Phillips in a now-familiar 4-2-3-1.
And that calm approach almost worked when Nick DeLeon headed down a quick, deadly cross from Taylor Kemp in the 37th minute to give United a one-goal lead at the RFK. Up until that moment DC looked relaxed, if not dominant. Observers might have been forgiven for believing a draw and maybe even a United winner at RFK was on the cards when Fabián Espindola nearly headed in moments later.
That all changed in a single moment: a pinpoint assist in the 57th minute from Henry, who had run to the byline to the left of goal before crossing perfectly for Luyindula to finish United’s season. It was yet another flash of technical brilliance from a soccer “Einstein”. Not even a Roy Miller red card or a Sean Franklin extra-time 2-1 “winner” for DCU would be enough to bridge the gap. The Red Bulls needed only a goal, a single moment, to flip the semi-final on its head, and they got it.
Discussing the foundation of his game this week, Henry told the press: “Right from the start, you have been told you have to share the glory, share the moments, share the ball.” The playoffs are all about these indelible moments, and as long as Henry still has some left to share after a long and venerable career, the Red Bulls have real grounds to hope for a trophy so elusive to the founding franchise it seems almost no one within it will yet mention it by name.
New England shouldn’t buy their own hype just yet
On Sunday evening, the New England Revolution, up 2-4 on aggregate in the Eastern Conference semi-final, needed only a draw at home in hash-less Gillette Stadium to ensure passage against the Columbus Crew, a team missing one of their most important players, Federico Higuaín, with a calf strain.
Instead, Jay Heaps’s team did what they have done a lot of lately – completely terrorize the opposition with the MVP form of Lee Nguyen, the incision of Kelyn Rowe, and the lethal touch of Teal Bunbury. Some believe the Revolution are among the best remaining teams in these playoffs, and a leading contender to win the MLS Cup.
If you’re just tuning in, that’s the same New England Revolution that lost eight consecutive matches spanning late May to early July and looked decidedly mediocre until a crucial late-season burst took them nearly to the top of the league. The natural inclination would be to look back over 2014 to see what New England did to overcome that terrible mid-season run of form and become one of the most threatening sides in MLS. Did Heaps tinker with formations? Was the addition of Jermaine Jones in defensive midfield a watershed moment, key in releasing the club’s more attack-minded players?
There may be grains of truth in these (particularly Jones’s influence), but in the end some teams hit their stride at the right time (see the Red Bulls). In light of this, perhaps the best thing the Revs did to turn around this season was not panic in the face of some poor results.
That same level-headedness is why the Revs shouldn’t buy their own hype just yet. Despite New England’s emphatic win, the Crew played their own part, failing to defend Bunbury’s second ball late in the first half and not tracking back to stop José Goncalves’s all-too easy goal in the second. New York, despite the loss of full-back Roy Miller to a red-card suspension, will be an altogether different proposition. The good news for Revs fans is that Heaps, who lambasted his team to a reporter at half-time despite earning the lead, probably knows this better than most.
Landon Donovan has the form a of man with nothing to lose
It was inevitable, really. Though the first of Landon Donovan’s three goals against Real Salt Lake was a team effort – Donovan’s head met AJ DeLaGarza’s dinked cross for the goal, which was the product of Marcelo Sarvas’s incisive pass, which was itself brought about by Stefan Ishizaki collecting a raking crossfield pass out wide to the right of goal, etc, etc – it ensured LD would be the talk of the game.
And not simply for his own brilliant hat-trick in the LA Galaxy’s 5-0 win, which clinched their place in the Western Conference final, but instead, yet again, for the failure of the US men’s national team coach, Jürgen Klinsmann, to take him to Brazil this past summer where the United States lost to Belgium in the round of 16. “I will never ever ever understand how Klinsmann left Landon Donovan off the USA team…#whatmoron,” one person tweeted mid-game. “Klinsmann should regret not taking [Donovan] to the World Cup,” wrote another. With another international break coming up this weekend, Donovan’s form for the Galaxy will no doubt garner a mention or two.
This view is a tad simplistic. For one, Donovan, who announced his impending retirement from football in early August, has since played some of the best football in his life, with 11 goals and 12 assists in his last 20 Galaxy matches. This is in sharp contrast to the 10 months preceding the World Cup in which Donovan managed to score three goals and earn four assists in 21 starts with LA. Though an influential talisman, Klinsmann wasn’t exactly off-base in excluding the player at the time.
But this raises another question: what if Donovan’s late-season surge, which could see him finish his career a champion, was in part the result of his national team exclusion and subsequent retirement? After all, Donovan admitted as much when his decision came toward the end of the summer. Though Donovan may be enjoying something of a lucky streak, he may also no longer feel the pressure that comes from having to prove something about yourself to others, whether US national team fans or Jürgen Klinsmann.
“When it’s all said and done,” Donovan told the press of his impending retirement this week, “there’s going to be some sadness, but there will be even more excitement because I will know for the first time in 16 years, I won’t have to worry about next year.” Landon is certainly playing like someone without a care in the world. The Galaxy may have the strongest weapon of any team left in the MLS playoffs: a peaking Landon Donovan with nothing to lose.
Seattle Sounders find defensive balance ahead of Western showdown
A 0-0 draw between the Seattle Sounders and FC Dallas late Monday night was, surprisingly, the most entertaining result of the Major League Soccer playoffs so far. The league’s introduction of the away-goal rule, which saw Seattle progress despite the deadlock, may have played a vital part in spurring that excitement, but it also gave Sounders coach Sigi Schmid some food for thought in preparing his defense against the LA Galaxy in what will be the unofficial MLS Cup final.
The windy first leg at Toyota Stadium saw Seattle nab a crucial away goal in a 1-1 draw against a physical, if less than dynamic, FC Dallas side under Oscar Pareja. The Sounders may have had reason to feel confident at home at CenturyLink, but FCD proved far more dangerous than their last outing might have suggested, probably due to the return of Mauro Díaz following a one-game suspension. Fabián Castillo’s lightning runs along the right looked far more effective than in Dallas’s previous few matches, and Tesho Akindele provided some good ballast on the other side of the pitch with Díaz back in the middle. Seattle looked at times more vulnerable than Sigi would have liked.
Vulnerable, but not docile. The Obafemi Martins/Clint Dempsey partnership was in full effect again, buoyed as ever by Ozzie Alonso in midfield and Marco Pappa playing a decent supporting role. Yet Seattle were at times too narrow, relying perhaps too much on Martins’s ability to hold up possession against two, sometimes three defenders at a time. Part of that came from Schmid’s reluctance to risk pushing his full-backs, DeAndre Yedlin and Leo González, too far up the pitch and expose his two centre-backs, Zach Scott and Chad Marshall. Though it may have neutered Seattle in attack a little at times (though not for large swaths of the second half), it gives Schmid some reason to hope for more balance than his team enjoyed toward the end of the season.
In the end, Pareja will wonder over his reluctance to make some substitutions for Dallas earlier in the game, with his side needing only a single goal to turn the match. For MLS, we will see a Western Conference final between the two major Supporters Shield challengers this season, and Seattle will get a chance to win an unprecedented treble. Though Schmid will rue the second-half injury to Alonso, Sounders fans can go into this final knowing they have done the business against LA at least once already this season …
