Power Rankings, 1-30 | Matchday 19
Very little movement as we start the Summer of Soccer
Kind of slid under the radar since the Club World Cup started, and the Gold Cup started, but Matchday 19 was kind of a banger – one that saw a new team atop the Supporters’ Shield standings. And so, as usual, I wrote:
• Philadelphia's pipeline shines, NYCFC get creative & more from Matchday 19
I really, really loved having games on Thursday & Friday nights, by the way. If I was the MLS schedule Tsar, I’d have two standalone games on Friday night, two on Sunday night and one on Monday night. The rest of the schedule would just happen on Saturday as it always does.
A guy can dream.
Now, here’s my vote for this week’s MLSsoccer.com Power Rankings:
Vancouver Whitecaps: Second loss of the year, but they were playing short-handed against a good team, and they showed well. Not gonna drop ‘em yet, but the upcoming schedule is a monster.
Philadelphia Union: Atop the Shield, but not atop the Power Rankings just yet.1
San Diego FC: Endlessly impressed by this team. If they beat Vancouver this weekend, they go atop the West.
Nashville SC: Make it 11 unbeaten, and the way they did it against Chicago – just hitting another gear in the second half – was impressive.
LAFC: Uhhh, I’m writing this before the Chelsea game.
Inter Miami: Oscar Ustari saved them in the first half. The fight they showed in the second half had been beyond them for most of this year.
Orlando City: Got the goal, got the shutout, got the win. Nothing pretty, but job well done (especially after those last two outings).
Columbus Crew: A much-needed bounce-back after their humiliating last outing.2
Minnesota United: They are who I’ve said they are.
FC Cincinnati: More encouraged by the defensive performance – not just the backline, but strangling things through midfield – than by the result. Which was a good one.
Seattle Sounders: Man, they deserved a point out of that game vs. Botafogo. That was their best performance of the year.3
NYCFC: Ruthless and comprehensive. If Hannes Wolf is going to start scoring consistently – Pascal Jansen used the word “consistent” about 15 times in his postgame presser – the Pigeons will climb.
New England Revolution: An anemic performance, but I’m mostly giving them a pass given their recent form.
RBNY: An anemic performance, but I’m mostly giving them a pass given their recent form.
San Jose Earthquakes: They were clearly the better team, and deserved that point despite playing a man down for the final 35 minutes.4
Portland Timbers: I’m relatively bullish on this team, but a warning sign: They’re down to 12th in the West on xGD, and have come out on the right side of that metric just once in the past five games.
Chicago Fire: Got a lesson on the gap between themselves and the big boys. I’m really, really interested in seeing how they attempt to address that in the summer window.
Atlético de Charlotte: Fought hard, but their attack lacks any kind of centerpiece when Pat Agyemang isn’t around to do the Marshawn Lynch thing.
Austin FC: Definitely playing better, and have now won two straight after a long drought.
Houston Dynamo: That was pathetic. If they miss the playoffs by a point or three, that’s the game they’ll look back at.
FC Dallas: Absolutely buried Sporting. Maybe hit on something with the latest iteration of the 4-4-2, which is really more of a 4-4-1-1?
Sporting KC: This might be too high.
Atlanta United: This might be too high.
Colorado Rapids: This might be too high.
Toronto FC: This might be too high.
Real Salt Lake: This might be too low?5
St. Louis City: Have looked better under the interim manager, but a home draw vs. the Galaxy is pretty brutal.
Montreal Impact: Good win. And goodbye, Nathan Saliba. Bonne chance in Belgium.
D.C. United: Yuck.
LA Galaxy: Four points from two games!
They’re playing good ball, and haven’t lost in months. But they lack a signature win over a top tier team (that matchday 2 win over a mess of a Cincy side doesn’t count). They’ve got three straight on the road coming up, with the 2nd and 3rd of those against Columbus and Nashville.
Let’s see what happens. ↩
It also ended a 6-game winless skid. That was bound to come to an end at some point – Columbus weren’t playing poorly, they were just finishing like shit. Related: I’m starting to be somewhat concerned about Daniel Gazdag. ↩
Cristian Roldan was the best player on the field against the Copa Libertadores champs. He absolutely ran that game. ↩
Bruce Arena is figuring out the defense. This team’s gonna be a real problem for the rest of the West. ↩
Zavier Gozo’s fun! He doesn’t fit snugly into any player archetype, but right now he’s finding ways to be an effective and productive attacker at 18. Hell yeah. ↩
