Orlando City SC 2018 Season Preview

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Orlando City SC 2018 Season Preview

Orlando City has rebuilt their roster with several blockbuster trades and signings this off-season. As they embark on their 4th MLS season, they finally look like a playoff-caliber team.

2017 in review

Orlando City came out of the gate guns blazing last March. The Lions started with a 7-1-0 record before things fell apart, and finished with a 10-15-9 record overall. Yes, that’s right. After starting the 2017 season with the strongest record in the league, Orlando City managed to secure just 3 more wins across the remaining 26 games. Curiously, their fall from grace apparently started in Week Eight, which is when former Ballon d’Or winner Kaka returned from injury and was re-inserted back into the lineup. It is both inaccurate and unfair to pin Orlando City’s poor 2017 season on him alone, because they had issues all over the field. But when a $7.1 million per year Designated Player can’t raise the level of a team, he is either past his prime or the team has far more problems besides him. For Orlando City in 2017, both were true.

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LA Galaxy 2018 Season Preview

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LA Galaxy 2018 Season Preview

One of the defining characteristics of storied franchises such the Lakers, Celtics, or Yankees is that even in times of struggle and departure from their usual dominance they've managed to come back around, regroup, and use new ways to find success. Usually that's due to executive leadership and deep pockets.

The success of the Galaxy hasn’t just been painted in the last eight years. The organization experienced great success in MLS 1.0, winning the Supporter’s Shield in 1998, the CONCACAF Champions Cup in 2000 (the second and last MLS club to win a CONCACAF tournament), both the Supporters Shield and MLS cup in 2002, and MLS Cup again in 2005. After some down years, they rebounded and won the cup and Supporter's Shield in 2011, then MLS Cup again in 2012 and 2014. They were dominant, struggled, and returned to dominance. In 2017 they struggled again. After one of the most disappointing seasons in team history president Chris Klein has been asked to rebuild one of the most storied organizations in MLS for the second consecutive season.

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DC United 2018 Season Preview

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DC United 2018 Season Preview

The 2017 campaign was a disaster for D.C. United. But a top-to-bottom roster rebuild and a brand new stadium in Audi Field should give United fans reason to be optimistic about the 2018 season.

2017 Recap

D.C. United came into the 2017 season riding the high of a late-season surge from 2016, but 2017 turned out to be a disaster. United finished dead last in the Eastern Conference with just 32 points, and second-to-last overall. A few key players succumbed to father time, several others could not stay healthy, and inadequate depth behind them made it a hard season for United fans to stomach.

Offensively, United was just not the same attractive, “total football” team that lit the league on fire in late 2016. They generated only 41.78 xG across 34 games (4th worst in the league). To make matters worse, United was only able to secure 27 of those, making it the lowest-scoring team in MLS. As much as the lack of goals was frequently pointed to as the main problem last season, United was also a mess defensively. They allowed 57 goals (2nd worst in the league) compared to 55.59 xGA (also 2nd worst in the league), which meant that the Black and Red finished with a -30 goal differential overall (the worst in the league).

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Albert Camus, Don Garber, and the health of MLS

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Albert Camus, Don Garber, and the health of MLS

While all humans endeavor to seek truth, we are also drawn to the power of a good story. There is a potential conflict between a story and truth that gives a lot of power to the storyteller, as they can effectively communicate a truth through a story or they can choose to mask the truth, and it might be difficult to tell the two apart. Albert Camus said that, “[f]iction is the lie through which we tell the truth.” Literature becomes classic when that truth resonates across cultures and generations, but as the #FakeNews and Russian hacker plot lines would indicate, this capacity to write fiction can also be harmful. Look no further than the sport represented by this website. The genesis of online fake news might well be the stories told during the European transfer market, where leverage seeking agents of information cohabitate to create what is generously referred to as “silly season.” Luckily, sports are harmless. Other areas of life are less so. So the dilemma persists: what is the best way to communicate truth?  Through the power of a story or with cold hard facts?

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2018 MLS Combine Player Profile Crash-Course

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2018 MLS Combine Player Profile Crash-Course

The 2018 MLS Combine started yesterday, with players coming to Orlando from around the world with the hopes that they might be taken in next week’s SuperDraft. Thankfully for SuperFans like us, tomorrow through Thursday the league will be streaming the games live. Because not everyone follows the college game, we've brought together three of the top minds in college scouting to give you scouting reports and profiles of many of the players invited to the combine. Each author has watched, been present for, and/or tracked data on multiple games involving each player they covered.

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Expectation Management: Carlos Rivas vs Mike Grella

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Expectation Management: Carlos Rivas vs Mike Grella

Three years ago I became a proud member of the ‘Congregation of Grella’.

As a tremendously under-appreciated winger in his time with the New York Red Bulls, Mike Grella has done just about everything a person could have asked him to do on his modest wage ($188,250 in 2017). His humble beginning, tremendous back story and journeyman career only add to the legend of a very successful stint in Harrison, New Jersey.

As the theme has gone the last few seasons, the Red Bulls are doing what they can to limit their risk with aging veterans. They have been cutting ties with those at the tail-end (or beyond) of their prime playing ability. They have been flipping those assets by turning them into opportunities for club.

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Tim Howard, Frank Rost, and MLS' Abandonment of the Average American Player

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Tim Howard, Frank Rost, and MLS' Abandonment of the Average American Player

The offseason is a truly wonderful time for every backup player. Will this be the offseason their hard work is rewarded? Perhaps they'll receive a new contract with their current club. Maybe they will move up the depth chart or see greener pastures with a new team. The winter break changes teams’ concerns from what players have done last season to what the players could do next year. For backups and fringe starters, the starting of a new season offers hope in a variety of ways.

As ASA’s resident goalkeeper dude, the offseason carousel is truly a righteous ride. Each new year holds the potential of a Tim Melia: a goalkeeper who was passed on by every team in the league only to become the best. And then there are the Sean Johnsons and Joe Bendiks, players whose careers are finally ready for a positive turn with a new team. But don’t forget about the youngsters, like Alex Bono and Zack Steffen, who are given a chance to take the reins despite being a little green. With all these positive strides in the league, I was curious about the most important position’s payment for their services.

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MLS Prospects in the NCAA Quarterfinals

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MLS Prospects in the NCAA Quarterfinals

The MLS Conference Finals are done, and only MLS Cup remains on the American soccer schedule for 2017.  The MLS fans' offseason depression is starting to kick in for the long, dreary (read: short and really not that bad) offseason.  Not so fast, my friend… continue the fun with the NCAA quarterfinals this weekend!

Between Homegrown Players, Generation Adidas contracts, and January’s SuperDraft, it’s a fair bet that over the next two months you’ll hear many of the big names still playing in the Elite Eight (especially if you’re a Chicago Fire supporter). Satiate your need for statistics and learn who leads the high-flying Demon Deacon and Tar Heel attacks, the backbone of the Hoosiers’ defensive fortress, and how to tell the Cardinals from the Cardinal (that one’s tough for all of us).

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What's the Point of Practicing Penalties?

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What's the Point of Practicing Penalties?

Note: If you're not interested in the math, skip down to “With that in mind". Alternatively, if you're especially interested in math, checkout my github repo with the data and a jupyter notebook.

What if we wanted to rank MLS penalty kick takers? What would be the best way to go about it?

We could look at historical PKs, and take the players who have converted the highest percentage of their chances. Here are a handful a players who have scored 100% of their regular season penalties, going back to 2011:

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Sebastian Giovinco: Master of the Free Kick

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Sebastian Giovinco: Master of the Free Kick

When Sebastian Giovinco earned himself a free-kick just outside the penalty box on Monday night it felt as though fate was serving up one of those great moments. Ninety seconds later, as the 72nd minute expired, Giovinco delivered on the set-up by sending a curled ball over the half-hearted leap of the Red Bulls' defensive wall. It went barely above the head of roaming fullback Michael Murillo, goalkeeper Luis Robles couldn't move to his right fast enough, and Toronto was thrust into the lead in the first leg of the Eastern Conference semifinals.

The goal was amazing and the moment was a big one for a team on the road. As mentioned shortly afterwards on the broadcast and later repeated on seemingly every facet of social media, Seba has now scored more set piece goals than any other player since his arrival to Major League Soccer in 2015.

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