The time has come. This weekend, the NWSL will return as the first professional sports league in the United States to take the field since the COVID-19 pandemic began. After writing previews since before the Challenge Cup was even announced (here are parts one and two), we’re excited to share our final set on the last three teams in the league.
Read MoreIn the time since the first round of mini-previews, the 2020 NWSL season has taken the form of a short tournament called The Challenge Cup, which is to be played from the end of June until the end of July. Many questions remain about how the competition will shape up, including which players will ultimately choose to participate. In this edition of mini-previews, we travel out west to preview OL Reign, Portland Thorns, and Utah Royals FC. From name changes to significant roster overhauls to new coaching staff, each of these teams has something new in store for the upcoming season.
Read MoreThe eighth season of the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) was supposed to kick off on April 18th. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the beginning of the season has been postponed until shrugs, well…eventually… someday… we hope. We’re hard at work creating full season previews, but while we wait for games to start up, we wanted to give fellow woso fans a little something to read. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing some of what we’re thinking about in hopes of starting conversations about the upcoming season now. Think of these as the previews of our previews.
Our first set of teams are all in very different places coming into this season. One hopes to continue dominance. Another’s offseason changes potentially signal a new chapter for the club. The third must find a way to cope with the glaring departure of arguably their most important player.
Read More“Parity translates to mediocrity. It doesn’t translate to excellence.” - Bruce Arena (2014)
You know, it’s kind of easy to imagine why the coach of the Los Angeles Galaxy might feel that way. After all, circa 2014, they were still the biggest club around, flexing their money advantage as much as the rule book would allow them and maybe sometimes just a little bit more. The Galaxy were more or less a lonely yacht moored in a league mostly populated by the kind of boat owned by upper middle class hobbyists. Those boats that are often neglected, dock fees piling up, the owners wondering if this thing is actually worth any of the hassle.
And to be clear, I don’t think he’s wrong. The boat he found himself the captain of in the middle of 2019 was a result of that parity. Mediocre was a charitable way to describe the mess Bruce inherited following the bizarre and disastrous tenure of Brad Friedel, a captain who motivated his crew by holding a can of gasoline and waving around a torch.
Read MoreOver the last two years, Giovanni Savarese has led the Timbers to overachieve in his first year as coach and underachieve in his second. Through this, Savarese has struggled to find his best formation, play in his preferred style, and make the team his own. In his third season at the helm it looks like he may finally have a team of players that is built to fit his desired methods and approach.
Read MoreSo I wrote the preview for Colorado, and I’m like ‘they’re solid, and they made upgrades - mid-table or better’. I wrote the preview for LAFC, and I’m like ‘they were the best team in MLS in 2019 - they’ll stay at or near the top of the league for sure.’
Orlando City? I don’t even begin to know, man. And anyone who tells you otherwise is full of cow manure.
Read MoreLast season was a down year for the New York Red Bulls, and yet they still ended their season with a perfectly respectable first round playoff loss. They enter 2020 with a few franchise faces missing, but primed for a new youth movement.
2019 in Review
What a disappointing season 2019 was for the New York Red Bulls. The Red Bulls are in an interesting place these days as an organization. Having lost the greatest manager in the world (don’t look it up, trust me it’s true I did the math), the Chris Armas era has been, well, completely unremarkable. Whereas in previous seasons the organization drew plaudits for finding so much success despite having a low payroll, focusing mainly on youth and promoting from within, last season they sort of resembled what you’d expect from a team that had a low payroll, and focused on youth and promoting from within.
Read MoreProbably the simplest way to summarize 2019 for the Vancouver Whitecaps is to say that they overachieved and still finished last in the Western Conference. Now, when I say they overachieved, clearly that doesn’t mean a ton, given how things ended up. But, it gives you a sense of how bad 2019 actually was for Vancouver. The Whitecaps outperformed expected goals, expected goals against, and expected points, but finished last in the West and ahead of only FC Cincinnati in the MLS standings.
Now, there wasn’t much to build on going into 2019 and Marc dos Santos brought in a ton of new players in his first year in charge, so as frustrating as 2019 likely was for the Whitecaps and their supporters, it probably wasn’t a shock.
One thing the Whitecaps did excel at in 2019 was limiting the quality of chances they allowed. Sitting back in a fairly low defensive block, the Whitecaps did a decent job of forcing opponents to take shots from low xG spots. They were actually one of the best teams in MLS in terms of expected goals per shot conceded. But, and you had to know there was a but coming there, they gave up over 100 shots more than anyone else. It doesn’t matter if you’re forcing teams to take low percentage shots if you give up that many shots because at some point you’re going to give up goals, and Vancouver did. A lot. If Vancouver can figure out a way to continue to limit shot quality but cut down on the number of shots they concede, that could be an area of significant improvement in 2020.
Read MoreBob Bradley came in with something to prove in 2018, the franchise’s first year. In interview after interview, he reminded folks that he skippered Chicago Fire to the double in 1998, the club’s first year of existence, winning both MLS Cup and the US Open Cup. Bob had similar ambitions for LAFC, and his ownership built him a team - with Carlos Vela and Walker Zimmerman and Eduard Atuesta and Laurent Ciman - that got pretty close in both 2018 and 2019.
Read MoreReal Salt Lake are not a team that’s going to spend big to bring in foreign talent, like a lot of Western Conference teams did this winter. According to Transfermarkt, RSL’s roster has the lowest total market value of any team in MLS. Under former manager Mike Petke, RSL were decent, though, in spite of their talent deficit. Last season they finished third, won their first round playoff matchup, and were that not far off from beating the eventual MLS Cup winning Seattle Sounders in the Conference Semifinal.
Because they did not do much to strengthen the squad in terms of talent, RSL’s most important offseason move was naming Freddy Juarez the team’s fifth head coach, after he guided the team from August on as the interim. Their ability to improve in 2020 will hinge on Juarez’s ability to coach up the roster. His two biggest opportunities are two things that were consistent roadblocks for the team under Petke - RSL’s attacking mechanics and creativity, and their youth development. If Juarez can get those two things right, Real Salt Lake has the capacity find themselves consistently in the top tier in the West. It will, however, probably take more than just 2020 to figure it out.
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