2021 MLS Season Previews: Columbus Crew, Portland Timbers, and Toronto FC
/The 2021 MLS season is nearly upon us! This is our first batch of team previews, three teams with seasons that start this week in the CONCACAF Champions League. Let’s do this.
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The Crew Zelaray-won in 2020: Can They Do It Again in 2021?
By Eliot McKinley
Last year I concluded Columbus’ preview by saying:
“If record-signing Zelarayan plays as hoped, Nagbe proves to be an upgrade over Trapp, and the whole team doesn’t get injured like last season, the Crew could potentially contend in the East.”
Lucas Zelarayan did, Darlington Nagbe was, injuries didn’t bite too badly, and I think winning MLS Cup qualifies as contending in the East. Things are pretty great in Columbus right now. All of last year’s top contributors are returning, free agents are flocking to central Ohio, a brand new downtown stadium is opening this summer, and the Crew are one of the favorites to repeat as champions.
2020 in Review
At the MLS is Back tournament, the Crew looked undefeatable, that is until they were defeated in a shootout by Minnesota in the first knock-out round. Through October, Columbus was in the hunt for the Supporter’s Shield, but a rough month of October, coinciding with the absence of Zelarayan and Nagbe due to injury, had them almost limping into the playoffs. However, with the full squad available the Crew tidily dispatched their opponents in their first three rounds of the playoffs despite a COVID-19 outbreak amongst the team. Days before MLS Cup, Nagbe and Pedro Santos were ruled out due to positive tests, but the Crew dominated Seattle at the last big match at Historic Crew Stadium to lift their second MLS Cup.
Despite Columbus’ ultimate success, the underlying regular season numbers were rather pedestrian. The Crew put up -0.07 xGD per game, good for 14th in the league and were the only team not to win an away game. While Columbus finished second in the league with 21 goals allowed, they gave up 31.06 xG, only slightly better than FC Cincinnati’s 31.43. The Crew were rather fortunate in 2020 to get the third seed, and caught some breaks to keep home advantage throughout the playoffs. However, the Crew saved their best play for the playoffs, they had the best xGD per game and deservedly lifted the Cup.
Offseason Roster Changes
The Crew return basically all key players from last season, of those not-returning only backup keeper Andrew Tarbell and backup winger Youness Mokhtar played more than 500 minutes. With CONCACAF Champions league in the cards, Columbus loaded up on depth, signing free agents Bradley Wright-Phillips, Kevin Molino, Perry Kitchen, and Marlon Hairston. Tarbell was replaced by Ohio-native Evan Bush via trade and Vito Wormgoor is essentially a new center back signing after suffering a season ending injury at the MLS is Back Tournament. Twenty-one year old Romanian youth international Alex Matan was signed from FC Viitorul as a Young Money player and will provide cover for Zelarayan at attacking midfield and on either wing.
One Weird Thing: Why does g+ hate Lucas Zelaryan?
Lucas Zelarayan burst on the scene with a game winning goal to open the season and a spectacular showing at MLS is Back. Injuries derailed him during the back half of the regular season, but he bossed the playoffs winning MLS Cup MVP in one of the best individual performances in the history of MLS Cup. However, ASA’s goals added (g+) hates him. Zelarayan is the worst regular season attacking midfielder since 2013 as measured by g+ compared to the average attacking midfielder, costing his team 0.15 g+ per game. So what’s going on here?
Zelarayan likes to dribble, including the playoffs he attempted six per game, the fifth most per game last year after Brian Rodriguez, Emanuel Reynoso, Cristian Pavon, and Younes Namil (Molino was 6th). Many times last season he turned the ball over in very high value locations as can be seen in these videos to the right that cost the team 0.13 and 0.14 raw goals added on their own. At the same time, Zelarayan doesn’t rack up value from progressive passes like other attacking midfielders. He ranked 31st in goals added from progressive passes form open play, his 0.036 goals added per game from progressive passes were about half of those by other attacking mids like Quintero, Pozuelo, and Valeri. Failed dribbles and few progressive passes and unsuccessful dribbles are frowned upon by g+. We don’t know how much his multiple injuries affected his regular season form, as g+ liked his playoff performances much more. But I’m sure Lucas and Crew fans don’t care if some mathematical model doesn’t like him, they’ll, to paraphrase the incomparable Hanif Abdurraqib, take ASA’s apologies in championships.
2021 Prognosis
It’s hard not to see Columbus as one of the favorites for the Supporter’s Shield and MLS Cup. Additionally, many see the Crew as MLS’ best hope for finally winning CONCACAF Champions League, but will face a tough task in likely quarter final opponent Monterey. Anything less than a deep playoff run and a competitive showing in CCL will be a disappointment in the Crew’s first season in New Crew Stadium.
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Portland Timbers: Glory, Gore, & Tragedy:
By Jeff Bull
The Portland Timbers had a glorious and tragic 2020, but it all made enough sense in the end. With every player available, Portland could, 1) win against any team in Major League Soccer, and 2) score enough goals to cover for a danger-prone defense. Everyone knows the “glory” moment - lifting the MLS Is Back tournament trophy back in July - but the tragedy seeped in slowly and in a way that Timbers fans could simultaneously see and dismiss as it happened. To recap:
The Timbers lost Sebastian Blanco, the player who led them through MLS Is Back, to a season-ending ACL tear in early September. That jangled the nerves, of course, but only briefly. The Timbers had reloaded going into 2020, but nobody REALLY knew what to expect from new arrivals Yimmi Chara, Jaroslaw Niezgoda, Felipe Mora, or even central defender Dario Zuparic. They all had their critics - Yimmi Chara got it worse, for some reason - but, game-by-game and appearance-by-appearance, all those players came good and contributed. By season’s end, Yimmi, Niezgoda, and Mora chipped in a combined 18 goals and 11 assists, a VERY healthy chunk of the final tally of 46 goals scored.
| Timbers 2020 g+ Leaders, minimum 500 minutes played | |
|---|---|
| Goals Added | |
| 5.19 | |
| 4.60 | |
| 4.01 | |
| 3.27 | |
| 3.14 | |
| 3.13 | |
| 3.11 | |
| 2.96 | |
| 2.18 |
The sense that those players HAD to contribute points to the other big question about the 2020 roster: with both players one step into their mid-30s, how much could the Timbers get out of legends-in-the-making, Diego Chara and Diego Valeri? (The same applied to Blanco, if to a lesser extent, before his injury rendered it moot.) Quite a bit, fortunately. While Valeri has visibly slowed since arriving, he continues to conjure goals and assists - 10 and 11, respectively, between the regular season and MLS Is Back - and he still started most games (18) of what ended as a 23-game regular season (and played in 22). Chara logged even more minutes and without anyone I’ve seen claiming he’s lost a step. I don’t think anyone would argue they did it alone, but Valeri and Chara did carry the team through a solid 2020.
The Athletic recapped that solid 2020 and measured its worth in eye-catching statistics. Portland’s head coach, Giovanni Savarese, who was quoted throughout, believes they can do it again. But where they finished on assists (league-leading at over two per game) and the positive gap between goals scored (2nd, 1.94/90) and expected goals (15th, 1.48/90) makes a strong case that Portland over-performed in 2020. Still, Portland had a solid, working set-up…until the injuries kept coming.
First, Jeremy Ebobisse (eight goals, two assists) picked up a concussion in mid-October; he would return, but barely, for the playoffs. The Timbers lost Niezgoda next, and for the season, to another ACL tear in early November. Those losses robbed the Timbers’ offense of options, which hurt plenty, but it also exposed an ever-shrinking margin of error. On the one hand, neither Valeri nor Chara ever visibly hit the wall; on the other, when they called in players like Cristhian Paredes, Marvin Loria and Tomas Conechny to give Chara and Valeri help, not one of them looked ready. In a general sense, then, resting players meant dropping points.
When the offense dried up down the stretch, the Timbers had neither the option nor the legs to change it. If you take the (reliable) curb-stomping of the Los Angeles Galaxy out of the equation, they scored just one goal per 90 minutes in seven of their eight final games of 2020, including the first-round loss in the playoffs to FC Dallas - and, as everyone knows, that ended badly. I can’t claim everyone heard it, the camel’s back cracked LOUDLY in my ear when Eryk Williamson limped off the field just before halftime in that same game. That was when the 2020 season ended.
In some ways, the Timbers’ 2020 season asked the question, how many players can this team lose before it ceases to be competitive? The effective answer - a couple, and big ones too - feels pretty reassuring; that was the unspoken thesis of that positively bullish recap in The Athletic. With so little substantive change to the roster, the 2021 season asks the same questions, but with a sharper point - e.g., Valeri and Chara a year deeper into their 30s, plus how well key players like Blanco, Ebobisse and Niezgoda will recover from injuries (ACL tears/concussion) that don’t always end in full recovery.
A longer season - it’s a full 34 games this time, not 23 - cuts both ways. Eleven more opportunities to recoup points lowers the cost of dropping points by resting Valeri and Chara, but it could also put more wear-‘n’-tear on their aging legs. On the brighter side, it also gives Blanco, Ebobisse and Niezgoda more time to get match-fit and maximally resilient, because, again, winning MLS Cup mostly requires being good enough for most of the year, and great at the right time, i.e. the playoffs. More to the point, the whole thing is a numbers game for the Timbers - they just need enough players available for most of the season. So long as Mora, Yimmi and Williamson remain healthy and available, the Timbers’ have enough ways to keep defenses guessing - and thereby score more - if they can get any two of Blanco, Ebobisse, Valeri and Niezgoda on the field. Those odds aren’t terrible.
The unspoken assumption in all that is that the Timbers, collectively, severally and jointly, carry over the same numbers from 2020 - something that’s far from a given. As noted in The Athletic’s recap, the Timbers OVER-performed on the attacking side in 2020 - i.e., they played above the numbers. This showed up across the board, but most clearly in goals scored versus expected goals (G-xG) for Valeri (1.87), Ebobisse (3.87) and Niezgoda (4.86). You only have to look back to 2019 for proof that’s not inevitable: Valeri and Blanco both UNDER-performed (admittedly higher) expectations in the same category in 2019, and Valeri went under his expected assists (-2.35). You’ll see plenty of wrinkles in the numbers if you look at enough of them, BUT, expectations being what they are, that means players can only exceed them so often.
The other unspoken assumption circles around the player most often associated with the word “irreplaceable,” Diego Chara. Setting aside the fact that he has, Chara cannot play at that level forever and the Timbers have, historically, struggled without him. The most recent count I could (easily) find noted that, between 2015 and June 2019, Portland went 0-15-10 in games in which Chara did not play. That same article reported a win, but that only bumps the all-time record to date to 1-15-10 (woo-hoo!), and 2020’s results didn’t meaningfully improving on that. Even if Valeri finally hits the wall, or even part of it, the attack has enough useful bodies to manage that and produce. The same does not apply to Chara: Portland has the bodies to replace him, but not the talent, tenacity and savvy. Of all the things likely to doom Portland’s 2021 season, more pressure on a nervy defense feels like Thing #1.
All in all, the Timbers go into the 2021 season in an unusual place. For one, they are unmistakably on the front-end of a transition that will see them say farewell to one of those “golden generations” you read about. The question is how well they’ve managed the front-end of that transition. That’s what Timbers fans will learn, for good or ill, in 2021. Personally, I’m optimistic they’ll feel better more often than they feel worse. Winning any of the several trophies, on the other hand, I think it’ll take more than a couple stars aligning.
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Pozuelo and Pray, Playing the Kids, and Pressing: The 3 P’s of Toronto FC’s 2021 Season
by Kieran Doyle-Davis
With a new MLS season upon us, Toronto FC show up at the doorstep with more questions than answers for the first time in a long while. Toronto flamed out spectacularly in the MLS Is Back Extravaganza, with Ronny Deila succeeding where Patrick Vieira and Dome Torrence failed (giving TFC an absolute beat down). Toronto turned their Orlando experience into a Hartford one before flirting with being quite good all season. Second half dismantlings of Columbus and Philadelphia were about as good as it got before the bottom fell out, they lost three of the last four, ending with another embarrassing knockout lost to plucky Nashville.
Out goes Greg Vanney, a coach ingrained in the organizational structure of the club as much as maybe anyone else ever. In comes Chris Armas, with (maybe I’m being generous) mixed success left in his wake. Slow, purposeful possession, no real pressing enacted by experienced elder statesmen presumably giving way to younger, faster, more aggressive play…. Maybe? They’ve still got the reigning MVP and a glut of talent, but there are three pretty big questions heading into this year.
Pozuelo and Pray
As the 2021 season begins, Toronto FC face themselves with a familiar problem. How do you build an offense around a talisman in a way that isn’t just letting him to figure it out and praying for the best? Giovinco was a singular offensive talent with elite creative numbers for others and elite shot getting numbers for themselves. While Pozuelo is a top tier creator, he doesn’t create for himself in a way others do. Couple that with his ball dominance as the highest usage player in the league last season (and one of the highest ever), and one of the most-dialed-up-to-11 passing risk profiles in the league (maybe in any league); Chris Armas has a legitimate job on his hands on building more sustainable ball movement into and around the final third in addition to all the amazing stuff Pozuelo does. If he doesn’t, Toronto’s attack may continue to sputter the way it did down the stretch without auxiliary attackers firing on all cylinders. TFC were 3rd in xG for all matches before October 1st at a respectable 1.80 xGF per match. From that point on, a paltry 21st with 1.12 xGF per match. Teams go through bad nine or 10 game stretches, but this team was certainly trending the wrong way at the end of last season.
G+ EFFICIENCY HERE IS THE AMOUNT OF RAW G+ PRODUCED PER GOAL OF G+ BURDEN. THE INLAY ZOOMS IN ON THE BOTTOM RIGHT OF THE MAIN CHART. POZUELO HAS THE THIRD HIGHEST USAGE SEASON EVER, AND IS ONE OF THE MOST BALL DOMINANT ATTACKERS IN MLS HISTORY.
SUMMING PASSES OF GREATER THAN 0.02 G+ FOR OR AGAINST, POZUELO SHOWS UP AS THE 2ND MOST POSITIVE VALUE ACCRUED, BUT BY FAR THE MOST NEGATIVE VALUE. THIS GIVES US A GOOD PROXY FOR THE AMOUNT OF RISK IN HIS PASSING GAME.
TORONTO FC ARE TRANSITIONING OUT OF ONE OF THE OLDEST ROSTERS IN THE LEAGUE. WITH LAURENT CIMAN AND PIATTI DEPARTING AND THE RETURN OF SOME LOANEES, THIS SQUAD COULD LOOK A LOT YOUNGER.
Play the Kids
Toronto FC have a weird roster heading into this season. Michael Bradley is still a TAM level player, Piatti and the remnants of his hamstrings are presumably on a beach somewhere warm (but certainly won’t be back in Toronto), and the third designated player spot looms cavernously open.
But dotting a decreasingly veteran roster are green, academy trained, shoots. Jayden Nelson and Jakheele Marshall-Rutty are legitimate blue chip global prospects in the attacking band, with youth international plaudits and bonafide European interest. Noble Okello is back off a successful loan spell in Denmark and has all the makings of a meaningful contributor in a midfield engine room that grew increasingly thin last year. Ralph Priso emerged, almost out of nowhere, as a useful squad piece. Julian Dunn is back from a successful year in the CPL. Toronto have academy pieces ready to soak up minutes in a way that just hasn’t happened in the Vanney era, despite all the talent coming through.
Much of Toronto’s success this year is going to come down to what they get out of the periphery. If Nelson or Shaffelberg or Okello (or even Liam Fraser at this point) cement a real first team role, it opens up a lot of other squad composition doors. If not, it might be more of the same.
Pressing and Possession
At the end of the Greg Vanney era, TFC were one of the few MLS teams who managed to have lots of possession without ever really having a cohesive block press to acquire so much of the ball. Toronto’s main tool for getting the ball back was a ferocious repress or counter-press or forcing longer passes into the channel for the very gifted Chris Mavinga to sweep up. However, in each of the last two seasons the Reds have been a top six team by possession but a bottom eight team in both total pressures and tackles according to FBRef and StatsBomb, with the 2020 iteration of Toronto falling all the way to 2nd bottom. If we consider passes per defensive action (PPDA) in even game states, the number of opponent half passes per tackle, challenge, or interception, those numbers look a lot more press-y, with 2020 Toronto being the 9th most active in the opposition half.
Armas has already publicly spoken about the interest in being a more proactive team defensively, and with his Red Bull coaching upbringing, it seems to make a bunch of sense with where this team wants to go. Toronto FC were at their pressing best last season when Michael Bradley was out of the team with the infinitely more mobile pivot of Osorio and Delgado, and with Armas directly calling him out to do more as a challenge, we will see how that goes. The midfield has had a very hard time when Bradley gambles on a counterpressing moment and gets beat, with nobody else really able to recover (and subsequently putting a tonne of pressure on Chris Mavinga to recover for EVERYBODY). If Chris Armas is going to want to be a more consistent pressing team, keep an eye out on how he creates the mobility or security to do so.
At Least It’ll Be Different
Truthfully, I have no idea how Toronto will be this season. Normally we’ve gotten a few more preseason games in and some hints about what’s going on, maybe a new DP signing has informed some of your predictions, but with COVID wreaking havoc to any and all plans, who knows what this team will look like. The only thing I can say for certain is that it will certainly look a little different.