We’re publishing three team previews every weekday until MLS First Kick on April 16th. You can find all of them here.
Today we’re looking at three teams who have been among MLS’s best teams for most of their history, but didn’t do much in 2020 and are looking to return to form in 2021.
Read MoreLook, if we do this whole preview in serious pundit voice there’s going to be nothing to say about New York City Football Club. They're the exact same team as last season! Which was pretty much the same team as the season before that! They’ve been good for years, and if you’re crazy enough to bet on MLS you’d have to be even crazier not to bet on them being good again this year. Like some jerk wrote, boringly, on this website a couple of months ago, there’s no reason NYCFC shouldn’t be a playoff team in 2020.
But screw that, right? There’s a reason nobody likes Nate Silver. You know who everyone likes, deep down, whether they want to work through this uncomfortable personal truth with their therapist or not, is very loud men who go on TV to yell their loud sports takes loudly. And if those men gave even one tiny airborne molecule of a crap about American club soccer, boy would they have some news for you: NYCFC is not going to make the playoffs this season. Not even close! In fact, you’re an idiot for ever thinking they might.
Read MoreYou’ve got to hand it to NYCFC’s new sporting director David Lee: the guy’s set himself up for success here. For a lot of young sports execs, making the leap from XO to HMFIC means taking a move to some club mired deep in Trust the Process mode. Not so for Lee, who ran point on Claudio Reyna’s personnel decisions the last few years and now inherits what he calls “the strongest roster of players we’ve ever had.”
If only they had a coach. Barring some winter sales, NYCFC’s opening day eighteen looks just about set, which makes it all the more important to give whoever’s going to replace Dome Torrent time to size things up and make a few signings of his own. Whether or not those moves involve much money, they could help shape next season’s tactics and determine whether this team will have the depth to juggle CCL and MLS next spring.
Read MoreThis is a site for the objective analysis of Major League Soccer and U.S. Soccer
