Toronto FC chews up and spits out Designated Players. Julian de Guzman, Torsten Frings, Danny Koevermans, Mista and of course Jermain Defoe have all passed through BMO Field with little more than shirt sales to show for their big-money contracts. Sebastian Giovinco – the biggest, big-money DP of them all – is proving himself to be different, however. TFC finally has its headline act.
In every sense Giovinco is now TFC’s leading man. The former Juventus player has appeared in all but 19 minutes of the club’s 11 MLS games this season, topping their goalscoring column (five goals) as well as the assists column (six), ensuring that Toronto FC’s play-off charge has eventually sparked. And in the 3-1 home win over San Jose Earthquakes, Giovinco was once again the star man, putting on two assists
In a newly renovated BMO Field Toronto FC have tickets to sell – and in Giovinco they certainly have a face to stick on the stubs. Of course, as MLS’s most expensive player – on a salary of $7m – TFC are paying a premium for such quality and stature, although if any franchise knows the often fragmented correlation between outlay and pay-off it is the franchise that paid Defoe over $500,000 per goal last season. Giovinco has at least reestablished that sometimes money does buy excellence.
If Toronto FC plan on releasing a DVD review of this season they may as well just show Giovinco’s already sparkling highlight reel. There was the cut inside and cheeky chipped finish at FC Dallas, and the curling freekick in the same game. Then there was the capping of a 17-pass move against the Chicago Fire, and of course the astonishing long-range effort against the Portland Timbers. And his cross for Justin Morrow’s diving head on Saturday wasn’t bad either.
But Giovinco’s influence goes beyond his dazzling individualism. The Italian has quickly become TFC’s dynamo, drifting out to the left and back into the centre again with the comfort of someone who has been playing with a team for longer than just a few months. And true to form over the past few weeks, Giovinco was once again central to TFC’s win against San Jose on Saturday.
“We keep finding him more now than I thought we did at the beginning of the year,” explained Greg Vanney afterwards. “We have more recognition of where he is, which is bringing him into the game more, and allowing him more opportunities to have those moments.” Indeed, TFC now revolves around the Italian – with Giovinco finding an astonishing streak of form over the past month or so to drive his team up the standings, even with Jozy Altidore absent. Toronto FC have pondered for eight years what it would take for them to make the play-offs. The answer might be Giovinco. GR
NYCFC drifting into contention but away from attention
As I left the US Attorney’s office on Wednesday morning, I overheard one of the press pack say to a colleague, “There’s a team here, right? Do they have a stadium we should get B-roll at?”
For a brief moment this week, an office in Brooklyn was the epicenter of the football universe, as the Fifa indictments were unsealed in front of a throng that included reporters from every major local and national network in New York.
New York City FC may have had mixed feelings watching all that attention. On the one hand it was a level of widespread exposure they could only dream of, and on the other hand, as they welcomed Houston Dynamo to Yankee Stadium on Saturday night, they probably weren’t in the mood for too much scrutiny, or the form to withstand it.
Or at least that’s the popular reasoning, which has seen the carefully cultivated hype around NYCFC experience a long, slow deflation as team after team has either beaten them or held them, usually fairly comfortably, in recent weeks.
And Houston’s early goal on Saturday – Will Bruin hooking home past a statuesque defense on a set piece – fell squarely into the narrative of many games in that time. New York have conceded numerous early goals and spent the rest of the game chasing – sometimes fruitlessly, sometimes picking up a point here and there.
And in the end, that’s how it turned out. David Villa scored the club’s first ever penalty just before half-time, to cap a game of conspicuous effort from the striker, who sometimes appears to have taken the need for him to put the team on his shoulders rather too much to heart, as he repeatedly tried to slalom past one man too many in search of goal.
So City were level and indeed came within inches of winning it in the dying moments, when Jeb Brovsky first sent a diving header arrowing off Tyler Deric’s outstretched palm and off the post, then just missed with a cushioned shot across the keeper in injury time
It was a fruitless climax to what had actually been one of the club’s better attacking performances, even if the result was another game in what’s now an eleven-match winless stretch.
Brovsky and others lay flat on the Yankees turf at the end of the match, presumably wondering what they have to do to get a win. A lot of MLS neutrals have stopped wondering when it’s coming, and crucially, as weeks go on, the local momentum of their arrival in New York has been steadily eroded by the reality of introducing an expansion team into the world’s toughest sporting market. They’re improving, but right now are a fair distance from capturing anyone’s imagination.
I didn’t hear the answer to my press colleague’s stadium question by the way – it was presumably a long one though. GP
Sporting KC have woken up
Let’s leave to one side for a moment FC Dallas’s ongoing capacity for wildly fluctuating results. Under Oscar Pareja, it’s never quite a surprise when Dallas run rampant in a 3-0 win or get destroyed 4-0, as happened when they faced Sporting KC on Friday night, and while the coach can point to Zach Lloyd’s dismissal in his 150th MLS match as a key factor, his team were already 1-0 down and being bossed by opponents who have finally found their groove in the last few games.
Graham Zusi in particular was in fine form after being eased back from the head injury he suffered against DC. He’d played the final 13 minutes of the game in Seattle last week, but the wisdom of taking his return slowly was demonstrated with a goal and two assists, as Sporting rose up the standings to tie Dallas, having looked like also-rans just a few weeks ago.
Since the World Cup a weary Zusi has not looked like himself, and on the general arc of form in recent months it’s understandable why he’s not in Jürgen Klinsmann’s squad to face Holland and Germany. Had Friday night’s performance come a game or two earlier it might have been a harder decision for Klinsmann, who also left out Benny Feilhaber, arguably the most in form No10 in MLS, and Zusi’s club captain Matt Besler.
Their club coach won’t mind. Two rookies, in Amadou Dia and Connor Hallisey were in the team, as Peter Vermes tries to painstakingly ease it into its next incarnation, but in the meantime he could do without losing some of his most reliable players to international duty, just as they’ve finally begun to hit on a formula that works.
It’s not quite the relentlessly high pressing Sporting KC game that, coupled with rock solid defense, swept all before them in 2013, though it’s recognizably in that continuum, and the fact that Dallas’s vaunted attack could only muster one shot on goal, at very least suggests a nod is due to the defensive side of their game.
But the sight of Zusi playing his way back into something like his best form is probably the most exciting takeaway for the home fans, beyond the big result against a rival. Sporting and Zusi looked exhausted as their season petered out in the 2014 playoffs, and looked in danger of sleeping through their alarm at the start of this season too. But Sporting are now just two points off second placed Vancouver with a game in hand, and the sight of Zusi with a spring in his step again can only encourage the locals.
It’s taken a while but Sporting KC have woken up. GP
Seattle always have their Pappa to fall back on
The last time Seattle and New York Red Bulls met at CenturyLink Field, it was on the home stretch of the latter’s unlikely run to the 2013 Supporters Shield, and the Red Bulls battled their way to a 1-1 draw, without Thierry Henry, that set them up for their decisive run-in.
Last year this game was at Red Bull Arena, and this time it was Seattle’s run to the Shield that was briefly interrupted by a hammering in Harrison.
The Red Bulls have always been “one of those teams” for Seattle. Sigi Schmid only has a losing record against three MLS sides and New York is one of them. And for much of the game on Sunday night that looked like a record that would be continuing. Lloyd Sam’s opportunistic header to nod in a deflected free kick had given New York a first half lead, and despite a couple of acrobatic stops by Luis Robles, if anything it looked like the visitors who were more likely to score again.
Dax McCarty, whose club coach will be delighted to see walk the necessary line between Gold Cup squad form and Gold Cup squad omission, did a fantastic job for most of the afternoon, in nullifying the link up play of Obafemi Martins and Clint Dempsey. The former tripped over the ball on his clearest chance, while the latter was anonymous for much of the game – until it really mattered, of course (more of which in a moment).
But as so often for teams facing the Sounders’ attack, you concentrate on the main men at your peril, as Marco Pappa and Lamar Neagle have the ability to hurt teams from other angles, or at least soften them up until the subtle charm of Chad Barrett substitutes in to batter tired defenses.
By the time Barrett clocked in for Pappa on Sunday, the man he’d replaced had already drawn Seattle level by twisting Chris Duvall inside out in the box before rifling a shot up and over Robles. And when at the death Demspey ghosted to the back post to touch the ball back across goal for Barrett to poke home from inches out, the Sounders had turned what at times looked like a cautious road game into another home victory.
It completed a three-game home stand that saw the Sounders take seven points, in a sequence that included a 1-0 victory over Colorado thanks to another wonderful Pappa goal, and a 0-0 draw against Sporting KC that begins to look like a great result given the hidings Sporting handed out to New England and Dallas in the games that sandwiched that one.
And it showed yet again that while the Red Bulls first XI under Jesse Marsch have turned out to be a well-drilled unit, who are in many ways more collectively enjoyable to watch than the various sides patchworked together to support Henry, they don’t yet have anything like the strength in depth their successors as Shield winners do. By the time the Red Bulls had begun to deal with the threat of Pappa, they’d forgotten to track the runs from deep of Dempsey and Co. Seattle are ticking over nicely again. GP
LA Galaxy’s season is starting to resemble 2012 more than 2011
Bruce Arena doesn’t care about regular season results until about June, supposedly, so with Sunday’s 2-2 tie with the New England Revolution falling on 31 May the LA Galaxy coach must find himself on the threshold of concern. The Carson club are currently slumped in fifth place in the West, five points adrift of conference leaders Seattle. The summer months are now crucial if the Galaxy are to set a tone ahead of a play-off run.
Of course, a point on the road at Foxborough isn’t a particularly bad result in isolation. Despite their own patchy form of late Jay Heaps’ team remain one of the best in the league right now, with New England’s quality shining through in the two goals from Teal Bunbury and especially Diego Fagundez, whose stunning freekick strike capped a frenetic opening 40 minute spell. But taken as a whole, factoring in the performances turned in recently, the result only accentuates LA’s lacklustre slide into summer.
Arena’s side are still without an away victory this season, having won just two of their last eight games in total – hardly the form of a strong title defence. In fact, the Galaxy have conceded eight goals in their last three outings on the road, although injuries to the likes of Robbie Rogers and AJ DeLaGarza may have played a part in that particular record. Nonetheless, LA are toiling at the moment, whether that is a result of their lengthy injury list or not.
However, had the Galaxy held on for a win against the Revolution – having led 2-1 following Gyasi Zardes’ cool finish from a wonderful Jose Villarreal back-heeled through pass – their recent form would have taken on a very different complexion. Having won their previous two games 1-0 (against the Houston Dynamo and Real Salt Lake) a case could have been made for LA reaching peak efficiency – like the kind that saw them steadily march to the 2011 MLS Cup title – with a victory in New England. Instead this season is starting to resemble 2012, when the Galaxy finished fourth in the West and staggered into the post-season.
LA still went on to lift the MLS Cup that season, and that will provide Arena and his struggling players with at least a degree of encouraging precedent, providing a warning to anyone hastily writing off the Galaxy. But right now the Galaxy are almost waiting for the return of Robbie Keane, who has made just two cameo appearances in the past month due to a groin strain, and the arrival of Steven Gerrard. The Englishman will finally join up with his new team in early July. And as long as they wait, the slide shows no sign of reverse. GR
