Football doesn’t really allow me to go to the knockout stages. That’s why the seasons and cup tournaments are often separate and the latter are interpreted as just silly, random game collections where anything is possible. Since football games are still decided it can be a moment or two, a moment or two that no team or person can really control all the time, pinning one’s whole season to one game Life and death are not fair.
That’s why most of the knockouts that you watch, such as the World Cup, are usually more difficult tests of one’s patience or really pain threshold rather than fun. and memorable. Teams, dreading a moment or two that go against them, do their best to make sure they never happen around.
However, in the MLS, where nothing really matters, the league is so focused on attacking and pouring their limited budgets into that portion of the field, sitting back is rarely an option. So while the MLS usually disables the regular season as a whole with the playoff structure, they usually do it in a fireworks-out-of-bathroom-burn-in-the-whole-house fashion. -fashion that few people really care about. The MLS knockouts are loud, chaotic, mysterious and, like wrestling, a great time as long as you don’t stop to think about it too hard.
Their unpredictable nature is why it’s been 20 years since the top two seeds have met in the finals of the tournament, as LAFC and Philadelphia Union did yesterday. But rarely are the top two seeds by far the best team. No one at the Western Conference was even on the same zip code as LAFC this season, and only Montreal was briefly able to even make a local call to the Union in the East. Since around July, it looks like these two were destined to do this dance.
For the style-playing crowd, this finale was tantalizing. The two teams came close to each other perfectly. LAFC loves to paint pastels with their attacking and passing play, dripping with creative players like Carlos Vela, Chucho Arango, Kellyn Acosta and Denis Bouanga. Not only do they want the ball, but they treat it with respect and admiration and show it its time.
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Union loathed the ball. They don’t want anything to do with it until they absolutely have to. That is the definition of a transactional relationship. In the end the ball has to come close and reach the goal, and that’s only when Philly is around. They defend, they counterattack with speed, they get it on the pitch as fast as they can, and then they put the ball in the net, more than any other team in the league. And then Union and the ball split again, with loosely arranged appointments to meet again later in the game but barely any contact until then.
Broadly, the two clubs also operate in opposite ways. LAFC is now the flashy team who have looked at the Galaxy all over town before they existed – the Galaxy once boasted of Beckham, Ibra, Keane, Gerrard, whoever else – and said, ” We could be bigger, better, slicker, cooler, and swaggier.” And then they were. This is the team that can sign Gareth Bale and Giorgio Chiellini, somehow, and then not feel like they have to play them all the time.
Union is much more aerodynamic. They search well, they sell well, they don’t care about splurging on anyone and when someone sells out, they move them and find the next person. There’s a rigid plan for how they play and how they build and nothing can frustrate them. Neither approach is wrong, because each brought Union and LAFC to the final.
And of course, this being the MLS, the two teams reversed styles for the match. Union had more possession of the ball, thanks to their initial breakthrough as they launched long balls towards strikers Julian Carranza and Mikael Uhre. That overcame LAFC press and then Union repeatedly won the second ball to establish control of the ball behind where LAFC could have forced the serve to Union more than they ever had. The relationship has gone from transactional to personal frontier.
LAFC’s tangled forward line is always a threat in the box, but doesn’t have much speed to penetrate spaces either. And apparently both teams are always playing against each other on penalties, resulting in a rather frenetic but sloppy game (41 fouls combined). These are two teams that lunge at each other but with weapons they rarely train with. There’s a one-knife swordsman and it’s going to look pretty awkward for a while since they’re meant to deal normal damage while being more conscious of getting their own face back.
That’s probably why the first five goals of the game came with set-pieces. No team was able to complete enough passes to create coherent attacks in unusual situations, while the constant barrage of passes sent the defense out of position and space. can be solved by taking down an attacker before they can find the vulnerability.
LAFC took the lead thanks to Acosta’s deflected free-kick. Union equalized early in the second half when replaying the free-kick, Jose Martinez attempted a shot from 35 yards that had as many chances of finding on target as a blindfolded sloth would, ended up being the perfect passer for Uhre . It’s iconic, as Martinez is still his usual defensive kick but the majority of his passes and shots of the day are as accurate as trying to throw a pie at a moving goal. move.
LAFC would again take the lead after 83 minutes from a corner when Jesus Murillo headed in, but Union needed just three more minutes to equalize with their free-kick from centre-back Jack Elliot. Elliot will score again in extra time, after the LAFC were reduced to 10 men after their goalkeeper Maxime Crepeau was sent off for denying a clear scoring opportunity, and he received a card. red when being loaded onto a vehicle after a knee flip. into paste during this process. All of that could lead to one of the last great moments in Twitter history:
There was also the small matter of former Union goalkeeper and Philly resident John McCarthy arriving in place of the sacked and shattered Crepeau, during a week of banners for the Philly kids that pierced the dreams of current Philly fans. . The lesson is that if you want to experience the joys of being a boy from your hometown of Philadelphia, you’d better look to the people who raised you. Even Phanatic admits this.
The League should have seen it pretty straightforward seeing the last six minutes or so with an additional man and an additional goal, but once MLS unscrews the lid of its personal Pandora’s box, you’ll never get inspiration. , once they have tasted the freedom and madness they can cause. Bale, who has barely touched the ball since coming on as a sub, simply rode for Elliot to make a cross to head and the game to the penalty spot and make every fan The USMNT chills because he probably won’t be active for most of that opening World Cup game, and will always be capable of doing something like this, as long as he stays upright:
Insert Aaron Long for Elliot, change the shirt’s color, and everyone can see it. We’ll save that for a few weeks from now.
And of course the penalties came, as Union failed to take one and was stared at by a former teammate. Of course they did. LAFC won the MLS Cup for the first time.
They are well-deserved winners, as they have been the class of the tournament since they appeared. It’s MLS to tee time, distilled at its finest. It’s two teams that, like the league, will go to hell without worrying too much if all the steps needed to do so, focus only on the end point. It’s not a game of great quality, but it’s the highest level of drama and drama as it flares up in the middle of a destructive derby, a horse race and sometimes a ballet show. performed by rhinos. No team in MLS is truly secure enough to lock down an important game and snuff it out, and only about every MLS team has just invested enough in their attackers to always come back and make things happen.
Is it the best way to go about it? Sure is not. Is it interesting? You bet your ass. MLS will happily deal with that.
