MLS Recap, DC United's hot streak while Drogba misses Montreal's match

Article by Matt Lichtenstadter If you can believe it, the MLS regular season is one week away from concluding. After a wild ride with plenty of ups and downs, each club has only one game left to decide their playoff futures. There is still plenty to decide on the final day of the season when each of the league’s 20 teams play at the same time, including playoff spots, seeding and the destination of the Supporter’s Shield. Quite a bit happened yesterday, so let’s take a look at it all. But first…   MLS Should Be Commended for the Schedule: MLS rightly gets stick for many things it does, but the way they’ve scheduled the last two weeks of the regular season is fantastic. This week, they scheduled all Eastern Conference games to kick off at the same time and the same with the West. Next week, all games kick off at the same time. This just adds to the drama of the final two weeks with everything at stake and everything happening concurrently. Mere seconds could determine fates and seasons for multiple teams, and not many leagues have that type of drama on their final days. When the league gets something wrong, they rightfully hear about it. That often isn’t the case when they get things right, so it’s perfectly acceptable to right that wrong here. Onto the actual games…   FC Dallas Scores a Pyrrhic Victory: With a late Carlos Ruiz goal (of course), FC Dallas wrested control of the Supporter’s Shield race away from Colorado who had seized it with their extra fixtures during the international break. However, the win came at a major cost. Mauro Diaz was carted off with what early reports are terming a season ending Achilles injury. They also lost influential midfielder Kellyn Acosta during this game as well, and these two injuries have come at the absolute worst time. Not only are both players hugely important to Oscar Pareja’s tactics, FC Dallas can’t really afford to lose depth when they have a must-not lose CCL game in midweek in Guatemala to advance as well as a game in LA on Sunday which will decide if they win the Supporter’s Shield or not, and whether they may have to face LA earlier in the playoffs. Oscar Pareja has some important decisions to make this week, and those decisions could easily decide how his team fares down the stretch. While they are still a good team despite these injuries, losing three of their most influential players to transfer or injury does make their road through the brutal Western Conference even harded.   Portland’s Conundrum: The Timbers absolutely had to beat Colorado at home on Sunday, which they did despite missing a penalty and looking fairly shaky in the second half. But like FC Dallas, they have important decisions to make with CCL looming this midweek. In order to advance, they need to beat Saprissa at home, and no other result will do. Then, they face a must win in Vancouver on Sunday to advance to the playoffs at all. They have to better one of SKC, RSL or Seattle’s result on Sunday in order to sneak into the postseason, so how does Caleb Porter manage a squad also beset by injuries with these two massive games coming so close to one another? Their task isn’t impossible, but unlike Seattle and RSL, they have two games to focus on rather than one. Sporting KC also has a CCL game, but it’s a dead rubber and they’ll heavily rotate for that game, in all likelihood. What helps Portland is that Seattle and Real Salt Lake play each other, so one of those teams has to drop points, and Portland is two points behind RSL and one behind Seattle. Sporting KC hosts listless San Jose, which doesn’t help the Timbers cause. Rotation may decide Portland’s playoff future and beyond, so the decisions Caleb Porter makes are absolutely vital.   The East’s Field of Six is Practically Set: Montreal and DC clinched playoff spots with their results this weekend, and though the race is not technically over, Philadelphia is pretty much in despite their free-falling form after New England coughed up their best and last chance to sneak into the dance against the Fire. They would need to beat Montreal, have Philly lost at home to the Red Bulls and somehow overturn a 13 goal deficit in order to make the playoffs, and though this is MLS, that task seems impossible. The fallout from that will be addressed at another time, but for the rest of the East, seeding is still up in the air. The Red Bulls win, coupled with NYCFC’s humbling at the hands of DC United means that the Red Bulls have pretty much locked up home field advantage in the East for the second straight season. Toronto FC has a chance to leapfrog NYCFC if they beat Chicago and NYCFC can’t do the same against Columbus, while DC looks to establish home field against either Montreal or Philadelphia depending on their results.   The Hot Team: DC United: Every season, one team enters the playoffs on a torrid pace and becomes a dangerous threat no matter how they had played earlier in the season or their previous issues. That team in 2016 is DC United. No team is in better form right now than them, and to watch the way they tore NYCFC apart should be a terrifying thought for everyone in the East, especially the Red Bulls, who could easily have to face them in the conference semifinals, and wouldn’t that be something? DC still has some way to go before getting to that point, but right now nobody in the league wants to face them on the form they’re in. Ben Olsen has had some good DC teams in the past, but the way this team is playing right now, led by Patrick Mullins, might be the best any of his DCU teams have ever looked.   Stars Gone AWOL: Two big stars were entirely absent from their squad’s respective 18’s on Sunday, creating major concern for both clubs. Steven Gerrard spent time in England rehabbing from an injury instead of doing so in the US. He has been so much better for the Galaxy this season than he has in the past, so missing him for critical playoff games is obviously not ideal, but what does this say about Gerrard’s future in the league that he’s doing this now, of all times? His contract is up at the end of the year, and this may be a sign that he’s not planning to return to the Galaxy next season, but that is pure speculation. Another star who was curiously AWOL on Sunday was Montreal’s Didier Drogba. Left out of Mauro Biello’s starting XI for injury or other reasons, he reportedly demanded to be left out of the squad entirely and also didn’t watch the game at the Stade Saputo. He too has questions about his future, and while the Impact it can be said have been better without Drogba at times than with him this season, this bust-up right before the playoffs is again a terrible sign. Questions about the future for both men in the league can be answered soon, but for the present both Bruce Arena and Mauro Biello have questions to answer about their big name DP’s as do-or-die time arrives in the league.   Setting Sunday’s Scene: With all games kicking off at the same time (4:15 Eastern Time), here’s what to know: Seattle-Real Salt Lake will air on ESPN, LA-FC Dallas will be on FS1, and ESPN2 will air a whip-around show with cut-ins to every game being played except LA-FC Dallas, and that will go to air at the same time. There will be no lack of options for MLS fans to watch decision day culminate and another regular season come to its exciting conclusion on national TV as well as locally. As for the games, those two obviously have critical importance in the race for Western Conference playoff spots and the Supporter’s Shield, but other games to keep your eyes on include Vancouver-Portland, Colorado-Houston and Philadelphia-Red Bulls. Enjoy the exciting finish to the regular season, and don’t forget the big CCL games this midweek as well for Portland and FC Dallas. Next week, there will be multiple pieces previewing the play-in games in both conferences as well as assessing the futures of the teams that missed the postseason.