MLS conference finals preview: Kei Kamara ready to take leap against Red Bulls
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Version 0 of 1. The other evening I was thumbing through my dog-eared copy of Moneyball – gotta do something on your wedding anniversary, haven’t you? – and happened upon the line from Billy Beane about the postseason being a complete crapshoot, and it got me thinking about Sunday’s MLS conference finals. Are play-offs right and proper? My colleague Graham Ruthven mused on whether Europe’s top leagues could ever institute an end-of-season play-off format, but acknowledged that to Euro soccer purists the idea is anathema. Why endure a 34-game season of blood, sweat and tears, only to start from scratch in the fall? Related: Could MLS-style play-offs work in Europe's top leagues? Hmmmm. Play-offs aren’t everyone’s thing, and no one wants to feel as though the regular season is merely the phoney war, but this year’s final four – New York, Dallas, Columbus and Portland – are at least upholding the integrity of the competition, since they finished first, second, third and fifth best in the final standings. (Vancouver finished second in the West, ahead of Portland, but only on goal difference.) You could argue that LA’s overall record didn’t accurately reflect the quality in their team, and it’s not a stretch to imagine Don Garber would secretly have loved to see Pirlo and Lampard in the postseason, but it would take a major churl to criticise this quartet: they deserve to be here. This is a big deal for MLS, the high point in the season, and yet it’s compromised slightly by the games taking place Sunday at 5pm and 7.30pm. Can ordinary Americans be persuaded to take their eyes off the NFL (or the Lethal Weapon marathon on IFC) and tune in to the soccer? As improved as the league is, with record attendances, better teams, and bigger stars, MLS still struggles for traction on television. Perhaps there’s only so much room for soccer in what Markovits and Hellerman call the American “sports space”, but it would be a great shame if these games didn’t find the audience they deserve. On to the match-ups. Did you know that Columbus put in 675 crosses in open play during the regular season, 115 more than Portland, their closest rival? That’s because Kei Kamara is 6ft 3in and leaps for days. According to ESPN, Kamara, who scored 18 regular-season goals and did for Montreal in overtime two weeks ago, can cover an area half the size of a basketball court in the 1.5 seconds that a cross is in the air – “underlining the mammoth difficulty defenders have in tracking his movements in the box,” as the MLS website breathlessly reported. It went on: “Reminiscent of a finely-tuned sports car, the Sierra Leone-born hitman can go from zero to 15 miles per hour in just three strides, fueling his explosive attacks of the service provided by his teammates.” Kamara is many things, and he’s obviously a wonderful player, possibly the league’s top striker, but he doesn’t really resemble a sports car. Maybe a high-performance SUV? Or a giant clanking monster truck? Anyway, Columbus will look to cross, and cross often. That’s not to say Columbus play like the Wimbledon of the 1980s, or the Republic of Ireland of 2015: they just have a distinctive style, and it suits them, so why not? Plus, if Kamara doesn’t get you, Ethan Finlay surely will. Finlay has a nice backstory: he was born in hockey-mad Minnesota, the son of a college hockey player, and was skating by age three – but then moved to North Carolina, and found grits, Tar Heels and Nascar, but no ice rink. Hockey’s loss was soccer’s gain, and Finlay has enjoyed his best season as a pro this term: 12 goals, 13 assists, and a special understanding with his attacking partner that has propelled the Crew far. The Red Bulls shouldn’t be too worried, though: their progress to the final four has probably been the most serene of anyone. Dax McCarty and Sacha Kljestan will be fresh from a week’s rest – no international commitments for them – and the Red Bulls’ high-pressing style could force errors in a Columbus defence that can be leaky. The Red Bulls’ Matt Miazga, newly committed to USA after coming on as a substitute in the 6-1 win over St Vincent and thus ending the possibility of playing for Poland, will have to be on his mettle against Kamara et al, but he will be: he’s a class act, tall but not plain, the rock in a back four that shut out DC over two legs. Related: How FC Dallas and their homegrown model could revolutionize US soccer Over in the West, Dallas travel to Oregon to take on Portland at Providence Park, and it’s also a difficult one to call. Dallas are probably favourites, as you’d expect from the team that topped the conference, but they flew under the radar, weirdly, in the regular season. Maybe it’s the lack of a truly big-name player, or the media’s focus on teams from the coasts, or the fact that no one is terribly keen on playing in the heat of the Frisco summer. Whatever the reason, they’re a top side: physical, athletic, young – and as my colleague Les Carpenter reports, largely homegrown. In Mauro Diaz they’ve got a playmaker of rare quality, and if he can escape the close marking of Diego Chara and feed Fabian Castillo, the league’s foremost dribbler, they can do damage on the counter-attack. How good are Portland? Well, they’ve beaten Sporting Kansas City and Vancouver already in the playoffs, so they must be doing something right. They’ll probably need a big game from Darlington Nagbe, newly capped by USA, but Fanendo Adi is hot, and they seem to have hit form at the right time. Maybe it’s written in the stars: that Kansas City shootout victory was forged in zany, Wheel-of-Fortune style, but their 2-0 aggregate win over Vancouver was genuinely impressive, and, thanks to veterans Ridgewell and Borchers, they’re difficult to score against. Two finely balanced finals then. Sit back and enjoy. Eastern Conference final Columbus Crew v New York Red Bulls, 5pm ET, ESPN Western Conference final Portland Timbers v FC Dallas, 7.30pm ET, FS1 |