NOTE: This appeared at SoccerCentric.

He’s played only seven games for Minnesota, but already, one fan has started a drive to clone midfielder Calum Mallace.

If it was possible, it wouldn’t be a bad idea, as the 23-year-old brings qualities that Minnesota desperately needed. Among United’s midfielders, he’s the most adept at both defending and attacking, helping to mute chances from the other side and turning that defense into offensive pressure for Minnesota.

“I’ve enjoyed playing that box-to-box midfielder type of role,” said Mallace. “I enjoy getting back, making tackles, and helping defensively. You can score all the goals in the world, but if you keep conceding at the back, that’s the end of the game. It’s always good to get back and help defensively, and then I feel like for me to get forward, I’ve got the engine to go all day long up and down.”

Don’t let the red hair and the Scottish birthplace fool you; Mallace is just about as Minnesotan as they come. His family moved to the state at a young age, and he starred for Henry Sibley High School and the Woodbury Predators club team before playing in college at Marquette University. His club coach, Don Gramenz, was an eleven-year Minnesota Thunder veteran, and a former Thunder coach; his brother Craig is a Thunder alum as well.

Officially, he’s on loan to Minnesota from Montreal. In reality, Minnesota’s just been nice enough to loan him to the Impact.

About the only thing that’s been missing from Mallace’s game this fall has been tallies on the scoresheet. He’s shown a willingness to shoot, and a willingness to get forward, but he’s yet to score – and he’s frustrated about it, too.

“They’re not going in the back of the net,” he said. “Shooting from distance is something that I need to work on, to test the goalkeeper from distance, but it’s also good to create chances and play those balls in behind the defense and get those forwards in those holes as well. I take responsibility for not getting any goals so far this year, but we’ve still got some games left, I’ll see if I can put some in.”

It’s a position that Minnesota hasn’t had too many goals from. Michael Reed scored once from a central midfield spot, and Aaron Pitchkolan – since moved to center back – scored early in the season from a corner, but that’s been it from goals from central midfielders. Effectively, that’s only one goal from someone other than a striker or a winger in the attack.

Heck, defenders Cristiano Dias, Brian Kallman, and Connor Tobin have combined for four.

Mallace says the team doesn’t have any sort of bias towards playing the ball wide; it’s more about attacking a team from the available angles. “We have Lucas [Rodriguez] and Miguel [Ibarra] who are both fast players that like to combine down the outside, so there’s nothing wrong with going there,” he said. “We’ve got myself and **Floyd [Franks] **and Michael Reed and different players who can play in the middle where we can keep it in there as well, so I think we’re dynamic in that we don’t always have to go wide or in the middle. We can do both and I think that’s good.”

Edmonton, this week’s opponent, certainly won’t be broken down without a fight. The Eddies have yet to allow more than one goal in a game at home; they are a defense-first kind of team.

Mallace, however, is feeling at least a little optimistic. “We’re going to have to press them from all different angles,” he said. “And maybe I can hit one in from distance as well.”

*NOTE: This appeared at SoccerCentric. *

It seems somewhat counter-intuitive to say it, but with half the season left, Minnesota United has run out of time.

They can’t continue to struggle. They can’t continue to put in good performances but fail to get results, or put in indifferent performances and come away with nothing. Even though they’re technically only four points out of first place, there are four teams in between them and the league-leading New York Cosmos – all four of which are capable themselves of putting together a title-winning run.

It’s a good bet that, to win the fall season, Minnesota will have to get to at least 23 or 24 points in the standings.  With seven games to go, they only have eight points; in order to leapfrog all the teams in front of them, they’ll need at least four or five wins in those seven games.

It’s hard to be optimistic about that, given that they’ve won just six of their 19 games so far this year, and that they haven’t kept a clean sheet defensively since April 20, and that they’ve won by more than one goal just twice all year.

The effort from the team has been there, and for much of every game, Minnesota has controlled the field. United will go through stretches where the other team can’t get near the ball, and the field appears titlted towards the opponent’s goal.

Rarely, though, does the team manage to convert the chances they generate into goals – and, at least once in every game, they suffer some kind of defensive lapse to allow the opponent onto the scoreboard. It can’t continue, not if United still has designs on playing Atlanta in the Soccer Bowl.

The next two weeks will define Minnesota’s chances for the fall title. This week, they travel to Edmonton, who are tied for sixth with United. Next week, San Antonio – one-point-this-fall San Antonio, completely-in-shambles San Antonio – visits Blaine.

Anything less than six points, against those two teams, and you can just about count United out of the running for the fall championship.

Edmonton, this week’s opponent, will be the tougher of the two matches. The Montons are currently in the midst of an astonishing run; they have played five consecutive 1-1 draws, which must surely be a record of some kind. The betting would have to be on a low-scoring game; Edmonton has scored more than one goal at home just twice all season, and has yet to allow an opponent to score more than once in those same games.

Part of that has to be ascribed to their home field. Edmonton plays its home games at Clarke Stadium, a remodeled Canadian football field, with artificial turf that appears to be little more than painted concrete and a football gridiron criss-crossing the pitch. Occasionally, as with last week’s game against Fort Lauderdale, gale-force winds blow from one end of the field or the other. It is, in short, not the nicest place in North America to play a soccer game (or watch one – something reflected in the Edmonton crowds, which have averaged just shy of 2,400 this fall).

An odd field such as Clarke, though, does tend to give an advantage to the team that’s used to playing there. Minnesota hasn’t won in Edmonton since April of last year, an epic 4-3 victory that included a player from both sides getting sent off and Devin Del Do scoring the winner from a long Brian Kallman throw in second-half stoppage time.

Edmonton is likely to play a similar lineup to the team that drew 1-1 in Minnesota two weeks ago. Daryl Fordyce and Corey Hertzog have started the past two games up front, with central midfielders Neil Hlavaty and Chris Nurse (last month’s league Player of the Month) slotting in behind and Robert Garrett and Gagan Dosanjh on the wings. The back line is headlined by the captain, center back Albert Watson, and goalkeeper Lance Parker, who is semi-famous (semi-infamous?) for modeling men’s undergarments in his spare time.

This is the challenge that thus awaits Minnesota. But they’re out of time to wait on addressing that challenge head-on.

This week on the podcast, we talk to Parker Hageman about his #GrandDrunkRailroad event. Plus: Ponder complaining and the attendant Teddy Bridgewater update, a Wild season preview, some Twins talk, and at the end, a bunch of giggling.

I don’t know much about Rochester manager Gene Glynn. I do know that he’s traveling with the Twins for the rest of the season, which is funny to me, so I wrote something typically nonsensical about it.

NOTE: This will appear at RandBall, your home for RandBall.

Football is unquestionably America’s biggest sport; there’s a pretty good argument to be made that the two most popular American sports leagues are the NFL and college football. In places like Texas, high school football might come it at #3.

Knowing this, though, why isn’t there more football? I don’t mean expanded seasons for the current leagues – they’re long and punishing enough. But it’s strange that football is only an August-to-early February effort in America.

The Canadian Football League and Arena Football have variously been broadcast on TV, but neither has earned a particularly wide following, in part because they are weird and different from good old classic football. And various non-affiliated minor leagues – the UFL, the XFL, even going back to the WLAF, the USFL, and the WFL – have tried, and failed, either because they tried to take on the NFL (bad move) or seemed more like a carnival sideshow.

I suppose there’s an argument to be made that Americans just don’t like to watch a minor league, which a spring football league would definitely be. Still, it seems like there’s room for another. It could be in college towns with no pro team., or maybe just in large non-NFL markets. Given the sport’s popularity, surely there has to be a way to make it work – and end our long spring and summer without football.

*On with the links:

Nick Nelson at TwinsCentric thinks the Twins have so much money to spend this offseason that they can’t help but spend. Personally, I think the Twins are like that old geezer that remembers when hamburgers were a nickel and a pair of shoes cost $10, and so even though he knows prices have gone up, he just can’t quite bring himself to head for the shoe store or the McDonald’s drive-through, because *things are just too darn spendy these days.

*The win, in baseball, is a stupid statistic. Here is more evidence of that.

*Bill Barnwell at Grantland breaks down Chip Kelly’s awesome new Eagles offense.

*Also at Grantland, Zach Lowe makes a strong case for the 40-minute NBA game. (I would support both this and an NBA regular season with fewer games. Both would make the league more awesome.)

*The Economist says that women’s sports are starting to make up some ground in the areas of TV viewership and commercial support. (I link to this partially – maybe mostly – because the University of Minnesota’s Tucker Center, and its director, Mary Jo Kane, are heavily mentioned. Hey everyone! They’re talking about us!)

*And finally: you may not be able to appreciate the genius of this old-timey-ified Arsenal roster in full, unless you’re a soccer fan, but I think everyone can laugh at pictures of people with outstanding mustaches and/or funny hats.

NOTE: This appeared at SoccerCentric.

It’s fair to say that virtually everyone associated with Minnesota United wanted to make today’s trip to New York, which offers both the city and a game against the Cosmos, one of the big names in soccer history. But two players recently in the starting lineup, Justin Davis and Sinisa Ubiparipovic, have missed out.

Ubiparipovic’s omission might make some sense; he was sent off for kicking an opponent after just one minute on the pitch as a substitute, last week, so he may well be in the doghouse. Davis’s, though, is somewhat curious.

Davis started every game at left back in the spring season, as well as the first four of the fall. He made the trip to San Antonio the following week, but didn’t play, due to what I was told was a knee issue. Since then, though, he’s apparently had two full weeks of normal practice, yet he didn’t even dress for last week’s game against Edmonton, and now he’s not on this trip, either.

Judging by what I saw at training on Thursday (and you can take that with as many grains of salt as you want), United will again start with Aaron Pitchkolan and Connor Tobin at center back this week, Kevin Venegas at right back, and Cristiano Dias at left back. Brian Kallman is in the squad, but appears set to start on the bench yet again this week.

Head coach Manny Lagos described himself as “happy” with the team’s back four. “I can’t say as a group we’ve been ecstatic, because we haven’t had a shutout,” he said. “I think we’re still trying to solve problems on the field the right way.”

Obviously, Lagos has seen something he likes from Dias and Venegas. That’s the only explanation for why Davis and Kallman, who were mainstays at fullback for years, suddenly aren’t on the field.

United’s squad for the game tonight: Campos, Ambersley, Griffin; Rodriguez, Ibarra, Mallace, Franks, Takada, Bracalello, Daley, de Silva; Pitchkolan, Venegas, Tobin, Dias, Brian Kallman; Van Oekel, Hildebrant.

Bright lights, big city

As I mentioned, it’s United’s first trip to New York – and Pitchkolan is ready for what he said is going to be a “fun weekend.”

“The Cosmos have a lot of brand power,” he said. “I think when they announced they were coming into the league last year, there was a lot of buzz about it. Obviously it’s going to be great to play there. I know they’ve been getting good crowds. The Cosmos name is a name that, people who follow soccer, know the Cosmos. ”

However, Lagos – true to coaching form – downplayed anything but a chance to get three points. “I look at the game more just in terms of an opponent, a very good opponent that’s going to give us a lot of challenges,” he said. “I really don’t try to look at anything past that for the most part.”

Emory re-appears, in Texas

Released Toronto defender Logan Emory spent the summer on trial with Minnesota, but couldn’t come to terms on a contract for the fall. Fans that vaguely wondered what had become of him can wonder no longer – he signed this week with San Antonio, and will be available for the Scorpions’ game in Atlanta.

It wouldn’t necessarily be a surprise to see him in the starting eleven; he’s vastly experienced, and San Antonio needs a replacement for the suspended Kevin Harmse. There are a few rumors floating around that Harmse, so recently the team captain, has quietly been released; he still appears on the Scorpions team roster, though, so it’s possible those rumors are premature.

Game details

It’s a 6pm start tonight, and for the first time this season, the game will NOT be available to watch on the league and team websites. The Cosmos have a TV contract with One World Sports (whatever that is), so you’ll have to head to http://www.oneworldsports.com/watch in advance to register; once you register, you should be able to watch the game at the same link.

As usual, the team will host an official watch party at Brit’s Pub in downtown Minneapolis, while the Dark Clouds supporters group will gather at the Nomad World Pub, just off the U of M’s West Bank.

NOTE: This appeared at SoccerCentric.

You have to go all the way back to May of 2012 to find Minnesota’s last two-game winning streak (excepting, of course, the first two rounds of last year’s playoffs). That said, it’s worth remembering that May 2012 was the culmination of a fairly epic run for the team that was then called the Stars; from September 2011 to the start of June 2012, Minnesota went seventeen matches in all competitions without losing.

Needing results to squeak into the 2011 playoffs, the Stars won two of their final three and drew the other – then beat Tampa Bay, Carolina (over two legs) and Fort Lauderdale (over two legs) to win the 2011 league title. They then started 2012 with a nine-game unbeaten run in the league, while also advancing to the fourth round of the US Open Cup, knocking out Real Salt Lake in the process.

In one week, though, they lost at San Jose in the Cup, then got drilled 5-1 at Carolina in the league, and since then, inconsistency has been persistent for the team. It knocked them down to a sixth-place finish last year, and to a sixth-place finish this spring, and unless they can start a new streak this fall, it’ll do the same to them once again.

Defender Aaron Pitchkolan can’t quite put his finger on the problem – but did note that Minnesota is hardly the only team suffering through it. “With the season as it is, it’s kind of weird, taking a long season and splitting it up into two,” he said. “You’re not going to have a whole lot of continuity with anything. I think the whole league has kind of struggled with that.”

Currently, three points separates first place and seventh place in the NASL standings, with only San Antonio off the pace. Said the defender, “You see in years past there’s a little bit more separation. This year I think everyone’s kind of feeling it out, and I think with so few games – twelve, fourteen games in a season – it’s just kind of basically a sprint. There’s no marathon here.”

“I think it’s a big deal, it’s something we’re very cognizant of,” said head coach Manny Lagos. “A little bit of it is we haven’t been as dominant at home as we should be this year. I don’t want to say we’ve dropped points at home, because every game has been different and there has been adversity.”

Lagos referred to the team’s 1-1 tie with Edmonton last week as another disappointment. “I think it’s another example of a game we probably should have won, even down a man, and we couldn’t quite do it,” he said. “Certainly that’s something where we’re trying to get better and trying to figure out a way to get mentally more consistent from game to game. That’s been difficult. That’s been a challenge. I think there have been some nice moments of soccer – both in the play and the attitude – but it hasn’t been consistent enough to put us on top of the table.”

The fall NASL season has eight games to go, and with United just two points out of first, the fall title is there for the taking. It’ll take more than one-game winning streaks and two-game unbeaten runs, though; it’ll take something like what Minnesota unleashed in late 2011 and early 2012. Whatever mentality the team had then, they need to get back for this year’s stretch run, or a disappointing finish awaits.

NOTE: This appeared at SoccerCentric.

Chances are, if you’ve heard anything about the NASL this fall, the New York Cosmos have been mentioned. The Cosmos were the most famous club of the original incarnation of the NASL, winning the league five times; they’re what people think of, when they think of pre-MLS soccer in America – Pele, Franz Beckenbauer, Giorgio Chinaglia, and all the rest.

It’s fair to say that the current NASL was near-desperate to get the Cosmos name back into the fold. (It was long rumored, though never confirmed, that one of the reasons for the split season this year was to get the Cosmos on the field as soon as possible, even though they couldn’t be ready for the April opening day.) It’s led to a huge amount of publicity for the league; even The Economist took a break from world and business news to mention the re-formation of the team.

Publicity aside, though, New York still had the small problem of forming a team from scratch and competing with seven other squads that already had a half-season in the books. I thought that they’d either be dominant or awful, but so far, they’re splitting the difference; they’re undefeated in three home games, with two last-minute victories and a draw, but have yet to win on the road, with two draws and a loss. The Cosmos sit fourth in the standings, one point above Minnesota.

New York has put together a veteran, experienced defense. Kyle Reynish, who started seven games over three seasons for Real Salt Lake, has played all six games in goal for the team. Left back Hunter Freeman was a regular for Colorado last season, and Houston the season before that; center backs Carlos Mendes (158 MLS appearances from 2005-12) and Roversio (a veteran of La Liga in Spain) also bring a wealth of experience. The only youngster featuring regularly over the past few games is right back Hunter Gorskie, who is in his rookie year. The 22-year-old began the year at center back but has switched to right back (at least, according to the posted lineups).

The midfield is anchored by Marcos Senna, perhaps one of the biggest names in the new NASL’s history. Senna won a European Championship for Spain in 2008, and played much of eleven seasons for Spanish giants Villareal. At 37, he’s taking his chance to be the new Beckenbauer, so to speak, and he leads the Cosmos with two scores (though admittedly one was a penalty and the other was a free kick on which the Edmonton wall accidentally jumped over his low shot).

New York has also offered a path back into soccer for American international Danny Szetela, whose name might be familiar to US national team fans from his three appearances for the team in the late part of the last decade. He was enough of a prospect that MLS held a weighted lottery for his rights when he signed in 2004, but he was out of soccer by 2010, due to a knee injury that eventually required three surgeries.

The midfield has lately been rounded out by Ayoze, who also played two seasons in La Liga for Sporting de Gijon, and American youngster Hagop Chirishan. Up front, the Cosmos have gone with some combination of Diomar Diaz, Alessandro Noselli, and Stefan Dimitrov; the three have combined for two goals, as the Cosmos have scored only six in six matches.

Even so, it’s going to be difficult for Minnesota to get a win at New York. The Cosmos are drawing some of the league’s largest crowds to Hofstra University, their temporary home, and they’re playing genuinely good soccer. Though United will talk about making a statement with a win, a point on the road would probably be a good result for the visitors on Saturday.

NOTE: This appeared at SoccerCentric.

Three thoughts from the USA’s 2-0 win over Mexico, which – combined with Panama’s draw with Honduras – has ensured the USA will qualify for next summer’s World Cup:

1. You can’t beat the poetry of yet another “Dos a Cero.” That’s now four consecutive 2-0 home wins over Mexico in World Cup qualifying. The USA supporters unveiled three enormous banners before the game, commemorating the 2001, 2005, and 2009 wins; they’ll have another to add for 2017, when the USA returns to Columbus to play Mexico (a location that’s not decided but is absolutely certain).

The Americans really had only a handful of chances; Eddie Johnson’s solid header from the USA’s first corner was denied in the first half, but he made no mistake with the team’s second corner, powering home for the first American goal. The USA’s second was created out of nothing, with some quick feet from substitute Mix Diskerud, who found a sliver of space through which to thread a ball that Clint Dempsey just missed turning home, but which rolled through for Landon Donovan to prod into the roof of the net.

Dempsey missed a penalty with the final kick of the match. I don’t mean to suggest that he did it just to preserve the happy poetry of a fourth straight 2-0 win, but I think I’d like him more if he did.

2. What has happened to Mexico? Where is the swashbuckling side that effervescently destroyed the USA 4-2 in the 2011 Gold Cup final? The squad whose youngsters took home the Olympic gold medal last summer? That battered the USA for almost the entire 90 minutes in a 0-0 draw just last March?

Wherever they’ve gone, they don’t appear to be coming back. Throughout the game, Mexico completely refused to press the USA back four; even after the Americans made mistakes playing the ball in defense, the Mexicans sat back and completely ignored the ball once the USA had taken possession. At times, it looked like a rule had been passed that banned the Mexico forwards from pressuring American defenders. It bordered on the absurd; at least once, Donovan, having won the ball in his own half, just stood on the ball calmly as Mexicans walked past him, back to their own half, heads down, not looking at the ball at all.

At the rare times that Mexico committed players forward – for much of the first ten minutes, and occasionally in the second half – the USA would get completely stuck, unable to get the ball out of defense without hoofing it into the crowd. Why they refused to get forward more often, I’ll never understand. It’s not as if the USA were rampaging forward on counter-attacks.

For USA fans, beating Mexico has always been a joy, not least because it seemed so impossible. Year after year, Mexican sides were simply better, more put together, more able to attack remorselessly and tirelessly, over and over again. This time, Mexico just seemed sad – a little pathetic, even, like someone who’s been yelled at one too many times to ever completely meet your eye during a conversation again.

3. Jürgen Klinsmann has now been completely vindicated. In mid-March, the Sporting News published a piece that called into question virtually everything about Klinsmann’s tenure as USA head coach. Klinsmann was judged by former and current players to completely lack any tactical sense, to spend too much time on off-the-field efforts, and to change lineups too often.

Since then, the USA squad has won the Gold Cup, established a record for their longest-ever winning streak at twelve games, and now, earned qualification for the World Cup with two matches to go. Not only that, he’s never lost to Mexico, with a draw and a win in the World Cup and the USA’s first-ever win in Mexico City to his credit.

I’m certain that there are critics and doubters left among the USA fanbase, but it’s impossible to argue with results. All that’s left for Klinsmann is his chance, next summer, to lead his team to success in the World Cup. If he can do that – however you might define success on the world stage – the German will certainly be recognized as the best coach in USA history.