MLS weekend wrap-up: Key takeaways from Matchday 7

Keep a close eye on Vancouver next week, when it travels to Mexico on Wednesday, April 9 and hosts Austin in MLS on Saturday, April 12. If that schedule doesn’t catch Vancouver out, there’s a good chance nothing will.

Diego Luna proves reports of the U. S. Men's National Team's doom are greatly exaggerated

Much has been written about the USMNT's "likability" problem in the wake of its embarrassing losses to Panama and Canada in the Concacaf Nations League. It's true that this vintage of the USMNT is struggling to make its mark on the field... but is the team unlikable? Not when Diego Luna is involved, that's for sure.

Luna had a spectacular weekend for Real Salt Lake, netting both goals in a 2-0 win over the L.A. Galaxy. Luna, a Sunnyvale, California, native and dual national with Mexico, is a new kind of American soccer star, one who takes shifts at coffee shops to improve his communication skills and speaks openly about the value of therapy. He’s the future of the USMNT, and man, does it look likable indeed.

Kansas City’s new manager bounce is bittersweet

The “new manager bounce” is a known phenomenon in soccer: when a struggling team fires its coach, it tends to get a good result immediately after dropping the news. Sporting Kansas City received that bounce this weekend, winning 2-0 against its Missouri rival St. Louis in a bittersweet moment for the club. 

Yes, it got the win it needed — but it lost Peter Vermes, the longest-tenured coach in MLS and fourth-longest tenured coach anywhere in the world, to make it happen. It’s hard to picture Kansas City without Vermes; the club is entering uncharted territory without his steady hand on the tiller.

Columbus’s fluidity is its saving grace in a post-Cucho world

Take a look at the Columbus Crew’s game-winning goal against CF Montréal this weekend:

Beautiful, right? What a perfectly weighted ball that is to Jacen Russell-Rowe. It’s the sort of ball midfielders dream of playing. But the man playing it, Steven Moreira, is no midfielder: he’s a center back.

Under visionary coach Wilfried Nancy, every Columbus player is encouraged to play multiple roles, and this weekend Moreira decided to play the role of Lionel Messi as well as the role of MLS’s reigning Defender of the Year. When Cucho Hernandez left Columbus during the offseason, we all wondered who would step up to replace his goals. Turns out, it’s not one player: it’s all of them. Columbus has found a way to score by committee.

San Jose’s defense shines in the background

San Jose beat D.C. United 1-0 in MLS’s first-ever game on April 6, 1996. This weekend, on the anniversary of that historic occasion, San Jose dropped the hammer once again, winning 6-1 over D. C. amid delirious home-field celebrations. (Captain Christian Benteke pulled one back for D. C. somewhere in the melee, bless him. He pretty much always does.)

With six goals scored, it’d be easy to heap praise on San Jose’s attacking line…but it was its defense, and particularly its goalkeeper Daniel, that sealed this game in San Jose's favor. Daniel made a stunning double save on Benteke early in the second half to keep the scoreline settled at 3-1.

If Daniel doesn't make that pair of saves, San Jose is suddenly dealing with a 3-2 game, and D. C. starts the second half with serious momentum. The goals that came later were lovely, but this was the play that really set San Jose apart.

MLS returns for Matchday 8 next weekend on Saturday, April 12.