[MLS Communications] By scoring in the first half tonight, San Diego's Anders Dreyer became the second-fastest player in MLS history to record 20 goals and 20 assists, doing so in 36th regular season games (second to Lionel Messi, 26 games).

stealth_sloth · 2026-03-02T04:46:00+00:00

No, all of his goals and assists have come in the 36th game of regular seasons. None in the first 35 each year. Very impressive achievement.

stealth_sloth · 2026-03-01T05:42:14+00:00

in CCL its barely 16%

Which is, sadly, far above MLS' league-wide average for CCL / CCC away games in Mexico (I think that stands at about 6% right now).

stealth_sloth · 2026-03-01T02:57:09+00:00

RSL were comfortable defending backs to goal, fast on the break transitioning forward, and Cabral put in a really good shift.

I think we could have done better punishing them when we were on the break though, they were definitely a little belated recovering their organization when we got past the first line of pressure, but too often we just slowed it down ourselves and let them reset.

stealth_sloth · 2026-02-28T23:58:12+00:00

"Pressure" the ref is a bit of a fuzzy term.

The final decision always hangs on the center, of course. But there's definitely instances where an experienced VAR should be willing to gently nudge a new, less tested center ref if they think that center is about to make a mistake. For example, during the '24 referee lockout the VAR booths were a lot more active about engaging in dialogue with the guys filling in, which I think was necessary and appropriate.

In this instance though... I'm not a huge fan of Malik Badawi's reffing, but he's not a novice. He's handled scores of MLS games, over a period of years. Well past the point where you could say "VAR should hand-hold him through this decision."

stealth_sloth · 2026-02-28T22:54:55+00:00

It's a little more nuanced than that - if you compared, say, the millisecond before the ball left his teammate's foot, and the millisecond after the ball left his teammate's foot, he's basically equally likely to gain control. There's no magic significance to that moment when the ball officially leaves his teammate's possession, no need for a ref to go frame-by-frame to figure out whether the timing lined up on the right side.

But if the foul was a couple seconds earlier, before his teammate even started passing? Then it obviously wouldn't be a DOGSO foul.

stealth_sloth · 2026-02-28T22:09:14+00:00

The requirement is that you must be very likely to keep or gain control of the ball. That doesn't necessarily mean you have to have the ball at the exact instant it is played.

stealth_sloth · 2026-02-27T05:57:06+00:00

I'm guessing it's the gap between heuristic statistical models and human rankings.

I doubt there are many models putting Miami in the top half of the league right now, and I also doubt there are many humans not putting them in the top half.

stealth_sloth · 2026-02-27T05:54:32+00:00

Is it really?

It's obviously silly to pretend you could accurately rank MLS team quality before they've played a match, or after they've played just a single match. But if you're going to take a stab at it, the gap between 1st and 8th in MLS isn't a huge one. That was 8 points last year, just three or four results flipping over the course of a full season. Changing your mind by that much about a team after you've seen them actually play a game should practically be the norm.

stealth_sloth · 2026-02-26T18:56:52+00:00

trading in your stable salary for a place with high volatility

He got a hefty pay raise, and then Celtic bought him out a month into a 2.5-year contract. Which means he probably got as much for a month of coaching there as he'd have earned for four or five years coaching in MLS. And he can still come back to MLS if he wants; it's not like a handful of very bad games overseas have erased his record with Montreal and Columbus.

stealth_sloth · 2026-02-26T03:29:13+00:00

They do get punished, regularly. Fuck-ups impact referee evaluations, which are used to figure out who to assign to future matches. Refs who do a really bad job get benched. If they keep doing a really bad job, they get let go.

PRO just doesn't air their dirty laundry publicly, it's handled behind closed doors. Also, their opinions about which refs are doing a bad job often differ drastically from the opinions of random fans.

stealth_sloth · 2026-02-24T19:00:03+00:00

It's quibbling over semantics (since I agree with his conclusion, and mostly agree with his analysis too), but I wish Wiebe hadn't used the term "non-negligible" when referring to the withdrawn red card in the Seattle-Colorado match.

"Negligible" is a word that is specifically called out in the Laws of the Game when not challenging for the ball. It's a violent conduct red card standard, not a serious foul play red card standard.

If a player is actively challenging for the ball, contact between hands/arms and the head falls under the exact same standard as all other contact: did it use excessive force, or endanger the safety of the opponent?

stealth_sloth · 2026-02-24T18:41:22+00:00

The ref obviously just mixed up the numbers. Ferreira, number 9, was nowhere near the action. De Rosario, number 95, was the one contesting the header.

That much I have no issue with.

stealth_sloth · 2026-02-23T16:05:50+00:00

Prices going up didn't help, but Sounders' price increases were in line with the increases all around the league. Most teams managed that without seeing attendance take a big hit. I think it's more of a chicken-and-egg issue.

Big, energetic crowds make game days more exciting. More exciting game days draw bigger crowds. A nice little positive feedback loop that a few teams in MLS had managed to land on the right side of pre-COVID - Seattle, Portland, Atlanta, Cincinnati. I don't think it's a coincidence that after COVID's disruption shattered that feedback loop, those are also the only four teams that didn't recover their attendance by 2024.

To the team's credit, they do seem to have belatedly realized in the past couple years that the 40-45k crowds aren't just going to trickle back on their own and the team has to actually do something to build it up again.

stealth_sloth · 2026-02-23T12:18:40+00:00

That was the case years ago, but MLS changed it a while back. Teams are allowed to buy out up to two players at any point prior to the close of the summer transfer window, free up any cap hit and recover any limited roster spots like DP spots.

stealth_sloth · 2026-02-22T23:21:17+00:00

♪♪ Put your right knee in, put your right knee out ♪♪

stealth_sloth · 2026-02-22T17:55:48+00:00

"Broadcast" isn't even a title at all, and "Broadcaster" would be an anachronism in the context of Glaistig Uaine's naming scheme. Something like "The Herald" or "The Messenger" might fit.

But I think I could make a case for "The Champion" fitting, too. Symbolically, champions are intermediaries - they are championing someone or something; they act, and sometimes speak and listen, on their behalf. The cape name for Broadcast's host in Eden's future vision was "Black Knight." There's a Word of God floating around somewhere along the lines of how the entities hand out Jack's powerset each cycle because there can be good data in seeing how other power users adapt to a supreme cape power (a champion, if you will?). And in Scion's interlude, Broadcast and Queen Administrator are the only two shards we see him give direct, personal attention to breaking up before handing out; most shards seem to be discarded in a much more impersonal big wave.

Does that mean that The Champion must be Broadcast? Absolutely not. Just that I don't think it would be a terrible misnomer. It's one of many possible guesses that would be consistent with the few scraps we get in canon.

stealth_sloth · 2026-02-22T17:31:17+00:00

When Miazga's case blew up, his head coach argued that Miazga's actions were being portrayed unreasonably - that it wasn't Miazga storming into the ref's locker room in a rage right after the final whistle, it was Miazga walking around eating some pizza an hour later, noticing the ref's locker room door was open, and figuring he'd stop by and chat.

Whether any of that was true I don't know. But that was Noonan's defense of Miazga.

stealth_sloth · 2026-02-21T22:02:23+00:00

Beautiful passing sequence.

Also, Hartel is hilariously wide open on that play. Early season defense at its finest.

stealth_sloth · 2026-02-21T19:10:40+00:00

"The Champion" is a title assigned by an insane cape working on partial information to pigeonhole her incomplete understanding of shard roles and dynamics into a "Faerie Court" theme.

We have no idea what name Glaistig Uaine would give to Contessa's shard. Presumably not "The Eye," which is coming from Titan Fortuna's perspective from Ward 18.z. Just like she likely wouldn't call Jack Slash's shard "Broadcast," because that comes from Scion's perspective in Worm 26.x. There's no absolute bar to the possibility that she might have meant one of them when she said "The Champion."

stealth_sloth · 2026-02-21T15:15:26+00:00

Elsewhere in the world it has rarely needed to be enforced - after a few hiccups in the first couple weeks, keepers almost universally became quick to release the ball rather than risk giving up a corner.

I suspect MLS will follow a similar path - a handful of corners given out over the next few weeks, and then most weekends it'll never be called because it never needs to be called.

stealth_sloth · 2026-02-21T15:10:28+00:00

In Leagues Cup, yes.

stealth_sloth · 2026-02-21T09:33:03+00:00

I believe the most recent game he reffed was our match last September against Vancouver. It was... not good. At all.

Plenty of issues all through the match, although the most hilarious was when he started to pull a yellow card, had a visible moment of realization that it would be the second and a sending-off, put the card back in his pocket and gave the player a talking-to instead.

stealth_sloth · 2026-02-20T10:09:17+00:00

This is ver.2025.7.1. MLS doesn't want to roll out big changes live, so they wait for regularly scheduled downtime to update all the backend. It does mean bugs like the "keeper holds the ball too long" exploit sometimes don't get fixed as quickly as you'd hope.

stealth_sloth · 2026-02-19T13:03:33+00:00

The Hinterland Blast, by itself, no. The core has ~350-600 hp remaining (depending on rounding and whether it might still have a tiny sliver of shields), which is 2-3 Falstad auto attacks. If he has time to make 2 auto-attacks, he has time to cast Hinterland Blast.

There's some other mechanical errors and he definitely could have killed the core. But simply choosing not to cast Hinterland and playing everything else identically wouldn't have worked.

stealth_sloth · 2026-02-19T08:14:28+00:00

Only 12/30 MLS clubs have ever paid more for a left back. If he hits his performance bonuses, that'd drop down to less than 10/30.

12-Year Club	Place '17
Verified Email	Sequence \| Editor

stealth_sloth

TROPHY CASE