The biggest knock against the Philadelphia Union most of the season has been an almost shocking inability to score. Through their first nine matches, they had scored only six goals. That started to change a week ago when two second-half goals gave them their first two-goal performance of the season. This week, the dam broke.
MLS Week 11 Review: Philadelphia Union Answer Their Critics
After scoring just six goals in their first eight matches, the Union have now scored eight in their past two.
After going 14 matches (dating back to last season) without scoring three goals in a match, the Union did that in both the first and second halves of Saturday's game at Toronto FC. Dating back to last week, they have now scored eight goals in their past 117 minutes after scoring just six goals over their previous 783 minutes.
More amazingly, all eight of those goals came from players other than Sebastian Le Toux, who accounted for 40 percent of their scoring in 2010. Le Toux has just one goal and three assists in 2011, although two of those assists were against TFC.
Rather, the scoring load has generally been carried by some of the team’s less celebrated players. Of those eight goals, just three were scored by players with anything approaching an impressive resume.
Michael Farfan, Gabriel Farfan and Kyle Nakazawa each scored their first career goals and Justin Mapp scored his first two goals of the season, which equaled his output of the past three seasons combined. The three other goals came from Carlos Ruiz and Danny Mwanga, whose two-goal, one-assist effort on Saturday was his first three-point match of his MLS career. With nine different goal scorers, the Union already have as man as they did all of last year.
It should be pointed out that these last two wins have come against two of the worst teams in MLS. TFC and the Chicago Fire have combined for just three wins and neither is averaging as much as a full point per match. They are also among the worst defenses, having allowed a combined 39 goals in 21 matches.
Still, the recent performances can't be ignored. Combined with a defense that continues to be one of the best in the league, this kind of scoring could transform the Union from an interesting team into one that is capable of challenging for the Supporters' Shield. Their 20 points are already tied for the third most in the league and their 1.82 points per match puts their pace at just four points behind the league-leading pace of the Los Angeles Galaxy.
The Fortress Falls
It was a wild weekend for home teams, as home teams won just one of 12 games and none of the nine weekend matches. Easily the most surprising of those results was Real Salt Lake falling 2-1 to the Seattle Sounders.
RSL had entered the match on a 29-match home unbeaten streak in MLS competition that dated back to May 16, 2009, but had started to show some signs of weakness. Not since their 4-1 win over the Los Angeles Galaxy back on March 26 have the Royals looked truly dominant and missing several of their top offensive players, a draw seemed like a perfectly reasonable expectation.
But the Sounders have not exactly been playing well and are dealing with some injuries of their own, and it didn't seem to be looking any better for them when Alvaro Fernandez was forced out of the game with an apparent groin strain just 17 minutes in. But the Sounders withstood several close calls and got a huge break when Jamison Olave dragged down Mike Fucito just outside the penalty area and was shown a red card. The Sounders needed less than 15 minutes to open the scoring, adding an insurance goal and then held on to become the first team to win at both Dick's Sporting Goods Park and Rio Tinto Stadium in the same season.
RSL still has the second best point per match (1.89) and their goal-difference is still the third best in the league (+6), so it's probably a bit premature to be claiming they are doomed. This is proof that there's only so much hardship a team can realistically deal with. RSL was already without Javier Morales, but will also be missing Alvaro Saborio, Arturo Alvarez and Paulo Jr. for the next few weeks. The defense, though, remains intact and until this week had allowed just two goals.
There are still reasons to believe RSL can regroup and make a run at the Supporters' Shield. They'll have to play much better than they have recently, though. They were a bit unlucky to not score more than one goal on Saturday, but that was the sixth straight MLS match in which they failed to score more than a goal. Since a team of mostly reserves beat the New England Revolution 2-0 on April 9, they've scored just three goals. That includes four matches at Rio Tinto.
More on those home losses
Entering this week, Chivas USA were the only team with a losing record at home and DC United were the only team that had been outscored at home. The best of the bunch had been the Portland Timbers, who came in with a perfect 5-0-0 record and a +6 goal-difference. Facing a depleted United side, that seemed a safe bet to continue.
Despite lacking the services of Charlie Davies and Dax McCarty and relegating Josh Wolff to the bench, United made the clearest statement yet that they are a far superior team to last year's embarrassment. Perry Kitchen, the outstanding rookie, got the visitors on the board early with a solid header off a class setup from Blake Brettschneider and the team managed to overcome the circus that led to a second-half penalty being retaken twice.
The other home losers weren't nearly as surprising, but there were some unexpected draws: Sporting Kansas City managed to snap their six-match losing streak by earning a point against the Colorado Rapids and the Columbus Crew surrendered three goals to Chivas USA.
Texas Derby lives up to hype
Now this is what a rivalry is supposed to look like. Five bookings. Goals early and late. A solid crowd. Yes, the Texas Derby has a ways to go before reaching classic status, but this was undoubtedly a step in the right direction.
The Dynamo twice fell behind, but managed to equalize both times. First on a goal from Cam Weaver, who's quietly having himself a nice season and now has four goals, already a career high. Their second goal was was made possible by Brad Davis linking up nicely with Colin Clark.
On FC Dallas' side, they got a wonderful goal from Andrew Jacobsen, who was able to volley in a header from about 20 yards out. The tie also extended the Toros' unbeaten streak to eight matches.
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