LAFC's emerging star, Red Bulls shift identity & more from Matchday 11 | OneFootball

By Matthew Doyle

We’re looking at a few pleasant surprises in Cascadia, San Diego’s Designated Players doing their thing, the Crew being the Crew and the Revs going old school.

The 2025 regular season is just about a third over. In we go:

Everything You Want

We’re reaching the point where LAFC’s center forward job is Nathan Ordaz’s job to lose, right? He scored the game-winner in their by-the-numbers 2-0 home win over Houston, which gives him four goals (and two assists) in about 800 minutes across all competitions this year.

Those aren’t overwhelming numbers; he’s not going to win the Golden Boot presented by Audi or anything. But his instant recognition in change-of-phase moments and willingness to run the hard yards – for himself, as any good forward does, but also for his team – injects pace (not just raw footspeed, but pace of play) and unpredictability into the Black & Gold’s attack. It gets opposing defenses into rotation, scrambling and running at their goal or caught a half-beat behind the play, and that matters.

For any team, that’s huge. For a team that plays like LAFC do, it’s everything.

I originally wasn’t going to post a clip from this game because it was just a good team winning a game they should win, but look at how aware Ordaz is here, and how quickly he reads the space as soon as play turns vertical:

Also note how he stays locked in even after David Martínez misses the chance to slip him through, toggling immediately to the near-post run for the pullback across the six. That’s a true goal-scorer’s mentality.

“He is aware that at the end of the night, if you want to score goals, you need to poach,” is how head coach Steve Cherundolo put it in the postgame presser. “You need to be in those areas. You need to be in the box, and you need to be running to goal – to be the first in the box. He was exactly where he should have been. He ran hard and was rewarded for it.”

“We have a fast counter-attacking team, so once we had that rotation going, you kinda always know where it’s going to end up,” is how Ordaz himself talked about that sequence. “Sergi [Palencia] put in the cross. I get yelled at every day in practice to make it to that first post, so that’s what I did.

“Thank God the goalie did what he did. I’m very happy with it.”

The Dynamo aren’t bad, by the way (though I have strong opinions about the decision to start Jonathan Bond). They’re certainly much better than they were in February and March, even if they were outclassed on the day because of their inability to get on the ball and dictate any of the game until the second half.

“LAFC are a good team at home, and they played well tonight. We were not comfortable on the ball in the first half, but we were sharp in the second half,” is what Dynamo head coach Ben Olsen said. “We got control of the game and looked better on the ball. We were still toothless in front of goal, but it was a good response by the group.

“You cannot just play one good half here in Los Angeles and expect to get a good result.”

And so it goes.

Ok, back to Ordaz: We’re in an era where converted wingers are taking up a bunch of No. 9 jobs (I have, against all odds, become a big Ferran Torres guy), and it sure looks like this kid is the MLS version of that. He’s been one of the most pleasant surprises in the league this year and gets the big stage next week when the Black & Gold visit Vancouver for Sunday Night Soccer presented by Continental Tire (7 pm ET | MLS Season Pass, Apple TV+).

Waiting For It Everyday

It took less than 10 minutes for Inter Miami to open the scoring against the Red Bulls on Saturday night. And for RBNY fans, the way it happened brought a familiar pain.

The Herons had pinned the visitors deep. They were knocking the ball around – doing so very comfortably – before whipping in a cross. It was cleared, but Miami won that clearance and kept RBNY pinned. So they knocked it around again and whipped in another cross.

Rinse and repeat. The Red Bull center backs cleared it out, Miami won the clearance, the RBNY line didn’t step up and so in came another cross.

This happened four times before, finally, New York’s center backs couldn’t quite deal with a whipped-in cross, and that left Fafà Picault loose on the back post. He one-timed a finish past Carlos Coronel…

And the rout was on.

This wasn’t a classic Inter Miami performance, coming, as they were, off a midweek Concacaf Champions Cup elimination against Vancouver. But a ho-hum 4-1 win over the Red Bulls should, at least, stem the tide on some of the frustration the Herons’ fanbase was feeling heading into the weekend.

That frustration has now made its way to Harrison, where the Red Bulls look nothing like a team that nearly won MLS Cup last year. They are waiting, every week, for things to click, but they’re not.

And these goals, man. It’s so easy to get to the back post unmarked against RBNY, and say what you want about Miami – a bunch of their flaws were exposed against the ‘Caps – they’re good enough and smart enough to take space in the box when it’s handed to them. Whether it’s attackers like Picault or Luis Suárez, or right back Marcelo Weigandt just ghosting completely inattentive defenders, there is always time and space to be found against a team that had built their identity on the ability to deny both.

Using American Soccer Analysis’s xPass metric (basically the same thing as xG, except it measures the likelihood of a pass being completed or not) there’s been a collective fall-off from the Red Bulls in overall… difficulty to play against, I guess? Like, how hard is it to complete passes and develop a rhythm against you?

Over the past 10 years that answer has always been “really freaking hard” at worst, and usually “hardest in the league.” What I’ve repeatedly written was they controlled the terms of about 90% of all the games they played in; no matter who they were playing against it turned into a crash-bang Energy Drink Soccer game (even against teams as good with the ball as the Crew), and that was always reflected in the numbers.

They’re not that team anymore.

They’re contesting and winning fewer box aerials despite facing more crosses, and they’re facing more crosses because they’re defending deeper and are under more constant pressure. When they do win those aerials and clear their lines, they’re winning fewer second balls at the top of the box.

Because they’re defending deeper and making it easier to complete passes against them, they’re not creating anywhere near as many chances as they used to via the press. Because their two main attackers are older and relatively slow, they’re not able to blow past teams on the break.

All of that puts a ton of pressure on them to become a precise and methodical possession team, which is about as big a philosophical shift as I’ve ever seen in this league. Since 2015 they’ve weaponized the change of possession; now it’s been weaponized against them. They need to protect the ball or they’re in trouble, but that means they can become gun-shy when it’s time to push forward.

“We had so many situations in our transition moments. We had two, three moments where we can go with clear direction to the goal,” said RBNY head coach Sandro Schwarz (who, to be clear, has mostly impressed me since taking over last year). “But we have to pass. We have to pass clean and when you lose the ball, for sure, then in the game [it’s] 2-0.

“Then you are losing a little bit the confidence. But we tried, every time we tried, but we have to play more clean and to make these fast deep runs behind the center backs or behind the fullbacks of the opponent.”

That is a good, honest answer. But I thought the way he ended it was particularly telling:

“That's it, guys. That's it, to be honest. That's it.”

A few more things to ponder…

13. The ‘Caps keep rolling – this time without Brian White, without Ryan Gauld (still, though maybe not for much longer), and with Ranko Veselinović getting a rest. It ultimately didn’t matter in their 2-1 win over RSL because this team just continues to ball.

White’s excellence and Sebastian Berhalter’s rise from part-time starter to maybe the best No. 8 in the league have taken up the most oxygen, but man… Pedro Vite has become the guy we all hoped Pedro Vite could be, hasn’t he?

They are atop the Supporters’ Shield race on 2.36 ppg – well ahead of Miami’s pace from last year – and are into the Concacaf Champions Cup final. You’re not supposed to be able to do that!

But they are. They have, by far, the best underlying numbers in MLS, and because of the development of guys like Jayden Nelson (2g/6a across all competitions, including the opening goal this weekend), J.C. Ngando, Tate Johnson, Édier Ocampo etc. etc. ad infinitum, they have shown the depth to survive injuries, fixture congestion, squad rotation, travel and everything else that has traditionally broken the very best MLS has to offer.

With LAFC having found themselves – they’re unbeaten in four and have played very well the past two games in particular – next week’s Sunday Night Soccer has “Game of the Year” potential.

RSL got out-classed, but not blown out. They finish their three-game road swing with a trip to Dallas next weekend, and a result there means this month was a success.

12. I don’t know why Atlanta United bunkered for the final 70 minutes of their 1-1 home draw with Nashville SC, but they did. Here’s the data from the first 20 minutes, during a period of the game that concluded with Miguel Almirón’s goal to make it 1-0:

And here’s the subsequent 70 minutes:

The Five Stripes got that lead and treated Nashville like they’re Barcelona. Nashville are good – they scored seven last week – but I don’t think that level of caution was warranted from the hosts. And I don’t really blame the fans who were booing at the end.

11. The Columbus Crew, ladies and gentlemen:

The final score – it ended 4-2 to the Crew – was probably a little flattering to Charlotte, who capitalized on an unusual Patrick Schulte gaffe to stay in the game just when the hosts were starting to drop the hammer. The Crown are a good team, but there are levels here, and Columbus are on a different one.

“We could have scored more goals. It’s the game of football. It's normal,” Crew head coach Wilfried Nancy said afterward. “We could have been in control a little bit more, I would say… I would like to have a game where I can sit down, clearly, but this is not the case [on Saturday].

“I'm happy. I'm happy with the performance. It's not easy to play against this team. They defend really well, really well organized defensively. We have grown a lot because if I compare with last year, they played the same way. But this year, we adjusted certain things.”

The Crew are one of two teams ahead of Miami’s record-setting points-per-game pace from last year. A third of the season is done, and I don’t think it’s too soon to start talking about the race for 75 points.

10. D.C. United are not, of course, one of those teams in the running, but they did manage their second victory in three with a 2-1 home win over the Rapids. Colorado did their usual thing of completely collapsing in the five minutes before the half – on the season they sport an incredible -7 goal differential from minute 40 to the halftime whistle. They’ve done it in 11 games.

To put that into context, CF Montréal were last year’s worst team in that particular stat on -5. That’s over 34 games.

There’s other stuff to talk about with the Rapids (I’m still not enamored with the 4-4-2; they’re starting to get key pieces back; the central defensive pairing remains a work in progress), but none of it matters at all if they’re just unplugging for 5-10 minutes every single game.

D.C. showed some progress with the ball, by the way. We’ll see if that holds up.

9. One of the year’s other breakout performers is Danley Jean Jacques. This whole sequence…

This is game-breaking, Best XI stuff from a No. 6. He’s been, I think, the most consistent and best player on a Union team – they won 2-1, by the way, thanks to a late goal by Mikael Uhre – that’s very clearly one of the five best in the league at this point.

Montréal actually played well, by the way. Marco Donadel shifted them into a 4-4-2 and met Philly on their terms, and it nearly worked. This team isn’t quite as bad as their record indicates.

But the record really is grim. They’re 0W-8L-3D, and that’s historically bad. They would need to average nearly two points per game from here on out just to earn an Audi MLS Cup Playoffs Wild Card spot.

8. I sent this one to some friends at about the 20th minute of the Fire’s scoreless draw with Orlando City:

Generating three xG in 20 minutes is insane. Getting nothing out of it is insane. Being forced to hang on for the final 55 minutes, after dominating like that, because your own 'keeper got sent off for misadventures outside the box is insane.

Chicago are in a very big rut right now, having gone winless in six. If they play like this again next week, though, chances are they’ll break that streak. This was a needed reminder that they’re able to play good soccer after last week’s spectacular capitulation against Nashville.

Orlando… both lucky and not to come away with a point, right? Pedro Gallese continues to be awesome – he is, by the numbers, the best ‘keeper in the league since Matchday 3 – and I think Oscar Pareja’s gambit to shift into a back three in possession is the right one.

But without Eduard Atuesta, who’s likely to be out a few weeks, they lack line-breaking passers out of central midfield, and that’s made it tough.

He’s pretty important!

7. Turning it over to Armchair Analyst special correspondent Calen Carr, who was on the mic in Austin for the Verde & Black's pretty dispiriting 3-0 loss to Minnesota United:

Austin have now won just once in their past five and aren't generating great chances. The bigger worry: that $30 million front line has negative attacking chemistry so far with just seven goals and a -6 goal differential through 11 games.

6. San Diego had no problems generating chances against FC Dallas, repeatedly ripping through the visitors in transition and getting both wingers, DPs Hirving Lozano and Anders Dreyer, in great spots in front of goal.

That led to goals, which led to more space, and in the end it was 5-0. That was maybe a little bit flattering, but not by a lot.

“We were in these individual defending moments that just didn't turn out well for us tonight,” Dallas head coach Eric Quill said, and what the hell, let’s show you one:

That’s just gorgeous soccer.

“It became a trickle-down process,” Quill said. “We're chasing, and chasing under fatigue, unorganized. It compounds itself and that's what happened.”

Los Niños (I’m still trying to make it happen, work with me here) snapped their three-game losing streak, and looked much closer to what they were, in terms of compactness, during the first six weeks of the season.

5. New England pushed their winning streak since shifting to the 3-5-2 to four, and Saturday’s 2-0 victory at Toronto was probably their best all-around performance of the bunch. They regularly ripped through TFC in transition and were quicker to everything in central midfield – both goals came when the Revs won loose balls in the middle of the pitch and immediately poured numbers forward. There is real chemistry between Alhassan Yusuf and Matt Polster in that neighborhood.

And then, when they got that 2-0 on the half-hour mark after goals from Carles Gil (playing at a Best XI level these days) and Leo Campana, they didn’t make the mistake of defending in Aljaž Ivačič’s lap, instead doing a nice job of keeping in the possession battle.

Formations aren’t tactics, but they’re related, and the 3-5-2 – at least the way the Revs play it, which is really a 3-4-1-2 with Gil in a free role – lets them immediately extend the game vertically without stranding either of the forwards. Polster and Yusuf mostly sit behind that, and the three center backs sit behind them. There’s no frills here, no underlapping center backs or anything like that, and that’s fine. New England badly needed some stability that would allow Gil and the forwards to attack, and they’ve developed that over the past month by giving rigid specificity to the d-mids and center backs.

That leaves the wingbacks as the only real hybrids, which is also fine. It’s a throwback interpretation of the formation, but when you’ve got a classic No. 10 playing at Gil’s level, it’s not wrong to play the hits.

TFC have now been shut out in three of their past four and four of their past six. They miss DeAndre Kerr.

4. The Sounders pushed their unbeaten streak to four (three wins and a draw) with a commanding 4-1 win over St. Louis, one in which they outshot the visitors 31-7, posted almost 4 xG and were in command in basically every part of the pitch.

A couple of related tidbits here:

Osaze is a true No. 9 who is absolutely destroying MLS NEXT Pro, real men among boys stuff. But it’s not that he’s just overpowering or out-athlete’ing the kids; it’s his movement that’s become refined over the last year (when both his goalscoring and underlying numbers were merely very good, rather than off-the-charts elite), which means… yeah, he’s a guy who finds good looks.

With Jordan Morris and Jesús Ferreira (whose time as a No. 9 was probably done, anyway) both laid up for the next few weeks at least, we’ll probably get to see some more of Osaze. Any MLS sicko should be looking forward to that. (Also, I will lose my sicko card if I don't mention how Nouhou had a goal and an assist. I'm not gonna analyze that, I'm just gonna remind you it happened).

St. Louis are now winless in seven. As I pointed out two months ago, teams are rusty and sloppy to start the season. But by about mid-April, everybody’s sharper.

Just stuffing as many center backs as possible into the XI and putting numbers behind the ball is a defensive strategy with a short shelf life. We see it every year.

3. It felt like the Quakes were due for a win like Saturday’s 4-1 over Portland, one in which they both played well and got on the right end of a few lucky breaks (they have habitually been on the wrong end of those, basically all year long).

Bruce Arena’s made some adjustments to the backline personnel, which was him making good on a promise after their 5-3 loss to Sporting a couple of weeks back. Rookie Max Floriani is now starting at right center back in a 3-4-3 (Floriani’s upside is huge, though he still has a lot of rookie moments), while veteran Dave Romney’s at left center back. Third-year pro Daniel Munie is in the middle, and that offers San Jose something different because of his distribution:

The other difference is this really was a 3-4-3 (they’ve mostly been playing a 3-5-2) with Cristian Espinoza and Ousseni Bouda flanking Chicho Arango (whose movement was incredible all game, both in possession and attack). All three of those guys got on the board – Espinoza twice, with Chicho and Bouda also picking up assists.

Playing with just two true central midfielders could become an issue against other teams, though the Timbers, who still aren’t comfortable in possession, aren’t really built to punish that.

Portland carved out some looks – including a few very good ones – but their inability to compress space effectively remains worrying, and was especially pronounced without Diego Chara.

2. NYCFC got a well-deserved 1-0 win over FC Cincinnati, one that always felt more likely to end 2-0 or 3-0 after Julián Fernández did well to pounce on a deflected pullback at the top of the box for a one-time finish past Roman Celentano.

Celentano was in the firing line all game, as the Pigeons generated 19 shots, many of them high quality. There were also moments like this one in which NYCFC got in an incredibly good attacking spot and generated nothing:

I’m certain I made the Face of the Week when Fernández did not make a run there.

Anyway, if you want to know why this team has missed Malachi Jones so much over the past year – why he got about twice as many box touches per 90 as Fernández, Agustín Ojeda and the rest of the wingers – it’s because Jones would never just sort of jog along in that outside channel Fernández is in. Instead, he’d have been riding two yards behind the line and sprinting towards the box as soon as that defender shaped his body towards the ball.

That should be the wide attacker getting slipped through virtually every time, but THE RUN MAKES THE PASS. The pass never happens if the winger is just standing there.

I feel weird picking on Fernández (who I’ve generally defended) in particular, and NYCFC as a whole, a little bit after this one. It was, after all, their third win in four and maybe their best all-around performance of the year (at least until Keaton Parks came off injured around the half-hour mark; he's irreplaceable). But they need those wide attackers to move like they mean it off the ball, and if that doesn’t happen, this patch of good form will be a patch, not a habit.

Cincy, whose five-game winning streak ended, need some of that chemistry and dynamism themselves. The talent is there but the pieces aren’t quite fitting, which was made worse by the absence of Pavel Bucha.

1. And finally, the Galaxy stayed in the cellar with a 1-0 loss at Sporting KC, who did not register a single shot:

That’s not “no shots on goal.” That’s “no shots, period.”

The Galaxy are now winless in 11 to start the year and saw both their healthy DPs come off injured (no word on how badly yet for Gabriel Pec and Joseph Paintsil). Sporting have now won three of five under interim head coach Kerry Zavagnin.

I don’t feel the need to get into this one any deeper than that.