Tag: MLS Madness

MLS Madness™ as double-VAR goal helps CF Montreal stun Philadelphia Union

Did you know VAR can VAR itself?

It’s safe to say that Jim Curtin didn’t enjoy the late, er, show at Stade Olympique on Saturday.

The Philadelphia Union boss was left baffled after his side threw away a 2-1 road lead to fall 3-2 at CF Montréal. Julián Carranza was sent off in the 69th minute, and the Quebecois club turned a seeming loss into a stunning win thanks to a goal that went through two different VAR checks, and a 98th minute Romell Quioto winner.

It started well enough for Montréal, who took a third-minute lead. Mathieu Choinière’s shot was handled by Jakob Glesnes, sending Quioto to the spot early. The Honduran had no trouble converting the penalty, giving Montréal their first goal of the season.

The Union weren’t happy with their first half, and wasted no time getting level. Mikael Uhre shot home after just 20 seconds following excellent work from Leon Flach and Dániel Gazdag.

Philadelphia then produced a lovely second, passing their way around the characteristic high press of Hernán Losada’s teams. A series of headed passes fell to José Martínez, whose clever lob opened the game up.

Gazdag then essentially produced a carbon copy of Martínez’s pass, taking advantage of an odd hop off the Big O turf to send Uhre in alone for a brace.

However, Carranza picked up a second yellow card nine minutes later, crashing into Joel Waterman well after the ball was gone.

It was a golden chance for Montréal to break out of a season-opening three-game losing streak, but even as Losada threw in a quadruple substitution to try and get his team some kind of equalizer, shots for the home side were hard to come by. The Union were showing their experience, and seemed set to kill the game off for a hard-earned win.

Montréal had seemingly one last push, though, and produced an unconventional equalizer in the 90th minute. Waterman, a center back, ended up in space on the right wing, and served in a hopeful cross. Choinière, a wingback, found himself in the goalmouth, and despite the attentions of three Philadelphia players, floated a header back against the grain.

The Union were bailed out, as the ball clipped off the crossbar and away from goal. With the game up for grabs, Chinoso Offor simply wanted it more than Glesnes, winning a shoulder-to-shoulder challenge to bundle the ball across the line.

VAR held up referee Nima Saghafi, though: Offor and Sunusi Ibrahim were possibly offside as Choinière’s header went towards goal.

Replays seem to point to a goal coming back, but even after Saghafi booked Losada for urging the game to restart and then checked the monitor, no conclusion came. Saghafi left the monitor after less than 30 seconds, calling the goal off. Montréal captain Victor Wanyama pleaded with an official, and before play resumed, VAR called down again.

The overturned call needed to be checked again…by the guy who had overturned it.

Saghafi took another look, and this time the goal stood. Unsurprisingly, the two coaches had differing takes.

“Luckily for the beauty of the sport and for us tonight they could come back and make the right decision because at the end they made the right call,” Losada told reporters after the match.

Union boss Jim Curtin felt somewhat differently in his remarks, saying “the word s—show comes to mind,” adding that “I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.”

Answering a question sent by a pool reporter after the game, Saghafi explained the situation:

On the initial review, the defender holding [Offor] onside was off screen. After the initial review occurred, prior to play restarting, the VAR discovered an angle that clearly showed that [Offor] was in an onside position when the ball was last touched by a teammate.

Back to the game, which wasn’t over. Losada’s D.C. United teams were known for going all-out for wins, whether or not that was the wisest course of action. With a home crowd roaring and a short-handed, fatigued opponent, though?

You probably already know where this one’s going: in the eighth minute of stoppage time Choinière was involved yet again, looping a cross to the back post. What started as a battle between Quioto and Union right back Olivier Mbaizo ended with the former easily shedding the latter, and Quioto turned the resulting free header into a dramatic, last-gasp winner.

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Ku-DiPietro, D.C. United youngsters spark wild, extremely late win

MLS Madness™ saw D.C.’s kids turn a sure loss into a shock win

Toronto FC would have gotten away from Audi Field if not for D.C. United’s crew of meddling kids.

In 2022, United didn’t get into the MLS Madness™ category outside of games that went terribly wrong, so in some ways 2023 is already better. United was 2-1 down as the 90th minute arrived, and looked like they were going to end up with a frustrating loss to TFC.

However, two stunning late goals — both sparked by young substitutes from their academy system — saw them rise from the dead to claim a wild 3-2 win at Audi Field on Saturday.

United had started well, getting a spectacular goal from their most prominent offseason addition Mateusz Klich, only for the game to drift away from them after halftime.

United managed just 0.5 expected goals by the 79th minute, and had seen Toronto equalize through Federico Bernardeschi’s 66th minute penalty. Mark-Anthony Kaye’s acrobatic finish after Bernardeschi’s curling long-range free kick seemed to doom the Black-and-Red to a game that felt a bit like something from last season.

Instead, a trio of academy youngsters in Ted Ku-DiPietro, Kristian Fletcher, and Jackson Hopkins ended up playing a major role in a wild, last-gasp comeback.

“To go 2-1 down was tough to take. I’ve obviously made the couple of changes,” Wayne Rooney told reporters after the match. “[I] put the young lads in and said ‘go and shine,’ so I think it was great. I’m delighted for [Ku-DiPietro], he’s been excellent all preseason.”

First, though, the 21-year-old got an assist. Ku-DiPietro, Fletcher, and Mohanad Jeahze (another offseason pick-up to make an instant impact) patiently played in a triangle, waiting for TFC to leave them an opening. Jeahze’s clever pass sent Ku-DiPietro into space along the endline, and the young attacker crucially took a moment to size up his options.

When you’ve got a target like Christian Benteke to aim for, the choice isn’t all that complicated, but Ku-DiPietro did very well to serve the ball on a platter as the veteran striker won a battle to head home a 90th minute equalizer.

A frigid Audi Field erupted, and United sensed their chance to take all three points. Within two minutes of play resuming, Hopkins broke free on the right and drove a low cross behind a scrambling TFC back line, but a lunging Benteke saw the ball zip inches from his reach.

Eight minutes into stoppage time, with what was likely the final look either team was going to get, a marauding run from Andy Najar unsettled Toronto. Najar — himself a United academy product from back in the day — fed Fletcher. In just his third MLS appearance, the 17-year-old disguised his intentions before touching the ball on to Jeahze, who in turn pinged a square ball into the mixer for Ku-DiPietro to crash home his first MLS goal.

Cue the big celebration: a knee slide, a shush, and some encouragement to the crowd behind Audi Field’s south goal.

“I just saw Fletcher flick the ball on to [Jeahze] and I just thought, ‘I gotta get into the box, because we can actually win this game right now,’ especially with the crowd behind their backs and momentum from our second goal,” Ku-DiPietro told a scrum of reporters in the home locker room.

Ku-DiPietro added that his knee-slide celebration was “just super fun. Always wanted to do it since I was a kid,” which conveniently ignores just how young he is himself.

Despite his obvious youth, Ku-DiPietro may feel like an older player on a United side full of youngsters. Fletcher and Hopkins, a U.S. under-20, made their impact at one end. At the other, 16-year-old Matai Akinmboni started at center back, going 78 minutes before leaving with what Rooney said was a cramping muscle.

“I’m delighted for Matai to come through the 70-odd minutes he’s come through, and he’ll learn from the penalty [he conceded],” said Rooney of the youngest player in his squad.

Rooney’s matchday squad, which also included midfielder Chris Durkin (an academy product who returned to the club after some time in Belgium), center back Donovan Pines, and 19-year-old defender Jacob Greene, had a total of eight players who came up through the D.C. academy pipeline.

Is Rooney psychic?

On top of the win, Rooney emerged as a possible clairvoyant, telling reporters that he effectively predicted how the game would go to his players.

“I actually said to them before the game, ‘there’s a possibility you might be losing the game and someone will come off the bench and win the game.’ And that’s exactly what happened,” said Rooney with the faintest hint of a smile.

Seeing the future or not, Rooney did note that the win was critical for United in multiple ways. The team lost a potential starter in Martín Rodríguez days before the game to a torn ACL, while 2022 All-Star Taxi Fountas suffered a hamstring strain even closer to match day.

After coming off of a difficult season and enduring plenty of less-than-glowing predictions in the winter, a home loss would have been more bad news. Instead, Rooney and United broke a winless run that dates back to August.

“We had a tough week, obviously, losing Martín [Rodríguez] with a knee injury, and then Taxi as well,” said Rooney. “I knew I’d be able to get an hour out of Nigel[Robertha], and then have Ku with his energy to come on and try to give us some of his individual magic, which he can do. I think to start the season with three points against a good team — Toronto are a very good team — we’re all delighted.”

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MLS Madness spreads nationwide as league breaks goalscoring record

MLS was, even by MLS standards, completely bonkers Saturday night

Summer in MLS can be a rough time. You’re too far away from the real pressure of making or missing the playoffs, it’s hot and humid everywhere, teams are figuring it out after transfer window moves. It can feel very much like everyone’s biding their time for September and October.

Not August 6. MLS Madness™ took hold in nearly every corner of the country, with goals galore, teams scoring and conceding in the deepest depths of stoppage time, big-name stars scoring bangers, and everyone basically went bananas. It was a perfect advertisement for the league: fun, flawed, weird, and inexplicable.

For one thing, MLS broke a league record for goals scored in one night. Across 13 games Saturday night, teams combined for 57 goals, an average of well over four per game. The old record of 46 was left in the dust.

As the league itself once said, This Stuff Kicks!

In chronological order, let’s go through one of the wildest nights in MLS history:

MLS Madness strikes again as Colorado Rapids come back to beat Red Bulls 5-4

Just another completely bananas MLS game

MLS has been On One lately, and the league’s latest bizarre chapter was a 5-4 Colorado Rapids win over New York Red Bulls Tuesday night.

The Rapids trailed 2-0 less than ten minutes after kickoff, and 3-1 before the 30th minute, but scored three times from the 77th minute onward to somehow take the three points.

It might have seemed like the wacky weekend of MLS results was enough. Two different 4-4 draws and a 6-0 rout came Saturday, and then for dessert, D.C. United scored twice in stoppage time to turn Wayne Rooney’s MLS coaching debut into an extremely unlikely 2-1 win.

If only that were it! Instead, Tuesday coughed up a game that could seemingly be scored to Yakety Sax.

Dru Yearwood and Aaron Long both scored in the first 10 minutes, and while Diego Rubio pulled one back for Colorado, the Red Bulls emphasized their superiority, as Lewis Morgan blasted a penalty kick past William Yarbrough in the 28th minute (a sequence that saw Lalas Abubakar initially sent off, only for VAR to overturn that call).

3-1 inside a half hour. That’s wild enough, right? Not if you’re the rickety roller coaster that is MLS. Keegan Rosenberry struck to get the Rapids within a goal going into the locker room, and though both teams seemed happy to go end-to-end throughout the second half, it started to feel like 3-2 was as wild as things were going to get.

Just as it seemed that Colorado didn’t have enough in the tank to make the comeback complete, they naturally scored twice in three minutes. Collen Warner equalized in the 77th minute, and in the 80th Michael Barrios was wide open on the right to give the Rapids the lead.

17-year-old winger Dantouma “Yaya” Toure then thought he’d make it 5-3, only for his goal to be called back after a VAR check. Toure shrugged the whole thing off and scored again in the 89th minute, finishing after Rubio was able to dance away from a crowd of New York defenders to keep the play alive.

Surely 5-3, 89th minute…we’re done here, right? We can’t go further into the weirdness, it’s a weeknight.

Not even close. The Red Bulls got to the penalty spot deep in second half stoppage time, with Tom Barlow eventually converting with ease.

And yet, MLS still had a little more madness. Barlow’s penalty was taken in the seventh minute of stoppage time, which was all referee Drew Fischer had initially given. However, the game carried on, and with the clock reading 98:59 and red smoke wafting into the Rapids’ penalty area, the Red Bulls seemed to have pulled off a miracle: Barlow nodded Long’s headed pass in from close range.

5-5! The MSG Network broadcast even changed their score bug to read 5-5. Long peeled away to celebrate, Barlow popped up expecting to be mobbed by teammates.

But before Barlow had to dodge overzealous celebrations, he spotted the last twist in the tale: a raised flag from the near-side assistant referee. Replays shown on the broadcast were deeply inconclusive, but Fischer wasn’t called over to the VAR monitor, and Colorado staggered out of Red Bull Arena with a 5-4 fever dream of a victory.

It was a particularly galling nightmare for the Red Bulls, who gave up a goal on a set piece, then gave up another on a throw-in, and also got a taste of their own high-pressing medicine on Rubio’s opener. Two Colorado goals clipped a Red Bulls defender on their way past Carlos Coronel.

Tune in tomorrow, as MLS’s capacity for chaotic soccer continues with four more games on the schedule.

Enjoy the Rapids-Red Bulls goalfest

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Portland Timbers, Minnesota United delivered some MLS Madness

MLS is weird!

The Portland Timbers visited Minnesota United for a Saturday afternoon MLS clash, and the two teams produced a wacky, weird, wonderful 4-4 draw.

Everyone knows MLS can be a deeply strange league, with fun goals and puzzling defending choices. Bizarre games are a regular occurrence—this isn’t MLS’s first 4-4 draw of the season—but it’s rare that a zany, madcap classic pops up on national TV.

However, Saturday on ABC, the Timbers and Loons provided exactly that. Nine yellow cards, eight goals, three equalizers, three lead changes, and no clarity for the packed middle tier of the Western Conference, which sees Portland (7th, 31 points) and four other teams sandwiched between third-placed Minnesota (35 points) and the Seattle Sounders, who sit 9th on 29.

Portland scored just 13 seconds into the match, with Sebastián Blanco finishing off a move that left Minnesota’s players looking like training cones.

And yet, they walked into the locker room down 3-1 after some wonderful work from Emanuel Reynoso (one assist, and involvement in all three goals) and Franco Fragapane (who scored one and added a bonkers heel flick that hit the post before Bongokuhle Hlongwane buried Minnesota’s second).

Naturally, that impressive comeback from the home side gave them a lead that lasted all of eight second-half minutes. Blanco scored in the 50th minute to bring the Timbers back to life, and by the 53rd minute it was 3-3 after Jaroslaw Niezgoda scored a goal that survived a lengthy VAR check.

Portland then surged back in front with this weird game’s weirdest goal. Blanco tried to slip a pass across the goalmouth from out wide, but even though he appeared to misplace that service, the ball somehow squirmed between Dayne St. Clair and the near post.

After 53 previous Timbers braces in MLS, Blanco hoped for credit for the club’s first-ever league hat trick, but the goal was credited as an own goal after clipping Kemar Lawrence on the way in.

There was still plenty of time for the game to take the oddity up to new levels, and Minnesota equalized through Luis Amarilla in the—you guessed it—69th minute.

St. Clair then redeemed himself for the fourth Portland goal with a spectacular save, and play remained wide open throughout the final minutes, with yellow cards piling up as the only defensive answer either team seemed to have was to foul as the other team sparked counter-attacks.

The rest of the weekend’s MLS games have a high bar to meet.

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