Luis Bueno Gives His MLS Preseason Rankings
By: Laurie | February 26th, 2008Luis Bueno is one of the bigger Southern California soccer journalists. He’s offering up his preseason thoughtson how the teams will do this year.
1. Chivas USA
2. Houston
3. New England
4. DC United
5. Colorado
6. Chicago
7. New York
8. FC Dallas
9. Los Angeles
10. Kansas City
11-t. San Jose
11-t. Toronto
13. Columbus
14. Real Salt Lake
Click on the links for the goalkeeping, defensive, midfield and forward rankings.
What do you think?
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Comments
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He knows that the Rapids are from COLORADO right?
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United States
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San Jose too high given the past records of expansion (RSL & Chivas shared the foot of the entire league and Western Conference allowing a crap Galaxy team to get in at the expence of 5th place East last year runners-up Kansas City who had been moved to the tougher East to balance numbers and had a better record to boot;Toronto was at the foot). Chicago winning the cup as an expansion is a different league.
RSL can surprise the further they get from the stink that is Ellinger and the closer they get to playing on grass.
Too much faith in Christian Gomez, I love him, he’s great but he doesn’t make the Rapids the 5th best team in the league.
Also probably underestimated- Dallas. They make smart acquisitions from South America and have generally been a good team for a couple of years. If it is a prediction for crashing out of the play-offs than yes, and they’ll probably have the traditional mid-summer Dallas swoon/crash, but they’ll be seeded higher than that.
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Ugh. Laurie, I want to counter this post. There are some clear deficiencies. NO WAY San Jose goes that high, or TFC that low, or Colorado that high, or RSL that low, or Dallas that low . . . its like he is looking at last years rosters and isnt takin into consideration these teams clear additions.
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My ranking:
1. DC United (I am just constitutionally unable to predict otherwise)
2. Chicago (yes; Blanco really does make them much better;plus fired up over NY’s tapping up)
3. Houston (finally actually win the West)
4. Dallas (hold the lead in the west til August when they go on a prolonged tie streak)
5. Chivas (Start strong Guzan transfers in the summer and they discover they don’t really have a second goalkeeper; that plus El Matador’s age makes the defence weak for the second half, still potent on offence)
6. Columbus (Sigi’s babies finally mature and start showing their stuff in Schelletto’s calming presence, then falter after he leaves in the summer only to rally at the end, Crew fans taken off suicide watch)
7. New York (slip in towards the tail end of the playoffs-again; Reyna injured most of season & Altidore leaves in summer)
8. Colorado (Christian Gomez helps just enough as they sneak into the playoffs on last day)
9. Real Salt Lake (RSL holds the final playoff spot til the last day when Colorado overtakes them proving to be the most heartbreaking RSL season yet;suicide watch continues)
10. New England (team finally falls apart and falls apart badly)
11. Los Angeles (3 DP level players don’t outweigh the inexperience elsewhere)
12. Toronto (better but not quite ready yet)
13. Kansas City (Claudio Lopez & Sealy can’t get it started on offence & giving away a lot of experience on defence proves stupid)
14. San Jose (yeah, they are another expansion- look on the bright side you’ll finish higher than Seattle next year)Probably wrong (yeah, I kind of forgot New England for a while after deciding that they were going to drop some-maybe took it a bit too far), but hey, what’s the preseason for if not talking out of your ass.
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Ahem. Have to disagree that San Jose will finish higher than Seattle next year. Apart from my own constitutinal bias, their USL team kicks butt, and they’ve gotten permission to “promote” a certain number of players to MLS. Watch out, teams at the top.
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United States -
Fight on people. San Jose stays at the botom until we find an offense. Any one got an offense we can borrow? But I predict we suck ass in the beginning, quietly get our shit together, then sneak into that last playoffs spot. But we lose that first post-season match (away games, *sigh*) and soomeone in the Front Office creates a heartwrenching video of the whole thing all the seson ticket holders quickly snatch up, watch on constant repeat next winter, and comment about incessantly on bigsoccer.
Thats how its gonna be.
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San Jose has a D enough to gain a few wins and give teams like LA, RSL and Colorado a run for their money.
Chivas is another class. As is Houston. Dallas may be as well this year.
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My big question mark about Chivas is that they dumped half their team in the off-season. I’m curious to see if they replaced them with better quality, or if the lack of cohesiveness that comes from adding so many new players in such a short time will hurt them in the long run.
(LA Galaxy fan speaking from experience here on that whole “lack of cohesiveness” thing.)
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Chivas dumped a lot of dev players who didn’t play a lot (I believe thhats what happened). Well, besides whatshisface from Dallas – yup, forgot his name already. Not sure the motivation for the total clean sweep but may be related to the fact that Chivas are one of the few teams allowed to grab players from their youth leagues? I honeslty haven’t been following their roster changes too closely. Either way, their off-season aquisitions looked wierd at the beginning but seem to be making more sense now. I’d say it may be their year this year. Don’t want to jynx it tho and Guzan single-handedly kept them in games last year (if you looked at the stats). Yup, sunno what will happen when they lose El Guzano.
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New England will be near the top no matter what. Nicol is too good a coach to let the team just fall apart. With a few more depth players, maybe a DP and we’re sitting pretty.
TFC has a nice looking team, they deserve to be flip=flopped with LA at the least, Colorado at the most.
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I was feeling very saucy after reading the comments here…then I sat down and tried to compile power rankings of my own…only to chicken out.
It’s too early. And, no, I don’t think TFC is going to be better than 11th. I think they’ll be lucky to be better than the Crew.
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Since we are playing the ranking game…
1. Chivas- Besides being the best, we lost no important players, just gained a few good ones. PS. Big plans for the team if Brad leaves.
2. Houston- lost three key players
3. DC- too much transition
4. NE- they’re good
5. NY- Hopefully they will score more than they concede.
6. CHI- Hopefully Blanco’s talent is contagious.
7. FCD- Don’t know why
8. KC- EJ left… net benefit
9. Crew- The Argentine.
10. Colorado- see number 7
11. RSL- It’s their turn to not be last.
12. Toronto- Canada…soccer?
13. SJ- The band is getting back together.
14. LA- too many eggs in three baskets. (two very old and fragile baskets and one basket that is tired of carrying the team)Posted from
United States -
I can only say as an unabashed homer that RSL is too low. They’re a possible playoff team. Their opening day lineup could have nine players who weren’t there on opening day last year. Quite the overhaul.
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Its still to early for any of this. At least for my Bulls. Ill wait till we are into March, past the 3rd.
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Rapids at 5? Chivas at 1?
I think the Red Bull are too low. Oh and the Wizards will surprise people.
Be sure to check out my preseason rankings soon at the KC blog. (shameless plug for my expertise, and by expertise I mean wild guesses)
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Australia -
Travis, relative to the comment I just deleted (after fixing the previous one. And none of this will make any sense to anyone else.) You’ll have your own editing privileges as soon as we get you access to post on this page.
Posted from
United States
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