It’s in the title, folks. Every week during the MLS season, Backheeled will dive into the biggest Winners and Losers from around the league. This week, San Diego FC played their first match, Emmanuel Latte Lath showed why Atlanta United broke a record to sign him, a crowd chanted “Bruce Arena”, and more.
Rory Kirke
Winner: Anybody who stopped themselves from jumping to conclusions after one game
Wow, Joe, way to start off the column with a bang.
First, I don’t think I care for your sarcastic tone. Second, we’ll get to the exciting stuff shortly. But as a word of caution: it’s always best to take both early season results with at least a few grains of salt.
Soccer is a high-variance sport. With low scores, weird things tend to happen. Between the incredibly small sample size, the fact that a number of teams rotated their lineups after midweek Concacaf Champions Cup play, and that we’re still waiting on a handful of pricey stars to debut, results from opening weekend are bound to be a little wonky.
Sure, we can still take note of promising performances and tactical choices. But let’s just avoid going overboard. My pal Arman Kafai said it well a few days ago:
We don’t care about results. Last year, everyone was praising Toronto FC’s start, when they recorded 10 out of 15 possible points and had one loss. Guess what happened the rest of the season?
Grains of salt, folks. Grains of salt.
Winner: San Diego FC
San Diego FC find themselves with a winner tag next to their name in this column – and not because they beat the defending MLS Cup champions in the very same building where the LA Galaxy went undefeated for all of 2024. I’m following my own advice. It’s too early to be reading into results, especially when the goals in San Diego’s 2-0 win in Carson came via a Galaxy error in buildup and a second half stoppage time strike.
