My first Power Rankings vote of the year

A little post-Cucho shake-up at the top

I’m going to try to make this a weekly thing – whenever I submit my PRanks,¹ I’ll put up a screenshot of my list here and write just a little bit about my thought process.

• Power Rankings Archive

So here’s the preseason version:

You’ll notice that this is a little different from last week’s “Preliminary Regular-Season Predictions” blog, and that’s for two big reasons:

1. The Power Rankings are a snapshot of what I think things are like at the moment, while the predictions are me peering into the crystal ball to try to sort out what things will be like on Decision Day, and

2. We’ve seen some pretty significant player movement in the past few days!

The most significant, of course, is the egress of attacking talent from Columbus, with Cucho sold to Real Betis and Christian Ramirez traded to the Galaxy. Had they stayed whole, I’d have them first or second in the above rankings.

As it is, I’m still confident they’ll be really good, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they once again hoisted a trophy of some sort this season. But I would be surprised if whoever they get to replace Cucho is as good as Cucho was. God I’ll miss watching that guy play (though now I am maybe developing a little bit of a rooting interest in Real Betis? – EDIT: MAYBE THE FUCK NOT).

The Crew’s loss is the Galaxy’s gain, as the center forward depth chart will soon have Ramirez as well as Brazilian U22 Matheus Nascimento on loan from Botafogo. They are now loaded at that spot, and should also be in good shape in central midfield with the addition of Uruguayan No. 6 Lucas Sanabria, who’ll also take up a U22 slot.²

A couple other notes:

• Everyone I’ve spoken with thinks Cincy’s going to get Evander by this time next week, so fifth might be too low.

• I’ve rethought RBNY a bit over the past few days. While I am still disappointed in their winter because they did not add a Best XI-caliber DP attacker (I still badly want the Timo Werner thing to happen), they have nonetheless done a good job of adding talent on every line.

• I am a little skeptical of Marco Pašalić living up to that DP tag for Orlando.

• Houston need to get that DP No. 10 in.

• So do Dallas, and I’d expect that to become Lucho Acosta’s new home (sorry Quakes fans).

• And finally… yeah, I might be way too low on the Rapids, who just bought one of my favorite players in the league. We’ll see!

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One more note: I’ve been helping out the boys at Soccerwise with 90-second primers on each team that they’re using as convo starters for their season previews. It’s been fun!

And I’ll be making my official, post-ETR Soccerwise debut later on this week. Make sure you subscribe!

1. Just a reminder that the MLSsoccer Power Rankings are voted on by like 20 people – writers, on-air talent, social media folks who watch every game, etc. But if you’re mad about them, the person you should absolutely yell at is J. Sam Jones.

Also, if you’re ever mad, even for a single second, about the power rankings, then honestly what the fuck is wrong with you?

2. I have one teensy concern about the Galaxy: Emiro Garces was awesome for them last year when they were getting 60% of the ball, playing a very high line and occasionally turning it over in bad spots. It perfectly matched his skillset.

This year they’ll probably be playing a little bit deeper and trying to get into the open field more, which means a little more back-foot defending. Garces is not great at that – maybe even not good at that. So a few early growing pains wouldn’t surprise me, but I’m still bullish.