Daily news roundups

News roundup: Union draw, LAFC win, Tottenham get big win

Photo: Marjorie Elzey

Philadelphia UnionĀ 

The Union fought to a 0-0 draw in Atlanta Saturday afternoon.

What they’re saying down in Georgia.

National coverage of the match.

Video highlights available here.

With the win, the Union are making a return to Champions League.

Union II have qualified for the MLS Next playoffs.

MLS

Can FC Dallas mount a MLS Cup challenge?

Riqui Puig and Chicharito have re-energized LA Galaxy.

Inter Miami got a big win over D.C. United.

A troubling allegation came from a coming together in that same match.

LAFC defeated Houston 3-1 to retake the Shield lead.

World

Jordan Pefok can’t stop scoring in the Bundesliga.

Erling Haaland also is on a goal streak at Man City.

Tottenham put six past Leicester in a big win.

Bayern Munich were stunned by Augsburg.

While Dortmund got a big win over rivals Schalke.

Mark McKenzie and Erik Palmer-Brown have been added to the USMNT roster for upcoming friendlies.

8 Comments

  1. If the Union end up losing out on the supporter’s shield because of the win tiebreaker, I won’t moan about it. Rules are rules. But, I’m not convinced wins are better than goal differential. AS it stands now, LA have the edge with two more wins, however, they’ve lost 4 more times. Is that not an overall worse performance? Draws can be hard “won” and should be seen as more valuable than a loss.

    I know. MLS introduced the win tiebreaker to discourage teams from playing for the draw. But draws are better than losses. And goal differential should really stand for something, particularly in this spot in which the margins can be really fine.

    Happy about the Champion’s League berth. Hope to get to one of those games if I get the chance.

    • Changing the rules would only be discussed at MLS HQ if the Union had more wins and LAFC/NYCFC/Seattle had a bigger points differential. In that case the MLS website would also be replete with articles supporting your thesis.

    • The simple question is which is better 2 wins and 4 losses or 6 draws. Given that wins are already worth 3 times as much as a draw, it seems silly to make them worth 3.01 times as much.

      • Right. We’d call the team with six draws ‘undefeated.’ If the team that won two games but got buried by the other four teams for a -10 goal differential, one might think the team with 6 draws was the better team.

        Also, making wins worth 3 points instead of 2 was the original rule change to incentivize winning.

  2. Mckenzie has the speed and skills to play the high line that Berkhalter wants. Hope that he gets a chance.

  3. Yes, goal difference is a better way to encourage attacking play than total wins. But will MLS change it? – not likely.

    The U receive a GAM bonus for CCL qualification. I’m not sure how much it is, though.

  4. PaulContinuum22 says:

    ESPN’s comment today on the U’s #1 ranking: “They…didn’t… score? That’s allowed? Of course they also kept a clean sheet so they came back from Atlanta with a point.”

    Heh heh heh…

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