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By: The Fantasy Physician
Round 23 Big Questions – Assessing Matchups Affected by Recent Leagues Cup
The double whammy for MLS teams is a busy schedule and roster rules that limit team depth. Fortunately, you are not subject to those limits as an FMLS manager. Your roster depth is as large as the number of players in the FMLS game, and you have the Fantasy Strategy Clinic here to recharge your strategic batteries every game week!
In this week’s article, we look at how the current Leagues Cup tournament, an extracurricular affair putting a lot of demands on players’ bodies and minds, could impact FMLS matchups and your player choices for the coming weekend.
Understand the toll on some players and some teams
Leagues Cup has pitted 18 of the 30 MLS teams against the 18 Liga MX teams in the preliminary phase of the tournament. That means these 18 MLS teams have played 3 preliminary phase matches in rapid succession over 10 days ending just a few days before this MLS match week, while the 12 teams that did not participate in Leagues Cups have enjoyed a nice vacation. Between injuries and exhaustion, those 18 teams may see variable degrees of rotation or players playing with dead legs who really should be rotated. That may create opportunities for you to pounce by taking their opponents or at least avoiding players and teams that may underperform.
In his article on game week 7, the Fantasy Therapist took you into different approaches to assessing matchups, all of which apply this week. Put that sound counsel to work this week, too, but then take your thinking 10 yards further up the pitch by considering matchups affected by Leagues Cup exhaustion. We hit the issue of dead legs early in the season, but a lot of time has passed and so a healthy reminder may not be untimely.
Let’s consider three types of matchups in abstract: matchups between teams that did not play in Leagues Cup, matchups between teams that both played in Leagues Cup, and matchups between one team that did not play and one team that did play in Leagues Cup. I think the simplest case is the first; you will judge those the way you would judge them any ordinary week. The second case is the hardest. Is it a wash? Is one team hit harder than the other? Proceed with caution. If you paid careful attention to player minutes in Leagues Cup AND can study both lineups when they drop AND feel like you have a handle on who may see more limited minutes than usual, you may do fine. At the very least, check your work by checking the minutes played in Leagues Cup for your potential players and see if they have seen limits in analogous situations like past double-game weeks. Finally, there are matches (4 of them) between a Leagues Cup participant and a non-participant; it’s those ones that may boost the non-participants’ prospects and your FMLS score in ways other managers miss.
In the tables below, teams in green did not play in Leagues Cup; teams in yellow did.
Matchups Between Leagues Cup Non-Participants (Home vs Away)
| New England Revolution | DC United |
| Philadelphia Union | Toronto FC |
| St. Louis City SC | Nashville SC |
| San Jose Earthquakes | Vancouver Whitecaps |
Matchups Between Leagues Cup Non-Participants and Participants (Home vs Away)
| Austin FC | Houston Dynamo FC |
| Chicago Fire FC | Los Angeles FC |
| FC Dallas | Portland Timbers |
| Sporting Kansas City | San Diego FC |
Matchups Between Leagues Cup Participants (Home vs Away)
| New York City FC | Columbus Crew |
| CF Montreal | Atlanta United FC |
| FC Cincinnati | Charlotte FC |
| New York Red Bulls | Real Salt Lake |
| Minnesota United FC | Colorado Rapids |
| Orlando City SC | Inter Miami CF |
| LA Galaxy | Seattle Sounders FC |
One more off-topic but not irrelevant wildcard: MLS just hit its summer transfer window, and that means a lot of new impact signings and departures will make themselves felt this week. They may increase the “I don’t know” factor in certain games. Too much murky “I don’t know” water drives me to look for clear limpid pools i.e. elsewhere.
Round 23 Seasoning your picks with understanding of Leagues Cup impacts
The Fantasy Physician wants you to take a special look at the healthy, rested teams playing (each one at home!) against Leagues Cup battered teams for special opportunities that others may miss. These are the teams highlighted in green in the middle table above. As it happens, they all play at the same time, Saturday at 830pm Eastern. That means when their lineups drop at 730PM Eastern, it is worth your while to step away from your dinner or picnic and study the situation for big opportunities.
- Austin FC: Brad Stuver (GK), Brendan Hines-Ike (DEF) or Guilherme Biro (DEF), Myrto Uzuni (MID)
- Chicago Fire: Phillip Zinckernagel MID (or Brian Gutierrez), Hugo Cuypers (FWD)
- FC Dallas: Petar Musa (a dark horse captain consideration)
- Sporting Kansas City: Erik Thommy (MID) and Dejan Joveljic (FWD)
Be careful in taking players on their opponents’ sides. Just to confound matters a little, frequently selected players Anders Dreyer and Denis Bouanga got some rest during Leagues Cup – Dreyer because of a red card and both perhaps in the third match because their teams prospects for advancement had melted away; I would consider them important, viable (but perhaps not as essential) choices and cannot encourage taking defenders from Sporting Kansas City or Chicago Fire.
There are decent and straightforwardly selectable players in the green-on-green table above i.e. the ones where neither team played in Leagues Cup, and remember to have a nice cup of coffee before you study the complex issues around the players in the final table, which features matchups of teams that both played these past two weeks. Alas, there are too many important players to ignore those matchups altogether.
In the previous article, the Fantasy Therapist gave you a great piece of advice: be a fan of the league, which is to say that those who stayed tuned in event during Leagues Cup will reap dividends this week when they target the bedraggled players from squads stumbling out of the Leagues Cup preliminary phase.
Their legs may be dead, but your FMLS squad can be fresh as a daisy!
The “Fantasy Physician” is Ron Birnbaum, @Half Century City on Discord
The “Fantasy Therapist” is Mike Leister, @Kenobi on Discord
