Hello!

With #SaveTheCaps in full swing and in need of everyone’s support, have you signed up yet? If not, it’s not too late!

Also, helping me out for another week is guest contributor Jordan. You’ll hear more from him below.

But before we get there, Axel Schuster had a closed-door media roundtable earlier today to provide a couple updates. While nothing “new” was shared, I still feel it’s beneficial to hear him speak on the matter - AFTN has a great thread here to peruse.

And shortly after, Har reported that Axel has signed an extension with the team. Can’t imagine he looks to commit to an organization that could up and leave, unless he possesses some level of optimism things get sorted.

So… maintain the faith.

The View

Two newsletter issues in a row from yours truly? I'm sorry in advance.

Not a lot's managed to change on my thoughts for things off the pitch in the past few days, so no sense bringing the vibes to anywhere but into the TV camera gantry for the first of five straight away matches for our Caps, at LA Galaxy (a place where we have never seen much success. Foreshadowing intentional.)

The first half was a cagey, disjointed affair from both teams. The Galaxy were intent on losing possession relatively frequently, and we didn't feel much better. The sudden affliction of Thomas Müller with an unspecified illness (this author suspects it was a dodgy taco truck that did the trick) which kept him out of the matchday 18 seemed to throw everything off-kilter. Jeevan Badwal (due to start on RW) got moved to CAM, with Emmanuel Sabbi coming into the starting 11 instead. This caused a number of issues, tactically:

1. Our pressing triggers were out of sync. My biggest criticism of young Jeevan Badwal is that, in the press, he is often far too passive/reactive in closing down. There have been times when he is the easiest one of the front four to get played around and break the press, and Saturday was similar but different - you could see communication between him and the others on who's taking whom on the press, but it just wasn't clicking the same way it does with our German superstar in that same role.

2. Offensively, there wasn't that same natural ability to find the half-spaces and break the final line of defense. Big credit to LA Galaxy here, and the fact they've got one of the best centerbacks in the league back from injury in big Norwegian Jakob Glesnes - he was snuffing out so many attempted through-balls that we were playing. Not being able to generate as many chances as we're used to at home was adding up.

We did get one glorious chance around the 15-20 minute mark, as a cross found Sabbi at the top of the 6, and he blasted a shot directly into the LA Galaxy keeper's chest. I've watched it back a few times, and while it was a good shot, I think it was just rushed a little, because he had the keeper at his mercy - shooting to either side of the net would've likely gotten us the goal. But it went dead straight at the keeper, generating what was clearly about half of our reported 1.32xG at the half (although the halftime stats did say we had generated double-digit shot totals, somehow.) It just felt VERY much like our first away game in Costa Rica, where the principles were there but the execution wasn't up to pace. This team is clearly not used to travelling right now.

Halftime, the 'Caps must've taken a siesta (don't blame them, it was warm on Saturday, I almost took one at halftime myself) but finally our play-it-out-of-the-back mantra got us burned. Normally-steady Yohei Takaoka had a substantially poor pass out of the back, up the middle (intended for either of Cubas or Berhalter) which was picked off by Lucas Sanabria and played through to Joseph Paintsil, who blasted a tidy top-corner near-post shot past a charging Takaoka to make it 1-0.

I won't lie, this really toasted my vibes. I spent the next 40 minutes being really salty about the performance. Jesper seemed to share that mentality right away, as he made a rare triple-substitution around the 55-60 minute mark, bringing on AZ (first minutes in several weeks) to replace Sabbi, Kenji Cabrera (also low minutes recently) to replace Badwal, and Chris's 2026 man-crush, Bruno Caicedo (lots of minutes recently) to replace Cheikh Sabaly (who had a deeply quiet night, but was meant as more of a defensive presence.) The hope was to inject pace and creativity into the front line behind Brian White, who was having a lonely, lonely day up front.

Speaking on Sabaly's defensive performance, Jesper commented in the post-game that the choice to start him over Bruno was to help Tate Johnson deal with LA Galaxy's Gabriel Pec playing at RW. I believe the exact quote was "I didn't want to waste Bruno having to run backwards towards our goal for 60 minutes." Which, I'll be honest, is logical. Let the kid cook.

He almost did, playing an incredible dribble through two defenders (only to get that hope crushed by Glesnes covering the LA backline). Kenji looked lively, AZ had a few good interchanges with him, but nothing was really working. Time rolled on, Galaxy decided to switch to 3 CBs (so a nominal back 5) to try and park the bus in a low block (our Kryptonite this season) and beg us to break them down to score.

So naturally, one of the wingers drew a foul from about 25 yards out wide, and Sebastian Berhalter hit a clean free kick assist to the dome of an un-marked Matias Laborda to earn us at least a point. And boy, did this open up a case of "Let's get 3" energy drinks for the lads, because they gave it everything for the final 10 minutes or so to try and win the game. Unfortunately, Seba had to take a tactical yellow to prevent a counterattack, which led to his substitution for Oliver Larraz, who has the distinction of not quite being as good as Seba is on set-piece delivery, because we got an identical chance late in the game from basically the same spot, except Oli's delivery went straight into the hands of the Galaxy keeper.

Thus, it ends 1-1. All four of the top teams in the West played on the road, and found draws (SJ got held by TFC, LAFC found a late miracle against southern rivals SDFC, and Seattle played to a relatively bore 1-1 with Wooden Spoon front-runners Sporting KC) so nobody moved around really in the race at the top of the West. All things considered, a road point is good, and Galaxy are improving and still finding ways to be a better team without Riqui Puig (who, let's be honest, the league is worse off not having play for 2 WHOLE YEARS - not to mention going through all of the treatment on a blown ACL only to have a botched surgery and have to do it all over again just sucks for that guy as a human being) but I'm concerned about the performance of the Caps in this one. San Jose next weekend will NOT be so kind as to let us score an easy equalizer like Galaxy seemed to be.

In news around the league, if you love chaos, I highly recommend checking out the highlights of the Florida Derby (MIA - ORL) from Saturday's slate of games. Also check it out if you love bad things happening to Miami. It's deeply satisfying in that regard. Honestly, having watched pretty much every MLS game on Saturday, there were some wild games, even by MLS standards. As mad as I am at the league and 'Caps management these days, I'm a sicko and I still enjoy watching football. Maybe next week I'll feel differently.

Until then, dear readers, #SaveTheCaps, etc.

Thanks again Jordan for picking up my slack! I hope to return with the normal vibin’ content next issue where we can talk about the Shake ‘n Back with the Quakes.

Uh… maybe that doesn’t quite work like I thought it would.