Here are ten thoughts on Week 1 of the 2016 MLS season.

  1. Back With A Bang

There was no better way to forget MLS’ CONCACAF Champions League woes than a thrilling Opening Day of the 2016 season, one which saw 36 goals scored in ten games across the league.

Of those ten games, multiple teams scored in six. The level of play ranged from high in Portland-Columbus and Montreal-Vancouver, to hugely entertaining in NYCFC-Chicago and LA-DC United.

MLS is notoriously tough to watch in the spring, as teams try to figure out their identities and play themselves into shape, but the early returns for the new season promise a faster start – perhaps necessitated by the ever-rising level of sophistication and ability around the league.

In any case, MLS’ decision to have all 20 teams kick off on the first Sunday in March was a huge success. Expect to see a similarly packed Opening Day next year – and hope that each week of the league’s coming-of-age 21st season is as exciting as its first week was.

  1. The Giovani dos Santos Problem

The LA Galaxy appeared to be going up in flames once again in Sunday’s nightcap at the StubHub Center, trailing DC United at halftime, when a couple of things happened.

Firstly, Ashley Cole came out with his hair on fire like we haven’t seen since he got his final Arsenal contract offer.

Secondly, Giovani dos Santos came off with a left leg injury. His replacement, Mike Magee, would score twice, win a penalty, and spark LA’s much-needed come-from-behind 4-1 win.

Obviously, Magee deserves a ton of credit. Much like Chris Wondolowski, he’s made a career out of understanding spacing and popping up in the right spots at the right time. He’s going to be hugely important for the Galaxy this year.

But it’s no surprise that LA began to click after dos Santos’ exit.

Dos Santos is the definition of a luxury player. He doesn’t fit anywhere tactically – doesn’t play enough defense to start on the wing, but frequently drifts out of games in which he’s utilized either as a second forward or #10 – and he has a tendency to kill space.

LA’s disintegration aligned fairly closely with dos Santos’ arrival last year, but unlike fellow mid-2015 acquisition Steven Gerrard – who himself is in a sad state of affairs these days – the Galaxy are committed to dos Santos long-term.

There’s a reason that, for all his talent, the Mexican international bounced around Europe and ended up in MLS in his mid-20s. Watch this space.

  1. O Canada In The East

The weekend’s two most impressive performances came from Canadian rivals Montreal and Toronto. The former’s 3-2 victory in Vancouver was more impressive than the final score indicated, while the latter’s 2-0 win at Red Bull Arena was the clearest sign yet that this year is going to be very different in The 6.

The Impact, playing without Didier Drogba, poured the offense on the Whitecaps. Ignacio Piatti played catalyst – and he was sensational – but it was the Montreal central midfield of Marco Donandel and Eric Alexander that quietly set the table for Mauro Biello’s run-and-gun attack.

Alexander was criminally under-utilized by the Impact last year, but he and Donadel’s partnership this year should look a lot like the pairing Alexander had with Dax McCarty in 2013 in New Jersey that won the Supporters’ Shield.

Toronto, meanwhile, won away at the Red Bulls with a performance that was dour but extremely efficient. It was a far cry from the last time we saw TFC on the road, in that playoff capitulation at the Stade Saputo. This Toronto team is full of proven MLS winners, and it showed on Sunday.

  1. The Champions Remain The Team To Beat

Anyone who is predicting that the Portland Timbers will be unseated as MLS Cup Champions in eight months is shooting in the dark. As they proved on Sunday in a thoroughly entertaining 2-1 home win over the Columbus Crew, the Timbers are still the best team in the league.

Portland, just as it did last December, played the Crew like a drum – sitting back, absorbing pressure, and breaking with power. Columbus was good, but they didn’t and don’t have the Timbers’ edge.

Fanendo Adi is virtually unplayable. The midfield three of Diego Chara, Darlington Nagbe, and Diego Valeri are all operating in their preferred positions in Caleb Porter’s 4-3-3, and are all playing some of the best soccer of their careers.

The Timbers are starting this season close to the level they finished last season with. As long as they remain healthy, Portland will continue to be MLS’ best team.

  1. Reboot in Houston

There are very few people in MLS high on the future – both immediate and long-term – of the Houston Dynamo, but much of Houston’s Opening Day performance must have pleased Owen Coyle.

Even though they got stung both early and very late in what ended up finishing as a 3-3 draw against New England, the Dynamo finally played with the kind of verve on offense that Coyle promised when he took the reigns from Dominic Kinnear last year.

Coyle’s two major offseason adds – Christian Maidana and Andrew Wenger – were both terrific. With Maidana especially, this team has more ways to attack you than they did in 2015.

There are still major holes in central midfield and on defense – and the looming figure of Cubo Torres and Cubo Torres’ salary withering away on the bench – but there’s no denying that Sunday was an exciting day in Houston.

  1. NYCFC Is Going To Be Fun

NYCFC’s 4-3 Opening Day win in Chicago was extremely entertaining, mostly thanks to a hilarious standard of defending from both teams.

But New York City looked sprightlier on offense than they were all throughout 2015, thanks in large part to an interjection of youth as Mix Diskerud, Tony Taylor, Khiry Shelton, and Tommy McNamara all got on the score-sheet.

New manager Patrick Vieira fit all four players into the team by opting to play a daring 4-3-3 – and it doesn’t get any more daring than lining Andrea Pirlo up as the pivot in that formation – and he was rewarded with his first win in MLS.

NYCFC’s defense looks like a grease-fire, but the work Claudio Reyna did in the offseason in cleaning up the team’s attack – Ned Grabavoy, Medhi Ballouchy, Andrew Nemec, and Sebastian Velazquez were all shipped out – is going to pay off.

This team might not be very good, but they’re going to be a lot of fun. It’s going to be a shootout every week. 

  1. Hats Off To Orlando 

There are a number of teams with fantastic support in this league – Portland, Kansas City, Vancouver – that couldn’t fill a 60,000-seat stadium.

But that’s what Orlando City did again on Sunday, treating their fans – those who stuck around, at least – to an absolutely thrilling 95 minutes at the Citrus Bowl that contained two red cards and two goals in the last two minutes of the game for the home team to salvage a 2-2 draw.

And while it wasn’t a positive that Kaka missed the game through an injury picked up in training on Friday, it was somewhat reassuring. At this point, Orlando’s foothold in their city goes well beyond one player – and when they move into their new stadium next season, that hold is only going to become stronger.

After a tumultuous offseason, this club begins 2016 in an enviable place.

  1. Referees Impress

PRO continues to make strides, and, despite plenty of opportunity, there was relatively little refereeing controversy across the league on Sunday.

That didn’t mean there weren’t big calls. Instead, it’s the big calls where Peter Walton has leaned on his referees to be more forceful – often, he contends, match officials are too hesitant to make big decisions.

To that point, much of Walton’s focus last week when testing video replay in Portland was on correctly identifying red-card worthy challenges.

Good referees don’t wilt in big moments. Alan Kelly, MLS’ best match official, has a history of correctly giving early red cards – a history he added to this weekend in Seattle by sending off O’Neil Fisher near the end of the first half.

  1. Columbus Doesn’t Have A Championship Defense

The Crew lost 2-1 to Portland for the third time since last October, and they lost again because they don’t have a championship-caliber defense.

Individually, Columbus has four good players across the backline. But as a unit, the Crew are too soft and too erratic to get back to MLS Cup. The manner in which they conceded against the Timbers on Sunday told the story: They gave up one goal on a set-piece and another on a scramble play in the box.

It’s the center of the defense where most of the concern lies. Gaston Sauro looks great next to Tyson Wahl and Emanuel Pogatetz, but he’s looking more and more like a strongman with limited strength.

His center-back partner Michael Parkhurst is hugely respected and key to Columbus’ distribution but lacking physically, while goalkeeper Steve Clark’s brilliance is far too often offset by his ponderous awareness in and around his box.

With Kei Kamara and Federico Higuain aging, the Crew’s title championship window is limited. If they don’t improve defensively, that window is going to close.

  1. Seattle Is Paper Thin

And it’s going to be costly, because Seattle is also old.

1-11, the Sounders are in a good spot. But as the home defeat to Sporting Kansas City showed, Seattle has absolutely zip off the bench.

That’s a huge problem. What made the Sounders so good in 2014 was the number of contributors they had outside of Clint Dempsey and Obafemi Martins – guys like Chad Barrett, Lamar Neagle, Marco Pappa, and Kenny Cooper who pitched in with big goals all year.

But those guys are gone, and they haven’t really been replaced. There are going to be injuries, red cards, national team call-ups, and Seattle is going to be left short-handed. It could be a long season in the Emerald City.