Houston Dynamo winger Ennali suffers season-ending injury
Houston Dynamo FC winger Lawrence Ennali will miss the remainder of the 2024 season with an ACL tear. Ennali injured his knee during Houston's 2-0 win at LAFC last Saturday. He scored in the 72nd minute after subbing on for Ibrahim Aliyu. The 22-year-old German joined Houston in July from Polish top-flight side Górnik Zabrze. He signed the largest U22 Initiative deal in Dynamo history, arriving alongside DP striker Ezequiel Ponce.
Vancouver Whitecaps sign DP midfielder Armstrong
Vancouver Whitecaps FC have signed Scotland international midfielder Stuart Armstrong to a Designated Player contract through 2026. Armstrong, 32, was a free agent after helping Southampton FC earn promotion back to the English Premier League.
The Western Conference is mostly settled at the top. Barring disasters of various degrees, the LAs should finish as the top two teams in the West. It would take a special push from the trailing teams and out-of-character collapses from the LAs to close the gaps with only one-fifth of the season remaining for most teams. It’s not impossible at this point, just improbable.
Where the West gets really interesting is right below the top. Third-place RSL is only seven points ahead of eighth-place Seattle. With the Sounders are four points ahead of ninth-place Minnesota, most of the playoff lineup is set, but there’s a ton of work to be done to determine the order.
Before we can get a clear picture of where everyone actually stands though, we need two teams to catch up to the rest of the pack. Vancouver is sitting in fifth place with two games in hand on fourth-place Colorado and third-place RSL. With six points separating them and RSL, the Whitecaps are two wins away from being equal on points for third in the West.
Then there’s Houston down in seventh with one game in hand on sixth-place Portland and eighth-place Seattle. That doesn’t sound like much, but Portland, Houston and Seattle are all equal on points right now. That extra game could be enough to keep them out of a Wild Card spot and could even keep them within touching distance of the top four. A win in their extra game would have them one point behind Colorado and four behind RSL after 27 matches.
There’s still plenty to play for down the stretch for these two. Both happened to have major news yesterday.
Ennali to miss season
Houston rightfully earned praise from media types like me for their work in the summer window. We’ve all become accustomed to their place in the MLS ecosystem in the last couple of years under Ben Olsen. They use the ball well, they keep games from getting out of control and every now and then they put together a team goal you watch on repeat a few times. That identity led them to a fourth-place finish in the West, a U.S. Open Cup and a Western Conference final appearance last season.
This year, it’s led to a team that’s a little less exciting in attack but about equally effective. They’re currently tied for first in the West in goals allowed per game and third in xG allowed per game. Last year, they scored 1.5 goals per game, this year they’re down to 1.35. That combo of defensive excellence and a decreased attacking output has them at 1.54 points per game, a mark slightly better than their 1.5 points per game rate in 2023.
Even last year though, with the team finding the net more often, it became clear that to truly be a contender, they needed the kind of attacking talent that could at least compete with the league’s best. So, midway through this season, they brought in DP forward Ezequiel Ponce for a club-record $8 million fee.
That alone might have been enough to convince folks of Houston’s place as a high-upside dark horse pick for MLS Cup, but then they went out and made another club-record deal. Midway through July, they brought in winger Lawrence Ennali from Polish top-flight side Górnik Zabrze as the most expensive U22 player in club history. Reports had the 22-year-old’s transfer fee at around $3 million and it became easy to see why over the weekend in Houston’s 2-0 win over LAFC.
In the first half, Ponce found the net for his first goal in MLS. In the second half, Ennali did the same when he sped past literally everyone on the LAFC defense (including Hugo Lloris) for a game-sealing, hope-igniting goal that put everyone in the West on high alert.
Seventeen minutes later, Ennali tore his ACL.
I can’t think of an injury in recent MLS history that’s been so equal parts cinematic and mean. With everything going right in their biggest win of the year, they suddenly lost their newest and most electric key contributor. I swear this was a bad Ted Lasso plot.
Now, Houston has to regroup and see if they still have enough juice to make a push for a trophy without Ennali. My initial thought is that Ennali coming good seemed like the key to all this. His presence plus Ponce could have tipped the scales. Now, it’s up to Ponce to tip them himself. It’s a big ask, but it’s not an impossible one for a club’s record signing.
Vancouver gets better at the top
Meanwhile, Vancouver’s outlook on life got more optimistic yesterday.
For about as long as we’ve done this newsletter, the read on Vancouver is that they’re a good team without the top-end talent to compete with the best teams in the league. That’s held true over and over as they’ve played well enough to be in kind of important games but not well enough to ever make it to truly important games.
Well, they’re at least not going down this year without taking a full swing at the problem. Yesterday, the Whitecaps officially signed 32-year-old Stuart Armstrong to a DP deal.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. Thirty-two is old for a DP and the Whitecaps have always been more than just one high-level player away. I think all of that is still true. But I’m willing to believe one really high-level player could make them dangerous enough to go on the kind of deep run we haven’t seen from this club yet.
Armstrong is on his way to Vancouver after spending the 2023-24 season in the English Championship with Southampton. The Championship is typically cited as a somewhat comparable but much stronger at the top league to MLS. And last year, he pulled off this in 2829 minutes of play.
That’s like one degree removed from Riqui Puig’s hilarious FBref chart in MLS. In fact…
Here they are overlayed on top of each other.
I’m not saying Armstrong is going to be Puig or anything, but I am saying he absolutely seems to have enough juice to immediately make Vancouver’s attack one of the most dangerous in the West. Teams already had plenty to deal with when going up against Ryan Gauld and Brian White. Now, they’ll have to deal with one more high-level option.
For me, that’s enough to make the Whitecaps one of the league’s most interesting teams down the stretch. There’s a chance they end up third in the West with a real shot at making a deep run once the playoffs arrive.
Suárez retires from Uruguay national team: Luis Suárez, Uruguay’s all-time leading scorer with 69 goals, will play his last international match on Friday night when La Celeste host Paraguay in FIFA 2026 World Cup qualifiers.
FC Cincinnati's Orellano named Player of the Matchday: FC Cincinnati wingback Luca Orellano's standout Matchday 30 performance earned him MLS Player of the Matchday presented by Michelob Ultra honors for the second time this season. Orellano scored two free-kick goals – including a breathtaking strike from way beyond midfield – in Cincinnati's 4-1 home rout of CF Montréal. The 24-year-old Argentine's second brace of 2024 gave him 7g/6a in his debut MLS season.
St. Louis CITY loan Blom to Kaizer Chiefs: St. Louis CITY SC have loaned midfielder Njabulo Blom to South African Premiership side Kaizer Chiefs. The deal lasts through June 2025 and contains a purchase option.
- Charles Boehm picked out the young standouts of Matchday 30.
- Here’s your Team of the Matchday presented by Audi.
- Boehm also spoke with Christian Benteke about his time in D.C.
Good luck out there. Establish high expectations for yourself.
