Your Tuesday Kickoff: Who were Round One’s biggest winners?

I talked a lot about Talles Magno’s absence affecting the NYCFC attack in the lead up to their 3-0 win against Inter Miami. Well. Talles Magno didn’t play and NYCFC looked just fine. More than that actually. They looked outright scary.

Now, did Inter Miami’s center backs put forward a masterclass in defending? No. But NYCFC looked a lot like the group that powered their way to MLS Cup last season.

I saw some folks smarter than me mention Magno’s absence might be a blessing in disguise and I don’t know if I’m ready to agree with that outright. He’s clearly not a true No 9 and had only been placed there out of necessity in the first place. But there’s no denying NYCFC didn’t need him for this one. With or without Magno, Montréal are going to have their hands full. The Pigeons were playing well down the stretch of the regular season and didn’t miss a beat in Round One. In fact, they looked scarier than they have for months. All you have to do is get hot at the right time, right?

Did y’all see the big taco? For those of you missed it, there was this guy at the FC Dallas game and he had a really big taco. The big taco probably changed everything for FC Dallas, to be honest. I don’t know if Alan Velasco hits that Panenka quite as cleanly without the big taco. They should probably just go ahead and make the big taco the mascot except, I dunno, I guess that guy probably ate all of the big taco. Either way, we woke up yesterday without the big taco and today we woke up with the big taco in our lives. So hey, maybe everything isn’t all bad?