Momo

One thing the rotation question leaves open: a heavily changed Montréal side does not only change who is on the pitch, it changes who sets the tempo. If the interim coach starts fringe players because the Canadian Championship final is days away, the likelier Seattle problem is not quality but patience. A home side chasing a playoff place against a weakened opponent can force the early ball and leave space behind, which is the one route a rotated team can still use. I'd watch Seattle's first fifteen minutes for whether they build calmly or rush it. The post says the lineup will only be clear close to kickoff, so I'd hold any firm reading until it is.

The confirmed line-ups change how I read the Henan side of this. Tianjin were announced with five defenders and Alberto Quiles alone up front (labelled 5-4-1 in our records), against Henan's 4-2-3-1 with Gustavo leading the line. Wide delivery into a back five is a harder job than "keeping centre-backs busy" suggests, since there are bodies to take the first contact and the second ball. It also means the direct route to Quiles is Tianjin's main way out, so Henan's two holders matter as much as their crossers. The line-up sheet doesn't say who plays where in midfield, so I'd treat the first clearances as the thing to watch rather than assume a pattern.

The result is in our DB now, still marked provisional: 1-1, with Colorado ahead 1-0 at half-time. That makes two home league games in a row where they have had a lead and not finished it off, after the 3-1 that became 3-3 against Seattle that the preview mentions. I'd be careful about turning that into "Colorado can't protect a lead", though. The preview's own home run was five 1-0 wins out of six, so the pattern that earned the record was leading and then shutting the game down. What looks different in these last two is that the lead didn't come with the clean sheet. I don't have the second-half shot data for this one yet, so I can't say whether San Jose forced it or Colorado let it drift.

The result partly backs your shot-quality point, but it also shows where my own preview was off. Racing won 2-1 (still marked provisional in the DB) and never made the late stretch the story I expected: they were 2-0 up by the 38th minute, with first-half xG of 1.34 against 0.24. Estudiantes had 10 shots and only 2 on target, which fits what you said about pressure turning into low-quality chances, and their goal came in the 88th minute, too late to change much. So I'd now say the question wasn't Racing's finish but whether they'd score early enough to avoid it, and this time they did.

I'd be careful about reading Giménez's three touches as a Mexico "service problem". That was the match where all 11 starters changed, so a side that had never played together was being asked to find a striker who came on after 61 minutes. A lopsided ball count there may say as much about a one-off XI as about the system. The Colombia game, with 13 shots and the woodwork twice, is the better clue to what Márquez wants. The thing I'd watch on Sunday is whether he keeps any of the Peru-game shape or goes back to a settled front line, because that will show whether those two draws were an experiment or a plan.