Down to the Queen City rolls the Sunday Night Soccer presented by Continental Tire bus, where we have ourselves a true six-pointer between two Eastern Conference hopefuls as red-hot Charlotte FC host the just-starting-to-heat-up (maybe) New York Red Bulls (7 pm ET | MLS Season Pass, Apple TV+).
The Crown have shaken off a long, dreary springtime of discontent to fairly cruise through their summer schedule and are now winners of six straight, the longest streak anybody’s put together in MLS this season.
RBNY need some of that, and may be crawling towards it with two wins on the trot, which comes after a stretch in which they won only once in eight outings.
Yet somehow, these teams are separated by just five points in the standings, with an Audi 2025 MLS Cup Playoffs berth guaranteed for neither. This one matters a ton.
Charlotte FC
- It wasn’t the smoothest adjustment to MLS for Wilfried Zaha. But he’s been reliably productive since the end of May with 3g/9a in 12 games, including a few match-winning moments.
- Another guy who’s provided match-winning moments is center forward Idan Toklomati, who inherited the spot after the club sold Patrick Agyemang to Derby County. Toklomati, a U22 Initiative signing, has 7g/3a in about 1,200 minutes, and has shown real fox-in-the-box instincts.
- Ashley Westwood is still the man pulling the strings in central midfield. The 35-year-old is a long-ball artist and among the league’s best at switching the field of play – a useful skill when you’ve got wingers like Zaha and Kerwin Vargas out there.
New York Red Bulls
- Like Zaha, Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting got off to an uninspiring start to his MLS career. But he’s lived up to his DP billing over the past few months, and is up to 15g/3a on the season.
- Emil Forsberg hasn’t been as good as last season, but has still been productive with 9g/9a as the team’s primary playmaker (no matter what formation they play that week).
- Still, the team’s best player has been goalkeeper Carlos Coronel. The Paraguay international, during his fifth year as the starter in Harrison, belongs in any discussion about 2025 Goalkeeper of the Year candidates.
They are on 44 points, in seventh place in the East. Lose this game and currently eighth-place New York City FC can tie them on 44, while ninth-place Chicago and 10th-place RBNY could end up being just two points back.
What I’m saying is things are tight, and this is what I mean by “a true six-pointer,” because you’re not just collecting three points yourself if you win this game – you’re denying three valuable points to one of the teams chasing you.
I’ll go ahead and say it: If Charlotte win this game, they make the playoffs. It won’t be over mathematically, but they’ll be eight points above 10th place with six games left. They’re not blowing that lead.
Lose it, though, and the door’s wide open.
All of the above, inverted. The Red Bulls are, at worst, two points out of seventh place if they win this game. Much more likely, they jump one or both of ninth-place Chicago (at Philly) or NYCFC (at Cincinnati) and breathe some life into what had been badly fading playoff hopes.
That matters not just for this year but historically, as this club is riding a 15-year postseason streak, an almost unfathomable run of consistency in a league of such parity.
This group doesn’t want to be the ones to let that slip away.
Charlotte: Delaying Adilson Malanda's departure keeps the window open
One player has played all 2,430 regular-season minutes for Charlotte FC this season. Can you guess who?
If you couldn’t come up with Adilson Malanda immediately, we’ve got to talk about your ability to suss out context clues. Anyway…
Sometimes the biggest win in the transfer window is not about who you sign, but who you don’t lose (not yet, anyway). Charlotte just sold Malanda to Middlesbrough for reportedly $8 million, something like an 8x profit after spotting him playing for Rodez in Ligue 2, but won’t bid adieu to the 23-year-old rock in the middle of their backline until the end of the season.
Getting Malanda back on loan for the remainder of the season was a real coup by general manager Zoran Krneta. Now, can Malanda help Charlotte not just make the playoffs but compete for the first trophy in club history? We’ve got five months to find out.
New York: Timo Werner, where art thou?
I am writing this at 11:53 am ET on Thursday, August 21. The transfer deadline is in approximately 12-ish hours.
Will the Red Bulls make a move that substantially improves their team? Tick tock. Tick tock. No point belaboring the point, but it’s going to be a big bummer for Red Bulls supporters if the Werner tease remains exactly that.
Charlotte FC
The first part of the year was defined by Zaha’s relative lack of production, which was downstream of his relative lack of chemistry with Agyemang. Those two guys couldn’t get on the same page, and so playmaker Pep Biel was executing something of a carry job through mid-spring.
But the bottom eventually gave out, and come the end of April, the Crown embarked upon one of the worst stretches in their young history: just two wins in 12 games over about two-and-a-half months. Nothing was really working.
Then Agyemang – a very good player who I’m high on, to be clear – left for the Gold Cup with the USMNT, and Toklomati took his place in the starting XI. And suddenly the attack found some chemistry, which came from a clearer tactical vision: they’ve dropped their line of confrontation deeper and mostly dispensed with any pretense towards being a ball-dominant team.
Their overall possession has dropped since the end of May, as has their field tilt and number of passes per individual possession. At the same time, the share of their passes that are long balls has increased, as have their total number of long balls, and number of diagonals per possession.
That last one is the biggest one, because those diagonals allow Zaha and Vargas, as mentioned above, to get into good spots against stretched-out defenses. Between that and the lower line of confrontation, that means more time playing on the break into space.
It’s not all that, of course. But even when they build goals via possession, a long-ball is usually involved:
Bear in mind, though, that those kinds of goals are less likely to occur when Biel – who is injured (hamstring) and not expected to play again until September – is off the field.
Long story short: quicker transitions and a star DP less isolated than he had been have catapulted Charlotte up the standings this summer. It’s simple, but it’s effective.
New York Red Bulls
We saw RBNY head coach Sandro Schwarz make a similar calculation last year, down the stretch and into the playoffs, as he abandoned the more ball-dominant style his team had been playing for a more pragmatic approach, one that sacrificed both possession and field position for space to counter into. It wasn’t classic Energy Drink Soccer – they were pressing high only selectively – but more of a classic, lower-division English approach to the game.
It obviously worked pretty well, as they made it to MLS Cup for just the second time in the club’s history.
Schwarz, though, is stubborn and determined to evolve his team into one that uses the ball well in all facets of the game. It doesn’t mean he’s trying to turn them into the Columbus Crew; he hasn’t moved the sliders that far. But this year’s Red Bull side plays at a slower tempo with more passes per possession than any RBNY side in more than a decade.
Is it working? Well, they’re in 10th place and fighting for their playoff lives. So… no. At the same time, they’re actually ahead of last year’s PPG pace. So… yes. The problem, you see, is this year’s Eastern Conference is a freaking wood-chipper.
An even bigger change than how much they have the ball is where they draw their line of confrontation under Schwarz. It’s usually a mid-block, both in and out of possession, which is designed so the RBNY midfielders (usually Forsberg, but here the underrated Daniel Edelman) can play the attackers into the final third at pace:
Think of it this way: they play short (more small passes in their own defensive third, and in the middle third) so they can then play long (into the space they’ve created in behind by holding onto the ball so well, and sucking the opponents upfield while doing it).
In theory, it’s very good. In practice, it’s been hit-and-miss – there’s a reason they’re fighting for their playoff lives and it’s not even September.
It’ll be the usual 4-2-3-1, with (I’m assuming) Brandt Bronico once again playing as a pressing 10 in place of the injured Biel. I’m also assuming newly acquired left back Harry Toffolo will spend another week coming off the bench, since Dean Smith probably doesn’t want to mess with a lineup that’s on a winning streak.
Two straight desperation wins, so best not to mess with what’s been working. That means the same 4-2-3-1 that beat Philly last weekend.
