The regular season’s month-long, Leagues Cup hiatus ends this weekend. As such, we will collectively jam down the accelerator as all 29 teams enter the stretch run towards Decision Day (Oct. 19).
To get you back up to speed, I’ve got a primer ready to go. Here are the teams to watch, the stories to follow, the players to keep an eye on, and everything else I can cram into one 4,000-word column.
Away we go:
Inter Miami take control of the Supporters’ Shield race
Nearly all year long, it was a five-team breakaway ahead of the peloton. Inter Miami, FC Cincinnati, LAFC, LA Galaxy and Real Salt Lake came out hot and have mostly stayed hot, while the Columbus Crew slowly reeled them in. By early July, the gang of five had turned into a group of six.
But in the weeks before Leagues Cup, most of the above teams (including the Crew) faltered once or twice.
Not the Herons, though. Even without Lionel Messi (alternately injured or on international duty), and even with a backline under constant maintenance, they kept finding ways to win. And so they are on 53 points with nine games left, good enough for a four-point Shield lead over the second-place Galaxy (on whom they’ve got a game in hand), and a five-point lead over second-in-the-East Cincy.
Miami have lost just twice in league play since finishing up their Concacaf Champions Cup run in mid-April. They haven’t been great, but they have found ways to win.
It’s often been spectacular when they’ve lost, and that was the case in early July with a 6-1 humiliation at Cincinnati. The return date in Fort Lauderdale is this Saturday (7:30 pm ET | Apple TV - Free). If Miami win, I don’t think we quite stick a fork in the Shield race. But I think their probability would shoot up to something like 90%, especially with Messi hopefully back in the next few weeks.
If Cincy win, we’ve got ourselves a mad scramble to the finish.
A bit more about these two teams:
While Messi’s health status is the headline question about Miami, the bigger one (in my opinion) is just how quickly and thoroughly center back David Martínez fits in, and how much he can juice his team’s ability to control games with the ball. Miami have enough talent to win anyway, but the best Tata Martino teams – and obviously the best Messi teams – have been the sort that run the game from back to front, a la what the Crew have done for the past year-and-a-half.
We haven’t seen much of that from Miami this year. Yet.
For what it’s worth, I thought Martínez was very good during Leagues Cup before his needless red card.
Cincy are second in the East and third overall in both points and points per game. If they’re to become the first team since the 2010-11 Galaxy to repeat as Shield champs, new Nigerian international CB Chidozie Awaziem will need to play like Matt Miazga and DP No. 9 Niko Gioacchini will need to play like, well, a DP.
As for MLS Cup presented by Audi: There is not much history of teams winning, especially in the Targeted Allocation Money (TAM) era, without an elite No. 9. Gioacchini’s never produced like one of those, but also, he’s never played with a creator like Luciano Acosta.
I think there’s room for optimism if you’re a fan of the Garys.
The third team at the top in the East is Columbus, who are doing the (nearly) impossible in stacking a great regular season on top of a deep CCC run, and then stacking a Leagues Cup run on top of that. Usually a deep CCC run is enough to kill an MLS team, but both?
Part of me expects the Crew to run out of gas down the stretch. But they brought in four more potential contributors this window, and Wilfried Nancy is better than anyone at talent development. All those errors playing out of the back in Leagues Cup… heavy legs? Maybe. Otherwise, the tank looks pretty full right now.
The better question might be “What’s their best XI?” I suspect it includes DeJuan Jones, but don’t think any of the other new arrivals find themselves in the starting lineup.
The fight for fourth place
The Red Bulls are on a very good 1.64 ppg, have a +11 goal differential and have lost just four times all year. And by not going out and bolstering their attack this window, via either a DP signing or a U22 or even an intra-league trade, they have left the door open for another East side to push past them and claim the final home-field advantage slot in the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs.
How many of their 11 draws so far this year would’ve been three points with a match-winner up top? How many more dominant performances – like the one they put on against Pachuca in Leagues Cup – will turn into draws because of a lack of top-end quality in the box? Maybe not enough to move them into the tier with the three teams above them, but they wouldn’t be far off.
Instead, they look a better bet to drop out of the top four than to crack that group of three.
Their next-door neighbors, New York City FC, didn’t exactly charge through the door RBNY left ajar, deciding instead to punt on summer reinforcements. The glass-half-full take is they’ll at least come out of Leagues Cup with some momentum after a run to the quarters, and with some added depth as players like Christian McFarlane and Justin Haak have proven to be contributors.
But that doesn’t close the gap on the lead pack.
Orlando are also playing well, and maybe have a bit of a selection headache up top:
- Ramiro Enrique got his chance to break out and has done so.
- Duncan McGuire came back from the Olympics and signed a long-term deal.
- Luis Muriel is still in town on a DP deal.
In the best version of Orlando, only one of these guys starts. And honestly, it’s hard to imagine it’s not Enrique, who’s got six goals in his past seven games.
Could that derail the chemistry this team finally found in June? Perhaps. But I wouldn’t bet on it, given that Oscar Pareja’s teams have a habit of cooking down the stretch.
And so I’ve buried the lede for this segment. Here it is: Charlotte FC, who made the most aggressive moves this summer, look best poised to climb past RBNY. Spaniard Pep Biel was not their first-choice DP No. 10, but he’s got a good résumé and good (not great) underlyings for a team that badly needs chance creation out of the midfield. He should slot seamlessly into the starting lineup and help right away.
That alone might be enough to push the Crown into that top four, but they also brought in veteran CB Tim Ream to pad out the defense. This one’s a little trickier, as Charlotte’s CB pairing of Andrew Privett and Adilson Malanda has been one of the very best in MLS this year, and it seems ill-advised to break that up just as you’re trying to find your finishing kick.
RBNY are at Charlotte on Saturday (7:30 pm ET | Apple TV - Free). The playoff implications in terms of sorting out 4-through-7 in the East standings are massive.
Philadelphia: Good bet for a Wild Card spot
I think if you polled 100 MLS front-office folks about the East Wild Card spots right now, you’d get 100 folks picking the 10th-place Union for one of them, and then a 50/50 split between Atlanta and Toronto for the other.
The argument for Philly is easy: The veteran CBs have stopped making mistakes; Tai Baribo has gone on a prolonged scoring jag that’s given the attack focus; young players like Jack McGlynn, Quinn Sullivan and Leon Flach have improved; and Andre Blake is back to doing stuff like this:
And paradoxically, I think the soon-to-officially-happen sale of José Martínez will help. It’s clear now, in retrospect, how this team needed to turn over some of its core to avoid getting stale. It’s now happening at least a little bit, and they’re playing with some life.
Toronto mostly are not. Their record over the last three months across all comps: 5W-12L-3D.
They made minimal moves this summer (it’s not clear if Henry Wingo will be a starter), and saw Federico Bernardeschi come off injured in their Leagues Cup exit.
They are hanging on by a thread on multiple fronts, with a tough trip to Houston on Saturday followed by a do-or-die Canadian Championship semifinal second leg on Tuesday.
That leaves Atlanta, maybe, as the other favorite to sneak into the Wild Card round? I think it’s fair to say their summer window was disappointing, and their Leagues Cup performance certainly was (they got grouped after a couple of PK shootout losses).
But Alexey Miranchuk is really good, and the midfielders and attackers around him in a basic 4-2-3-1 are more than just functional. Plus I am old enough to remember all of us throwing dirt on them this time last year after an embarrassing Leagues Cup exit.
So there’s precedent for a turnaround, even if the remaining schedule is a bit of a bear.
Montréal are even with Philly and are just one point behind Atlanta, and their remaining schedule is a bunny rabbit. They did not really make moves this summer like a team expecting to make a push, though.
Even with all that, they’re one of the most interesting teams to watch because of the potential of Jahkeele Marshall-Rutty to find meaningful minutes in a role that suits him. A few years ago, Toronto could’ve sold this kid for $10 million. Now Montréal got him for a pocketful of General Allocation Money (GAM).
I don’t think Nashville have the midfielders to change how they’ve played this year and turn that into points. New head coach B.J. Callaghan’s got his work cut out for him, and general manager Mike Jacobs is gonna have to make some serious moves this winter.
D.C. United have, in my opinion, played better than their record all year, but have repeatedly found ways to lose. And that continued into Leagues Cup, where they were pretty clearly the best of the below-the-red-line group in the East. Yet they managed to win just one game outright.
Troy Lesesne has switched this group out of their 3-5-2 and into a 4-1-3-2, and 17-year-old center back Matai Akinmboni might, in fact, now be a starter. They will be fun to watch because of that and various other things.
But I can not pick them to climb above the red line. They’ve shown how frail they are too many times.
New England hit an on-the-fly reset of their season by bringing in as many as four new starters. And with games in hand (they’ve played 23; the teams they’re chasing have all played 25 or 26) they can make up ground quickly.
But seven of those final 11 games are on the road – including a trip to Montréal this weekend – and Carles Gil hasn’t been healthy for a minute, and it’s just hard to imagine them jumping six spots.
New England hit reset on their season. Chicago said “hold my Old Style” and look like they’re hitting reset on their entire club, and I honestly love that for them. It needed to happen.
A name I’d expect to see prominently mentioned as the next Fire boss: Gregg Berhalter.
One more…
Usually, eighth and ninth-place finishers come in between 1.25 and 1.35 points per game. Right now, eighth place Toronto are on 1.15 ppg, and everyone else I mentioned is between that number and 1.00 ppg flat.
This year in the East, 40 points probably gets you into the postseason.
A three-team race for No. 1
All year long it’s been LAFC, the Galaxy and RSL in some order. All three are still right there, and any of that trio could win the West. Hell, any of the three could still win the Shield. None of the 2024 books are closed.
That said, if you look at the underlying numbers, and you factor in the addition of Olivier Giroud, LAFC have the hallmarks of a juggernaut. Some of this is small-game hunting (they crush bad teams) and some is front-running (give them a lead and they’ll kill you on the break – just ask those folks up in Seattle).
But that’s nit-picking; this team has been excellent virtually all season. And even amid that excellence, head coach Steve Cherundolo hasn’t been afraid to make adjustments.
The best example is when they followed up a 5-1 embarrassment against Columbus with a listless 1-1 draw vs. RSL last month. So the next time out, the 4-3-3 was gone, and in every game since (save for one), it’s been a 3-4-3.
I think it makes them less fun to watch, and I think it runs the risk of turning them into a one-dimensional team like they were in last year’s playoffs. But also:
Opponents are now forced to recalibrate their defensive structure on the fly (or not do so at all, in Seattle’s case). It is a different look, and they have been devastating in it.
And this is before Giroud has any sort of impact.
I don’t really have any quibbles about the Galaxy’s attack. Conservatively, we’re talking about a top-five group in the league. With Dejan Joveljić healthy and Marco Reus integrated, we might more accurately be talking about top one.
If you want to understand why I’m, nonetheless, lower overall on the Galaxy than I am on LAFC, it’s because of their inability to stop the ball through midfield. As per American Soccer Analysis’ goals added metric, the Galaxy are dead last in preventing progressive dribbles through the middle third. They are third-to-last in preventing progressive passes through the same zone.
Here’s what that can often look like against a good team:
That goal from Chicho Arango brings back some good memories, eh RSL fans? Between a downturn in form and then a four-game suspension, the one-time MVP front-runner has now scored just once in the past two-and-a-half months, a span of seven matches across all competitions.
If the Claret-and-Cobalt are going to keep up with the LA duo, they need Chicho to be the guy he was through the first three months of the season. And they need one of the new wingers – I don’t care which – to provide a reasonable facsimile of the now-departed Andrés Gómez.
Here’s the good news: Their toughest stretch of the season is over, and their remaining schedule is pillowy soft. They get four out of their next five at home, and three of those are against non-playoff teams.
There is some ground to make up. They can manage it. They’re not out of the race for the West’s top spot just yet.
Five teams for the No. 4 seed
Will the Colorado Rapids fall off after this Leagues Cup run, a la Nashville last year? Head coach Chris Armas has pointed out that they’re not a deep team, and following the sale of Moïse Bombito to Nice, they’re officially a bit thin at the back.
Right now they’re in fourth, but the difference between them (1.58 ppg) and eighth-place Portland (1.44 ppg) is fractional. A bounce here or there, and it all gets jumbled. They need to keep riding the wave of excellent vibes and hope that one of the wingers gets on a bit of a scoring binge. When this attack has a third heat beside Djordje Mihailovic and Rafa Navarro, they are dangerous.
Force me to pick one team from this bunch to rise above the rest, though, and I’m not going with the Rapids.
Instead, I’ll cast my lot with the Houston Dynamo.
Of this group, they are least likely to rely upon bounces and more liable to play the other team off the field with the ball. They can control games outright, and this summer they finally went out and made a couple of attacking signings to turn all that possession into penetration and penetration into chances and chances into goals:
We saw it in the Leagues Cup group stage when they buried RSL. You’ve got to understand that this is a really, really good and structured RSL team, one that doesn’t get stretched out and find itself behind the play. But in Houston, they were chasing all night.
I’m buying all the Dynamo stock. They went hard this summer, getting Ezequiel Ponce and Lawrence Ennali. They did what the Red Bulls and Whitecaps should’ve done.
Yeah, the Whitecaps are a good team again. Probably a little bit better than last year, and they’ve shown resilience when Ryan Gauld was hurt. I think they’ll win the Canadian Championship.
But there’s no reason to think that they’re about to shoot up the standings and claim home-field advantage in Round One. They’re still short a piece or two.
The Sounders are also short a piece or perhaps two, though in theory, the answer to their needs is already on the roster.
- If Pedro de la Vega is a DP-caliber winger who can beat guys off the dribble and create chances, Seattle can probably stick with the 4-2-3-1 and potentially become a top-four team in the West.
- If de la Vega is either perma-injured or just not that good, manager Brian Schmetzer might want to consider switching to a 3-5-2 with more of the chance creation coming from a forward partnership.
Want a telling stat? Seattle are 28th in the league in expected assists following a successful 1v1 in the attacking third. Put another way: they don’t beat guys off the dribble in dangerous spots often, and on the rare occasions when they do, they don’t follow that up with a meaningful final ball.
There’s a reason LAFC are so content to sit in and absorb against them.
Anyway, if de la Vega is suddenly really good, I think most of Seattle’s problems are solved. But that’s a season-defining “if,” and I’m not really expecting it to break the Sounders’ way this year.
In many ways, the Timbers are a spitting image of the Galaxy. The two big ones are:
- Their attack is one of the best in the league (I’d have them in that top five).
- They allow teams to possess the ball too easily through midfield.
The good news? Portland have made a lot of progress on point No. 2 in recent months as Phil Neville has sorted out the midfield partnerships and, I think, clarified some pressing triggers.
Buy-in is the other big thing. Do you know how you keep a superstar happy? Get him more touches. Evander’s attempting almost nine more passes per game now than in 2023, which puts him in the 90th percentile among attacking midfielders.
And these aren’t empty-calories touches, either – his passes into the final third, passes into the box, and xA are all up significantly over last year.
Nothing is up more, though, than Evander's through-balls per 90. He’s almost tripled his 2023 rate, and the entire attack knows to put their heads down and go when he gets on the ball:
Evander dogwalked a very good Rapids side. When you play that well in attack, it gets easier to commit defensively.
Is he healthy? It’s not clear. If he is, the Timbers can drop four on anyone.
Even so, I think Neville might want to shift Kamal Miller back to LB on a permanent basis. It provides more stability.
The race for ninth place
If you’ve done the math, you know there’s only one postseason berth left in the West. Right now it belongs to Minnesota United, a team that’s logged just two MLS wins – over Sporting KC and the Quakes – since mid-May.
The Loons brought in a lot of new faces this summer. I don’t know how these guys are going to fit into the 5-4-1 that manager Eric Ramsay has used for most of the year. I don’t know if he’s even going to stick with the 5-4-1; when I look at the roster, it looks like a 4-2-3-1 would be more natural, especially if the goal is to get new DP forward Kelvin Yeboah on the field with, rather than instead of, Tani Oluwaseyi (I will scream bloody murder if Tani is benched, though I will also bear in mind that he’s carrying a knock).
The lack of a top-end No. 6 is glaring. I know they tried, but that’s the one move they had to get done.
Of the below-the-line teams, right now I like St. Louis the most. They brought in five or maybe even six new starters, which should see both the backline and the attack almost completely remade. It also pushes some of the holdovers (most notably Eduard Löwen) into better spots, an adjustment that’s aided and abetted by a better overall game model from interim head coach John Hackworth.
So I don’t think their strong Leagues Cup showing was a mistake. But as much as I like them, they are 10 points below the red line. That is a ton to make up in nine games, and I don’t expect them to manage it.
Did Austin do enough, then? Sporting director Rodolfo Borrell finally started making significant moves, bringing in DP winger Osman Bukari and a couple of starters on the backline.
As with St. Louis, doing so has had more than an additive effect on the quality of the lineup; Bukari’s intelligent (and very fast!) off-ball movement, for example, has clearly made things easier on the rest of the attack. His strengths resonate with those of Sebastián Driussi et al, and that makes the entire team better.
They still have a match-winner in goal, too. Brad Stuver remains the most underrated ‘keeper in the league.
Still, I think I’m picking Dallas to sneak above the line. That’s maybe a bit ambitious given they were pretty limp in Leagues Cup (that 2-0 Leagues Cup loss to FC Juárez was embarrassing), but they’ve been the best of this bunch since Peter Luccin took over, and have done most of it without Jesús Ferreira, a chunk of it without Asier Illarramendi, and all of it without Alan Velasco.
All three of those guys are various shades of back. All three of those guys are massive difference-makers, and new d-mid Manuel “Show” Cafumana might be as well – he seems the perfect type of rangy ball-winner to slot next to Illarramendi in a double-pivot.
I also liked the Ruan acquisition. He’s gonna get forward to give you both attacking width and depth. That’s what guys like Ferreira, Velasco and Petar Musa need.
The thing that gives me the most pause about Dallas, who are one point behind Austin and three behind Minnesota: Their remaining schedule is tough. Get three points on Saturday at D.C., though, and it gets a lot easier to believe they’ll have a postseason.
Sporting are a point ahead of St. Louis, but added only one piece (to be fair, Joaquín Fernández looks the part of a starting CB) in the summer window. I don’t think that’s enough.
The other big move: Willy Agada is now William Agada.
Nothing gold can stay.
I find it hard to believe the Quakes will have a better moment this year than their 5-0 Leagues Cup win over Necaxa. The hope is they can bottle that performance and break some hearts down the stretch.
Golden Boot
Chicho’s dry spell has re-opened the race for the Golden Boot presented by Audi. He’s still first overall with 17 goals, but his once-commanding lead has shrunk to just one, over both Christian Benteke and Denis Bouanga. Dániel Gazdag has a puncher’s (or a PK merchant’s) chance as well, on 14.
Bouanga, of course, won it last year. Five players have won it twice, but nobody’s won it back-to-back.
The other thing to think about with regard to the Golden Boot is the overall total. Last year Bouanga won it with 20, which is a relatively low tally to take home the prize. The year before, Hany Mukhtar scored 23, which is more in line with historical norms.
The high-scoring days of the late 2010s, when guys like Josef Martínez, Carlos Vela and Zlatan Ibrahimovic all went over 30 goals, seems like a long time ago.
Goals per game
Overall, however, total goals are up significantly to 3.11 per game, a massive increase over last year’s 2.76 and the highest mark since 2018’s 3.19.
And bear in mind that the stretch run is usually the highest-scoring time of the year.
Assist chase
Can Lucho get to 20 assists? Only three other guys have done it:
- Carlos Valderrama (26 assists in 2000)
- Sacha Kljesta (20 assists in 2016)
- Maxi Moralez (20 assists in 2019)
This isn’t some pass-before-the-pass fluke from the reigning MVP – he leads the league in xA by a mile as per every single available advanced data site, and most agree he’s been better than he was last season.
Which is hard to believe, but honestly, I don’t disagree.
MVP race
So, who’s the MVP?
For a while, it was a two-man race between Chicho and Messi. But I think the door’s open for Lucho and Bouanga now as well (and it might be shut for Messi). And while his counting stats aren’t the same as the other guys, I refuse to rule out Cucho Hernández.
Three of the past five winners have come from the team that took home the Shield. So be sure to factor that into your thinking when you’re handicapping the race.
Points record
Will Miami – or anyone else – break the single-season points record?
The Herons are on 2.12 ppg, which is fractionally behind New England’s record-setting 2.15 ppg from back in 2021. The point total Miami are aiming for is 74.
Honestly, I think they’re gonna do it.
Top tier
How many teams will top 2.00 ppg? How many will top 70 points?
That Revs side was the last to top 70 points, and last year’s Shield-winning Cincy side were the only one since to top 2.00 ppg.
MLS has only had one year in which multiple teams topped 2.00 ppg: 2018, when both the Shield-winning Red Bulls and Tata’s Atlanta did it. We’ve never seen a season in which two teams topped 70 points.
I think this is our year.
