The finish line is in sight, and the 2025 MLS regular season has mostly sorted itself out.
The Supporters’ Shield has been clinched, the also-rans are booking offseason vacations, and the last few Audi MLS Cup Playoffs spots are being fought over by teams that mostly seem determined to lose them.
So with the standings drama winding down, it’s time to zoom out a bit. This mailbag (my first in a long, long time) isn’t about who’s in or out of the postseason. It’s about everything else: tactical adjustments, offseason rebuilds already taking shape, a returning hero in Vancouver, and whatever else you’ve decided to throw my way.
It’s a chance to take a breath before the chaos of the playoffs begins, and to look at where this league stands – on the field, off of it, and at all stops in between.
Let’s jump in.
The deal you make when you choose to play a system around No. 10 is that you do the running for him and he does the creating for you. The No. 10 solves the most intractable problem in the game: How do we score goals? That is the bedrock of the whole thing.
Lucho simply was not living up to his end of the bargain at FC Dallas. He was mopey and mercurial, yes, but he’s always been that way, and teams have mostly just lived with it because his genius-level chance creation and elite goalscoring record out of midfield made it worth it.
Lucho’s walking on defense, but giving you three tap-ins a game? Ok, I guess I’ll dig in a little harder. Lucho’s walking on defense, but also walking on offense, and isn’t creating danger in the attacking third? Well, he’s sabotaging the whole thing, isn’t he?
So yeah, it became that type of problem for Dallas, just as it became that type of problem for FC Cincinnati down the stretch last year. Getting him out of the XI was always going to improve los Toros Tejanos against the ball.
Where head coach Eric Quill has done such a good job is turning it into an attacking strength as well, finally hitting on a 3-5-2 with flying wingbacks and a forward pairing of Petar Musa and Logan Farrington. Getting those wingbacks attacking high and wide early means they’re often up against stretched-out, back-pedaling backlines. And because those backlines are so stretched out, Musa and Farrington have spent a lot of time playing 2-v-2 in the box. The central midfield, meanwhile, is more attritional: they run their socks off, force turnovers, and move the ball competently.
No genius chance creators in the mix, but sometimes you don’t need one. It’s just about hard work and getting numbers in the right spots.
The No. 10 is still popular outside of the very top of the game in Europe. The issue at the top of the game, though, is twofold:
- The best players are, by definition, more versatile physically, tactically and technically than lesser players. This means teams (managers) have more tools to scheme away individual genius creators while, at the same time, having more tactical flexibility in how they create goals themselves (hiding the 10 deeper as a regista; relying on chance-creating wingers – who are the most valuable players in the game; building a game model that creates dynamic superiority with fullback overlaps; building a game model that creates positional superiority with fullback underlaps; etc.).
- Europe’s temperate climate and the fact that every game in the best leagues takes place on a pristine pitch at sea level distorts what is physically possible elsewhere. If it’s 45 degrees, cloudy and raining all season long, you can run harder, faster and further than if you have to face actually adverse conditions. And so you can turn it into a game that’s more about running against the ball, which has never played to the strengths of the traditional 10.
I think that sort of scenario could handicap a country with those exact weather specifications, especially if that country also has a notoriously insular and retrograde approach to the game. And that might partially explain, say, 60 years of disappointment in international competition at the national team level.
If there were, you know, a country like that, I could see their league getting taken over for almost a decade by a coach with a more cosmopolitan worldview and an understanding of how to use modern 10s like, to choose a couple names completely at random, Kevin De Bruyne and Bernardo Silva. Sadly, I could also see that coach’s success being so influential that said country actually pulls itself out of the dark ages and starts producing 10-like attackers who make their national team both good and successful.
But this is all hypothetical, of course. I'm not sure a country like that – one that also has an outsized impact on global soccer culture and perception – actually exists.
Sign Justin Haak, Walker Zimmerman and Carlos Coronel to free-agent deals. Trade for Emeka Eneli. Make a cash transfer offer for Georgi Minoungou.
D.C. United need to upgrade in goal, rebuild the spine and get at least one proven, high-level chance creator on the wing (especially if they intend to keep Gabriel Pirani, who’s shown to be a pretty good goalscoring No. 10 but is not really a playmaker). Given how their scouting has gone in recent years and the inexperience of the new chief soccer officer (Erkut Sogut), I’d err strongly on the side of building via known MLS commodities.
The biggest risk here is probably Zimmerman, who’s in his 30s and has had an injury-ravaged season. But it’s a risk worth taking if you think he can give you 4,500 healthy minutes over the next two seasons because no center back in the league does more to raise your floor.
I feel like Crew fans are a little too far down into the pits of despair here. I know it’s been a brutal second half of the season, but this team’s won two trophies in the past two years, has the guy who is still, in my opinion, the best coach in the league, and tallied yet another 50-point campaign.
They also just got two irreplaceable starters back ahead of schedule and played one of their best games of the season at a very good Orlando City team. Was the 1-1 final scoreline disappointing? Yes. But the process was good, and if you play like that, you will eventually create your own luck in front of goal.
It really is too bad about Wessam Abou Ali’s injury, though. If he were healthy, this would be a fun dark-horse MLS Cup pick, especially now that they have the added catalyst of playing to send Darlington Nagbe out on a high note.
I mean, I think there’s a young attacking midfielder on the roster they’re expecting to graduate into more minutes next year (see: Cavan Sullivan). That’s pretty obvious.
Force me to come up with a trade, though, and it’s Dado Valenzuela. He’s not a visionary chance creator – that’s why he hasn’t really broken through for Cincinnati – but he’s got a great engine and the way he creates chances via pass-and-move combo play around the box kind of lines up with Philly’s game model.
Think about it. Dado’s at his best in tight spaces when the game’s frenetic, and Philadelphia are not about making the perfect decision with each touch. They’re about making a good decision quickly and immediately transitioning into the next phase. That’s either:
- Moving into space off the ball to be open for the next touch, or…
- immediately re-pressing if you’ve turned it over.
Frenetic, right? That’s what Dado does best.
He also fits as either a second forward or an attacking midfielder (in the way that Quinn Sullivan, Indiana Vassilev and Milan Iloski have played “attacking midfielder” this year). That kind of flexibility is useful for the Union.
Man, Ryan Gauld’s reintegration has been seamless. If anyone reading needs it, here’s a recap of the whole thing:
- Gauld, who was thought to be irreplaceable, got injured back in March when the ‘Caps were a base 4-3-3 team.
- They stayed in the 4-3-3 even without him and made a run to the Concacaf Champions Cup Final (let’s just skip a recounting of that game at Cruz Azul).
- Injuries started piling up elsewhere around that time, so head coach Jesper Sørensen was forced to do some lineup and formation tinkering.
- Vancouver defied expectations by staying in the Western Conference race anyway, though around mid-summer, they looked to be fading out.
- That’s when they signed Thomas Müller, who has always been a playmaking second forward/No. 10 (or raumdeuter, as Müller himself termed it more than a decade ago).
- Sørensen immediately changed the formation to a 4-2-3-1, which better fit Müller.
- Since that switch, they're unbeaten in all competitions, including winning their fourth straight Canadian Championship last week.
- In that game, Gauld finally made his long-awaited return from injury, coming off the bench and scoring Vancouver's final goal.
- He followed that up with another cameo off the bench in last weekend’s 4-1 win over the Quakes, and set up an excellent look for Müller with his first attacking touch of the game.
The issue with Gauld in previous iterations of the ‘Caps was that he was both their best winger and their best No. 10. Now he is just their best winger, which settles where he should play.
The only question now is how much he should play. Personally, I hope they keep bringing him off the bench (maybe get him 20 minutes this weekend instead of 15) and slowly ramp him up for the playoffs. Then, when November comes, at the least you’ve got a game-changing super-sub, and at best you’ve got the old, Best XI-caliber version of Gauld.
You are not nuts.
It feels like Gregg Berhalter is saying, “Look, we’re not going to be solid enough defensively to win games the traditional way, so let’s change the meta.” Make the game play out on different terms – like the soccer tactics version of Don Draper’s “if you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation” line.
The issue is the apex version Crew sides of 2023 and 2024 under Wilfried Nancy weren’t just possession juggernauts, but relentlessly drilled and structured ball-winning machines. I do not think the Fire will get to that point between now and the end of the month.
To put numbers to it: Columbus allowed 44 xG last year and 41 xG in 2023. Chicago have already allowed 54 xG in 2025, and have 90 minutes to go.
Levels.
Man, this is a fun one that deserves a whole column. Gonna bring that to you next month.
True story: Vancouver would have to win out (and hope the Quakes lose their finale) to better San Jose’s year-over-year improvement. If San Jose beat Austin on Decision Day, they’ll have registered a bigger year-over-year improvement than the ‘Caps, no matter what.
Which is to say that while Bruce Arena’s work hasn’t been perfect – he never figured out the pressing structure, which remained bad throughout the season, and was over-reliant on veteran attackers who provided very little against the ball, which only compounded the structural issues – going from a 21-point Wooden Spoon campaign to 40-ish points and fighting to the very last day of the season to make the playoffs is massive year-over-year jump.
Obviously, it doesn’t come close to what Sørensen’s done overall, even if Bruce wins on raw points. The Vancouver manager has put together one of the best campaigns in league history, full stop.
But San Jose are in significantly better shape than they were 12 months ago, and I am not betting against Bruce’s ability to coax another 15-20 point improvement out of them next season.
This is an easy one: Philly’s underlying numbers were good last year (+0.25 xGD/90). They were just cursed in both boxes.
Their underlying numbers are very good (+0.53 xGD/90) this year, and they have not been cursed in either box. Tai Baribo carried the attack in the first part of the year, and they’ve gotten myriad contributions in the second half of the season once Baribo cooled off. Plus, they survived Andre Blake’s injuries, which they had not done so well with the previous two seasons.
Along the way, Carnell has incorporated and elevated several young players (Olwethu Makhanya and Frankie Westfield on the backline; Quinn Sullivan and Danley Jean Jacques in midfield; Andrew Rick in goal) who have delivered, while parting ways with a few veterans (Dániel Gazdag, Jack Elliott, José Martínez) who’d maybe gotten a little stale.
Which is to say that all of this is very real – the Union are good, and have been good – in a way that St. Louis’ first half-season just wasn’t. It was a magical thing that the 2023 team did, to be clear. Real “beloved of the Soccer Gods” stuff. But just as clear is that it was over by July of that season, and that was obvious to anyone who looked closely.
Was that Carnell’s fault? Maybe a little bit. But also, St. Louis were sorting through cultural, philosophical and personnel issues that Philly just don’t have to deal with. Carnell’s job is to go out there and play Ernst Tanner’s players in the system that Ernst Tanner wants, and to get everyone to execute at their absolute maximum. Everyone in Chester is aligned on that.
So if you look closely at the Union, you’ll find a few warts – we all saw what Nashville did to them in the US Open Cup semifinals, right? – but nothing that screams “massive regression is coming!!”
I can tell you right now I won’t be picking them to win the Shield again next year, but to answer you directly: 12 months from now, we’ll be talking about the Union as a 55-to-60-point team and a potential MLS Cup winner. So yeah, much more like a repeat of 2025 than what we saw happen to St. Louis in 2024.
