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| We're going deep, people. And shallow. |
This post begins the process of looking forward to Major League Soccer’s (normal, hopefully) 2023 regular season. There are a number of concrete things in the works – among them, a new team (St Louis CITY FC (I’m told capitalizing “CITY” is deliberate, so I’m following the form guide), the launch of a new TV deal (it ain’t cheap, but it’s cheaper than a year’s worth of SlingTV) – as well as some ephemeral things we’ll all imagine together, e.g., a post-World Cup bump or slump, depending on how the U.S. Men’s National Team does in the repressive, murderous shithole still known as Qatar.
That said, this look forward begins with a look back – specifically, to how all the teams in MLS have done over the past decade-plus of competition. I had grandiose dreams of getting all granular with this, posting mini-histories for all the teams and flagging key players, but decided that was both pointless, what with teams cutting players (and, more to the point, not yet adding new players), and against the spirit of where I want and hope to take future league-wide posts going forward...which assumes twitter survives the impulsive sociopath that bought it a couple weeks back. If things hold together from today into the future, I want/hope to take in the regular season action from a bird’s-eye view, i.e., something more narrative and, if I can get the screws in my brain just right, looser. Which segues nicely to this post...
The research was quick, dirty and asked just one question: where did all the teams that participated in MLS for any given year between 2010 and 2022 finish at the end of the regular season? That misses a couple things, obviously – the proverbial “peaking at the right time” theory that became fashionably cliche in the early-/mid-2010s, but also a very real phenomenon like post-season form – but the thing I really wanted to establish was how all the teams that will compete next year have done over a fair patch of time. Or even lately – which does come up and in the way that anyone who follows the league would expect.
Before getting into that, I wanted to note some fun stuff I discovered while poking around the past. For instance, Chivas USA competed in the league all the way up to 2014; they’re not competing today anymore, not directly anyway, but I’d completely forgotten that my Portland Timbers ever played that team. Related to that, both Sporting Kansas City and the Houston Dynamo played in the Eastern Conference from 2011 to 2014 - and both were very competitive in the East during that time (to the tune of placing 1st and 2nd in 2011).
Of perhaps more interest, the 2010 and 2011 seasons featured pretty goddamn wacky rules for playoff qualification. If memory serves, this followed from a fleeting obsession with total points as the ultimate arbiter of which teams deserved what. They didn’t go too nuts in 2011 – that season saw the top three teams in each conference qualify for the post-season, along with the four teams with the highest points total after that – but the league went all-in on the concept in 2010. That season, just the top TWO teams from each conference qualified for the playoffs followed by the next four teams, regardless of the conference. And that, kids, is how the Western Conference sent six teams to the playoffs while the Eastern Conference sent just two...and did I mention the league had only 16 teams that season? That year got weird, and all the way down to the Colorado Rapids besting FC Dallas in MLS Cup. The perils of drugs and/or getting loose with playoff qualification concepts...
The league has stuck with fairly standard playoff formats since 2012, at least outside the annus fuckedupibus (aka, 2020), the conferences keep to themselves as they battle to MLS Cup, etc. I’m not even sure those two weird seasons matter; I only mention them to recall the glorious years when league-wide coverage was possible (just 16 teams in 2010, people) and the desperation to hold and grow the fanbase at its most fickle and debasing. Good, good times...
Now, to turn to the actual data. The point of the exercise is pretty straightforward: I wanted to see how all the teams in MLS placed and/or performed since 2010 – and, yes, plenty of teams joined the league after that – to see if any meaningful trends popped out. A couple did, but I got a bigger kick out the several surprises I stumbled over along the way.
That said, this look forward begins with a look back – specifically, to how all the teams in MLS have done over the past decade-plus of competition. I had grandiose dreams of getting all granular with this, posting mini-histories for all the teams and flagging key players, but decided that was both pointless, what with teams cutting players (and, more to the point, not yet adding new players), and against the spirit of where I want and hope to take future league-wide posts going forward...which assumes twitter survives the impulsive sociopath that bought it a couple weeks back. If things hold together from today into the future, I want/hope to take in the regular season action from a bird’s-eye view, i.e., something more narrative and, if I can get the screws in my brain just right, looser. Which segues nicely to this post...
The research was quick, dirty and asked just one question: where did all the teams that participated in MLS for any given year between 2010 and 2022 finish at the end of the regular season? That misses a couple things, obviously – the proverbial “peaking at the right time” theory that became fashionably cliche in the early-/mid-2010s, but also a very real phenomenon like post-season form – but the thing I really wanted to establish was how all the teams that will compete next year have done over a fair patch of time. Or even lately – which does come up and in the way that anyone who follows the league would expect.
Before getting into that, I wanted to note some fun stuff I discovered while poking around the past. For instance, Chivas USA competed in the league all the way up to 2014; they’re not competing today anymore, not directly anyway, but I’d completely forgotten that my Portland Timbers ever played that team. Related to that, both Sporting Kansas City and the Houston Dynamo played in the Eastern Conference from 2011 to 2014 - and both were very competitive in the East during that time (to the tune of placing 1st and 2nd in 2011).
Of perhaps more interest, the 2010 and 2011 seasons featured pretty goddamn wacky rules for playoff qualification. If memory serves, this followed from a fleeting obsession with total points as the ultimate arbiter of which teams deserved what. They didn’t go too nuts in 2011 – that season saw the top three teams in each conference qualify for the post-season, along with the four teams with the highest points total after that – but the league went all-in on the concept in 2010. That season, just the top TWO teams from each conference qualified for the playoffs followed by the next four teams, regardless of the conference. And that, kids, is how the Western Conference sent six teams to the playoffs while the Eastern Conference sent just two...and did I mention the league had only 16 teams that season? That year got weird, and all the way down to the Colorado Rapids besting FC Dallas in MLS Cup. The perils of drugs and/or getting loose with playoff qualification concepts...
The league has stuck with fairly standard playoff formats since 2012, at least outside the annus fuckedupibus (aka, 2020), the conferences keep to themselves as they battle to MLS Cup, etc. I’m not even sure those two weird seasons matter; I only mention them to recall the glorious years when league-wide coverage was possible (just 16 teams in 2010, people) and the desperation to hold and grow the fanbase at its most fickle and debasing. Good, good times...
Now, to turn to the actual data. The point of the exercise is pretty straightforward: I wanted to see how all the teams in MLS placed and/or performed since 2010 – and, yes, plenty of teams joined the league after that – to see if any meaningful trends popped out. A couple did, but I got a bigger kick out the several surprises I stumbled over along the way.
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| This, but surprising. |
The first conceptual draft of this post tried to control for surprises – i.e., I flirted with doing a little digging in search of the factors that saw DC United have banner seasons in 2012 and 2014, but with one of the worst seasons in league history sandwiched between in 2013 – but, in the spirit of looking forward...I mean, who gives a shit? [Ed. - That said, were those the Rooney/Lucho seasons, and with a young Steve Birnbaum and an old Bobby Boswell anchoring the backline, Ben Olsen presiding over and/or sucking the life out of it all? And doesn’t he paint or something?]
The rest of this post gives over to bullet-points, or rather “team points,” all of which overview all the teams that will compete next season with notes how they’ve done in seasons going back to 2010, where applicable. And, in keeping with another soccer tradition, yes, I did organize all the teams into a loose ranking system. The point of all this is to separate the league into teams that have established winning traditions, whether historically and recently, from the teams that have either established less inspiring traditions or that have, by all signs, given up on winding up anywhere good and passed out in a ditch by the side of the road. Who among us, etc.?
Think it’s fairly self-evident from here...from best (odds) to worst of having a sunny 2023, based on the historical record:
The Competitors
Philadelphia Union
They’ve been good since a little before Jim Curtin took over – and even made the playoffs in their second season in MLS (2011) – but they’ve finished in the East’s top tier for the past four seasons (yes, even annus fuckedupibus, but they won the Supporters’ Shield that season). And they pushed Los Angeles FC to the brink in the 2022 MLS Cup, even if they burst into a blue flame in the penalty shoot-out. Good from top to bottom, they had a stellar season by the numbers (e.g., second-best-ever goal differential), which doesn’t leave a ton to improve...though I don’t think a little something special in midfield (e.g., even an upgrade of Flach would do) could put them over the top.
New York City FC
I don’t think I was alone in wondering whether they’d make the playoffs at all in 2022, but their history gets at the folly of betting against NYCFC. They have made the playoffs every season after their inaugural one (2015) and they placed in the top three in five of those seven seasons. They’ve had better and worse seasons, of course – and maybe losing Taty Castellanos (plus some injury woes) knocked them out of the explicit elite this season – but they’ve been among the league’s best since joining MLS. And they’ve got an MLS Cup besides.
Seattle Sounders FC
Yeah, yeah, they missed the 2022 playoffs – and finished 11th in the West (11th!). But this team has been insanely and, for some, infuriatingly good since literally the season they joined the league. The Sounders didn’t just make the playoffs every season prior to the last one, they made it to four MLS Cups, won two of them, and claimed the Shield in 2014 on top of that. Moreover, on a meat-and-potatoes level, they finished 2nd in the West or better in half the seasons they’ve played. This was the first season they just couldn’t get going (I’m a big Joao Paulo fan, so have excused plenty), but if there’s a team I’d expect to right the ship tomorrow, it’s Seattle.
Los Angeles FC
They came into the league so hot that it gets easy to forget that they stumbled in 2020 (who didn't?) and missed the post-season all together just last season. They won the 2022 MLS Cup in a way that might have finally yanked the “soft” tag all the way off, plus even won the Shield in 2019 – and with one of the best teams in MLS history (by the numbers). I don’t know how much of that Cup winning team will return for 2023, but this team also never seems to want for resources. They don’t have much for history (just five seasons old), but the short term looks pretty damn bright.
Portland Timbers
Yeah, I’m keeping them up here. And, yes, that absolutely slips past some salient facts – e.g., that Portland have missed the MLS playoffs in five of their 12 seasons in the league (including the last one...which ended like a man’s final fart) – but they have also been in the thick of the competition in three of the seven seasons where they did make the playoffs, and to the tune of reaching three MLS Cups and winning one of them. All of that’s a long way of arguing that the Portland Timbers have been the most successful, reliably erratic team in MLS for the past decade, you’re welcome. That said, and sadly, if they don’t get the coming transition right – and that transition has absolutely arrived – they could fall out of this elite group. And keep falling.
The Steady Regulars
Red Bull New York
This team made the playoffs in every single season of the sampler – they even have a fairly tight string of Shield victories to put a proper shine on their very real glory days (those teams were awesome and scary) – but they’re one rung down for the most obvious reason of all: Red Bull New York hasn’t reached an MLS Cup since a fluke appearance in 2008. They did better when they had special players who complimented the collective style – e.g., Thierry Henry, Sacha Kljestan, Dax McCarty, and Bradley Wright-Phillips – but...they still haven’t lifted a Cup. And, to reinforce that theme, they haven’t been all that good since their last Shield win, 2018. They finished higher in 2022 than they did in the three seasons prior, but they didn’t look like going anywhere either. Bottom-line, the pedigree is good, but the ceiling’s there too.
FC Dallas
This was one of the surprises, believe me, but Dallas fits the bill. Apart from back-to-back glory years – they won the Shield in 2016, but also tied RBNY on points for the same in 2015 – Dallas doesn’t often finish high. By some loose math, their average around 4th overall, but they did that in ten of the thirteen years in the sample. All that only becomes impressive when you stop to long enough to really take in just how many good players this teams sells to greener pastures season after season. For a team that fluid to be this consistent....yeah, they’ve earned this.
The rest of this post gives over to bullet-points, or rather “team points,” all of which overview all the teams that will compete next season with notes how they’ve done in seasons going back to 2010, where applicable. And, in keeping with another soccer tradition, yes, I did organize all the teams into a loose ranking system. The point of all this is to separate the league into teams that have established winning traditions, whether historically and recently, from the teams that have either established less inspiring traditions or that have, by all signs, given up on winding up anywhere good and passed out in a ditch by the side of the road. Who among us, etc.?
Think it’s fairly self-evident from here...from best (odds) to worst of having a sunny 2023, based on the historical record:
The Competitors
Philadelphia Union
They’ve been good since a little before Jim Curtin took over – and even made the playoffs in their second season in MLS (2011) – but they’ve finished in the East’s top tier for the past four seasons (yes, even annus fuckedupibus, but they won the Supporters’ Shield that season). And they pushed Los Angeles FC to the brink in the 2022 MLS Cup, even if they burst into a blue flame in the penalty shoot-out. Good from top to bottom, they had a stellar season by the numbers (e.g., second-best-ever goal differential), which doesn’t leave a ton to improve...though I don’t think a little something special in midfield (e.g., even an upgrade of Flach would do) could put them over the top.
New York City FC
I don’t think I was alone in wondering whether they’d make the playoffs at all in 2022, but their history gets at the folly of betting against NYCFC. They have made the playoffs every season after their inaugural one (2015) and they placed in the top three in five of those seven seasons. They’ve had better and worse seasons, of course – and maybe losing Taty Castellanos (plus some injury woes) knocked them out of the explicit elite this season – but they’ve been among the league’s best since joining MLS. And they’ve got an MLS Cup besides.
Seattle Sounders FC
Yeah, yeah, they missed the 2022 playoffs – and finished 11th in the West (11th!). But this team has been insanely and, for some, infuriatingly good since literally the season they joined the league. The Sounders didn’t just make the playoffs every season prior to the last one, they made it to four MLS Cups, won two of them, and claimed the Shield in 2014 on top of that. Moreover, on a meat-and-potatoes level, they finished 2nd in the West or better in half the seasons they’ve played. This was the first season they just couldn’t get going (I’m a big Joao Paulo fan, so have excused plenty), but if there’s a team I’d expect to right the ship tomorrow, it’s Seattle.
Los Angeles FC
They came into the league so hot that it gets easy to forget that they stumbled in 2020 (who didn't?) and missed the post-season all together just last season. They won the 2022 MLS Cup in a way that might have finally yanked the “soft” tag all the way off, plus even won the Shield in 2019 – and with one of the best teams in MLS history (by the numbers). I don’t know how much of that Cup winning team will return for 2023, but this team also never seems to want for resources. They don’t have much for history (just five seasons old), but the short term looks pretty damn bright.
Portland Timbers
Yeah, I’m keeping them up here. And, yes, that absolutely slips past some salient facts – e.g., that Portland have missed the MLS playoffs in five of their 12 seasons in the league (including the last one...which ended like a man’s final fart) – but they have also been in the thick of the competition in three of the seven seasons where they did make the playoffs, and to the tune of reaching three MLS Cups and winning one of them. All of that’s a long way of arguing that the Portland Timbers have been the most successful, reliably erratic team in MLS for the past decade, you’re welcome. That said, and sadly, if they don’t get the coming transition right – and that transition has absolutely arrived – they could fall out of this elite group. And keep falling.
The Steady Regulars
Red Bull New York
This team made the playoffs in every single season of the sampler – they even have a fairly tight string of Shield victories to put a proper shine on their very real glory days (those teams were awesome and scary) – but they’re one rung down for the most obvious reason of all: Red Bull New York hasn’t reached an MLS Cup since a fluke appearance in 2008. They did better when they had special players who complimented the collective style – e.g., Thierry Henry, Sacha Kljestan, Dax McCarty, and Bradley Wright-Phillips – but...they still haven’t lifted a Cup. And, to reinforce that theme, they haven’t been all that good since their last Shield win, 2018. They finished higher in 2022 than they did in the three seasons prior, but they didn’t look like going anywhere either. Bottom-line, the pedigree is good, but the ceiling’s there too.
FC Dallas
This was one of the surprises, believe me, but Dallas fits the bill. Apart from back-to-back glory years – they won the Shield in 2016, but also tied RBNY on points for the same in 2015 – Dallas doesn’t often finish high. By some loose math, their average around 4th overall, but they did that in ten of the thirteen years in the sample. All that only becomes impressive when you stop to long enough to really take in just how many good players this teams sells to greener pastures season after season. For a team that fluid to be this consistent....yeah, they’ve earned this.
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| An abyss opens from here. Kind of. |
The Mid-Table Middle-Class
The top of this section bleeds into the above a bit, but I’m giving longevity its due.
Nashville SC
Unless I miss my math (put money on it, seriously), Nashville is the only expansion team in the sample, maybe even league history, to have made the playoffs in every season of its (three-year) existence. That’s hardly surprising based on the core – e.g., Walker Zimmerman in defense, McCarty in midfield, and Hany Mukhtar bringing the special up top in the past two seasons – and yet, they have yet to finish higher than third (that was 2021). It’s good, in other words, and reliable, but at least one of those key players will age out soon.
Minnesota United FC
A story similar to the above, only without the flawless record (they missed the playoffs their first two seasons) and with twice the track record. Minnesota has always had some flash players – e.g., Darwin Quintero, Kevin Molino, Bebe Reynoso – but they always backed it up with grit – e.g., the brutish backline of Brett Kallman and Michael Boxall, with Osvaldo Alonso in front for a while – and band-aids – e.g., Robin Lod’s underrated 2022 (he’s my MVP, honestly). This is a good team, basically, that shows signs of carrying on as one. And injuries really did kill them this season. That’s less to excuse than acknowledge it.
Sporting Kansas City
This one’s a bit more of a stretch – one that reaches into the next tier, for the record – but SKC has been more consistent than Dallas when it comes to making the playoffs and making them at a higher spot too. Moreover, they placed first in their conference four of the past 13 seasons and won MLS Cup in 2013 (at home, I believe, and on a bitterly cold day). So...what are they doing down here? Simple, SKC has finished horrifically in two of the past four seasons (11th in 2019 and 12th in 2022) and, for all the resources they put toward this – and with a keen eye on the jolt they got by signing William Agada and Erik Thommy – they strike me as another team in transition, they’ve got some glory years regulars aging out (thinking Graham Zusi and Roger Espinoza mostly), etc. They can break either way and, based on history, I expect them to break upwards, I’m just not sure how long it’ll take.
Real Salt Lake
Sure, they’ve come down from the glory days – they finished either second or third in every season from 2010 to 2014 – and they’ve only scaled those heights once since (in 2019), but, for all the near-misses since 2014, RSL have missed the playoffs just three times in the past 13 seasons. Their peak seasons might have faded from memory (2009-2014, #RIP), but they’ve beat considerable odds to remain a reasonable bet to take a space in the playoffs in any given season.
Orlando City SC
This is the biggest stretch of this group, but they followed the same rough template as Minnesota, if only slower and a couple places lower in the standings. As much as they’ve been inconsistent over the course of the past three seasons, Orlando have made the playoffs, if narrowly, in each of the past three seasons. They have some good pieces – at least one of which (Junior Orso) appears poised to go away – but the proverbial whole picture has never come all the way together for this bunch. At the same time, and to their credit, Orlando puts real work into improving the team. It doesn’t always come off, of which....noted, but the trend line is there, even if it’s moving slow.
The Erratic
This category contains some of the bigger surprises. In rough order...
New England Revolution
Fun fact: since 2010, the Revs have a pattern of that sees them miss the playoffs for three straight seasons, then to make them for the next three. Bonus fun fact: they’ve done well for themselves in each of those three positive season – making (and losing) the Cup in 2013 and running away with the Shield at a sprint in 2021. The Revs build good teams, basically, just ones with returns that diminish in short, reliable cycles. Now, the bad news: if that recent pattern holds, New England has two schlumpy seasons ahead – i.e., more non-competitive than bad. Worse, that seems to fit the current state of the team.
Columbus Crew SC
I know, right? Ohio’s OG team has made three MLS Cups and won two of them - both of them within the sample. They’ve broken ground with some players, e.g., Guillermo Barros Schelloto, the league’s first talented, semi-anonymous Argentine(?), and fielded some legends, e.g., Brian McBride and Chad Marshall (who was a big part of making Seattle really good back when). They’re also another team that has missed the playoffs almost as often as they’ve made them over the sample period, and they’ve done it in three of the past four seasons – i.e., on both sides of their latest MLS Cup win. Again, they can be competitive, but it’s a crapshoot.
Colorado Rapids
As noted above, they won MLS Cup in 2010 – and they won the West in 2021 – but that fits the Rapids yo-yo history in the league: they’ll finish near the top of their conference one year (e.g., 2016 and 2021), and then miss the playoffs, and by some distance, the next (e.g., 2017 and 2022). And for anyone looking to some firm logic for that, I’d come back with, Robin Fraser looked like a genius coach, but only until he didn’t. For what it’s worth, I think this team has played money-ball better than any team in MLS history, but that only carries them so far.
Club du Foot Montreal
Sure, one iteration of this team – the one led by one-man-fan-favorite (aka, me), Ignacio Piatti – came within a couple goals of winning the CCL, but Montreal have missed the playoffs more often than they’ve made them (six of eleven times), and it might have been impressive that they placed higher this season than they have in all prior seasons, had they not finished 10th, 9th, 9th, 7th and 9th in the five season prior. They’re competitive...just less competitive than I thought.
The Lately Competent
A squirely group, in that they’ve all only had the one good season.
Austin FC
Austin went deeper than pretty much anyone expected, and got mocked twice as hard as any team along the way, but they’ve looked sturdy and organized in every game of watched; in fewer words, well-built. Toss in a couple players who can score – e.g., Sebastian Driussi, Diego Fagundez...I know I’m forgetting several – and you’ll have viable team nine times out of ten. Is it possible they over-performed in 2022? Sure. That doesn’t mean they weren’t good.
FC Cincinnati
Having watched them for something like half the season, I can confirm they’ve finally called in the parts and built a wholly competent team, one that seems bought in even. If Vazquez continues to produce at this same level, they hold onto Brenner and get a long-term foundation in central defense, Cincy has a solid shot at some good seasons.
Inter Miami CF
I’m less familiar here, but Miami impressed me enough the few times I watched them to believe they have a competitive foundation. Going the other way, the Flamingos rode an aging stallion down the stretch, Gonzalo Higuain, and who knows how many season he has. They botched their first seasons almost as badly as Cincy, but I’ve got bigger questions about how Miami keeps going.
Fallen on Hard Times
Think this one explains itself all right...
Toronto FC
On the one hand, burying a team that dominated the mid-to-late 2010s this “low” oversells an impression of failure – and if there’s a team that spends more drunkenly (yet reasonably well) than Toronto, they don’t play in MLS. All that money hasn’t bought them love, not over the past two (full) seasons, and the whole thing has started to feel like a flopping tech start-up – one arguably starring Michael Bradley. That said, the flying Italians they brought in last season (Insigne and Bernadescchi(? maybe?) do look special, which turns a turn-around into a question of finding a strong supporting cast...and I’ve seen some house-cleaning from Toronto (e.g. Jonathan Osorio and Chris Mavinga, even if I don’t know if anything final has been done with either). It’ll be interesting to see where they go – and how quickly they can right the ship.
Atlanta United FC
This team hit the ground flying six seasons ago, led by a freakishly fast counter built around Miguel Almiron (now impressing in the EPL) and Josef Martinez. A solid cast supported that attack, obviously, and Atlanta has never been shy about swinging for the fences on acquisitions. But cash doesn’t convert into quality one-to-one and heavy bets on the next (often Argentine) great thing (e.g., Ezequiel Barco and Pity Martinez) have blown up in Atlanta’s face season after season since that blistering start. Dropping them this far down may feel harsh, but Martinez’s noisy departure (also, did this actually happen?), hints at some rot under the floorboards.
Los Angeles Galaxy
The Landon Donovan/Robbie Keane (& Others!) Galaxy teams of the first half of the 2010s (2010-2014) completely ominated over those seasons, winning three MLS Cups and two Supporters’ Shields. Few teams in any sports see glory years like that, but the Galaxy did. They stayed in the top five for the next two seasons – and, won’t lie, I couldn’t name the years Zlatan played for them -but they’ve missed more than they’ve hit over the past six seasons and have a real “Sick Man of Europe” vibe about them. If I had to sum them up in a sentence, it would read something like, putting very expensive band-aids on a top-shelf USL team.
DC United
I want to make one thing clear: when DC sucks, they suck. They’ve attempted some real investments over the past couple seasons and to less than little avail: not even flashy signings like Edison Flores and Taxi Fountas have kept them from missing the playoffs in the past three seasons and finishing in the shitter this season and on the rim of it in 2020. The only thing keeping them out of the abyss yawning below is the period between 2012 and 2019, when they made the playoffs in all but two seasons and finished fourth or better in five of them. DC lurks in these precincts of the damned not because they don’t try, but because they fail.
Vancouver Whitecaps
They’ve walked a fine line between better than you think and not so good over their 12 seasons in MLS. While they’ve never been great...or consistent, they have made the playoffs in five of their seven seasons in the league. Not hopeless, in other words. Most of those misses, however, came over the past seven seasons. As people who follow this space (and actually read the posts) know, I don’t read many other sources, so all of this comes from The Mothership’s Matt Doyle, but he’s been telling me that the ‘Caps had almost completed the rebuild for going on three seasons now...but they keep missing the playoffs.
The Doomed
The teams below can sign just about anyone and I wouldn’t trust it until they made the playoffs. Not totally unlike The Lately Competent, just with deeper scars.
San Jose Earthquakes
God bless their one, legendary season still fit in the sample -Goonies never say die, #RIP 2012 – but it has been horrific for the overwhelming majority of the years since and one can’t help wondering how big a role failed long-shot and a sort of broad cheapness plays in all that, but also the longest outdoor in the world (and does that record still stand?). In their defense, they threaten to rise to...whatever you call RSL’s level season after season, they just never get there. Just two playoffs seasons since their legendary one, and a lot less hope.
Houston Dynamo FC
Credit to them for at least attempting a rebuild this season – and the Hector Herrera signing looked cool on paper, if nothing else (and I thought they landed a flash forward as well...Sebastian something, and he didn't look bad) – but there is plainly something broken about this team. They’ve finished better than 8th in just one of the past nine seasons, and they finished well worse in five of those. They’ve been pay-no-mind material for near a decade, which amounts to a searing falling off for team that scared the shit out of the rest of the league for a whole damn decade.
Chicago Fire FC
To the surprise of no one paying any kind of attention, Chicago has been the worst team in MLS over the past 13 seasons. They’ve made the playoffs just twice over that stretch, with the most recent coming six seasons ago, and they’ve missed them by a wide mark for six of the last eight (which, here, means they finished ninth or lower).
Mystery Meat
Charlotte FC
I saw them play...three times? I think? To the extent they gave off an impression it all, it fell somewhere between Orlando and Austin – i.e., the structure seemed good, but it needs “the specials” to turn the foundation into something that works.
Well, that’s the journey. Now, let’s see if the social media I typically use to produce this still breathes for another night...and how well the other ones pick up the slack (expectations set to subterranean, fwiw). Hoping this project survives, but, if not, it’s been a hoot!
The top of this section bleeds into the above a bit, but I’m giving longevity its due.
Nashville SC
Unless I miss my math (put money on it, seriously), Nashville is the only expansion team in the sample, maybe even league history, to have made the playoffs in every season of its (three-year) existence. That’s hardly surprising based on the core – e.g., Walker Zimmerman in defense, McCarty in midfield, and Hany Mukhtar bringing the special up top in the past two seasons – and yet, they have yet to finish higher than third (that was 2021). It’s good, in other words, and reliable, but at least one of those key players will age out soon.
Minnesota United FC
A story similar to the above, only without the flawless record (they missed the playoffs their first two seasons) and with twice the track record. Minnesota has always had some flash players – e.g., Darwin Quintero, Kevin Molino, Bebe Reynoso – but they always backed it up with grit – e.g., the brutish backline of Brett Kallman and Michael Boxall, with Osvaldo Alonso in front for a while – and band-aids – e.g., Robin Lod’s underrated 2022 (he’s my MVP, honestly). This is a good team, basically, that shows signs of carrying on as one. And injuries really did kill them this season. That’s less to excuse than acknowledge it.
Sporting Kansas City
This one’s a bit more of a stretch – one that reaches into the next tier, for the record – but SKC has been more consistent than Dallas when it comes to making the playoffs and making them at a higher spot too. Moreover, they placed first in their conference four of the past 13 seasons and won MLS Cup in 2013 (at home, I believe, and on a bitterly cold day). So...what are they doing down here? Simple, SKC has finished horrifically in two of the past four seasons (11th in 2019 and 12th in 2022) and, for all the resources they put toward this – and with a keen eye on the jolt they got by signing William Agada and Erik Thommy – they strike me as another team in transition, they’ve got some glory years regulars aging out (thinking Graham Zusi and Roger Espinoza mostly), etc. They can break either way and, based on history, I expect them to break upwards, I’m just not sure how long it’ll take.
Real Salt Lake
Sure, they’ve come down from the glory days – they finished either second or third in every season from 2010 to 2014 – and they’ve only scaled those heights once since (in 2019), but, for all the near-misses since 2014, RSL have missed the playoffs just three times in the past 13 seasons. Their peak seasons might have faded from memory (2009-2014, #RIP), but they’ve beat considerable odds to remain a reasonable bet to take a space in the playoffs in any given season.
Orlando City SC
This is the biggest stretch of this group, but they followed the same rough template as Minnesota, if only slower and a couple places lower in the standings. As much as they’ve been inconsistent over the course of the past three seasons, Orlando have made the playoffs, if narrowly, in each of the past three seasons. They have some good pieces – at least one of which (Junior Orso) appears poised to go away – but the proverbial whole picture has never come all the way together for this bunch. At the same time, and to their credit, Orlando puts real work into improving the team. It doesn’t always come off, of which....noted, but the trend line is there, even if it’s moving slow.
The Erratic
This category contains some of the bigger surprises. In rough order...
New England Revolution
Fun fact: since 2010, the Revs have a pattern of that sees them miss the playoffs for three straight seasons, then to make them for the next three. Bonus fun fact: they’ve done well for themselves in each of those three positive season – making (and losing) the Cup in 2013 and running away with the Shield at a sprint in 2021. The Revs build good teams, basically, just ones with returns that diminish in short, reliable cycles. Now, the bad news: if that recent pattern holds, New England has two schlumpy seasons ahead – i.e., more non-competitive than bad. Worse, that seems to fit the current state of the team.
Columbus Crew SC
I know, right? Ohio’s OG team has made three MLS Cups and won two of them - both of them within the sample. They’ve broken ground with some players, e.g., Guillermo Barros Schelloto, the league’s first talented, semi-anonymous Argentine(?), and fielded some legends, e.g., Brian McBride and Chad Marshall (who was a big part of making Seattle really good back when). They’re also another team that has missed the playoffs almost as often as they’ve made them over the sample period, and they’ve done it in three of the past four seasons – i.e., on both sides of their latest MLS Cup win. Again, they can be competitive, but it’s a crapshoot.
Colorado Rapids
As noted above, they won MLS Cup in 2010 – and they won the West in 2021 – but that fits the Rapids yo-yo history in the league: they’ll finish near the top of their conference one year (e.g., 2016 and 2021), and then miss the playoffs, and by some distance, the next (e.g., 2017 and 2022). And for anyone looking to some firm logic for that, I’d come back with, Robin Fraser looked like a genius coach, but only until he didn’t. For what it’s worth, I think this team has played money-ball better than any team in MLS history, but that only carries them so far.
Club du Foot Montreal
Sure, one iteration of this team – the one led by one-man-fan-favorite (aka, me), Ignacio Piatti – came within a couple goals of winning the CCL, but Montreal have missed the playoffs more often than they’ve made them (six of eleven times), and it might have been impressive that they placed higher this season than they have in all prior seasons, had they not finished 10th, 9th, 9th, 7th and 9th in the five season prior. They’re competitive...just less competitive than I thought.
The Lately Competent
A squirely group, in that they’ve all only had the one good season.
Austin FC
Austin went deeper than pretty much anyone expected, and got mocked twice as hard as any team along the way, but they’ve looked sturdy and organized in every game of watched; in fewer words, well-built. Toss in a couple players who can score – e.g., Sebastian Driussi, Diego Fagundez...I know I’m forgetting several – and you’ll have viable team nine times out of ten. Is it possible they over-performed in 2022? Sure. That doesn’t mean they weren’t good.
FC Cincinnati
Having watched them for something like half the season, I can confirm they’ve finally called in the parts and built a wholly competent team, one that seems bought in even. If Vazquez continues to produce at this same level, they hold onto Brenner and get a long-term foundation in central defense, Cincy has a solid shot at some good seasons.
Inter Miami CF
I’m less familiar here, but Miami impressed me enough the few times I watched them to believe they have a competitive foundation. Going the other way, the Flamingos rode an aging stallion down the stretch, Gonzalo Higuain, and who knows how many season he has. They botched their first seasons almost as badly as Cincy, but I’ve got bigger questions about how Miami keeps going.
Fallen on Hard Times
Think this one explains itself all right...
Toronto FC
On the one hand, burying a team that dominated the mid-to-late 2010s this “low” oversells an impression of failure – and if there’s a team that spends more drunkenly (yet reasonably well) than Toronto, they don’t play in MLS. All that money hasn’t bought them love, not over the past two (full) seasons, and the whole thing has started to feel like a flopping tech start-up – one arguably starring Michael Bradley. That said, the flying Italians they brought in last season (Insigne and Bernadescchi(? maybe?) do look special, which turns a turn-around into a question of finding a strong supporting cast...and I’ve seen some house-cleaning from Toronto (e.g. Jonathan Osorio and Chris Mavinga, even if I don’t know if anything final has been done with either). It’ll be interesting to see where they go – and how quickly they can right the ship.
Atlanta United FC
This team hit the ground flying six seasons ago, led by a freakishly fast counter built around Miguel Almiron (now impressing in the EPL) and Josef Martinez. A solid cast supported that attack, obviously, and Atlanta has never been shy about swinging for the fences on acquisitions. But cash doesn’t convert into quality one-to-one and heavy bets on the next (often Argentine) great thing (e.g., Ezequiel Barco and Pity Martinez) have blown up in Atlanta’s face season after season since that blistering start. Dropping them this far down may feel harsh, but Martinez’s noisy departure (also, did this actually happen?), hints at some rot under the floorboards.
Los Angeles Galaxy
The Landon Donovan/Robbie Keane (& Others!) Galaxy teams of the first half of the 2010s (2010-2014) completely ominated over those seasons, winning three MLS Cups and two Supporters’ Shields. Few teams in any sports see glory years like that, but the Galaxy did. They stayed in the top five for the next two seasons – and, won’t lie, I couldn’t name the years Zlatan played for them -but they’ve missed more than they’ve hit over the past six seasons and have a real “Sick Man of Europe” vibe about them. If I had to sum them up in a sentence, it would read something like, putting very expensive band-aids on a top-shelf USL team.
DC United
I want to make one thing clear: when DC sucks, they suck. They’ve attempted some real investments over the past couple seasons and to less than little avail: not even flashy signings like Edison Flores and Taxi Fountas have kept them from missing the playoffs in the past three seasons and finishing in the shitter this season and on the rim of it in 2020. The only thing keeping them out of the abyss yawning below is the period between 2012 and 2019, when they made the playoffs in all but two seasons and finished fourth or better in five of them. DC lurks in these precincts of the damned not because they don’t try, but because they fail.
Vancouver Whitecaps
They’ve walked a fine line between better than you think and not so good over their 12 seasons in MLS. While they’ve never been great...or consistent, they have made the playoffs in five of their seven seasons in the league. Not hopeless, in other words. Most of those misses, however, came over the past seven seasons. As people who follow this space (and actually read the posts) know, I don’t read many other sources, so all of this comes from The Mothership’s Matt Doyle, but he’s been telling me that the ‘Caps had almost completed the rebuild for going on three seasons now...but they keep missing the playoffs.
The Doomed
The teams below can sign just about anyone and I wouldn’t trust it until they made the playoffs. Not totally unlike The Lately Competent, just with deeper scars.
San Jose Earthquakes
God bless their one, legendary season still fit in the sample -Goonies never say die, #RIP 2012 – but it has been horrific for the overwhelming majority of the years since and one can’t help wondering how big a role failed long-shot and a sort of broad cheapness plays in all that, but also the longest outdoor in the world (and does that record still stand?). In their defense, they threaten to rise to...whatever you call RSL’s level season after season, they just never get there. Just two playoffs seasons since their legendary one, and a lot less hope.
Houston Dynamo FC
Credit to them for at least attempting a rebuild this season – and the Hector Herrera signing looked cool on paper, if nothing else (and I thought they landed a flash forward as well...Sebastian something, and he didn't look bad) – but there is plainly something broken about this team. They’ve finished better than 8th in just one of the past nine seasons, and they finished well worse in five of those. They’ve been pay-no-mind material for near a decade, which amounts to a searing falling off for team that scared the shit out of the rest of the league for a whole damn decade.
Chicago Fire FC
To the surprise of no one paying any kind of attention, Chicago has been the worst team in MLS over the past 13 seasons. They’ve made the playoffs just twice over that stretch, with the most recent coming six seasons ago, and they’ve missed them by a wide mark for six of the last eight (which, here, means they finished ninth or lower).
Mystery Meat
Charlotte FC
I saw them play...three times? I think? To the extent they gave off an impression it all, it fell somewhere between Orlando and Austin – i.e., the structure seemed good, but it needs “the specials” to turn the foundation into something that works.
Well, that’s the journey. Now, let’s see if the social media I typically use to produce this still breathes for another night...and how well the other ones pick up the slack (expectations set to subterranean, fwiw). Hoping this project survives, but, if not, it’s been a hoot!
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