Capping the "Getting Reacquainted With [_______]" Project & Barely Tying It to the Timbers

A ballet had the most metal one.

Since the middle of December 2024, I’ve posted mini-histories of every team in Major League Soccer under the title of “Getting Reacquainted with [Your Local Team]”…of varying quality, based on the evidence and feedback I’ve received online. That project had a variety of motives – among them, actually getting reacquainted with what every team in MLS has done over time, but also last season and how that looked against their history – but there was one motive to bring them all and in the darkness bind them: holding them all up as Ghosts of Christmases Yet to Come for my local team, the Portland Timbers.

I’ll close this post with links to all of those mini-histories, and feel free to pick through them as your personal ghosts so move you, but a couple lessons from all that half-assed reading stood out:

1) there are patterns for a fair number of teams in MLS, even if they’re not linear, and seeing those patterns harden in seasons ahead wouldn’t surprise me in the least;

2) I still believe, however naively, that there is enough flexibility in the supply side of the equation (i.e., a planet’s-worth of under-appreciated players) and still/just enough leveling in the league’s roster rules to allow teams from smaller markets to keep putting together a team good enough to compete in MLS, even against the big-market/glamour teams – e.g., Los Angeles FC, the Los Angeles Galaxy, (for now) Inter Miami CF, and (maybe? one day?) New York City FC and Red Bull New York. Once you pull those three cities/five teams out of the sample (shouldn’t Chicago be in there, if only for some countries? And what about DC now?), that leaves plenty of MLS markets where the first question that follows an agent’s pitch to a player is, “Where is that? In America, yes, but where is that?”

There are other ways for MLS teams to exist, operate and succeed, of course: teams like Atlanta United FC and Toronto FC are sloppy drunken spenders, which allowed them to both do it (i.e., win trophies) and almost immediately undo it; FC Dallas and the Philadelphia Union (mainly, though they’re not alone) have player pipelines that pump out a steady stream of young talent, a situation that helps them on the field, if only until they get an offer they can’t refuse and have to pull key pieces out of a good roster. Even those distinctions only matter at the margins, because MLS teams by and large compete on some uneven form of the same terms. How many times were you reminded about The Los Angeles Galaxy lost decade as they made their run to MLS Cup 2024? Then there are the teams from “where is that?” America like Columbus Crew SC and the Seattle Sounders and, sure, even Atlanta (wait for it*), who have won half the MLS Cups over that same period.

Getting Reacquainted with St. Louis CITY FC, the Boomtown (Rats?) of MLS

St. Louis, as their best possible selves.

[WARNING: Between St. Louis CITY SC not having much history and me feeling like I needed to fill "X" amount of space, I got over my skis on multiple details around this team. If you want to skip the whole thing - and that's probably advisable - here's a short version: St. Louis has played two seasons in MLS, one pretty good, especially for an expansion team, the other bad. There are multiple, credible reasons for their change in fortunes, and they made changes toward the end of 2024 that have a decent chance of paying off. Still, that's only two seasons for context, and that leaves a lot of open questions going into 2025 that can only be closed by results on the field.]

Thumbnail History
St. Louis CITY FC came into MLS like a wrecking ball in 2023. Their inexhaustible high-pressing style gave them an advantage over teams shaking off early season rust and allowed St. Louis to run up the score against one team after the other. Over the first nine wins in franchise history – which included five straight wins in their first five games – only the Portland Timbers (of all teams) limited them to two goals; St. Louis bagged three or more against every other team. But for the four losses and one draw that came between wins five and nine, St. Louis presented as a juggernaut. Brazilian forward Joao Klauss led the first wave of the press, at least until injury slowed him down, but head coach Bradley Carnell’s system had (e.g.) Jared Stroud and Indiana Vassilev crashing after Klauss, Eduard Lowen to follow up and make the most of any turnovers. While that wasn’t good enough for a wire-to-wire performance, St. Louis rode a second winning streak of victories on either side of the 2023 Leagues Cup to a first-place finish atop the Western Conference. It’s (so very) possible I’m forgetting a thing or three, but that might have been the best debut season in MLS history after the 1998 Chicago Fire’s run to MLS Cup. Sporting Kansas City was one of the teams St. Louis steamrolled over those nine, not early victories – a 4-0 romp at CityPark stadium (and who knew there was drama around that?). Seeing SKC turn the tables over a lopsided two-leg series in the first round of the 2023 MLS playoffs sums up St. Louis short-‘n’-sweet history in MLS.

Total Joy Points: -1

How They Earned Them (& How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
[Ed. – No need to click the above link: per the Joy Points Scale, a team only gets credit for “making the playoffs” if they progress to the quarterfinals of the MLS Cup Playoffs.]

Long-Term Tendencies
The only “tendency” St. Louis has established so far is being wildly successful on the attacking side in 2023, and then (almost) as wildly unsuccessful on the defensive side in 2024. Related, their defense wasn’t great in 2023, but it didn’t have to be.

Getting Reacquainted with Charlotte FC, "a Team That Plays in MLS"

I am No.1 player on [MLS Team].

Thumbnail History
I have a nasty habit of picturing Charlotte FC as a team wholly composed of Brandt Bronicos, but that’s a personal problem, not a history. Charlotte only joined MLS in 2022, but they’ve proved to be a reasonably successful, if conservative, start-up. One could make a case that they’ve improved season-on-season – e.g., no playoffs in 2022, then qualifying as a wild card in 2023, then qualifying for the playoffs clean in 2024 on the back of a lofty fifth-place finish in the East – but thar be pitfalls on the road to progress. For instance, Charlotte only scored one more goal in 2023 (45) than they did in 2022 (45), but they still allowed the same number of goals in both seasons. The sole reason Charlotte landed the wild card in 2023? MLS expanded the number of teams that qualified for the playoffs from a (half-)sensible 14 in 2022 to a comically expansive 18 in 2023 (as always, I assume they did this for Miami). Another fun fact: they scored 46 goals in 2024. If you can find a sports book that will spot you generous odds on Charlotte scoring 47 goals in 2025, one could make a dumber bet.

Most of the spicy stuff happens on the player side with this team – e.g., the failed experiment that was DP forward Enzo Copetti, the low-simmering drama around their relationship Polish forward/all-time leading scorer Karol Swiderski – but there is a lot of “Charlotte FC is a team that plays in MLS” level of buzz around the team – at least so far. They have done well with attendance – second-best in MLS in 2024, if Wikipedia’s to be trusted – but I’m guessing they’ll need get a sexier product on the field if they want to stay that high after the new-team novelty wears off.

Total Joy Points: -1

How They Earned Them (& How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
[Ed. – No need to click the above link: per the Joy Points Scale, a team only gets credit for “making the playoffs” if they progress to the quarterfinals of the MLS Cup Playoffs; still evening out on zero points beats eating the -1 for missing the playoffs entirely.]

Long-Term Tendencies
While they have been nearer (2023) and farther (2024) from doing so, Charlotte has never scored over the league average for goals scored.

Getting Reacquainted with Austin FC, McConaughey's Disappointment

Ye Olde Tyme NFTs.

Thumbnail History
Austin FC came into MLS pretty hot, publicity-wise – look, Matthew McConaughey! He’s got a drum! – the fans showed up with drums of their own (and trumpets) and did “Keep Austin Weird” proud enough. The stadium looks great and there’s something charming about the way they bathe it in green light every time the home team scores (wait for it). The stage looks great, but…

Austin FC threw everyone a head-fake in 2022, when they finished second in the West and made a deep run in the MLS Cup playoffs (semifinals!). Their inaugural-season ringer, Sebastian Driussi, looked like a brilliant buy by their second season, his supporting cast of Maxi Urruti, Ethan Finlay and (particularly) Diego Fagundez combined with him in beautiful, four-part harmony, and the defense was…average, and goalkeeper Brad Stuver did everything he could to keep it that way (“Stuuuuvvv!”); Alex Ring directed traffic in midfield, Julio Cascante played better than he ever did as a Portland Timber: everything was clicking and the future looked bright. My memory's hazy on this - Austin's not a team I follow closely - but 2022 might have been the same season that pundits never stopped talking about how much Austin was over-performing their metrics. Even if that convo wasn't in 2022, having one super-freak of a season in what has otherwise been a short, barren history makes for a fitting way to wrap one's head around this team. Austin didn't make the playoffs in 2021 and they haven't made them after 2022, not even as a wild card. If you bought Austin FC stock after 2022, that would make you the proud owner of a bunch of tulip bulbs no one else wants. Looks like they have some time left on their stretch as an expansion team...

Total Joy Points: -1

How They Earned Them (& How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
MLS Playoffs Semifinals: 2022

Getting Reacquainted with Nashville SC, the Plain Sister of MLS

C'mon. You have an opinion. All of you.

Thumbnail History
Nashville SC joined in the COVID season (2020), along with Inter Miami CF, but fate has made them the plain sister, or the unathletic brother to MLS's (for now) glamour boys. And they built their inaugural roster as if they'd had their fortunes told by an insurance agent. It started with anchoring the backline with Walker Zimmerman and the midfield with ferever-MLS vet, Dax McCarty; the front-office honchos filled out those two lines with still more familiar, imposing figures – e.g., Dave Romney and Daniel Lovitz in defense and Anibal Godoy in midfield. When it came to the offense, Nashville spent both big and wisely on one player – Hany Mukhtar, a future (and deserved) league MVP (2022) – but spent a couple seasons looking to squeeze more production than other teams got out of MLS journeymen like C. J. Sapong, Teal Bunbury, or even Alex Muyl and Fafa Picault. That’s not to say they haven’t tried to level up with bolder signings – e.g., I thought they’d landed a secondary scorer with winger Randall Leal, alas – but pinching pennies in the attack remains something of a tradition with Nashville. Against that, a good defense goes a long way toward getting reliable results and their formula had them making the playoffs every season since joining MLS, if sometimes only as a wild card, which, again, doesn’t count around here*…also, yes, wait for it. That made the consistent and, to be clear, there are worse things, but I don’t know that any meaningful collection of pundits and punters every genuinely believed they’d go anywhere in any post-season. Nashville didn’t even make the MLS Cup quarterfinals in Mukhtar’s 2022 super-season, though they did in 2021, aka, the one season where they scored well over the league average and I think there’s a lesson in that…

…and, no, things haven’t panned out on the implementation side, but I do think the Organization has tried to take it to heart. Hold that thought....

Total Joy Points: 3

How They Earned Them (& *How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
MLS Playoffs/Quarterfinals: 2020, 2021
Leagues Cup Runner-Up: 2023

Getting Reacquainted with Inter Miami CF, the Very Bestest, Special Boys of MLS

Fuck Lays on so, so many levels.

Thumbnail History
I came this close to lumping the Miami Fusion in with Inter Miami CF, and this was to the point of doing the math, but decided the gap separating the two teams was too vast. The Fusion joined in the same pre-contraction expansion season as the Chicago Fire, only, when contraction did come, the league opted to keep Chicago and cut Florida loose…of which, maybe it’s time for an early 2000s revival. I opted against, even if OG Miami was a good, fun team and even that’s before getting to the fact that MLS legends like Kyle Beckerman, Pablo Mastroeni and Nick Rimando started their careers in sunny Florida, which alone marks them as a worthy footnote for posterity…

…but today’s Miami lives in a totally different ZIP code than the old team and about 20 floors higher. It was born a glamour team and, as befits a team with ambition to match the buckets full of cash they had lying around, 2020 Miami went so rules-breaking big on its first roster-build that it forced the league to sanction it for playing a shell-game with their roster compliance. They played through the sanctions (which, factually, didn’t bite till the following season) and squeaked into the 2020 playoffs, if only due to the fact the playoff pool was out-of-control-house-party big that season (because COVID) and even then it took a wild card slot an MLS HQ acting as a village. In fact, Miami never made the playoffs as anything better than a wild card until 2024 – which, 1) doesn’t count in these parts* and 2) took riding Gonzalo Higuain’s last gasp to come off. I briefly became obsessed with Miami’s chances at the beginning of 2023 when they started strong on the back of sterling midfield performances from Gregore and Jean Mota, but Gregore went down for most (if not all) of the season by the third game and Mota succumbed to an injury of his own just a couple games later. Miami’s cruel summer to arrived ahead of schedule - they went winless and generally stepped on rakes from the middle of May to the middle July – and then came the ringers. Lionel Messi arrived first, of course, but then came Sergio Busquets, Jordi Alba, and…Robert Taylor. With all that star power and a new director (they bumped now-Portland Timbers head coach, Phil Neville, for Tata Martino), Miami won its first trophy, the 2023 Leagues Cup. They could not, however, climb out of the hole the pre-ringer team dug over those two months of dining on shit once a week…and we all know where things go from here, not least because the league never allows us to forget that Messi Is Here.

Total Joy Points: 10

How They Earned Them (& *How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
Supporters’ Shield: 2024
Leagues Cup: 2023
CCL Quarterfinals: 2024
U.S. Open Cup Runner-Up: 2023

Getting Reacquainted with FC Cincinnati, MLS's Maddest Makeover

Picture the "before" house on fire.

Thumbnail History
FC Cincinnati came into MLS like a paper-mache wrecking ball, starting with one of the worst roster builds in MLS history. They invested heavily in No. 8s for that inaugural 2019 roster - not a true No. 6 in sight, never mind a No. 10 - and rounded it out with a thin foundation of center backs, a couple attack-oriented fullbacks, plus a couple random wingers and two or three forwards with a history of needing service to be effective. The first of their three consecutive Wooden Spoons followed surely as night follows day. This year’s absolutely woeful San Jose Earthquakes team just unburdened them of the record for the most goals allowed in a single season, but Cincinnati may never let go of their claim to the all-time worst goal differential. They barely improved over the next two seasons (seriously, see the goals allowed by the 2021 team), and some of that surely followed from the wild game of musical chairs around the coaching seat - Alan Koch gave way to Yoann Damet, gave way to Ron Jans/some casual racism, then came Jaap Stam, there might have been another coach in there, who can say, really, then Yoann Damet again. Rebuilding from that first, fucking terrible roster was always going to take time, but doing it headless was madness. Small wonder the rehabilitation took a lot of time and, at last, some smart hiring. The Organization helped and hurt on the way to that – by throwing money at all the problems here, and (I think mostly one owner-dude) meddling on the wrong (i.e., soccer) side there – but the former translated as a willingness to burn money until the (many) problem(s) was(were) solved. The Organization kept faith through the failures – e.g., the Spoon-spank’d 2021 team had the still-capable Geoff Cameron and Haris Medunjanin, plus Luciano Acosta, Brandon Vazquez and Brenner, if in pre-threatening form – and, more crucially, seemed to genuinely learn from failure. The biggest shift came with two hirings: first, coaxing Chris Albright away from Philadelphia to act as general manager, then betting on Pat Noonan’s potential by anointing him head coach ahead of the 2022 season; second, they signed Nigerian midfielder, Obinna Nwobodo, at the beginning of the same year, a man who chews real estate and wins 75% of the battles he engages. Those two changes alone made some prior investments – e.g., Alvaro Barreal, Vazquez, and, even if it took a minute, Yuya Kubo – look a whole lot smarter. With all that in place, it took just a couple, if big, defensive signings (Matt Miazga and Yerson Mosquera) and the arrival of a budding goalkeeping star (Roman Celentano) to turn Cincinnati into a Supporters’ Shield-winning team by their 2023 season. Cincy made the semifinals of the MLS Cup playoffs that same season and might have gone farther had (Defender of the Year!) Matt Miazga not lost his whole goddamn mind at the end of a playoff win over the Red Bulls. At any rate, they lost some key players either before (Brenner, gone by April 2023) or during (Vazquez) the 2024 season, but Cincy has a remarkable talent for finding new players when they need them…it’s like they figured out how the rules work or something…

Total Joy Points: -1

Getting Reacquainted with Minnesota United FC, the Very Modern Model of a Median MLS Franchise

"It could be going better!"

Thumbnail History
I tend to think of Minnesota as a team that always makes the playoffs, but never looks much like reaching the end of them. That’s only half right, though, if for a couple reasons. First, Minnesota missed the post-season entirely their first two seasons and again in 2023. Second, even when the Loons do qualify – which, to be clear, they’ve done more often not, and directly more often than as a wild card team – they almost always fall out before the quarterfinals. That drops them into the folds of the biggest wrinkle in the Joy Points formula* - i.e., teams only get credit for qualifying as a wild card if they clear the next two hurdles in the post-season – and that choice obscures the reality that the Loons are a solid regular season team. Solidity feels like a good descriptor for what Minnesota has done on the field through their short history, as well. Adrian Heath coached them from their ascent from the USL (in 2017) to round about the latter third of 2023, when they let him go. In my mind, “Heath-ball” has generally meant fielding teams that were constipated in every sense of the word - think stubborn and unimaginative - it took the organization getting its defensive midfield in order. It started with bringing Osvaldo Alonso over from Seattle in 2019 and Minnesota has kept that close enough to effective with additions like Jan Gregus and Hasani Dotson(?). Still, putting a shield in front of “imposing” center backs – i.e., large, slow-ish, but combative and capable center backs like Michael Boxall, Brent Kallman, (briefly) Ike Opara, and Bakaye Dibassy – went a long way toward taking care of one side of the team. On the other, Minnesota has this tic, equal parts knack and limitation, of finding one guy with enough talent to make a competent defense pay off enough times. The most famous version of that was the “mercurial” Emanuel Reynoso (he's a chronic hooky-player), but they've also pulled out a couple wild cards or two, with the too-oft injured Kevin Molino serving as a tragic figure. When all else fails, Minnesota leans into one of the best all-purpose Band-aids in MLS history, one-man multi-tool, Finnish jack-of-all-but-defensive-trades, Robin Lod to steer the ship to shore. When that certain magic player cannot be found, is unavailable, or is, say, refusing to report for duty (see: Reynoso), Minnesota winds up relying on a rotating cast of characters like Darwin Quintero (for whom they had huge dreams, honestly), Ethan Finlay, Bongokuhle Hlongwane (just re-signed!), Tani Oluwaseyi, and half-random guys like, say, Franco Fragapane. All that work and movement has yielded the returns immediately below…

Total Joy Points: 1

How They Earned Them (& *How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
MLS Playoffs Semifinals: 2020
MLS Playoffs/Quarterfinals: 2024
U.S. Open Cup Runner-Up: 2019

Getting Reacquainted with Atlanta United FC, the Drunken Sailors of MLS

Pick his pockets! Pick his pockets!

Thumbnail History
As noted in yesterday’s post on Los Angeles FC, Atlanta United FC started the tradition of expansion teams coming into MLS swinging. They arrived in the 2017 season like fun drunks livening up a wedding, finishing fourth overall and with the second best goal differential (+30) behind an historically (and freakishly) good Toronto FC team. Atlanta finished even higher in 2018 – if, again, second-best after a Red Bull New York team winning its third Supporters’ Shield – but coming second almost certainly got lost in the dopamine when they won MLS Cup 2018 at…well, an unfortunate stroll over my Portland Timbers. The secret to pulling that off followed from near-perfect roster construction. It started with (more or less) flipping off that season’s Expansion Draft, finding two future stars in the 2017 Superdraft – Julian Gressel was the stand-out (Miles Robinson bloomed later) – and then going nuts with trades and transfers. Atlanta’s FO built a spine out of ol’ reliables from all over MLS – e.g., Michael Parkhurst, Jeff Larentowicz, and their apparently-fovever goalkeeper, Brad Guzan - but they had to scour the international markets for their crown jewels, Josef Martinez and Miguel Almiron. One gave them lightning-like verticality – Almiron, who seemed to bend time when he got on the run – while the other finally ended Roy Lassiter’s 23-season reign of terror atop the single-season record for goals scored. For two fun-filled seasons – 2018 and 2019 - defenses struggled to keep Martinez from scoring goals and all came perilously close to allowing him a goal per game. Atlanta’s Act I seemed destined to on forever, but, as every play does, the action moved on to Act II, aka, the one where the hero(es) look lost and everything looks impossible and the doom kicks in. The trouble started when Martinez tore his ACL in the first game of 2020 – he would miss the entire season – and then came COVID, chaos (aka, Gabriel Heinze) and, when it all ended, a 23rd-place overall finish in the final standings. That’s not to say Atlanta didn’t move heaven, earth and bags of money to avoid that fate: when Almiron moved on to the EPL’s Newcastle, they gambled heavily on Ezequiel Barco and Pity Martinez, two young, (reportedly) high-upside talents from Argentina. They paid a $15 million transfer for Barco and (I think) somewhere around $10 million for Martinez; Barco played more games (81), but Martinez got more in less time (39), but he was only around for 2019-20, while Barco lasted from 2018-2020, but both players are more memorable as cautionary tales than for anything they did on the field. Coaching problems plagued the team as well, starting with the apparent sociopath, Heinze, but, with respect to Gonzalo Pineda, they haven’t got it right since. Some entry-level farting around in the CONCACAF Champions’ League aside (see below*), things faded fast and, hard as they’ve tried, the color hasn’t flushed back into Atlanta’s cheeks since…or has it?

Kidding. It hasn’t. Not really.

Total Joy Points: 10

Getting Reacquainted with Los Angeles FC, It Rose from the Corpse of MLS 2.0

The Honey Pot, starring Henry Higgins (1967)

Thumbnail History
As a preliminary, I decided to burden Los Angeles FC with the Chivas USA’s record of failures and accomplishments. The judges (in my head) have allowed this on the grounds that, 1) Chivas USA was created with a potential advantage – e.g., access to the player pool/any rising talent of their parent club, Mexico’s Club Deportivo Guadalajara, S. A. de C. V. – and 2) only three years separate the good and wise demise of Chivas USA and the founding of LAFC. To anyone aggrieved by the choice, bringing in the predecessor’s softer numbers does less damage than you think (only shaved off four Joy Points*), while also imbuing the successor project with the air of a phoenix rising. Anyone paying attention to the chronology of this series may be crying foul on behalf of Atlanta United FC and Minnesota United FC, but I liked the idea of putting Major League Soccer’s two foreign-held subsidiary franchises in back-to-back posts (the New York City FC post went up yesterday).

To quickly touch on Chivas USA, it was conceived as a honey-pot to lure Mexican-American fans to MLS at a time when the league was hard-up for eyeballs. The initial concept boiled down to bringing in, admittedly surplus (i.e., aging), but still famous talent from Mexico’s Chivas, sweetening the pitch by throwing in some potential future stars for the parent club (aka, longshots), and rounding out the roster with whatever non-Mexican players Chivas USA could find between the 2005 Expansion and SuperDrafts. Legendary Mexican midfielder Ramon Ramirez and (I think) Francisco Palencia headlined the effort, but the first-year model went to shit in one short season. It took only one swat from the Wooden Spoon at the end of 2005 for Chivas USA to (largely) abandon all that and become a more or less regular MLS team, effective immediately. The front office gave the team an MLS face-lift for Year 2, calling in midfielder Jesse Marsch as an on-field Svengali, while also bringing in proven experienced pieces for the attack (Ante Razov) and the defense (Carlos Llamosa and Tim Regan). All it took from there was one good (Jonathan Bornstein) and one great pick (Sacha Kljestan) from the 2006 SuperDraft to carry Chivas USA to their first post-season in 2006 and lift them higher still in 2007, when they won the Western Conference. From there, things fell off one season at a time and, slowly, the organization fell apart. By the time all concerned pulled the plug after the 2014 season, I think most MLS fans forgot Chivas USA was around until they showed up on the schedule…

Getting Reacquainted with New York City FC, MLS's Proof of Foundation

Even the artist's rendering is embarrassing.

Thumbnail History
When New York City FC joined MLS in 2015, it revived the premise of planting a junior club for a major international team – (recent) EPL juggernaut Manchester City in this case – in the U.S. Think Chivas USA 2.0 (and see tomorrow's post). New York’s second team had the advantage of joining a different league, one where the rules actively invited the signing of ringers. As befitted a team playing in the country’s premier city (I'll brook no dissent on this), the organization went big, signing England/Chelsea midfielder Frank Lampard, classy Italian regista (think I’m using that correctly), Andrea Pirlo (fucking legend), and Spanish golden-generation great, striker David Villa. They also opted to insult that talent by making them play homes games in a baseball stadium, an embarrassing look that hasn’t graced the league since the earliest days of MLS, when teams regularly played over football lines every fall. (Ed. – I understand there’s a soccer-specific stadium in the works, at a place called Willets Point, and I can’t spit out “good job,” with “about fucking time” getting in its way.) NYCFC’s debut season reinforced a familiar lesson, chief among them, that seeding an MLS-regular expansion team with a few high-profile (and aging) ringers from Europe’s biggest teams ain’t enough. The team missed the playoffs in their first season (by quite a bit), and defensive failures would plague the team until they got more holistic about roster building. Defensive reinforcements arrived over their second and third seasons, led by Maxime Chanot and Alexander Callens in central defense and Sean Johnson in goal, and that laid the foundation for the rebuilt team. Success wouldn’t come until the team found lower-profile, but better and frankly hungrier, ringers at fullback, up the midfield spine and at the sharper end of the attack. A lot of the relevant players were on the roster as early as the 2019 – guys like crunching No. 8s, Alexander Ring and a young James Sands, fullback Anton “Tin-Tin” Tinnerholm and Ronald Matarrita, and a young forward named Valentin Castellanos, who went by “Tata” – but Maximiliano Moralez was the modest mouse that got the attack singing from the same page (and gods bless the genius who found the image for his Wikipedia page). NYCFC finished in the top ten overall in every season from 2016 to 2022, and in the top five more often than not. That solid set-up just needed a nudge at that point, and that arrived in the persons of a head coach (Norwegian Ronny Delia, now with Atlanta, btw) and in a star-turn season from Castellanos. The blue side of New York raised its first MLS Cup in 2021 (over the fallen bodies of the Portland Timbers) and, with Ring as a notable exception, one doesn’t see many changes between the 2019 roster and the one that started and won MLS Cup 2021. Apart from Castellanos leaving in the middle 2022 wasn’t so bad, but, as always happens some players aged out (not Moralez; dude just re-signed), and others moved on - Johnson and Callens stand out – and the hot, new, often young fixes like Santiago Rodriguez, Talles Magno and…Richie Ledezma struggled to maintain the same standard. Before they knew it, the 2023 season was over and NYCFC neither played nor figured in the MLS playoffs.

Total Joy Points: 12

Getting Reacquainted with Orlando City SC, MLS's Solid B Students

My man, bringing all the good not great.

Thumbnail History
Orlando City SC’s history follows the redemption variety of the expansion team narrative: eating shit for several seasons before finding their feet and running with the rest of the league. Ever the ambitious organization, they signed to avoid that fate on Day 1, if with a fatal flaw – e.g., bringing in (aging) Brazilian great Kaka on joining MLS in 2015 and, after he moved on, trying an updated version of the same thing luring (aging) Portuguese great Nani to Orlando in 2019. MLS broadcasters dutifully hyped both players, but Kaka never carried them to the playoffs and Nani would burn one season he could barely afford to (because, again, old) before Orlando finally built a roster equal to the work of pushing the team higher. It wasn’t for lack of trying, either: Orlando’s all-time roster (these things vary widely, but that's one of the good ones, btw) amounts to a casting call of the good, the great and the reliable from teams all over MLS, maybe even yours. Unfortunately, few of them lasted long and even fewer of them delivered the goods. Orlando’s turning point came in the Weird Year, aka, 2020, aka, the COVID season, when they not only made the “real” playoffs for the first time (quarterfinals, baby!), but also reached their first final in the MLS Is Back tournament (won by my Portland Timbers!). The near term could have been written off as Orlando enjoying homefield advantage throughout that tournament, but that argument never went far - it's not like they had fans cheering them on where other teams didn’t (no one did) – and they’ve (broadly) proved themselves a better organization season on season. Even if the Joy Points Scale doesn’t pick it up*, the Lions have qualified for the playoffs, if only as a wild-card team (and on a regrettably bloated invitation list), from 2020 forward. More significantly, Orlando has found 1) a reliable, if limited, consistency and 2) have clawed a little higher in each of the past two post-seasons. I speak to the 2024 season below, and finally start naming names, but they also pushed eventual champs (and damn good team) Columbus Crew SC to extra-time in the Eastern Conference semifinals in 2023. That’s something the, say, 2017 and 2018 teams could hardly imagine. The “Sign Famous Old Guy” model died a righteous and deserved death.

Total Joy Points: 2

How They Earned Them (& *How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
MLS Is Back Runner-Up: 2020
MLS Playoffs Semifinals: 2024
MLS Playoffs/Quarterfinals: 2020, 2023
U.S. Open Cup: 2021

Getting Reacquainted with Club du Foot Montreal, Canada's "Other" Flash in the Pan

Actual search result for "flash in the pan"

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One thing the entire "Getting Reacquainted with" project has surfaced is how few trophies Major League Soccer’s Canadian teams have contributed to the collective trophy case. While that makes sense when it comes to the Vancouver Whitecaps, who has battled gravity for as long as they’ve been a team, it takes looking past Toronto’s FC’s (one-off) all-conquering 2017 team and, to the case in point, the Montreal Impact team of the mid-2010s. As laid out in their list of mighty works below*, Club du Foot Montreal’s best era amounted to two fleeting seasons, but it was a freakin’ party for as long as it lasted.

The Montreal Impact, known as Club du Foot Montreal since 2021, graduated from the USL to MLS in 2012 and, judging by their Year One signings, they came in determined to make a splash. While their inaugural roster contained the usual smattering of MLS journeymen (e.g., Collen Warner, Davy Arnaud and….huh, Zarek Valentin), and hyped-up youngsters (e.g., Andrew Wenger), Montreal did some heavy shopping in Italy, signing CBs Alessandro Nesta and Matteo Ferrari and slick and saucy little forward, Marco Di Viao. All that investment not only failed to translate to Quebecois, it went two tits up in 2014, their only season to end with the shameful sting of the Wooden Spoon. After the failure of the Italian experiment, Montreal started sniffing around other leagues for talent and that search brought in two of their all-time great talents, the Belgian defender/midfielder Laurent Ciman and, one of my all-time personal MLS favorites, Argentine winger/forward, Ignacio Piatti. Piatti had the misfortune of showing up in time to go through the Wooden Spoon paddle-wheel, but the arrival of Ciman and smart additions like midfield mind-fucker Marco Donadel the experienced Nigel Reo-Coker made turned the team’s fortunes on a literal dime. A mere five and half months after the worst regular season of 2014, the Impact went the distance in the 2015 CONCACAF Champions’ League, contesting the two-leg final against Mexico’s famous Club America. In a pattern familiar to any MLS fan from that period, Montreal carried a promising result out of Mexico City (1-1!) only to collapse under the weight of a second half onslaught front of their home fans in the return leg. Those 135 minutes’ worth of dreaming certainly felt incredible and, with that breeze blowing at their backs, Montreal became the talk of MLS when they hit the high-profile player motherlode by signing Chelsea/Ivory Coast legend Didier Drogba in late 2015. With the core intact and Drogba throwing around his weight and talent up top, even if not for every game (dude was old by then), L’Impact put together their best-ever MLS season in 2016…and, just as quickly as they came, the good times ended. Montreal would bubble up into the fringes of real competition in the seasons that followed, but, more often than not, they fail to make a noise loud enough for anyone to hear, at least not one that isn’t a thud of failure. Here's to a season and a half at the top, huzzah, or rather, allons-y.

Total Joy Points: 2

Getting Reacquainted with the Philadelphia Union, the MLS Team on the Precipice of...?

So close and yet, etc.

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The Philadelphia Union have reached three U.S. Open and lost them all. That feels like good framing.

In the grand timeline of MLS expansion, the Philadelphia Union arrived fairly early – a couple seasons after Toronto FC, one after the Seattle Sounders, and one before my Portland Timbers, aka, 2010. You can pull a couple threads out of that, but Philly did better than many MLS team using that time to sort out a reliable approach to team building. Not perfectly, by any means, but still pretty fucking well. Keeping that path linear requires a little willful amnesia, not to mention looking past at least one recent warning signs (see below). As expansion teams are wont to do, they hit the biggest rocks at the beginning, i.e., they missed the playoffs in six of their first eight seasons. Their first roster looked a lot like what it was: a Frankenstein’s monster built of scraps they reclaimed from the Expansion Draft, plus a couple hyped SuperDraftees (Jack McInerney and that season’s number one pick, Danny Mwanga) and the odd exotic signing stapled onto it (which one is it? Don't recall). As the limits of that approach became apparent, Philly put more effort into signing game-changing players – e.g., Conor Casey, Maurice Edu, and, arguably the biggest swing of those first attempts, Cristian Maidana – but those players came and went before Philly’s dry spell in the playoffs ended. While it wasn’t the Union’s first trip to the post-season (viva 2011!), 2019 constituted a turning point in their history (for now; everything’s contingent, people) Until…rather recently, the Union made the playoffs every season since; better, they won the Supporters’ Shield…if in the weird season (i.e., 2020), and strolled to a clash against Los Angeles FC in MLS Cup 2022, where they came out on the wrong side of the consensus best-ever finals in league history. The best argument for things staying sunny in Philadelphia follows from the quality of the cream they can skim from their academy system – think Derrick Jones, Auston Trusty, Brendan Aaronson, Jack McGlynn and Nathan Harriel. Players like that don’t grow on trees and that’s a luxury the Union has that (many?) other MLS teams don’t. With that foundation beneath them, Philly only needed to improve at signing impact foreign players – particularly when they had a good, steady coach staff (who think Jim Curtin will be unemployed for long?). Things didn’t really turn around for the Union until they signed players like Alejandro Bedoya (2016-present), Jack Elliott (2017-2024; [UPDATE: Just got word Elliott was a SuperDraftee; good get for Philly.]), Jamiro Monteiro (2019-2021), personal favorite, Jose Martinez (No. 6s and 8s are my people), and, more recently, a (once?) league-elite defender like Jakob Glesnes, and smart attacking pieces like Daniel Gazdag and Julian Carranza. Those two factors have helped keep the Union at, or at least close to, the top teams in MLS…until somewhat recently. This one’s tricky…

Total Joy Points: 13

Getting Reacquainted with the Vancouver Whitecaps, Cascadia's Afterthought

"I forgot I had to bring something."

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To begin, the Vancouver Whitecaps have never had a great season. That’s a big thing to hold in the back of your mind anytime you see a pundit push them toward the hype train before or during any given season. Over 14 MLS seasons, the ‘Caps have not once advanced past the quarterfinals in the playoffs. On the one hand, yes, they reached the CONCACAF Champions’ League semifinals in 2017 – which took beating peak, if off-season Red Bull New York (e.g., the Red Bulls won the Shield again in 2018) – on the other hand…c’mon, who gave ‘em a snowball’s chance of beating Tigres UANL or Pachuca CF to win the whole thing? A gentler scale than mine might have rewarded them for four wild card appearances (2012, 2014, 2021, and 2024), but I call them “Joy Points” for a reason - i.e., stalling at the quarterfinals the two times you make them spells “s-u-c-c-e” at most, as opposed to “success.” It’s been a slog for them, basically, and yet Vancouver has had their players. Alphonso Davies, who unwittingly auditioned for Bayern Munich by playing for Vancouver, tops the list, of course (and, lord, was he a blast to watch), but that list gets pretty damn short from there. Despite all of the promising candidates that have auditioned for the No. 10 jersey (or its equivalent role) - Camilo Sanvezzo comes to mind, Ryan Gauld can’t be avoided, of course (also don’t think he actually wears No. 10) and, um…Davide Chiumiento? - the ‘Caps have struggled more than most MLS teams with landing “impact players,” particularly on the attacking side of the pitch. Lest they be accused of not trying, Vancouver has also gone with signing battering ram forwards to increase goal production - think Eric Hassli and Lucas Cavallini – but Hassli neither did much nor lasted very long, and Cavallini’s chief talent was pissing off opposition CBs. At any rate, none of it came all the way off (see below) and the length of that short list only underscores the 'Caps' ongoing failure to get enough things right. I could walk through the same issue in the defense, name some names, and so on…but, well, what’s the point? Long story (very) short, the Whitecaps have never managed to squeeze enough of good players onto the same roster, or to hire a coach who could squeeze that little something extra out of the players that they did have available. The end, if until they finally get that new beginning.

Total Joy Points: 0 (lifted to zero by Canadian Championships, fwiw)

Getting Reacquainted with the Seattle Sounders, the Kristoffersons of MLS

It's the way they make it look easy, honestly.

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The Seattle Sounders have missed the playoffs just twice since joining MLS in 2009  – and, here, “missing the playoffs” includes falling out at any point before the last eight teams wild card slot to qualify. Their haul of trophies makes them the second-best team of the past decade on the Joy Points Scale* – only Los Angeles FC tops them over that period (though not all time…wait for it…) – and, sure, that hits closer to him as a Timbers fan, but it doesn’t make it any less true. The question is how they pulled that off. It started with smart first-season signings – think everyone from Jhon Kennedy Hurtado from Colombia, Sebastian Le Toux from the USL, and most important for me, midfield wrecker Osvaldo Alonso, from one of the many in-tournament defections from a visiting Cuban team. After throwing in a smart reclamation or two from the Expansion Draft – all-time utility-player great Brad Evans stood out – adding their first DP (Swedish midfielder Freddie Ljungberg) and putting it all under a road-tested, road-approved MLS head coach like Sigi Schmid, the Sounders had themselves a team. They made the playoffs both from the jump, then season after season. They percolated into the semifinals by their third (2012) – still not an easy thing, even in the multi-DP era – and returned again in 2014. Those first two little “blurps” into the big time followed from signing league-leading attacking pieces – e.g., DP winger/midfielder Mauro Rosales and then-USMNT-regular Eddie Johnson in 2012, then USMNT fixture Clint Dempsey and the bustling Nigerian, Obafemi Martins in 2014 – and letting them cook without a care in the world in front of one of the Sounders’ many (insanely) reliable defenses. And then came the trophies: the Supporters’ Shield in 2014, then an MLS Cup in 2016 and another, better one in 2019 (MLS Cup 2016 almost put me off soccer). The Sounders had already won three U.S. Open Cups before 2016 and they’d compete in two more MLS Cups before 2020. Whether one starts that run in 2014 or 2016, it made Seattle the fourth Shadynasty in MLS history – i.e., late 1990s DC United first, then the San Jose/Houston teams of the early-to-mid 2000s, followed by the LA Galaxy from the first half of 2010s, then Seattle – and, again, they never really came down. Mapping out the succession of talent does a good job of explaining how all this worked: for instance, only one season separates the departure of DP midfielder Mauro Morales and the arrival of (improved) DP midfielder Nicloas Lodeiro (in 2016); they only burned one season of riding Dempsey’s aging knees and a mish-mash of attacking half-solutions before calling in Raul Ruidiaz (2018) to boost the next generation of attacking players (e.g., Jordan Morris) and the next round of journeyman (e.g., Will Bruin); Kim Kee-Hee took over the defense after MLS legend/monster Chad Marshall retired (2018?) and Roman Torres couldn’t step onto the field often enough, and Yeimar cane in after him. It even applies at the coaching level - Brian Schmetzer replaced Schmid after 2016 and he’s been there every since, with very little cause to leave – and that’s what separates the Sounders from the most MLS teams: they simply have yet to fall behind, on or off the field. That’s how a team wins eight trophies in 16 seasons in MLS, including the league’s first‑ever CONCACAF Champions’ League trophy in 2022. I’ve been waiting for the collapse, believe me, but I haven’t seen it either.

Total Joy Points: 50

Getting Reacquainted with Toronto FC, the Once-Lucky Wastrels of MLS

Just reeks of the vibe, right? Especially then?

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With Toronto FC, we arrive at the first expansion team to join Major League Soccer with the Designated Player Rule in full, if budding effect – i.e., the league allowed just one per team. Toronto wouldn’t sign their first DP until 2009 and, bluntly, it took them another five seasons to get it right. As follows (in the short-term), their inaugural season roster has strong Expansion Draft vibes, plus some half-desperate swings at star players – e.g., Danny Dichio, Carl Robinson, and…I don’t know, Adam Braz? Marco Reda? Their first forays in the DP market fell (very) flat – e.g., Julian de Guzman (hard, "eh"), plus a list of one-to-two season signings that impresses in all the wrong ways – but splashing cash paved their way to Toronto’s fleeting glory seasons. All the seasons prior to that point? Trash, sometimes absolute trash (e.g., Wooden Spoon’s in 2007 and 2012): they didn’t make the playoffs in any form until 2015. When the success did come, it’s hard to say where it started – e.g., was it signing Michael Bradley (2014), Sebastian Giovinco (2015) and Jozy Altidore (2015), or did that team need Greg Vanney (who looks better after 2024) to pull them together? – but I do know that those moves built Tim Bezbatchenko’s reputation into something that still sells today (not unreasonably). As the timeline below* indicates, the investment didn’t pay off immediately, but Toronto rose meteorically once they took off. In a better universe, Toronto would have won their first MLS Cup in 2016 against the Seattle Sounders (Stefan Frei had a goddamn day in that one), but they made up for it with a clean sheet/clean win over the same team in MLS Cup 2017. This brings up one key difference between the 2016 and 2017 rosters – specifically, the arrival of the Spanish midfielder Victor Vazquez. Unlike the rest of the big names, he wasn’t a DP; Vazquez was just a smart signing that gave Toronto the fourth dimension a good team needs to become great. Blessed with one of the great, single-season teams in MLS history, and a legit talent in Giovinco, Toronto made the U.S. top flight’s third close run at winning CONCACAF Champions’ League in 2018 and, to their credit, they came as close as any of them. The overall focus(/obsession) over DPs aside, the thing that stands out most about that 2017 roster is the large number of role-playing ploggers that populate it – e.g., Eriq Zavaleta, Mark Delgado, even Jonathan Osorio and the now-forgotten Armando Cooper. For a time, one could hold up Toronto FC as proof of concept for the DP Rule, i.e., the idea that three great players in the right positions can win a title. That wasn’t their last hurrah – they fought Seattle (such a fucking thing for those several seasons) in MLS Cup 2019 with another DP, Alejandro Pozeulo, leading the way – but the manner of that loss already hinted at a waning force. The trophy case in Canada’s largest city has collected dust since and that brings up something else about Toronto – i.e., the gambler’s ambition that defines the team that remains Canada’s best in the MLS era. I haven’t seen players get blessed as the Second Coming (of what, though?) the way Lorenzo Insigne and Federico Bernardeschi did when they signed for Toronto in 2022. Both players wouldn’t arrive until the middle of the season, but the mere thought that they'd finish the season with Toronto kept the team alive for a lot of pundits against the evidence of very bad results. Toronto finished 13th in the Eastern Conference that season, 27th overall. When the Wooden Spoon slapped them the following season (2023), I’ll be damned if that wasn’t the gods punishing hubris.

Getting Reacquainted with Real Salt Lake, the Inspiring Underdogs of MLS 2.0

I can see you don't care....

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I’m here to tell the kids that joining MLS as an expansion team today is nothing like what it was in the mid-2000s. Back then, the incoming front office couldn’t sign even one designated player – the Designated/aka “Beckham Rule” wasn’t codified until 2007 – which left any incoming team picking through the same crappy, then exhausted buffet, as every other team in the league. That’s the MLS Chivas USA and Real Salt Lake stepped into in 2005 and, golly, does “stepped into” get right to it. To their (very temporary) credit, Chivas USA turned over a competitive roster within one season – notably, by signing some soon-to-be famous young Americans - but it took RSL four seasons to climb that mini-Everest. They built their first, best teams around rightful MLS legends like Kyle Beckerman, (now Miami assistant coach) Javier Morales, and long-time anchor/dream-killer, Nick Rimando, but they also did some next-level work in terms of finding great complimentary players like Fabian Espindola and, to turn the backline into a wall, Jamison Olave and Nat Borchers. When it all finally came together with a couple players who understood their roles and played them well – e.g., Ned Grabavoy and Will Johnson as shuttlers in a midfield-four diamond – they became one of MLS 2.0’s most consistent – and dangerous – teams. RSL didn’t just make the 2008 playoffs, they pushed to the semifinals. Just one season later, they raised MLS Cup 2009 by holding them off in regulation and through extra-time, until they dealt a pre-peak Los Angeles Galaxy team one of the most famous Rimando-ings in MLS history. All that success turned head coach Jason Kreis into not just a hot commodity, but the subject (or is it an object?) of a campaign that tried to whisper him to the U.S. Men’s National Team hot-seat for a season or two. That team turned Rio Tinto Stadium into a fortress with a 29-home-game unbeaten streak that started in June 6, 2009 (their road form, on the other hand…), but even that triumphal time included one of the most sharply painful moments in MLS history. RSL reached the final of the 2010-2011 CONCACAF Champions’ League tournament and, after drawing Liga MX’s Monterrey 2-2 in Mexico, all they needed to become the first MLS team to hoist the revamped regional club championship trophy was a keep Monterrey off the board in the fortress they’d built. All that promise came undone when some guy named Humberto Andres Suavo Pontivo scored at the 45th minute for Monterrey and, even with their (then-)best all-time roster and flashy forward Alvaro Saborio on board, RSL couldn’t pull back that one goal. RSL survived the blow and, with the balance of the core still intact, they reached the semifinals again in 2011 and MLS Cup again in 2013. They ultimately lost that game, but the success head coach Jason Kreis enjoyed between 2008-2013 made him not just a hot commodity, but the subject (or is it an object?) of a campaign that tried to whisper him to the U.S. Men’s National Team hot seat. Smal wonder he checked out after that season to take the reins at New York City FC (before they even had horses, it bears noting), but player by player and season by season, the members of that team either aged out or moved on. As you’ll see below, RSL never fully slipped all the way under the waves – they’ve made the last eight in the playoffs four times since 2013, including a trip to the playoffs in 2021 - but they have struggled with getting enough quality on the same roster in the same season to take them that vital one step further. They have improved at finding the odd great/promising young player (e.g., Diego Luna), including on the DP market player (e.g., Cristian Arango), and they have a respectable youth system (see Justen Glad, Adrian Brody(?)), but they remain a small-ish market team in a league where that gets harder every season.

Getting Reacquainted with Houston Dynamo FC, MLS's Stubborn Workhorses

It got 'em there. Four times, in fact.

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Houston Dynamo FC, then just the Houston Dynamo, weren’t MLS’s first second-wave expansion team (i.e., the ones that came after the 2001 contraction); calling them one doesn’t quite tally either because and they never had to go through the proper expansion team exercise of building from nothing. Moreover, they got stupid fucking lucky in that the team they received had just hoisted the Supporters’ Shield the season prior in San Jose.

As noted in the previous chapter in this series, the San Jose Earthquakes franchise had caught fire in the years before their ownership group yanked out their roots and moved them to sweaty Texas. A couple players didn’t make the trip – e.g., defenders Danny Califf and long-time forward Ronald Cerritos – but they came with a handful of the most famous names in Houston Dynamo history – e.g., Dwayne DeRosario, Brian Ching, Eddie Robinson, Pat Onstad, (my man) Brad Davis, etc. etc. Between that ready-made roster and employing Dominic Kinnear, one of the best head coaches of the 2000s, they had the horses to kick off franchise history with back-to-back MLS Cups in 2006 and 2007. Some minor stumbles aside, the Dynamo wouldn’t slip far out of contending over their first seven or eight seasons in the league. That’s a bit of trip, honestly, when you review the rosters that battled to losses in the 2011 and 2012 MLS Cups (just…how did that team get there in an 18-/19-team MLS?), but it also shows how far a good foundation (and a succession of stingy defenses) can carry a team. My personal highlights from the Dynamo’s glory years included the fingernail-rending battles they played in against Mexico’s CF Pachuca in the CONCACAF Champions’ Cup/League over the 2008 and 2009 seasons; those games marked the first occasion I genuinely believed MLS teams would eventually compete with Liga MX’s best, a hard goddamn sell in those days. Still, their best days dried up and, aside from the odd hurrah here (U.S. Open Cup winners in 2018!), and the strong run outta nowhere there (2017 playoff semifinalists), Houston idled through the late 2010s and early 2020s while the rest of MLS sprinted ahead. A jarring fall, given their history, and flashes of recovery notwithstanding, the question of whether they can get back up again remains open. For all the good decisions they made going into 2023 – due to the way he fits the Dynamo’s classic controlled(/stingy) playing model, pulling Ben Olsen out of early retirement made all kinds of sense and Mexican legend, Hector Herrera, gave them someone to build around, if only for (literally) two seasons – Houston still hasn’t found the attacking ace they need to make all that thuddingly responsible build-up play payoff. Closer than they have been, in other words, but still a player or two short of dangerous. Paging MLS [#.0]’s version of Ching or DeRo…

Total Joy Points: 18