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.

The wonderful wizard of NC?

How 2024 Measured Up
As noted above, the defense improved – quite a bit too (15 goals fewer) - and one has to wonder how much of that follows from the hearing of England's Dean Smith as a head coach at the beginning of 2024. Despite playing in the wide-open and wilder Eastern Conference, Charlotte allowed the fewest goals in the East and the second-fewest goals across MLS (Seattle allowed the fewest, fwiw); moreover, only Columbus really pushed them in the East. The late arrival of Tim Ream probably helped, but Charlotte got a lot of stability and security from the combination of Adilson Malanda and Andrew Privett in central defense, Kristijan Kahlina in net behind them in the nets, and Ashley Westwood and Djibril Diani skirmishing and distributing in front of them. While their struggles with impact signings has continued – e.g., Swiderski missed most of 2024 (and his since transferred out completely), they cashed out Belgian midfielder Brecht Dejaegere after (roughly) a season and a half, and, while he had a decent season, Israeli winger Liel Abada has yet to fill that role – 2024 saw the emergence of young American forward Patrick Agyemang, aka, Charlotte’s first single-season scoring leader not named “Swiderski.” They’ll need to get something going up top sooner or later and that “something” needs to be better more consistently than, say, Kerwin Vargas.

Questions for Their 2025 Season
Based on the few moves they’ve made, I’m not expecting too much falloff on the defensive side. They’ll need to replace the 2,100+ minutes they got out of Jere Uronen at fullback, but they never leaned too hard on Junior Urso as a No. 8 and those are the only two moves that should meaningfully impact the defense. They did put some work into beefing up the attack, bringing over the surplus-to-requirements midfielder Eryk Williamson from the Portland Timbers (who struggled, first, with injury, then finding minutes) and picking up veteran forward from the Ivory Coast and (mainly) England’s Crystal Palace, Wilfried Zaha to a...DP/loan contract(?). The latter has plenty of experience and…respectable direct production (i.e., goals), but the key thing to remember is that, so long as Charlotte’s defense holds at or near its same level – and they are returning everybody - scoring even a handful more goals would go some distance to making them competitive. So, maybe the above plus another few months (with an option) from Spanish midfielder Pep Biel makes them a bigger problem for the rest of the East?