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| C'mon. You have an opinion. All of you. |
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
Long-Term Tendencies
Nashville fans have seen a lot of good defenses and, I'm guessing, far too much of Mukhtar trying to carry the attack all on his lonesome. Even in their best attacking season, 2021, they weren’t even 10 goals over the league average for goals scored. While they haven’t played enough seasons to establish a clarifying pattern, Nashville has scored comfortably under the league average in three of their five seasons in MLS. A good defense is great, but a team has to have a little something on the other end to win tournaments.
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| Rot's tricky, even for hot carpenters. |
Can I get a worst season in Nashville’s history? (Yes, you can!) Mukhtar reverted to (quite) average, Sam Surridge, aka, Nashville’s biggest swing at signing an attacking star/Hany’s Helper, failed to deliver (and he played plenty of minutes), their “big” off-season acquisition, Tyler Boyd, missing half the season, and the rest of the supporting cast (e.g., Muyl, Bunbury(?), Jacob Shaffelburg) wandering all over the stage, the attack fell flat. When Nashville’s defense couldn’t rise above average, the kiss of death landed on both cheeks and they missed the playoffs outright for the first time in their history. Based on what I’m seeing for minutes played, either a fair number of players missed a lot of time or a panicking coach moved around the pieces a few times too many. Gary Smith might have been that coach, but the sum of all the above, on top of a general feel of stagnation (probably?), moved the Organization to sack Gary Smith, the one coach Nashville had ever known during their time in MLS. It's hard to say that helped - rot's a bitch - and a Decision Day road win over the equally-dead Chicago Fire FC might count as the highwater mark for a season that only got worse from there. Before closing this section, very little of the above comes from direct observation: I just don't watch Nashville all that often. No offense intended to Nashville or their fans, but great defensive teams with crap offenses aren’t exactly catnip for neutrals.
Questions for Their 2025 Season
Who the hell is B. J. Callaghan feels like a good place to start. His resume isn’t awful, but apart from a few years at Villanova and an interim gig with the U.S. Men’s National Team after Gregggg Berhalter’s (first?) contract expired, Callaghan doesn’t have any head coaching experience. That’s to say, his biggest recommendations for a head coaching job come less from his record in the role than the opinion of the (respected) coaches he has assisted down the years. Best of luck to him, of course, especially because, so far, what I’m seeing looks a lot like Nashville reverting to their safe space. They cut quite a bit of baggage, most of them MLS (again with the) journeymen – e.g., Godoy, Kallman, Dru Yearwood, Sean Davis, long-time project Tah Anunga, and…shit, how was Leal still on the books? – but their replacements don’t point to the attacking make-over that Nashville very desperately needs. Gaston Brugman (acquired from the Galaxy) comes closest on delivering, but he’s a good attacking No. 8, at best, but I don’t see anything in the bios for their other two midfield additions – Edvard Tagseth and Bryan Acosta (who's familiar!) that presents them as a game-breaker. Game destroyers, maybe, game-breakers, no. Given that, I’m forced to assume that Nashville has something in the works because, if they don’t, the question becomes, how do they avoid missing the playoffs for the second straight season?
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