Level Set 23, Charlotte FC: It Was Just Another Tuesday, And Then...

Does the job. A job.

What follows is a brief history of Charlotte FC, plus more brief notes on whatever long-term tendencies they have. Their 2025 season gets weighed on both sides of that and the whole thing ends with where I see things with them in this very specific moment in time - i.e., before First Kick 2026. You should count on things happening between here and there.

The post ends with a scale I came up with to measure the long-term success of every team in Major League Soccer. It does some things well (e.g., count trophies/achievements), other things less well (capture recent trends). It's called the Joint Points Scale and you can find a link that explains what it does. I was really stoned when I came up with the scale and wrote the post. Caveat lector. With that...

Thumbnail History
I have a nasty habit of picturing Charlotte FC as a team wholly composed of Brandt Bronicos, but that’s a personal hangup, not history. Charlotte only joined MLS in 2022, but they’ve been 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 (then in 2025…wait for it) – but they also have yet to hit that prized gallop on the road to progress. instance, Charlotte struggled with scoring from the jump – e.g., partial to/stuck in the mid-40s (e.g., 45 goals in 2022, 44 in 2023, 46 in 2024) – and, if memory serves, they’ve never been good on the road. 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 (which tracked as an insurance policy in the event Miami struggled). Most of the spicy stuff happens on the player side with this team – e.g., the failed star experiment that was DP forward Enzo Copetti, the low-simmering drama around Polish forward/(still) all-time leading scorer Karol Swiderski – but a kind of “Charlotte FC is a team that plays in MLS” level of buzz around the team remains. So far, think capable to a fault.

2025, Briefly
Charlotte fans finally got a rollercoaster ride in 2025, but thrills don’t automatically come back up or go back out as enjoyment. I can’t remember whether this followed from getting a handle on his temper or allowing it to fly off, but getting’-up-there DP, Wilfried Zaha, finally his stride (ten goals, 10 assists); they got a strong (somewhat interrupted) season out of Pep Biel (ten goals, 12 assists), Idan Toklomati posted healthy stats (11 goals, four assists) after coming on as Patrick Agyemang’s replacement, and they got respectable production out of wingers(?) Kerwin Vargas and Liel Abada (six goals, three assists and five goals, two assists, respectively): all that combined to lift Charlotte above the league average for goals scored for the first time in team history (55 scored, four goals over). Among that group, only Zaha and Biel played over 2,000 minutes, Biel just barely. The numbers go down from there (not crazy sharply, but still), which leaves one wondering how much absences contributed to Charlotte spoiling their good start with a sour 2-9-1 run in regular league play from the end of April into the first week of July. They clawed their way back to contention with a nine-game winning streak in league play from the rest of July through the first week of September and that let them hit the post-season with…a decent head of steam. Even with a baffling 1-4 home loss to Montreal at the end of September, Charlotte survived its early summer collapse, finished fourth in the East and earned hosting privileges for their first-round series versus NYCFC. (Charlotte’s still not great on the road and actually got worse in 2025, at 6-10-1 versus 2024’s 5-8-4). It didn’t help them in the end. NYC stole the opener at Charlotte and kept the first two games close, and then forced Charlotte to open up and chase Game 3 by scoring go-ahead goals on both sides of the halftime whistle. That had to be an abrupt, disappointing ending after what looked like a promising ending, but roller coasters do that now and then.

Life is weird, man.

Long-Term Tendencies v Recent Trends
In what I’d call real progress, Charlotte finished on the right side of average for both goals scored and allowed for the first time in 2025. They owe nearly all that improvement to the attack, but, thanks to good leadership from Ashley Westwood, Tim Ream, Adilson Malanda and even Kristjian Kahlina, the defense held up its end too. They finally attained balance, in other words, but they didn’t get any closer to a trophy.

Players I Still Like/Additions So Far
Losing Malanda (right?) feels like a big hit – and I’m a hard sell on the oft-hobbling Henry Kessler as a replacement (don’t know who David Schnegg is) – but the rest of the losses on the ledger (click here, scroll down a bit) don’t look so unwise, never mind bad (e.g., Bill Tuiloma, Eryk Williamson, even Nikola Petkovic). The addition side looks brighter as well, I like Luca de la Torre, who they formally separated from Celta Vigo in the offseason and making things official with Biel looks like good business as well. They still have Kahlina, Westwood, the ageless Ream (sounds dirty with "Tim" up front) available, plus that lovable Bronico scamp (for all the banter, dude's reliable), so having Zaha plus Toklomati and the two wingers should keep them at our close to last year’s level. Does de la Torre add enough? Let’s just say I want it to more than I believe it will. Still, Charlotte should stay in the mix for 2026, even if at its lower edges, even if they don't add more players. Which I think they should...unless they're not able to, which could totally be the case. I'm a generalist...

Historical Success (/Hysterical Failure)
Total Joy Points: -1

How They Earned Them
They haven’t. Per the Joy Points Scale, a team only gets credit for “making the playoffs” if they progress to the full quarterfinals in the playoffs.