Nashville SC Scouting Report: Folks, I Have a Feeling. A Feeling.

L to R: Muyl, Mukhtar, Surridge?

Think I found a vehicle for smuggling Western-Conference-wide chatter into a post – e.g., inside the upholstery on the seats, also, at the end of this post. First up, the Nashville SC Scouting Report.

Don’t worry. I’ll keep it brief. A good spy knows to talk about only what he observed directly. Oh, in the list of prior results below, W = Win, L = Loss, D = draw. I’m guessing you know that, but some guy last year made a joke about it and I never recovered.

Nashville SC
0-1-1, 1 pt., 0 gf, 2 ga (-2); home 0-0-1, away 0-1-0
Last Results: DL
Strength/Location of Schedule
v NE (0-0 D); @ RBNY (0-2 L)

About what you’d expect, though the home draw versus the New England Revolution had to sting a bit. I watched more of that one than I watched of last weekend’s road loss at Red Bull New York (~35 minutes) – and I watched more of that one than I should have (~30).

Big picture, Nashville’s a mediocre team with new head coach, B. J. Callaghan. Their broad profile remains the same: play hard to beat, let Hany Mukhtar cook. That worked better a couple seasons ago, when Hany had younger, plumper legs and a stronger supporting cast. In 2024, it led to a fucking terrible start to the season (click here, scroll way down), the second-fewest goals scored in all of MLS (click here, scroll down, then up) and missing the playoffs – and the early signs for 2025 don’t point to immediate improvement. You don’t see a lot of attacking talent (flair is dead) when you look at Nashville’s starting XI last week and the week before. After Mukhtar, Andy Najar gives you something up the right, but also from the back. and it’s been a while for Daniel Lovitz (good defender, tho); Alex Muyl provides strong running and competent combination, but that wraps up introductions for the crew tasked with feeding English (right?) forward, Sam Surridge. They haven’t got much to him lately – a (likely bogus) offside call pulled back his only “goal” of 2025 (against the Revs; pretty good) – which forces Surridge to move all over the receive the ball. While posted respectable numbers last season, he’s not a great field player and that just puts things back on Mukhtar and his Mediocre Men to find Surridge in good spots, but he’s not there – see moving all over – and the whole thing looks pretty circular and, no doubt, frustrating for all concerned.

MLS Conference Semifinals: An Assessment at the Break

Inadequate.

As much as I like the playoffs better (and with how much more I’d like with the Portland Timbers still in it now officially noted), they don’t provide much space for analysis. A bunch of things happen over each 90-minute stretch (plus stoppage time), generally/interchangeably the same kinds of things that happen over 90-minute stretches (plus stoppage time) throughout the regular season, but there’s not a hell of a lot to say about coughing up three goals in 20 minutes than, “well, guess they’ll have to score four goals next Sunday.”

That’s FC Dallas’ situation, of course, after having a team-wide episode of “The Vapors” against the Seattle Sounders to start the second half. Sure, you can explore what went wrong on each of the goals (rough night for Maynor Figueroa, but the central defense wasn’t central on Seattle’s first two), but even if Dallas can fix those glitches on the return leg, it’s likely to have the same effect as pouring a glass of water on the ashes of your house after it burned down. I’m not a Dallas fan, so I’m left imagining how slowly time passed for them as Nicolas Lodeiro’s long run outside their defense reached its inevitable, agonizing climax. Personally, I had enough time for a sip of beer on either side of thinking “he’s not gonna miss that.”

That’s a huge win for Seattle, obviously, and a huge hole for Dallas. The only question left is, can Dallas make up the scorched ground? Not based on what they gave last night. Seattle held the edge all night, for one, but the blunter reality came with how much trouble Dallas had going forward. To borrow a term from MLSSoccer.com’s Matt Doyle, Dallas is missing their unicorn, Mauro Diaz. Things didn’t look great when Mauro Diaz went down or anything, but his absence didn’t kill them all on its own. Now, however, when they need to find a way forward and a minimum of three times, too? No better time for magical beasts.