Level Set 19, Nashville SC: The Responsible Younger Sibling

It's Shaun Cassidy, right?

What follows is a brief history of Nashville SC, 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
Nashville SC joined in the COVID season (2020), along with Inter Miami CF, but fate has made them the plain sister/unathletic brother to MLS's 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 forever-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 on the attacking side may have been Nashville’s first tradition. Have they moved on since? One could make a case for Sam Surridge as a first step – they (reportedly) paid $6.5 million – but he also came over after a shaky season in the English Championship. (And who can see what the future holds?) If Nashville has demonstrated anything, it’s how far a good defense goes toward getting reliable results and/or into the playoffs. Apart from a slip in 2024, Nashville has qualified for 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. Consistency ain’t so bad, of course, and a good defense is great, but a team has to have a little something on the other end to win tournaments – and one player can’t shoulder the entire attack. Call it illustration, call it a quirky bit of trivia, Nashville didn’t even make the MLS Cup quarterfinals in Mukhtar’s 2022 super-season.

MLS Western Conference Round-Up: Checking the Blowouts & the Wrong End of the Standings

I go with the wind, I am the wind. That is me. True story.

If all goes according to plan – and if you’re holding your breath, by the gods, I urge you to stop – I will top next week’s version of this post with Portland Timbers’ match reportage. For anyone who’s curious what that will look like, it should be something like the Eastern Conference round-up posted to this same channel last night. But also shorter. I posted earlier on the Timbers letting two points slip away versus LAFC last Saturday, but fuck it, it’s early and Portland’s in fourth place and when’s the last time that happened. For the record, this used to be the kind of thing I would look up, but The Mothership has stripped a lot of the links and connectivity out of their archived material, which makes that kind of thing a lot harder…what a bunch of assholes.

A final programming note: most weeks, I will watch whichever team the Timbers have next, but there’s no goddamn way I’m sitting through Austin FC beating the Galaxy by one damn goal when I’ve already stared at both of those teams more than anyone but their biggest fans should have to.

Right, let’s kick around what happened in MLS’s Western Conference last weekend. Just the good shit.

Seattle Sounders 3-0 Nashville SC
Why This Game?
A combination of trying to figure out what’s going on with Nashville and keeping your enemies close…

The Game, Briefly (watched 1-45)
First, both teams rested their share of regular starters, if for reasons unknown – Albert Rusnak and Jordan Morris for Seattle, and Edvard Tagseth, aka, Nashville’s Engine – and, against the even numbers in the final stats, the game was over by the 34th minute. As confessed above, I only watched the first half (fine…most of it), but I caught at least five of Nashville’s shots on goal in the full highlights and never saw them serve up anything more threatening than a kitten in a sombrero. One li’l curiosity to note: wily veteran Andy Najar played some role in at least two Seattle goals, one by commission (the first goal), the other by omission (what was he doing so far from Paul “Everyman” Rothrock on that third goal?). Pedro de la Vega got a lot of hype in the Official post-game chatter (aka, MLS Wrap Up...gotta stop watching that bilge), but even he credited Obed Vargas for teeing up his goal. The Sounders overwhelmed Nashville, no question, and took just 15 minutes to bury them. Sometimes a game just gets away from a team.

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.

U.S. Tops Honduras in the Main Course (After a Nice Appretizer)

We are the world! We are the Turkey!

"...I only laced it with PCP."

And that's why I love the bar where I watch soccer most often. Because that's quality eaves-dropping...

One other note before getting into the nitty-gritty. Like most of you, I read two (or more) things today that bunched my undies, e.g.: 1) the record-breaking number of people who watched the Women's World Cup Final; and 2) reports on the comparatively shitty pay that members of that same team made during the tournament leading up to said World Cup final. Yes, yes, women's sports don’t draw with anything like the same consistency as men's leagues do around the world, and, yes, that translates into what they get paid. Still, and even if just domestically, those same women drew a shit-ton of eyeballs for that final, so call this my (extraordinarily modest) call to see them reap some (meaningful) measure of the dollars spinning off that whirlwind. Because they earned it, goddammit. And if it's because the sponsors failed to show up, leverage that shit into the next contract because people, Americans, especially, totally watch the women's game. Make it right. I don’t care how it's done, but fucking pay these women what they absolutely earned.

And, with that, time for the two-course meal that was tonight's CONCACAF Group A kick off.