MLS Cup 2024 is done and dusted and the LA Galaxy have won their sixth title. Now it's time for what will be a very busy offseason. There are no major changes to the overall roster spending from 2024 to 2025, but with the 30th team joining the league (San Diego FC, another boring Europhile name, alas), it will be more challenging than ever to keep up with what everyone is doing.
It's crazy to think that the 2025 season will be the 30th in league history. It's come a hell of a long way, and still has a good ways to go. I feel a lot of American soccer fans somewhat underrate both the quality of play and the fun/zaniness of it, but one of the big problems the league faces, IMO, is that there's a lack of fan network effects — it's hard to get a feel for the narratives and find people in real life to talk about them, sometimes. Nonetheless, I continue to feel that the long-term growth of American soccer culture and the national teams hinge heavily on our domestic leagues.
Offseason Calendar
This is a list of the MLS-iest roster mechanisms of the winter. More and more players who are out of contract are eligible for free agency, per the latest CBA, but some players with less service in the league go through the Re-Entry Draft and those with the least service are available in the Waiver Draft. All of these rules are created because MLS owners are business nerds who like to create complicated systems that smush player negotiation leverage.
12/9 — half-day trade window to allow teams to make some last adjustments to their roster before the expansion draft
12/11 — expansion draft, San Diego gets to pick five
12/12 — MLS free agency opens, the arcane MLS waiver draft
12/13 — the legendary Re-Entry Draft, stage 1
12/19 — the slightly more active Re-Entry Draft, stage 2
12/20 — the MLS SuperDraft, which still has some useful players, but college soccer gets so little coverage and prognosticating the transition from NCAA to MLS is so hard, that it's a crapshoot from the inside and is a pure "wait and see" thing as a fan by now.
The NWSL got rid of their draft and I'd like to see MLS follow suit. It's not like you are drafting the next NBA superstar here. Most players drafted won't turn out to be better than USL quality, so just let kids find a team that is a good fit for them developmentally, IMO.
Of course, the bulk of the incoming players will be signings from abroad. MLS rules are changing a bit to give teams slightly more flexibility in how they arrange the top of their roster. Nothing life-changing, but a slight move in the right direction.
I always like to watch MLS in general with an eye on young American talent, so I'm curious to see where teams sign more prospects to first-team deals. I think there's been a small lull in the amount of domestic talent coming through the league owing to the 2004/2005/2006-born cohorts lacking a bit of depth, but I expect that to change with the 2007/2008/2009-born cohorts.
Looking Ahead To International Events
After 2023, the CONCACAF Champions League died and the CONCACAF Champions Cup was reborn. There is a constant pendulum across CONCACAF events and LigaMX/MLS collaborations like the erstwhile SuperLiga and the current Leagues Cup in which everyone decries the lack of MLS-LigaMX games and then, when given the games, gets mad about the travel and fixture congestion.
Anyways, the neo-CCC is straight two-legged knockout tournament that consists of four or five rounds, depending on whether you get a bye.
MLS entrants for 2025 include:
Columbus Crew (Leagues Cup winner)
LA Galaxy (MLS Cup winner)
Vancouver Whitecaps (Canadian Championship winner)
LAFC (Leagues Cup runners-up)
Colorado Rapids (Leagues Cup 3rd place)
Inter Miami (Supporters Shield winner)
FC Cincinnati (next best Supporters Shield team [5th] that didn't otherwise qualify)
Real Salt Lake (next best Supporters Shield team [6th] that didn't otherwise qualify)
Seattle Sounders (next best Supporters Shield team [7th] that didn't otherwise qualify)
Sporting Kansas City (US Open Cup runners-up; the winners LAFC otherwise qualified)
The draw is tomorrow, December 10. Due to MLS dominating the final stages of the 2024 Leagues Cup and therefore getting all the Leagues Cup slots, as well as the bonus Canadian Championship slot, there are ten MLS teams and only six Mexican teams. Hopefully that means more MLS teams will get past the perilous pre-season-form February and March games and be able to take their best shot when they round into shape.
The Mexican big guns – América, Tigres, Monterrey, Cruz Azul — will all be there. And also some teams that think of themselves as big guns, but who aren't, really: Chivas and Pumas.
This tournament will wrap up by June 1, with one round played approximately every month (Feb, March, early April, late Apr / early May, June 1 final)
--
We also have the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup, hosted in the US, and the first large-format CWC. Each of the last four CONCACAF champions qualify, which includes the Seattle Sounders, who won the 2022 edition. The host slot has been granted to Inter Miami forhaving Lionel Messi winning the 2024 Supporters Shield.
Seattle got a very bad draw, with PSG, Atlético Madrid, and Botafogo.
Miami's was somewhat friendlier, with Palmeiras, Porto, and Al Ahly.
Neither will be expected to advance, but hopefully they're able to acquit themselves respectably.
Coaching and Front Office Changes
I'd say that MLS clubs, on the whole, have developed somewhat itchier trigger fingers with coaches over recent years, which is probably an appropriate shift because there have been some managers in this league who have had an awfully long leash.
There are a lot of changes heading in 2025.
Atlanta: fired Gonzalo Pineda in June; Rob Valentino has been interim but won't get the job. Status: OPEN
Austin: fired Josh Wolff in October. Status: hired Nico Estévez
Chicago: Frank Klopas, who was essentially a year-long interim, left. Status: hired Gregg Berhalter as both manager and director of football
FC Dallas: fired Nico Estévez in June; hired Peter Luccin as interim. Status: hired Eric Quill,a former reserve team manager who had left to coach New Mexico United in the USL
Inter Miami: Tata Martino resigned; word is that he had a falling out with some of their big name players. Status: Hired Javier Mascherano
NYCFC: fired Nick Cushing after the season. Status: OPEN
Philadelphia: fired Jim Curtin after the season; he and Ernst Tanner never had a great relationship. Status: OPEN, but rumored to be Thomas Letsch, last of VfL Bochum
San Diego FC: expansion team coached by former FC Dallas academy / US U20 / USMNT assistant / USMNT interim Mikey Varas
San Jose: fired Luchi Gonzalez in June; Ian Russell served as interim. Status: hired Bruce Arena as manager and sporting director
St. Louis: fired Bradley Carnell in July; John Hackworth served as interim. Status: hired Olof Mellberg
Toronto: John Herdman resigned in scandal. Status; OPEN
Vancouver: fired Vanni Sartini after the season. Status: OPEN
It's doubtful that anyone else will get canned at this point, so that's five openings to be filled. Some of them are fairly attractive positions.
Selected Team Narratives
Inter Miami is the most internationally famous and splashiest team now with Messi & friends on board. They quite good in 2024 — they set the single-season points record even though Messi missed considerable time, but they had clear flaws that manifested themselves in crunch time. They'll need to shore up the defense over the offseason. It's unclear how much cap space they'll have to do so.
Atlanta is by far the best-supported club in MLS, but they've been underperforming lately. They got Garth Lagerwey on board before the 2023 season as president/CEO and he's finally cleaned house of some incumbents (manager Gonzalo Pineda, GM Carlos Bocanegra). They've just missed on a lot of expensive signings and need to do better. Lagerwey has had so much success with RSL and Seattle that I expect them to sort it out sooner rather than later.
NYCFC broke ground on their stadium in Queens last week. Getting this done in the five boroughs has been a white whale for the league and it should be huge for the league's ability to break through in the country's largest city to a bigger extent.
I'm not super optimistic about the Revs given that Caleb Porter is kicking around. I'm also not a huge believer in sporting director Curt Onalfo. However, it's clear that a big roster overhaul is underway, so we'll see. I'm excited to watch the growth of Peyton Miller (Unionville, CT), who just turned 17 after the season ended, and who is a big LB prospect for the Revs, for the US U20s, and is a legit USMNT prospect if he develops.
LA Galaxy have the potential to be a force for a good while. Their GM, who was previously an underling in LAFC's front office of all places, has been great and if he can continue to iron out the kinks (kinda soft defense) they'll be a tough team to face. As a USMNT fan, what I really want is for LA Galaxy or LAFC (or ideally both) to do better on the academy front — both these teams should be cranking out big-time players constantly, and that hasn't happened.
Chicago Fire have been just spectacularly bad for so long. They've made the playoffs just once in the last 12 years, which is really hard to do in this league. Everyone loves to hate Gregg Berhalter, but I expect that he'll improve them quite a bit. He'll fare better when he can do his own shopping instead of spending his days attempting to pound square pegs into round holes with the USMNT.
Columbus has been awesome under Wilfried Nancy, but came up short in the playoffs (and in CCC, though to be fair they were annihilated by diarrhea in Pachuca...). I keep expecting someone in Europe to grab Nancy, but otherwise it seems likely that they'll keep rolling.
Anyway, feel free to chime in with your team.
It's crazy to think that the 2025 season will be the 30th in league history. It's come a hell of a long way, and still has a good ways to go. I feel a lot of American soccer fans somewhat underrate both the quality of play and the fun/zaniness of it, but one of the big problems the league faces, IMO, is that there's a lack of fan network effects — it's hard to get a feel for the narratives and find people in real life to talk about them, sometimes. Nonetheless, I continue to feel that the long-term growth of American soccer culture and the national teams hinge heavily on our domestic leagues.
Offseason Calendar
This is a list of the MLS-iest roster mechanisms of the winter. More and more players who are out of contract are eligible for free agency, per the latest CBA, but some players with less service in the league go through the Re-Entry Draft and those with the least service are available in the Waiver Draft. All of these rules are created because MLS owners are business nerds who like to create complicated systems that smush player negotiation leverage.
12/9 — half-day trade window to allow teams to make some last adjustments to their roster before the expansion draft
12/11 — expansion draft, San Diego gets to pick five
12/12 — MLS free agency opens, the arcane MLS waiver draft
12/13 — the legendary Re-Entry Draft, stage 1
12/19 — the slightly more active Re-Entry Draft, stage 2
12/20 — the MLS SuperDraft, which still has some useful players, but college soccer gets so little coverage and prognosticating the transition from NCAA to MLS is so hard, that it's a crapshoot from the inside and is a pure "wait and see" thing as a fan by now.
The NWSL got rid of their draft and I'd like to see MLS follow suit. It's not like you are drafting the next NBA superstar here. Most players drafted won't turn out to be better than USL quality, so just let kids find a team that is a good fit for them developmentally, IMO.
Of course, the bulk of the incoming players will be signings from abroad. MLS rules are changing a bit to give teams slightly more flexibility in how they arrange the top of their roster. Nothing life-changing, but a slight move in the right direction.
I always like to watch MLS in general with an eye on young American talent, so I'm curious to see where teams sign more prospects to first-team deals. I think there's been a small lull in the amount of domestic talent coming through the league owing to the 2004/2005/2006-born cohorts lacking a bit of depth, but I expect that to change with the 2007/2008/2009-born cohorts.
Looking Ahead To International Events
After 2023, the CONCACAF Champions League died and the CONCACAF Champions Cup was reborn. There is a constant pendulum across CONCACAF events and LigaMX/MLS collaborations like the erstwhile SuperLiga and the current Leagues Cup in which everyone decries the lack of MLS-LigaMX games and then, when given the games, gets mad about the travel and fixture congestion.
Anyways, the neo-CCC is straight two-legged knockout tournament that consists of four or five rounds, depending on whether you get a bye.
MLS entrants for 2025 include:
Columbus Crew (Leagues Cup winner)
LA Galaxy (MLS Cup winner)
Vancouver Whitecaps (Canadian Championship winner)
LAFC (Leagues Cup runners-up)
Colorado Rapids (Leagues Cup 3rd place)
Inter Miami (Supporters Shield winner)
FC Cincinnati (next best Supporters Shield team [5th] that didn't otherwise qualify)
Real Salt Lake (next best Supporters Shield team [6th] that didn't otherwise qualify)
Seattle Sounders (next best Supporters Shield team [7th] that didn't otherwise qualify)
Sporting Kansas City (US Open Cup runners-up; the winners LAFC otherwise qualified)
The draw is tomorrow, December 10. Due to MLS dominating the final stages of the 2024 Leagues Cup and therefore getting all the Leagues Cup slots, as well as the bonus Canadian Championship slot, there are ten MLS teams and only six Mexican teams. Hopefully that means more MLS teams will get past the perilous pre-season-form February and March games and be able to take their best shot when they round into shape.
The Mexican big guns – América, Tigres, Monterrey, Cruz Azul — will all be there. And also some teams that think of themselves as big guns, but who aren't, really: Chivas and Pumas.
This tournament will wrap up by June 1, with one round played approximately every month (Feb, March, early April, late Apr / early May, June 1 final)
--
We also have the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup, hosted in the US, and the first large-format CWC. Each of the last four CONCACAF champions qualify, which includes the Seattle Sounders, who won the 2022 edition. The host slot has been granted to Inter Miami for
Seattle got a very bad draw, with PSG, Atlético Madrid, and Botafogo.
Miami's was somewhat friendlier, with Palmeiras, Porto, and Al Ahly.
Neither will be expected to advance, but hopefully they're able to acquit themselves respectably.
Coaching and Front Office Changes
I'd say that MLS clubs, on the whole, have developed somewhat itchier trigger fingers with coaches over recent years, which is probably an appropriate shift because there have been some managers in this league who have had an awfully long leash.
There are a lot of changes heading in 2025.
Atlanta: fired Gonzalo Pineda in June; Rob Valentino has been interim but won't get the job. Status: OPEN
Austin: fired Josh Wolff in October. Status: hired Nico Estévez
Chicago: Frank Klopas, who was essentially a year-long interim, left. Status: hired Gregg Berhalter as both manager and director of football
FC Dallas: fired Nico Estévez in June; hired Peter Luccin as interim. Status: hired Eric Quill,a former reserve team manager who had left to coach New Mexico United in the USL
Inter Miami: Tata Martino resigned; word is that he had a falling out with some of their big name players. Status: Hired Javier Mascherano
NYCFC: fired Nick Cushing after the season. Status: OPEN
Philadelphia: fired Jim Curtin after the season; he and Ernst Tanner never had a great relationship. Status: OPEN, but rumored to be Thomas Letsch, last of VfL Bochum
San Diego FC: expansion team coached by former FC Dallas academy / US U20 / USMNT assistant / USMNT interim Mikey Varas
San Jose: fired Luchi Gonzalez in June; Ian Russell served as interim. Status: hired Bruce Arena as manager and sporting director
St. Louis: fired Bradley Carnell in July; John Hackworth served as interim. Status: hired Olof Mellberg
Toronto: John Herdman resigned in scandal. Status; OPEN
Vancouver: fired Vanni Sartini after the season. Status: OPEN
It's doubtful that anyone else will get canned at this point, so that's five openings to be filled. Some of them are fairly attractive positions.
Selected Team Narratives
Inter Miami is the most internationally famous and splashiest team now with Messi & friends on board. They quite good in 2024 — they set the single-season points record even though Messi missed considerable time, but they had clear flaws that manifested themselves in crunch time. They'll need to shore up the defense over the offseason. It's unclear how much cap space they'll have to do so.
Atlanta is by far the best-supported club in MLS, but they've been underperforming lately. They got Garth Lagerwey on board before the 2023 season as president/CEO and he's finally cleaned house of some incumbents (manager Gonzalo Pineda, GM Carlos Bocanegra). They've just missed on a lot of expensive signings and need to do better. Lagerwey has had so much success with RSL and Seattle that I expect them to sort it out sooner rather than later.
NYCFC broke ground on their stadium in Queens last week. Getting this done in the five boroughs has been a white whale for the league and it should be huge for the league's ability to break through in the country's largest city to a bigger extent.
I'm not super optimistic about the Revs given that Caleb Porter is kicking around. I'm also not a huge believer in sporting director Curt Onalfo. However, it's clear that a big roster overhaul is underway, so we'll see. I'm excited to watch the growth of Peyton Miller (Unionville, CT), who just turned 17 after the season ended, and who is a big LB prospect for the Revs, for the US U20s, and is a legit USMNT prospect if he develops.
LA Galaxy have the potential to be a force for a good while. Their GM, who was previously an underling in LAFC's front office of all places, has been great and if he can continue to iron out the kinks (kinda soft defense) they'll be a tough team to face. As a USMNT fan, what I really want is for LA Galaxy or LAFC (or ideally both) to do better on the academy front — both these teams should be cranking out big-time players constantly, and that hasn't happened.
Chicago Fire have been just spectacularly bad for so long. They've made the playoffs just once in the last 12 years, which is really hard to do in this league. Everyone loves to hate Gregg Berhalter, but I expect that he'll improve them quite a bit. He'll fare better when he can do his own shopping instead of spending his days attempting to pound square pegs into round holes with the USMNT.
Columbus has been awesome under Wilfried Nancy, but came up short in the playoffs (and in CCC, though to be fair they were annihilated by diarrhea in Pachuca...). I keep expecting someone in Europe to grab Nancy, but otherwise it seems likely that they'll keep rolling.
Anyway, feel free to chime in with your team.
