Our annual collection of post-mortems rolls on with the collection of teams that made it to Game 3 in Round One of the Audi 2025 MLS Cup Playoffs, but no further.
You can find the Western Conference non-playoff teams HERE, the Eastern Conference non-playoff teams HERE, the Wild Card losers HERE, and the teams that got swept in Round One HERE.
Ok, in we go, examining the seasons of five teams that are spending this week thinking about what might have been.
2025 in a nutshell
They just about hit – or maybe even exceeded, with that 59-point regular-season – the expectations most people had laid out for them after a promising 2024 campaign. But even if the end was ultimately kind of predictable (another Round One exit), the way they got there definitely wasn’t.
First part of the season: Really pretty dire as Wilfried Zaha had trouble settling in, Kristijan Kahlina struggled and the backline was out of sorts. The only truly bright spot was that Pep Biel was awesome:
Do this one trick that defenses hate!
Come summer, they were under the playoff line. It was bad.
Second part of the season: Biel gets injured, and all they’ve got to replace him is veteran grinder Brandt Bronico (very much not a No. 10!). Pat Agyemang is sold and replaced by U22 striker Idan Toklomati.
And so they run off nine straight wins, tying the post-shootout mark set by the Sounders nearly a decade ago. Six of the nine were by a single goal. They climbed from 10th to 4th in the East. Charlotte went out there, backs against the wall for months on end, and took care of business.
Now, no nine-game winning streak is all down to one guy, but I want you all to understand this context: Virtually every analytics platform I’ve looked at has Kahlina saving nearly a goal per game over expected during that nine-game run, and that very much matches the eye test. He was incredible.
It’s one of the best sustained runs I’ve ever seen from an MLS goalkeeper. EVER. He is the king of the Queen City.
What comes next?
And so my honest take is they didn't actually play better during that streak: it was just that Kahlina went supernova and Toklomati got hot. Once Kahlina regressed to merely “very good” and Toklomati hit a little slump… well, they followed that winning streak up by going 2W-4L-1D in their final seven games across all competitions.
That includes their Best-of-3 Series loss against New York City FC, in which they managed exactly one goal. They’ve now scored just twice in six playoff games under Dean Smith, and have done so with a team that is, on balance, very old (seven of the starters in the decisive Game 3 were 30 or older).
They are mostly at an age in which you’d expect them to get worse, not better.
What to watch for this winter
The biggest hole that needs filling is caused by the departure of center back Adilson Malanda, who’s off to Middlesbrough. That is, I’m sure, the first bullet point on general manager Zoran Krneta’s to-do list.
But the bigger picture has to include some serious thinking on the roster build. The underlying numbers, the playoff performance(s) and the age of the squad are all screaming that regression is coming if they sit on their hands this winter.
Player I’m excited for
Academy winger Nimfasha Berchimas has been one of the most impressive attackers at the FIFA U-17 World Cup, and turns 18 in February. He’s ready, man. There has to be a plan to get him at least 1,500 first-team minutes across all competitions next year.
Notes
- There are two guys occupying premium roster slots – DP winger Liel Abada and U22 CM Nikola Petkovic – that I’d imagine will not be back.
- Biel will be back, but unlike in 2025, he’s likely on a DP contract next year.
- Smith’s game model keeps the floor high. Can Zaha, Biel and Toklomati raise the ceiling when it matters next year? Or will they bring in a new third DP to try to do that?
2025 in a nutshell
There were three bullet points at play when talking about the Sounders entering the 2025 season:
- We’ve known for a long, long time that it’s almost impossibly hard for MLS teams to juggle multiple competitions. Make a deep run in international play? Suffer the consequences later. And Seattle entered 2025 slated to play in three separate competitions outside of the regular season. Four, if you count the playoffs.
- Did this team have the top-end talent to actually win trophies? They hadn’t won one – and ipso facto, hadn’t had the top-end talent to win one – since the landmark 2022 Concacaf Champions Cup (née League) title.
- Hey, they were fun to watch at the end of 2024… was that real?
In the end, bullet point No. 3 turned out to be spectacularly real – Seattle were, in my opinion, one of the two or three most fun teams to watch in MLS this year – and became part of the answer (obviously an affirmative answer) to point No. 2. They won Leagues Cup 2025 with a resounding 3-0 triumph over Leo Messi & Inter Miami and thus, ipso facto they had the top-end talent to win a trophy.
That title came at the end of a months-long run of simply exceptional soccer, which started with a strong three-game showing at the FIFA 2025 Club World Cup. I think they proved as much in that three-game swing against Botafogo, PSG and Atlético Madrid as they proved in the title-clinching win over Miami or the 7-0 win over Cruz Azul.
They certainly ran out of gas after that, and in the end went out in Round One of a playoff series they’d dominated. They did so not because they were bad, but because they weren't sharp on the margins in the way they had been during the summer. When they had a chance to step on Miami’s throat, they did so; when they had a chance to step on Minnesota’s? LOL.
Which brings us back to point No. 1: they suffered the consequences for pouring so much into Leagues Cup, just as last year’s Crew team did.
In the end, I feel like this was a 95th percentile outcome for this particular team. Though Sounders fans being what they are, I guarantee more than one in 20 is upset about the 2025 season.
What comes next?
Either a big offer or a big contract for Obed Vargas. My guess is the former.
Because of how the roster is built, and the conveyor belt pouring talent from the academy to the MLS NEXT Pro side to the first team, I don’t think there’s much worry about replacing him (great as he is). Nor is there, I don’t think, much worry about making do without injured DP Pedro de la Vega, who’ll be sidelined for some time (again) while recovering from a nasty knee injury late in the season.
What to watch for this winter
Another veteran d-mid, perhaps, to replace the likely departing João Paulo? Sure. And likely one of the veteran wingers is headed elsewhere, but not much beyond that unless someone bowls them over with an offer.
Though do keep an eye on Paul Rothrock’s impending free agency.
Player I’m excited for
Georgi Minoungou should be a starter next year. Endline pullbacks across the box are the second-most valuable attacking pass in soccer (after through-balls), and look at this:
To borrow a line from Jeremiah Oshan: Minoungou played 726 minutes. Everyone with at least four completed cutbacks logged at least twice as many.
Part of this is Seattle’s game model, of course (you can see other Sounders wingers on that chart; also, they went from 28 open-play goals last year to 44 this year – the game model is good!). But part of it is Georgi being a legitimate 1v1 force in a way few wingers in this league can match. He is a high-value chance creation machine.
Notes
- All three Seattle DPs (de la Vega, Albert Rusnák and Jordan Morris) are under contract for next year.
- Their three-headed center forward combo of Morris, Danny Musovski and Osaze De Rosario combined for 30g/7a across all competitions this year. All those endline pullbacks work!
- Expect academy products Snyder Brunell (CM) and Stuart Hawkins (CB) to have bigger roles next season. Brunell might even be the starter next to Cristian Roldan.
- I will be shocked if Andrew Thomas, who was in the sticks for Leagues Cup, is not the starting goalkeeper next year. Open question as to whether or not the legendary Stefan Frei is willing to take a backup role, but it's time.
2025 in a nutshell
They waited a long time to sell Cucho Hernández, and then a longer time to replace him. When they did replace him, the guys they got either didn’t perform (Dániel Gazdag) or didn’t stay healthy (Wessam Abou Ali).
They didn’t reinforce the central defense, so when veteran Rudy Camacho was out for the entire season (basically), that meant they had to rearrange the midfield, which meant they had less cohesion in the attack. That meant fewer chances for less lethal attackers, but it also meant less control of the game overall.
That meant more pressure on the makeshift defense to dominate in the box (not their strong suit!) and less margin for error should goalkeeper Patrick Schulte slump (he did).
All of that happened. By the end of May, it was clear that this team didn't have the juice.
They were still good – they ended up on 54 points in a brutal East, and it wasn’t at all fluky. But they went out early in the Concacaf Champions Cup to an LAFC team they’d previously dominated in big games, went out in the group stage of Leagues Cup (though they played well), and then lost in three to their biggest rival in Round One of the playoffs. They were not a championship-level team this year.
I am a huge believer in head coach Wilfried Nancy and his system. This year was a reminder that top-end talent is usually the ultimate differentiator, and the 2025 Crew didn’t have it.
What comes next?
Here’s a blurb from CelticWay:
Wilfried Nancy has emerged as the new frontrunner to become the next manager of Celtic, according to a report.
The 48-year-old is currently head coach of MLS outfit Columbus Crew.
French-born Nancy is said to be well regarded by Paul Tisdale, Celtic's head of football operations.
Other reporting from Scotland has repeatedly said that Celtic’s top managerial target would “not be available until December” without ever naming said target. Let’s do the math, folks: how many managers around the world that’d be on Celtic’s radar also wouldn’t be available until next month?
Selfishly, I hope he stays. But I’m not counting on it.
What to watch for this winter
Almost certainly, they’ll have to replace Nancy, and that really is the biggest job.
The other big job will be to replace the legendary Darlington Nagbe, whose unpressability (yeah, I just made it up; don’t act like you don’t know what it means) was one of the keys to elevating Nancy’s system. Will it work as well without him?
They could go out and get a CB to finally replace Camacho, then move Sean Zawadzki up to Nagbe’s spot alongside Dylan Chambost. Zawadzki is a real ball-winner and organizer, but nothing like Nagbe on the ball.
The flip side is they try to get as close to a like-for-like replacement as exists in prodigal son Emeka Eneli:
Just make the Godfather offer. Bring him home!
Player I’m excited for
Nineteen-year-old academy product Taha Habroune looked so good this year (I understand why he was pulled in the first half of Game 3 against Cincy – Nancy needed someone to run in behind and stretch the field; I don’t take that as a knock on Taha).
In a perfect world, we get to see him, Diego Rossi and Abou Ali spend about 3,000 minutes up top together next year across all competitions.
Notes
- “What happens with Gazdag?” – who is under contract through 2027 – is going to be a giant question in search of an answer this winter. I remain shocked at how completely it just didn't work for him.
- There’s a lot of pressure on general manager Issa Tall, whose biggest moves since taking over have mostly under-delivered. Part of that is bad luck (Abou Ali), but part is guys just not producing (Gazdag, Hugo Picard, Ibrahim Aliyu) what was needed.
2025 in a nutshell
Here are the headers from my colleague Ben Wright’s recap of Nashville’s season for the excellent SixOneFiveSoccer.com:
- “Drastic individual improvements”
- “Historic team success”
- “Roster rebuild”
If those are the headers, you’re talking about a team that just had a damn good year! And I think if you’d offered that to Nashville fans before the season, they’d have grabbed it. Unanimously.
Obviously, the “historic team success” part is easy – they won the US Open Cup, which marks the first trophy in club history. They also tied the single-season team record with 54 points, scored a club-record 58 regular-season goals, and had a 15-game unbeaten streak (all competitions) at one point.
The “drastic individual improvements” and “roster rebuild” sections are sort of linked, because it wasn’t just the top end of the roster (Sam Surridge having a career year, and Hany Mukhtar getting back to his best) that leveled up, but the down-roster guys as well. Especially the younger players, teenagers like Matthew Corcoran and Chris Applewhite – a cohort Nashville had never shown any interest in until B.J. Callaghan became head coach in the middle of 2024. Developing players like that is the secret sauce for consistent MLS success.
And then the part that’s threaded through all of this is the way Callaghan changed the game model (you can see that in the 58 goals scored, which feels like about 3x as many as they’d scored in any previous season). Nashville weren’t a pure possession team like the Crew or Sounders, but they tended to be just as comfortable with the ball as they were without it, tilted the field much more often, settled for useless crosses much less often, and actually developed some final-third attacking patterns for the times when they were exclusively playing on the front foot.
They went from an exclusively counterattacking team to one that was capable of playing some of the best soccer in the league, and often did so in their biggest games. And they won a trophy because of it.
What comes next?
Like the Sounders, they crashed after winning their late-season Cup, though unlike the Sounders, it was part of a longer downslope because even with Callaghan’s facility for developing young or fringe players, the ‘Yotes just don’t have the kind of depth that the best teams in this league can put out there. So competing in multiple competitions… really tough.
They need to do it again next year, though, so I expect another busy offseason.
What to watch for this winter
I’d say “the big decision is what to do with out-of-contract DP center back Walker Zimmerman,” but it’s not really a big decision, is it? They can’t bring him back as a DP, so what they need to do is find a more reasonable number that works for both parties.
Which means the decision is whether to go with the three DP/three U22 roster build, or the two DP/four U22/$2 million GAM roster build. In years past, the first option was the only option, but that has obviously changed with Callaghan on the sidelines.
Player I’m excited for
“Third attacker X.”
I don’t know who it will be, obviously, but whether it’s a DP signing or a U22, they’ve got to get a third heat to add to the attack alongside (more likely underneath) Surridge and Mukhtar.
My personal hobby horse has been for them to go after San Jose’s Niko Tsakiris on a U22 deal, the same way Houston got Jack McGlynn last winter. Tsakiris is a similar talent who, I think, would work exceptionally well pulling strings behind the two goalscorers.
Notes
- Both Daniel Lovitz and Andy Najar were excellent this year, but both guys are well into their 30s, and neither has a clear successor lined up. CSO Mike Jacobs has to have “young fullbacks who can pass the ball” on his Pinterest board.
- I wouldn’t be at all shocked if Brian Schwake – who was the goalkeeper during the Open Cup run – went into next year as the No. 1 ahead of Joe Willis (they have a team option on Willis’s deal).
2025 in a nutshell
The line heading into 2025 was that the Timbers were going to be a more complete team – more capable of beating you in different ways, less vulnerable on set pieces, less reliant on their DPs.
And on some level, I think they achieved that. They certainly couldn't rely as much on their DPs this year, for example, since David Da Costa was nowhere near as productive as Evander had been, Jonathan Rodríguez got hurt early, and mid-season arrivals Kristoffer Velde and Felipe Carballo were not productive (injury in Carballo’s case, while Velde took some settling in before he finally started putting the ball in the net in the playoffs).
So they had to be better in other areas and, for about half the year, they were. It was particularly noticeable in their set-piece defense, and also in the play (early on, anyway) of goalkeeper James Pantemis. He was outstanding until an injury in mid-spring.
Still, all along the underlying numbers were waving red flags, and at the exact mid-point of the season, regression hit: the Timbers won just three of their final 17 regular-season games. They probably weren’t quite that bad, but… if you spend half the season barely winning on the margins, you can’t be too surprised if you spend the next half of the season barely losing on the margins.
This time, at least, they managed not to get bounced in the Wild Card in historic fashion. But their Round One Best-of-3 Series against San Diego wasn’t actually all that close.
In the end, I’d say they feel further from contention now than they did 12 months ago.
What comes next?
Is head coach Phil Neville’s job safe? In 90 matches with Miami, he was at 1.32 points per game. In 82 with Portland, he’s at 1.38 points per game.
I think the first part of the offseason will be watching what decision, one way or another, is made there.
What to watch for this winter
The second part of the offseason… there are a lot of guys – a lot of veterans – who are out of contract (or could be, if their options are declined) this winter. One of them is Diego Chara, and I need him to have one more year left in his legs; I don’t think my heart could take it if Chara and Nagbe both retired at the same time.
The point is they have a chance to make this team look very different even if they are, in fact, locked into Da Costa, Velde and Rodríguez as their DP trio for 2026.
One thing the front office deserves credit for is a newfound willingness to look at MLS-proven guys to try to bolster the squad. This was never a strong suit of the previous regime, but bringing in guys like Carballo, Matías Rojas, Omir Fernández and Ariel Lassiter is, I think, a good use of resources, even if it didn’t pan out perfectly this season. Could they have another go at it in the free agency market, or with a cashfer target?
I wouldn’t rule it out. They need proven guys who can raise the floor and grind through a season, and hopefully show the know-how to help give this team a tactical identity it largely lacked.
Player I’m excited for
At the same time, they need young guys who can push into the first team and push out underperformers. Did we see Gage Guerra, who was excellent with Timbers 2, take a first step towards that with his heroic moment at the end of Game 2 vs. San Diego?
I hope so. There’s a growing tranche of evidence that players who are outstanding in MLS NEXT Pro can come in and be, at the very least, rotation-caliber in MLS (this has proved especially true for strikers).
The Timbers need to embrace that.
Notes
- I’m curious to see if there will be any overseas interest in Juan Mosquera, Finn Surman or David Ayala. Those guys should be written-in-pen starters next year if they’re back, but I think the “if” is very operative.
- I know Da Costa struggled, but I really like the idea of him and Rojas paired as attacking midfielders.
- If Rodríguez comes back 100% fit, do they see him as a goalscoring left winger or a center forward? He’s played both throughout his career.
