Real Salt Lake gets to prove that the start isn't a fluke and they are well on their way to the MLS Cup or something. I keep waiting to see if the other shoe will drop and RSL will suffer for having teenagers all over the place scoring and leading the team but maybe that's not going to happen and the kids will keep things rolling. We shall see.
Before the season started, this is one I picked as a likely RSL win. I don't think as highly of Austin as the media did going into the season. They haven't done anything so far to change my opinion.
I was thinking that the first real chance or expectation for 3 points would be against SKC but I have been proven incorrect. How long this early success lasts will be interesting to follow. Clubs will make adjustments, Pablo wont, and we shall see what follows. I have been very much enjoying being wrong so far and hope it continues.
I kind of hate putting this out there, but the thought has crossed my mind more than once that this season will be more like 2024 (hopefully without the infamous shenanigans). Starts out much better than anyone predicted, players get hot (and sold) and RSL can't maintain it over the course of the whole season. While there is certainly more time to add to the roster with the WC break and more games to get new players to acclimate to the league, it's still hard if you sell the key players. It's why I had a hard time predicting how this team will finish. Keep the team together and they finish closer to 5th. If they don't, it's probably closer to 10th. Still, they are looking better now than I thought they would, especially given the absences.
What sucks is as a league we might get closer to the big leagues, but one thing they have that we never will is the Champions League. I think the only way to get past that is getting to the point that salaries are bigger than other leagues. Unless maybe at some point MLS gets 1-2 spots
MLS already has the 5th highest median team salaries. It's a big jump to top 4 though. MLS needs a lot more media revenue to make it happen though. Doubling the current contract isn't enough.
I guess it depends on what you want this league to be. Is it to produce US talent to both enjoy here and sell abroad, or are we going to be importing top regional talent from elsewhere, with a hope of selling on? I prefer the idea of trying to keep MLS more of a domestic league instead of rushing to be a “top4,” more like Brazil.
I have been thinking along the same lines. With the spending, salary cap, and the size of the league, I would think MLS will start taking basically all but the champions league players. (For example, players choosing to play for an LA Galaxy over a Freiburg, Getafe, Sassuolo, Sunderland etc. if the money is the same.) A stat that I find fascinating is that in all of Europe there are only 6 metros with 5M people or more that have consistent Champions League contenders. London, Paris, Madrid, Dortmund (Ruhr) , Barcelona, Milan. MLS alone has 12 metros with more than 5M. I wonder if the big pockets at FIFA and in America could push for the Club World Cup every year at some point. Or MLS just tries to replicate the super league idea with big teams like Miami, NY, LA etc. playing tons of marquee games in big markets with the stars. Just the pure amount of MLS teams that could be bidding on the biggest players is intriguing. If you think about La Liga for example; Only 2 teams are going to ever be options for a player like Haaland. If MLS gets to those spending levels there could be maybe 8+ big-market teams with legitimate title aspirations and an open checkbook competing for his signature. Obviously a long, long, long ways to go and very much a pipe-dream with current budgets, but interesting to think about!
My hope is that MLS stays patient and continues to grow without getting too far overextended. Bigger leagues, bigger clubs can lead to more debt etc. ManU at over billion in debt can't be good. An argument could be made that MLS has been a little too cautious but I will take that over being too aggressive and flaming out like some other leagues have done. I have thought that MLS should expand to 2 20 team conferences, east and west, and have a "Super Bowl" at the end of the season like the old MLS world series. You could have a balanced home and away schedule for both conference and the winners play each other. Or a small playoff of the top 4 or 6 teams on each side because America. It might help with promotion and relegation if the country is cut in half and you get promoted or relegated east or west of the Mississippi or something. Travel costs would be cut dramatically and make smaller leagues more viable if they don't have to travel from LA to NY or something. There is still so much potential for soccer in the US. Time will tell.
I want MLS to be parity driven, but to be the best it can be. Iron sharpens iron. It'll make the domestic players better to play against better international players. It'll be good to bring players over and then have some stay to become coaches and stuff. Don't need to arbitrarily restrict what MLS can be.
I find the promotion relegation talk to just be an excuse euro snobs use to watch European soccer and justify themselves for not watching mls. By and large, these same fans only watch top divisions in Europe and rarely support teams that ever are in danger of relegation (spurs this year an exception) to me it’s a blunt factor: the best players play in Europe. Just admit you like watching the best. There is nothing wrong with that
It isn’t arbitrarily restricting. It’s like what goobx1 pointed out, where you have teams in serious debt at the mercy of billionaires or other sundry and dubious organizations willing to dump capital into the enterprise. It reduces fair play and parity, because the financial rules are not equally applied and enforced, if at all. I’m OK not having a Barça, Real Madrid, PSG, Bayern Munich, Man City, Chelsea, Arsenal, Man U, Pool, etc….. that commands international media attention and the complete circus that surrounds it. Take a look at Anderlecht even. I’m OK not getting into the insane inflation of player salaries. Let those guys ride the wave. I think MLS is doing well, even if they are probably growing more conservatively than they should have leading up to WC2026. But who knows? Maybe this WC ends up a total bust because of all the other political things going around, and they ended up bumbling into doing the right thing?
I think you missed my parity line. I'm not talking full on all teams are equal, but absolutely don't want MLS to become the French/Spanish/Portuguese (and to an extent German) leagues. You'll always have teams that make/spend more money, but you can put constraints on it to keep it in check. There has to be hard ceilings AND floors.
I agree. I'm not a Pro Rel guy in the US really but if that is where they want to end up then finding a way to cut down travel will play a major role in Pro Rel success. The Euro snobs that go on and on about it love to flaunt USL propaganda and then crickets when someone points out that the USL model is even sketchier than MLS. “USL is completely unique in professional sports that you have a privately held company that owns the league.”USL Players’ Association rejected latest CBA proposal from USL and authorized a strike.Connor Tobin, executive director of USLPA, explains the business model of USL.… pic.twitter.com/wZSoIz7xo2— GOLZ (@golz_tv) March 4, 2026
In the end MLS will be whatever maximizes profits for the owners. I have no idea what that will look like. I don’t the expansion model for increasing profits can be successful too much longer. However, it seems to me that it won’t be parity driven either. I tend to believe Star power will be the driver for the foreseeable future since that’s what will attract viewers and maximize the media deals.
I would love to see MLS do something kind of similar to goobx1’s idea. Aug-Nov Regular Season: 15 games vs every Conference opponent (16 teams per conference) This is for seeding and qualifying for the second half of the year. -Top 8 qualify for MLS Cup and Leagues Cup - Bottom 8 qualify for MLS “Championship” and Open Cup Dec-Jan: Winter Break Feb: Leagues Cup and Open Cup group stages. Both just like World Cup but with home-and-away group stages. 4 team groups. Minimum 6 group-stage games guaranteed, Maximum 10. Mar: Leagues Cup and Open Cup knockouts Apr-May: MLS Cup and MLS “Championship” tournaments.. (Completely separate; kind of a quasi - pro/rel thing going on.) 16 teams in each cup. 4 groups, Top 2 in each group go through. Single elimination from there. Same set up with the home-and-away group stage for consistency. Minimum 6 games guaranteed. Maximum 9 So if you are terrible and never advanced in any tournament even against lower leagues in Open Cup, you would play 27 games in a year. If you won every game possible you would play 34 games + Champions Cup/CopaLib/Club World Cup. I like it because there is as much knock-out soccer as possible and more weight to the regular season games. It helps “balance” the schedule in that you don’t play regular season games vs just some of the other conference. - Some real financial incentive to be top half which hopefully results in investment, pressure, effort. Games “mattering” etc. - Everything resets the next year so not the crazy devastating consequences of relegation. - Has more “reset” points in the season for continued hope. - Variety of opponents from year to year. USL teams would get guaranteed home games vs MLS teams. MLS would get to travel away to Mexico in Feb. to help with the winter issues and general leagues cup competitiveness.
That's a bit too complicated for me, personally. The new system that has each team playing every other team at least once a season (and same-division teams twice) fixes most of my concerns with the current setup.
Don’t mind thinking outside the box. But three thoughts: 1. This sounds like ncaa basketball and nit tournament. The big dance is watched, the nit really isn’t. That secondary tournament you have would be bad soccer I worry and not at all watched 2. The game count to get to the tournament is way too short. 3. Two months off off is suicide to the league. They have to play relatively consistently during the season
totally fair critiques, I guess the winter-break will be more like 1.75 months-ish from “mid-December through early February” in reality. I do wonder if thy will try to fit in Leagues Cup games in there? I think the winter break could be a recruiting tool for players, basically “come here and spend the holidays with your family for the first time in your career.”
Yeah I just don’t get how the league thinks an American audience will keep attention to a league that just breaks like that. It’s almost like the league is admitting it really isn’t located in a place to play during those months and shouldn’t have its season calendar set to it…
Here is a guess for the starting lineup Cabral Quinton, Glad, Engel Gozo Sanabria Caliskan Dillon Hezarkhani Solans Guilavogui A little curious as to why Dillon might get the call over Moisa. I think that Luca is a better player but what do I know? I think you can expect Stijn to get some minutes at some point.