The stretch run of the MLS regular season is precariously placed in the league’s calendar. The final eight to 10 matchweeks land a month later than the season’s first 25-or-so matches, leaving little momentum to help size up the standings. Leagues Cup, a high-octane tournament that has no bearing on the overall table, happened just before, acting as a mid-summer tune-up.
What should be one of the most enthralling stretches for nearly all 29 teams is reduced to a waiting room atmosphere with the MLS Cup Playoffs on the other side.
Still, there are very real stakes as we head into the final month for 11 of the league’s combatants. Only one team (San Jose) is already eliminated, but the competition for playoff places feels a bit less up-for-grabs in the West than usual. Rather than projecting the final standings, here is a four-pack of intriguing prospects at the business end of 2024.
The Galaxy’s Rise and LAFC’s Continued Dominance
At this stage, all LA Galaxy has to do to win the Western Conference regular season crown is stick the landing. They earned that luxury in a 4-2 statement win over Los Angeles FC on Saturday.
After a decade in the wilderness, the longtime MLS banner club is back among the contenders. With midfielder Riqui Puig at its heart, its meticulously reconstructed roster is full of stars and more balanced than any LA squad since the heyday of Landon Donovan and Robbie Keane.
Despite this, it still feels as though The Galaxy is estimated to be in the second tier of MLS Cup contenders, fairly or not.
The Eastern hierarchy is set, with Inter Miami alongside FC Cincinati and Columbus Crew, who claimed the league’s two main trophies in 2023. Out West, every good thing the Galaxy has done remains overshadowed by its rival. After Joseph Paintsil and Gabriel Pec were early-season darlings, LAFC signed Olivier Giroud. In the days following the Galaxy’s signing of Marco Reus, LAFC enjoyed a run to the Leagues Cup final before clinching a place in the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup final.
This isn’t just a case of recency bias. As the Galaxy struggled to acclimate to modern MLS, LAFC became the conference’s power. Even if they ward off their noisy neighbors to win the regular season table, they project to be an underdog if the two clash in the MLS Cup Playoffs.
Maybe being slept on will rekindle the momentum that led to their first MLS Cup win in 2002 and the Beckham-era breakthrough in 2011. But again, it’s a different MLS than either of those teams competed in and the Galaxy has adapted to current customs. Rather than relying on one star, this roster is built with balance.
The team is designed to thrive when forced to possess the ball, a necessary trick to master when LAFC and others still feast on transition moments. Puig can more comfortably chase the game to get onto the ball early, often knowing Reus is lurking near the final third to do the rest. If an opponent is too fixated on the two European midfielders, Paintsil and Pec will make them pay on the flanks. Either way, striker Dejan Jovelic has enjoyed life without Chicharito poaching minutes and leads the team with 14 goals.
That versatility and ability to be dangerous despite scarce transition moments gives the Galaxy a slightly higher upside as we near the postseason. Rather than relying too much on Denis Bouanga’s runaway train routine, the Galaxy has had much of its core together all year and has worked out how to break down a low block.
Charlotte’s Search for a Game-Breaker
While the Western Conference has devolved into a Battle for Los Angeles homage, the East skews more top-heavy. Nearly everyone will be shocked if the conference’s entry into the MLS Cup doesn’t come from Ohio or South Beach. Still, it takes four teams to kick off a conference semifinal and someone has to earn that right.
So why not Dean Smith’s upstart Charlotte FC?
The third-year franchise underwent a considerable overhaul this winter, bringing in the former Aston Villa and Norwich City boss and bolstering his squad. Record signing Liel Abada has struggled for consistency since leaving Celtic for North Carolina, but his performance in a 3-1 win over FC Cincinnati back in July reinforced the high-end upside in his locker. Kristijan Kahlina is playing like a favorite for goalkeeper of the year, 22-year-old Adilson Malanda is a defensive bedrock, and there’s dependable chance creation thanks to Ashley Westwood and Kerwin Vargas.
Unfortunately, the post-Leagues Cup restart has shown some limitations of this squad in its current state. Smith’s side is the least proactive pressing team in MLS, with 16.4 passes allowed per defensive action (PPDA). That’s well below the league average of 13.2. Abada’s inconsistency has robbed the team of a true game-breaker like Cucho Hernandez, Luciano Acosta, or (don’t say Messi, don’t say Messi) Ryan Gauld.
That luxury piece is vital in today’s MLS, a clear delineator between haves and have-nots and helps explain why a good Charlotte side often struggles to turn competitiveness into points.
On the one hand, only two teams are trailing more often this season than Charlotte: the 2023 MLS Cup winner Crew and the 2023 U.S. Open Cup winner Houston Dynamo. Conversely, only eight teams in MLS spend less time in a winning position than Smith’s. So while it isn’t inherently bad that no team is tied more often, the balance between leading and trailing makes them more like a mid-table side than a contender.
If there’s a comparison to be found, it’s roughly 400 miles west along I-40. Nashville SC is dreaming of brighter days under new coach B.J. Callaghan, who was hired midseason after Gary Smith’s dismissal. The fact Smith never failed to guide his team to the playoffs wasn’t enough to avoid the sack as results stagnated, mostly because it felt like he operated with a high floor and a low ceiling — a reality that often comes with a mid-to-low defensive block and a deficit in the possession battle.
The trick that got Nashville into consecutive conference semifinals was a genuine game-breaker. Hany Mukhtar became a modern MLS great thanks to Smith’s trust, but a lack of support in the final third capped the team’s overall potential. Without a player like that, it’s hard to flip a result in a blink — and you’re prone to bad stretches, like the one that led to Smith’s dismissal or Charlotte’s current one-win-in-eight run.
The good news for Charlotte is the team is well aware of this missing piece. Charlotte was aggressive in the market — targeting Miguel Almiron, Calvin Stengs and Giovani Lo Celso — but came up short as the window slammed shut.
In 2025, the East could be more open as Miami continues to age, Columbus tries to keep the band together and Cincinnati tries not to go full Philadelphia 2.0 (more on them later). For now, Smith has laid a bedrock upon which a contender can be built. We’ll see what kind of furniture he has to work with on the other side of the winter window.
The Union’s Unexpected Slide
While the nature of the MLS schedule makes every team’s season feel sporadic, Minnesota United has had three distinct phases in its first season post-Adrian Heath.
In the opening months, interim coach Cam Knowles did exceptional work in tough circumstances, gracefully handing the reins to Eric Ramsay to continue the good times. Once June rolled around, the bottom fell out. Injuries and international tournaments exposed how thin the squad was, kicking off a nine-match winless run that only ended against lowly San Jose. The Loons have won both games in September and three of four counting that pre-Leagues Cup triumph over the Earthquakes.
In short, they spent a few months as a top-four threat, two as a bottom-feeder, and now look like any one of a dozen or so MLS sides: capable on their day, but too flawed to contend at the top end. That’s a great place to be during the first season under a young coach who didn’t have a preseason of preparations. Minnesota enters Wednesday’s slate sitting 9th in the West, nursing a five-point cushion for the last playoff place with six games to go.
Stylistically, Minnesota’s attack is modern and coherent. They prefer to operate on the break rather than dominating possession. They have downhill runners who can be decisive in transition, from playmaking technician Robin Lod to scoring threat Bongokuhle Hlongwane. This summer saw sporting director Khaled El-Ahmad bolster the forward-thinking options, using the team’s two open designated player slots on striker Kelvin Yeboah and midfielder Joaquín Pereyra.
What the club didn’t do, for an eighth consecutive window, is address the obvious need in defensive midfield that’s been present since Osvaldo Alonso’s legs gave out in 2021. Their forward line is still fine at pressing, with a near-average PPDA, but the lack of midfield steel has left the back line overexposed and goalkeeper Dayne St. Clair overworked.
The standings are bound to change between now and Decision Day, but a return to the playoffs would mark a clear success in Ramsay and El-Ahmad’s first season. Like Charlotte, it’ll be fascinating to track their roster curation this winter.
Eight teams have an expected goal difference per game of at least 0.3 — a noticeable advantage. Three are widely regarded as MLS Cup contenders: LAFC, Columbus and Cincinnati. Another four are sized up as being pretty good but with flaws keeping them from heavyweight status: New York Red Bulls, Real Salt Lake, the Colorado Rapids, and Seattle Sounders.
The mysterious eighth team entered the season with title-winning aspirations. In a matter of weeks, they were relegated to the secondary tier of almost-there teams. With six games remaining, that team — the Philadelphia Union — is in danger of missing the postseason for the first time since 2017.
Every great team suffers a decline at some stage and Philadelphia’s original core has been picked off and rebuilt in real time. Head coach Jim Curtin, sporting director Ernst Tanner and the entire sporting staff have done a remarkable job to keep the Union in contention for so long despite the league’s rules and constraints, but the results just haven’t matched the underlying numbers.
There are a few obvious explanations. Three-time goalkeeper of the year Andre Blake has played just 26% of the team’s regular season due to a few injuries. When Blake starts, the Union are 4-2-3 — with 1.55 points per game that would rank 4th in the East. Without him, they’re 3-7-9, a 0.84 pace that is worse than every MLS team but San Jose. Six of those nine defeats were decided by one goal.
Another crucial factor has been their inability to close out results. Only St. Louis City has dropped more points from leading positions than Philadelphia, with 22 points slipping from their grasp. Having led in 15 games, that’s a rate of 1.56 points dropped per lead.
Of the seven teams dropping more than one point per lead, only D.C. United is in a playoff place — and even they are clinging by the narrowest of margins. What separates Troy Lesesne’s United from the Union is the inverse ability to reclaim points from trailing positions. D.C. has stolen 16 points from trailing positions, while Philadelphia has salvaged just nine. The Union trails United for the final playoff spot by a narrow 0.07 point per game margin.
So often, we assume that great and borderline dynastic teams crumble dramatically: a key player or coach leaving town or a truly heartbreaking defeat. In hindsight, perhaps MLS Cup 2022 was that back-breaker for Philadelphia. Or, maybe, it’s more underwhelming: a team in another relative retooling phase that’s susceptible to bad bounces.
(Top photo: Kyle Ross, Kelvin Kuo/Imagn Images)
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Jeff Rueter is a staff writer for The Athletic who covers soccer in North America, Europe, and beyond. No matter how often he hears the Number 10 role is “dying,” he’ll always leave a light on for the next great playmaker. Follow Jeff on Twitter @jeffrueter
