Guess what? Preseason starts in less than a week! Concacaf Champions Cup play begins in a little bit more than a month! And a week after that – about six weeks from now – the 30th MLS season will get underway.
Hope you enjoyed that very brief off-season. Now, let’s shake off the winter cobwebs and talk about who I think we’ll be talking about for the next 11 months.
These are the guys who I expect, to one degree or another, to define the 2025 MLS season. In we go:
Denkey is, as of now, the record MLS signing, at a reported $16.2 million. The Togolese center forward’s FBRef chart shows why:
Look at all that green. So, so pretty.
Understand that Denkey put up those numbers consistently – as in, each of the last three years in both domestic and continental play – for a Cercle Brugge side that was hardly a juggernaut. If the man wanted to eat, he had to work, and as that “progressive passes received” number indicates, he worked.
I think Denkey will be good whether Lucho Acosta is happy or not. More to the point, I suspect playing with a 9 who’ll make the unselfish runs that Aaron Boupendza wouldn’t stands to smooth out some of the choppy emotional waters Lucho’s sailed into this offseason.
Another point I want to make here: If Denkey put up these numbers at age 20 or 21 in Belgium, he’d be off to England or Germany. But because he didn’t break out until his age-22 season and has now just turned 24 – which, as per the new big-five leagues' orthodoxy, is now officially over the hill – Cincy found an open lane for what could be a decade-altering purchase.
If Denkey hits, look for more MLS teams to shop for guys in his age range in the Low Countries.
At one point last summer I’d suspected it would be Weston McKennie. The Juventus and USMNT midfielder has, by all accounts, a great relationship with new Fire boss Gregg Berhalter, and is such an obvious fit for what this Chicago team needs. I would also argue Chicago – which would put the ball on McKennie’s foot about 100 times a game and ask him to pull all the strings – fits what McKennie needs for the next step in his career.
That’s not to diminish his role with Juve, where he’s become sort of the ultimate utility man/glue guy. But he’s not running the show there (he’s in the 23rd percentile among midfielders for passes attempted) and never will. Here are the positions he’s played across his past five Serie A matches:
Just as Clint Dempsey’s most productive years for the USMNT came after he moved back to MLS and played a more central role for his club – which then translated for his country – I reckon the same could happen with Wes. Alas, he’s probably proved himself too valuable as the jack-of-all-trades in Turin to become the master of one in Chicago.
Anyway, the Fire have two open DP slots, an ambitious new sporting structure, and an owner who has never been shy about spending. Whoever they go big on this winter will have the spotlight on him at all times.
Or maybe $25 million, even? Though I wouldn’t be shocked if the Five Stripes actually spent a little less on their big splashes this winter than we’re all expecting – not pinching pennies, mind you, but not necessarily blowing the Denkey number out of the water. New CSO/sporting director Chris Henderson has always been able to spot a bargain, and if you think you can get the same production out of a $12 million signing that you could out of a potential $25 million signing, well, getting the $12 million guy makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?
Regardless, it all feels like it’s on the table for this team, and the fanbase is as jacked as it’s been in five years. Whether it’s a $12 million signing or $20 million or more, they’re bringing in someone to be a star. And we’ll all be paying attention.
Yeah, you probably guessed that I would get around to the reigning Landon Donovan MLS MVP at some point, didn’t you? Wherever Messi goes, everybody watches. It’s been like that for 20 years, and it’ll be even more like that this year because this one could very well be his last. We’ve got a finite amount of time to watch the greatest soccer player of all time ply his trade, and I won't take it for granted.
Nor will I gloss over his, ahem, defensive shortcomings:
To be clear, it is always worth having Messi out there. But the structure around him was weirdly loose and lacking throughout huge chunks of last season, and new head coach Javier Mascherano’s got work to do to improve that.
One other note: since the Concacaf Champions Cup (née League) changed to the single calendar year format back in 2018, no team that’s competed in that tournament has won MLS Cup in the same year.
Miami open their CCC campaign on Feb. 18 with a trip to Sporting KC.
The Colombian center back became a full-time starter with four games to go in the 2024 regular season. Upon his insertion into the XI, the Galaxy’s non-penalty xG allowed dropped from 1.46 per 90, which was 21st in the league (i.e., pretty bad!), to just 1.05, a number which held firm across those final four regular-season games and all five Audi MLS Cup Playoffs games, at the end of which the Galaxy hoisted their sixth MLS Cup title.
That 1.05 would be a top-five mark throughout an entire season. Garcés won the job and they became a championship-caliber defense. Sometimes the simple explanation is the right one.
Garcés does have his weaknesses back there, most notably in the air. It’s not that he’s bad once he’s up there, it’s that he’s got this weird lack of awareness when defending crosses. As such, his defensive profile in the box looks more like a fullback’s than a center back’s in a few measurable ways. That almost led to an improbable Noah Eile equalizer in the 33rd minute of MLS Cup 2024 presented by Audi.
Still, I can’t remember another time when a simple personnel adjustment along the backline so dramatically changed a team’s fortunes. Garcés will have immediate Defender of the Year juice heading into 2025 for the reigning Cup champs and the spotlight that comes with it.
This dude’s been on the way for the past three years, and the only question is whether he arrives in the winter window or once the summer window opens in July.
Given Atlético Madrid's place in the standings (two points back of Real Madrid, with a game in hand), and how Griezmann remains one of the best players in the world even as he hits his mid-30s, my hunch is we won’t see him until summer.
- LAFC have plenty of firepower to wait that long.
- My hunch is that Griezmann joining in the summer window will be more “Nico Lodeiro, 2016” or “Hristo Stoichkov, 2000” than “Olivier Giroud, 2024” in terms of results and productivity.
I was never a big “Roldan as a 6” guy. I honestly thought his best MLS season was 2021, when he played as a sort of pressing 10 in a 3-4-1-2 with Lodeiro hurt for most of the season. He then shifted to the wing for 2022, where all he did was lead the CCL in assists as the Sounders became the only MLS team in the tournament’s modern history to win that trophy.
Roldan’s strength was always his ability to defend from the front and be super dynamic in changing phases of play, which 1) got his team onto the front foot real quick, and 2) compensated for his lack of end product. He was, I thought, never really an orchestrator, or a natural backline shield.
But João Paulo got hurt in Seattle’s final match last August, so with plenty of options on the wing and things thin in midfield, Brian Schmetzer moved Roldan back to d-mid. And man… I don’t have enough superlatives. It was genuinely the best run of games from any d-mid I saw in MLS last year.
It’s tough to boil a No. 6’s performance down to numbers, but I’ll try: once Roldan got into the lineup at d-mid, Seattle’s number of passes per possession rose, which means they controlled the ball more. At the same time, their possessions lost in their own defensive third dropped – i.e., they became harder to press – while their box entries skyrocketed, which means they controlled the ball more and turned that into more penetration. And along with that penetration, their xG per passing sequence also rose, which means that penetration was turning into danger more often.
This, of course, was in conjunction with Roldan getting on the ball more and dictating play with his passing (so much better than I’d remembered it!) and his ability to read the game, step out of his zone and win the ball in advantageous spots.
The truth is, even if he plays that well again, people won’t be talking that much about him. Obed Vargas’s story – and looming eight-figure deal somewhere – is too compelling, as is the reported acquisition of Jesús Ferreira, as is the production of Jordan Morris, as is the development of Pedro de la Vega, etc.
But Roldan’s the one who’s going to make the game for this team. He was awesome last year.
Two summers ago, Coco won the Golden Ball as the best player at the Concacaf Gold Cup. He led Panama past the USMNT and into the final, where they ultimately fell to Mexico.
It was deserved. Coco was awesome running the show as a pure No. 8 in central midfield, getting on the ball as often as possible and using that inimitable footwork to create time and space where there should’ve been none.
The Dynamo haven’t used him that way the past couple of years, as that No. 8 slot has mostly been reserved for Héctor Herrera. But HH is gone now, and my guess is it’ll be Coco – who, at age 26, is at his absolute prime – moved inside to replace him. “Get your best players in their best spots and let them dictate the game” is a good rule of thumb for building a team, and there’s no doubt who Houston’s best player is. Nor is there any doubt about what his best spot is, no matter how good he’s looked in that false winger role the past couple of seasons.
I hope we get a full year of the 2023 Gold Cup version of Coco for the Dynamo. There aren’t three more entertaining players in the league.
Calling this guy a forward does him a disservice:
At his best, there is exactly one player in MLS who’s better than him. And that guy also happens to be better than anyone who’s ever played the game, so… yeah.
I had to take a flier on a prospect, so let’s go with the most obvious one there is. Sullivan didn’t exactly dominate MLS NEXT Pro last year, but he was a net positive overall as a 14-year-old, especially with his dribbling and passing. He then didn’t look out of place in his few cameos with the first team over the second half of the season. He’s got a flair on the ball that’s unusual for domestic products, and a playmaker’s instincts that are downright rare.
If Cavan becomes the same level of athlete as his older brother Quinn – a good athlete, but not a world-beater – he will play in MLS until the day he turns 18, then jump on a plane for Manchester. That’s how high his skill level and IQ are.
Watching how he develops, both as an athlete and a soccer player, is going to preoccupy a lot of folks on both sides of the Atlantic for the next few years. And it won’t just be Union fans on this side of the pond – folks who identify first and foremost as USMNT fans (and who are no doubt seething about that McKennie blurb above) will be watching with real, borderline pathological interest as well. Is there a chance he plays himself into the frame for the 2026 World Cup?
It’s remote, but it’s there. And if he manages it, we’ll all be paying attention.
