Happy New Year! Here's a look at what's in the immediate future

First off, thanks to everyone who commented on my previous newsletter, the one commemorating a year of this thing existing. You’re all very nice, and I greatly appreciate each and every one of you.1

In between that blog and this one I wrote a couple of columns for MLSsoccer, putting a bow on the 2025 season. In case you missed them, here you go:

• Western Conference: Grading every team’s 2025 season
• Eastern Conference: Grading every team’s 2025 season

As expected there were a few questions about the grades, and I got into it a little bit on BlueSky. I think this ended up being a constructive discussion, and is useful context for literally every team, not just the Sounders:

I should probably have laid out that rubric at the start of each column. Oh well!

Anyway, believe it or not we’re just 10 days away from (some) teams2 reporting for preseason, which means I’m ramping up my suite of preseason coverage. I’ll have a column on big, global targets, as well as a more comprehensive transfer guide in the coming weeks. And then much more to come after that as we close in on First Kick for season No. 31.

I’m writing this just after Tom broke the news that Riqui Puig might miss all of 2026 because he needs surgery on the same knee in which he tore his ACL back in the 2024 Western Conference final.

I have two reactions to this:

1. This just sucks. Riqui’s the type of player every neutral likes, a modern-day Valderrama3 who sees passes no one else does and makes the game beautiful because of it. If he’s healthy, the Galaxy are a top 5 MLS viewing experience. If not, they’re mid-table at best. I really, really hope the doctors go in there for the procedure and find that it’s not as severe as they’d feared.

2. The Galaxy, between their offseason upgrades and Riqui’s imminent return, were an easy bet to get back to 60+ points and legitimate contention. Now it looks like CSO Will Kuntz is going to have to do some serious scrambling.

Note that if the Galaxy place Riqui on the season-ending injury list, they’ll be able to use a DP slot for his replacement. Again: Placing him on that list automatically opens a DP slot.

But “season-ending” means “season-ending” – there’s no shades of gray in this one. Hang that tag on Riqui, and it’s a guarantee we don’t see one of the league’s most exciting players again until 2027.

So yeah, it’s January 2 and we’ve already reached the first huge pivot point of the 2026 season. MLS doesn’t quit.