Offseason Guides: For RSL and Orlando, the abyss is staring back

Our twice-weekly cadence of the offseason guides continues with teams that made the postseason but not the playoffs. I have decided to be a stickler about that for no particular reason at all.

Here are the post-mortems for MLSsoccer:

• Western Conference dregs
• Eastern Conference dregs
• Wild Card losers
• Round 1 Sweeps
• Round 1 three-gamers

There will be more of those coming after the conference semifinals, previews for which can be found here:

• What will decide the Western Conference Semifinals?
• What will decide the Eastern Conference Semifinals?

Ok, in we go:

Real Salt Lake

2025 finish: 9th in the West on 41 points, sneaking into the Wild Card by virtue of the first tiebreaker (wins).

Biggest question: Is there a direction here?

I mean, in terms of points per game there is a direction: straight down. RSL dropped from a team-record1 59 points last year to just 41 this year. And this wasn’t a fluky thing where a season got derailed by a couple of injuries or a bad goalkeeper – quite the opposite in that regard; this was like a 35-point team without Rafa Cabral – or something of that nature.

No, it was a case of almost everyone regressing, or at least not improving much. I know that flies in the face of perception a bit in the case of Diego Luna, but his excellence in 2025 has mostly been reserved for the US men’s national team. For RSL he was… mostly ok. Some big moments, but very few dominant overall performances.

18-year-old winger (or forward? or second forward? I’m still not sure what his best position is) Zavier Gozo was something close to a revelation, at least, and I’m very much looking forward to watching him bloom (hopefully) in 2026. But the truth is that this team hasn’t been the same since Andrés Gómez was sold and Chicho Arango was exiled in the summer of 2024, and none of the solutions either head coach Pablo Mastroeni or the front office has tried since then have worked.

And worse, I’m not sure I see the theory behind the moves. Why spend so much on four separate center forwards (William Agada, Ariath Piol, Rwan Cruz, Victor Olatunji) in one calendar year? Why get older and more expensive at fullback? Why haven’t expensive imported attackers like Diogo Gonçalves and Dominik Marczuk settled at all?

I know I’m going on a bit here, but to me it feels like they’re just throwing stuff at the wall and hoping to hit on something rather than making targeted signings or promoting kids through the academy/Next Pro pipeline in a structured way, with a structured idea of how they fit into the first team.

Top winter priority: Get someone with that vision, I think?

Mastroeni’s proved to be a good MLS head coach over the years. He does the single most important thing any coach can do: get his team to fight. I’ve poked a lot of fun at his “Stats will lose to the human spirit every day of the week” take from almost a decade ago now, but it is, on its face, true. Give me a shitty gameplan executed at maximum effort over a perfect gameplan executed at half-speed, every day of the week.

But also, that’s a false binary. The best teams play with both maniacal conviction and gimlet-eyed, almost bloodless efficiency. You know your patterns of play, you know where the best chances on the pitch come from and how you want to get there, you know the structure you want to be in when you risk losing possession of the ball.

RSL, in 2025 had none of that. It was Luna, Cabral and inshallah.

State of the roster: Land of Misfit Toys, with very few guys I’d rate as even “above average” at their respective spots, let alone “very good-to-excellent.”

This despite having filled five of their six premium roster slots, and having a bunch of TAM guys under contract.

• 2026 TAM players: Glad, Ojeda, Olatunji, Ruiz, Vera, Yedlin

• 2026 U-22 players: Luna, Palacio2, Piol

• 2026 DPs: Cruz, Gonçalves

Where the XI stands now: A team that’s used multiple high-end roster slots (DP, U-22 and TAM) on center forwards should probably play a 4-4-2 or 3-5-2, right?

Right, but none of those guys looked great, and it probably still makes sense to play in the 4-2-3-1 that they had so much success with in the first half of 2024.

Truth is, though, I have no idea which way this whole thing is heading.

4-2-3-1:

• GK: Cabral
• LB: Katranis
• CB: Vera
• CB: Glad
• RB: Yedlin
• DM: Eneli
• CM: Ojeda
• LW: Luna
• AM: Gonçalves
• RW: Gozo
• FW: Cruz???

Things to know:

• You could flip Luna and Gonçalves3 in that lineup. I don’t think it matters much.

• I don’t expect Luna to be sold until after the World Cup.

• I’ve said repeatedly over the past month that the Crew should find a number for Emeka Eneli that works for both them and RSL. It would make a ton of sense for both teams, especially if he’s not a starter in Utah anymore.

• Cruz’s loan option expires at the end of June, so honestly… it feels like this whole thing is getting blown up mid-summer of next year. I’d wager that “retooling” is the RSL Word of 2026 when, in reality, they’re going to need to tear down and rebuild the whole thing.

Orlando City

2025 finish: 9th in the East. So five spots lower than last year, but with one more point and MUCH better underlying numbers. Weird season!

Biggest question: Can they get off Luis Muriel’s albatross of a deal and open up a DP slot?

There are other big things that the Lions will have to deal with – an heir to Pedro Gallese4 in goal, how to replace Cesar Araujo at d-mid (the return of Wilder Cartagena should help with that, but they absolutely can not count on him to play 3000+ minutes next year), and whether they can upgrade at left wing.

They’ve also potentially got to think about how they want to replace Alex Freeman, who I assume will be sold this winter – and what that means for the game model. Remember, Orlando really only came alive once Pareja changed the way his traditional 4-2-3-1 operates by shifting it right and giving Freeman free rein to get forward. That’s not as devastating when it’s Dagur Dan Thórhallsson pushing forward.

But still, to me, this team’s ceiling was raised and subsequently lowered by the play of Muriel. When he got on a hot streak, they were awesome: capable of beating anyone in the league, and making that beating hurt.

When he went cold they were dogwater. And for most of his two years in MLS, he’s been cold as hell.5

He’ll be 35 in April, and this is the final year of his contract. He’s not going to be better than he was in 2025; he’ll probably be worse.

They’ve got to get out of that deal, open up a DP slot and go HAM.

Top winter priority: Make better use of their premium roster slots.

He’ll be 35 in April, and this is the final year of his contract. He’s not going to be better than he was in 2025. Hell, he’ll probably be worse.

They’ve got to get out of that deal, open up a DP slot and go HAM.6

Fact is that even without Freeman and Araujo, and even with the irreplaceable Robin Jansson entering his golden years, I really like a lot of what this roster has to offer: Martin Ojeda and Marco Pašalić are really good; everyone knows I love Eduard Atuesta; and guys like Tyrese Spicer and Duncan McGuire are good depth pieces.

But they got nothing from their U-22 slots this past year, and not enough from Muriel.

What does this team look like with, say, another high-level match-winner in the attack, and a good, athletic young CB next to Jansson7?

State of the roster: It’s in some flux, obviously, but also in better shape than most. A mid-50s points season with good underlyings doesn’t just happen; there are good players here, even if some can (should) be upgraded.

They’ve also clipped a fair number of expensive TAM deals from the books. They should have room to improve.

• 2026 TAM players: Angulo, Atuesta, Brekalo, McGuire
• 2026 U-22 players: Rodriguez
• 2026 DPs: Muriel, Ojeda, Pašalić

Where the XI stands now: A few very obvious holes to fill, a few fairly obvious upgrades they can make as well.

But there are a number of foundational, high-level players here. They certainly can’t stand still this winter and expect to get better, but they’re not completely out to sea, either.

4-2-3-1:

• GK: ???
• LB: Marín
• CB: Jansson
• CB: Brekalo
• RB: ???
• DM: ???
• CM: Atuesta
• LW: ???
• AM: Ojeda
• RW: Pašalić
• FW: ???

Things to know:

• I am hoping that Pareja sees the success he had with Freeman and starts remembering he can be more aggressive pushing academy and Next Pro players into major first-team roles. I’m honestly shocked we haven’t seen more of that during his tenure.
• While they haven’t been great at promoting academy players, they’ve crushed it in the draft over the years. And guess what? They’ve got two very high picks this year, as they own both the Galaxy and Dynamo first-rounders, each of which are in the top 10, while their own falls in the middle of the first round.
• You can probably tell from my tone here that I’m weirdly more optimistic about this team heading into the offseason than I think many – including many in their fanbase – are. We’ll see if that optimism survives the winter.

Thanks for reading ARMCHAIR ANALYST: TACTICS FREE ZONE! This post is public so feel free to share it.

I had the great pleasuring of filling in for Alexis on the Cooligans in the aftermath of the USMNT’s dismantling of Uruguay on Tuesday night.

Christian is a man of honor and made an appropriate, heartfelt apology to Alex Freeman. Not to Josh Sargent, though.

Give it a watch, and of course please give those guys a follow across all the various social media platforms!