Offseason Guides: Sounders in pursuit of continuity while Charlotte & Minnesota need flexibility

I had some family stuff to take care of last week which is why there was no second newsletter, and now why we’re going to do three each in the next two sets of offseason guides.

Here are the post-mortems I’ve been working on for MLSsoccer:

• Western Conference dregs
• Eastern Conference dregs
• Wild Card losers
• Round 1 Sweeps
• Round 1 three-gamers
• Cincy & Philly crash out
• Loons & LAFC reach the end
• SDFC set a record and NYCFC set their path

Vancouver and Miami are coming this week. Also, I had some fun with this one:

• MLS Cup 2026: Top 5 way-early contenders

Ok, in we go:

Seattle Sounders

2025 finish: 5th in the East on 55 points. But really, the finish that moved the needle was winning the Leagues Cup.1 It was this club’s first title since 2022, and beating Messi in front of a full house… that sure seemed like a big moment.

Biggest question: What resources are they prepared to use on the central midfield?

This roster is so well-constructed – which is downstream, to be clear, of the overall club culture that has valued both the academy-to-first-team pipeline and the Tacoma-to-first-team pipeline – that they don’t really have to operate with the same sort of desperation we see from other MLS clubs. Even the good ones probably look at the Sounders with a good dose of envy, because Seattle are the team that has reliably turned guys like Jackson Ragen into Best XI-caliber CBs and guys like Osaze de Rosario into tournament match-winners.

So that means their biggest questions tend to come around succession planning. We know what that looks like up top and on the wings, and we know most of it at fullback and goalkeeper and center back.

But we’re not really too sure deeper in midfield. Joao Paulo is officially gone, and Danny Leyva will be soon, it seems. More crucially, the expectation is that Obed Vargas probably will be as well.2

That leaves Cristian Roldan (of course), his brother Alex as the break-in-case-of-emergency back-up, and young Snyder Brunell, the next homegrown riding the Leyva-Vargas pipeline.

They’ll have a couple of open U-22 slots and a good chunk of GAM, so they can do some stuff here. I’m just not sure what, exactly, that will be.

Top winter priority: So, uh, I kind of just covered it. Sorting out Vargas’s immediate future and understanding what that means for the rest of the roster build is the first thing they’ve got to do as basically everything else is already in place.

That’s true for however long Pedro de la Vega is sidelined, because they can just cycle through Jordan Morris, Jesús Ferreira, Paul Arriola and Georgi Minoungou on the wings. I’m expecting they’ll find a way to bring Paul Rothrock back as well.

Left back? They’ve got Reed Baker-Whiting behind Nouhou. Right back? They’ve got Kalani Kossa-Rienzi behind Alex Roldan. Forward? Morris, Musovski, De Rosario. Stuart Hawkins will play a bunch this year at center back. They’ve already made the decision to push Andrew Thomas into the starting job in goal, which means they either need to find a top backup or to talk Stefan Frei into becoming the top back-up, but that’s not exactly “top priority” stuff.

State of the roster: I’m sorry the Sounders are so boring to write about, but that’s what happens when you have such a robust player pipeline and a game model that puts literally everyone into positions to succeed.

The state of the roster is deep and really good. And if they suffer more injuries or absences, they will just keep bringing guys up from Tacoma and probably won’t miss a beat.

• 2026 TAM players: Ferreira, Yeimar, C. Roldan
• 2026 U-22 players: Baker-Whiting
• 2026 DPs: de la Vega, Morris, Rusnak

Where the XI stands now: I wrote in the MLSsoccer post-mortem that Minoungou should be a starter next year and I stand by that. Look at this shit:

Cutbacks are the second-most valuable type of pass in the game behind through-balls, and Minoungou creates them at a higher rate than anybody else in the league.

This would be a hard decision for head coach Brian Schmetzer, but hard decisions are good.

Note that I’m going to assume Obed gets sold this winter, but obviously if he’s back, he’s a starter and Brunell’s on the bench.

4-2-3-1

• GK: Thomas
• LB: Nouhou
• LCB: Ragen
• RCB: Yeimar
• RB: A. Roldan
• DM: C. Roldan
• CM: Brunell
• LW: Minoungou
• AM: Rusnak
• RW: Ferreira
• FW: Morris (Musovski???)

Things to know:

• Morris was really good but Musovski was just straight-up better last year. It’s pretty clear the two of them – and deRo – will platoon, though I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they got a godfather offer for Musovski. If that happens, then deRo would end up second on the No. 9 depth chart and I’d expect CSO Craig Waibel to sign a depth option from a the USL or Next Pro ranks.
• Cristian Roldan is obviously the irreplaceable man for this team, and is going to turn 31 in June. It’s time to start thinking, at least a little bit, about what comes next, even if that moment isn’t likely to come for real until 2029.
• I’m not reading too much into their defensive issues either at the start of the year or after winning the Leagues Cup. Maybe that’s me whistling past the graveyard but I’d put my money on them being a top five defensive team in 2026, and for the set piece issues to be near completely resolved.

AFC Charlotte City

2025 finish: 4th in the East on 59 points. A meaningful step forward, though I’m fairly worried that was a mirage.3

Biggest question: Can they evolve the game model into something more dynamic?

Up until about the middle of 2024 the Sounders were known as an ultra-defensive team that played well with a lead but just didn’t have the juice in possession to chase the game, or even to really push the game. They won by not losing.

That changed when Schmetzer adjusted the game model, pushing the right fullback higher and allowing either of the central midfielders to release forward into the attack basically at will. It didn’t take an overhaul or anything, simply a commitment to playing upfield with tempo in order to create overloads and to own the most valuable spots on the pitch.

That is the next step for Dean Smith and this Charlotte team. They have a good foundation, a great goalkeeper, a couple of dynamic attackers and veterans in midfield and at fullback who know how to play the game.

Let them off the leash a little bit! Get those fullbacks forward to draw numbers away from Wilfried Zaha and Pep Biel, and give Ashley Westwood and whoever’s partnering him license to get into the box off the ball.

I’m not saying they have to commit to it 100%. But we’ve seen, over the past two years, that their current game model has a very obvious ceiling. Regressive soccer doesn’t win in tournament play.

Top winter priority: Replace Adilson Malanda.

It’s pretty obvious that if you sell your starting center back for a record fee, you’re probably going to need to bring in a new center back.

Now, I am a very big Andrew Privett fan. I do think that he is a starting CB in this league. Potentially, even, a high-level one, as was the case in 2024. But I am not particularly convinced that he and Tim Ream are a great pairing, and Ream is very clearly the written-in-pen starter at left center back.

Simple fact is that if you sell a star CB for a record outbound fee, replacing that guy is probably going to be your top job.

State of the roster: Solid, but mostly pretty old. As it stands, six of their projected starters will be at least 30 at first kick, with most of that group solidly in their mid-30s. A seventh starter (Biel) will turn 30 in the summer, and outside of Idan Toklomati and (arguably) Kerwin Vargas, none of the younger guys4 have really moved the needle.

So yeah, they need to get younger. They pretty clearly ran out of gas late in the season after that miraculous, Kahlina-led nine-game winning streak. Subsequent to that they won just two of their final seven games across all competitions, and scored just once in their three playoff games.

The story of that final playoff game was Charlotte’s old guys getting left in the dust by younger, spryer NYCFC attackers. It’s a lesson both Smith and CSO Zoran Krneta has got to take to heart.

• 2026 TAM players: Kahlina, Ream, Toffolo, Westwood
• 2026 U-22 players: Coulibaly, Toklomati, Vargas
• 2026 DPs: Abada, Biel, Zaha

Where the XI stands now: It’s mostly built, and I think the idea is that the biggest upgrade will come not from the winter window, but from getting a healthy Biel back into the lineup with Toklomati and a fully integrated Zaha.

It’s a good plan. Maybe not a great one, but definitely good.

4-2-3-1

• GK: Kahlina
• LB: Toffolo
• CB: Ream
• CB: ???
• RB: Byrne
• DM: Westwood
• CM: Diani
• LW: Zaha
• AM: Biel
• RW: Vargas
• FW: Toklomati

Things to know:

• I’d be surprised if DP winger Liel Abada wasn’t bought out. Opening that slot up could give them some real flexibility (which I’d assume they’d keep until making a move in the summer window).
• I am 1000% convinced that if Charlotte were able to start generating Sounders-style endline pullbacks, Toklomati scores 20 goals.
• They’ve got a lot of GAM, which will be useful since they need to add some real depth along the backline.

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Minnesota United

2025 finish: 4th in the NFC Central. Yes, Wes, I am going to keep making this joke and so is everybody else.

Biggest question: Can they evolve the game model into something more dynamic?

Sorry for the copy+paste job but c’mon, I’ve been banging the drum about playing against the ball – how it limits MLS teams in the biggest games – for a long time now. Whether it’s the Union’s Energy Drink Soccer approach or Charlotte’s more traditional sit-and-counter approach, I just haven’t seen much evidence that in the modern version of MLS, “we’ll play against the ball” teams have the same kind of ceiling as “we’re going to play with the ball” teams.

And that brings us to the Loons.

• 39.3% possession (dead last)
• 37.2% field tilt (dead last)
• 78% passing accuracy (29th)
• 531.2 touches per game (dead last)

Believe it or not I had a lot of fun watching this team this season, and head coach Eric Ramsay is very obviously a brilliant set piece coach, one who was also smart enough to lean into his team’s advantage on long throws and set pieces. There was a point, early in the year, when the Loons were generating about an extra goal per game on restarts, more or less.

But that always felt unsustainable, and in the end it was:5 they won just once in their final seven games across all competitions, which included a brutal home loss in the US Open Cup semifinals, and then an eventual 1-0 playoff elimination at the hands of San Diego in the West semis.

Obviously there are attacking implications to this, but even bigger, in my opinion, are the late-game defensive implications. Here’s what that looks like: in regular-season play, Minnesota had a -2 goal differential from the 70th minute onwards, which was one of the worst marks among playoff teams.

In tournament play, they were eliminated from the USOC on a 120th-minute goal. They were then eliminated from the playoffs on a 72nd minute goal.

If they’re going to take another step forward next year into meaningful contention, they’ve got to figure out how to use the ball to kill games off.6

Top winter priority: Find their go-to No. 9.

When you develop players like Tani Oluwasyi, eventually you sell players like Tani Oluwasyi.

And look, it’s wild that that’s an issue given that Tani, a former mid-first round draft pick, wasn’t even supposed to be the starter. That was supposed to be DP Kelvin Yeboah. But Yeboah had an injury-plagued season, and even when he was healthy he got pretty soundly outplayed by Tani. And then when Tani was sold and the door opened for Yeboah to win his old job back… meh.7

They’ve got Mamadou Dieng, who like Tani was a USL-Championship goalscoring star, waiting in the wings, and Bongi Hlongwane can play up top a bit.

But I have a feeling that a trade or purchase is coming.

State of the roster: Well-built and deep. CSO Khaled El-Ahmad hasn’t hit on every signing he’s made, but he’s gotten more right than not, and Ramsay’s done well to get something out of the holdover veterans (Dayne St. Clair deserved his Goalkeeper of the Year win, and I voted Michael Boxall this year’s Defender of the Year, while I think Wil Trapp had the best season of his career) as well as a few of the down-roster guys.

It’s the premium roster slots that have been a little bit problematic. Joaquín Pereyra and Nicolás Romero have varied between excellent and anonymous, while Nectarios Triantis was really impressive – albeit in a smallish sample size.

So… we’ll see.

• 2026 TAM players: Boxall, Fitz, Gressel, Hlongwane, Lod(???),
• 2026 U-22 players: Gene, Romero, Triantis
• 2026 DPs: Pereyra, Yeboah

Where the XI stands now: Mostly complete, though I’m going to go ahead and assume they’re bringing in another DP No. 9. They can easily do that and shift to a 3 DP/3 U-22 roster model since they’re sitting on nearly $5 million worth of GAM.

5-4-1

• GK: St. Clair (???)
• LWB: Markanich
• LCB: Romero
• CB: Boxall
• RCB: Harvey
• RWB: Hlongwane
• DM: Trapp
• CM: Triantis
• AM: Lod
• AM: Pereyra
• FW: ???

Things to know:

• St. Clair is a free agent, but I’ve got to believe they’ll figure out a way to get the deal done and keep him home. Absolute disaster if they don’t. Same with Lod.

• Three guys they brought in mid-season – Julian Gressel, Dominik Fitz and Alexis Fariña – didn’t quite fit. I think Fitz will be back, but I do wonder about what the future will bring for the other two.

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And now for something of a PSA: my good friends at Kickback Soccer Media launched their World Cup platform last week, a really ambitious project aimed at prepping folks next year’s tournament. They’ve put together 10-20 minute podcast capsules on every participating country,8 which you can listen to now on all podcast platforms in their Kickback ‘26 feed.

They’ve also launched Bluesky, IG, and TikTok channels, original social series, a weekly newsletter, and live shows, all of which you can find through this link. It’s the perfect platform for both newer and more avid American soccer fans looking to follow the World Cup.

Give them a follow, and let a friend know about it too.