Power Rankings, 1-30 | Matchday 37
Philly have full control of the Shield race, but the West is wide open
We’re getting down to the bitter end, which means it’s time to really think about the Supporters’ Shield race, the playoff races, and what 2025 meant as a season overall. Here’s the Sunday column:
• Philly extend Shield lead, FC Cincinnati miss out & more from Matchday 37
One programming note: I am, entirely out of the blue, back on the individual match previews (most of them, anyway) on Season Pass with Wiebe. We’re talking 3-5 minutes per match, just digging in real quick on the storylines and what we’d expect to see from a tactical point of view.
So if you’re still trying to scratch that old Extratime itch, there you go.
Philadelphia Union: 7-6-3, +1 GD against teams currently above the playoff line, and 12-1-3, +22 against the scrubs. They finish up with third-place NYCFC1 at home on Saturday, then at Charlotte. So while it feels done… not yet?
LAFC: Nobody’s playing better. It’s not just Son + Bouanga, either – the other mid-season additions have contributed a decent amount, too.2
Inter Miami: Their next three are at home before finishing up at Nashville on Decision Day. If Philly slip up I would not be all that shocked if Messi & Friends rampaged to a second straight Shield.
Vancouver Whitecaps: As I wrote in the Sunday column it’s just a damn shame about all the injuries. They’ve been so good and so resilient all year long, and will go down as one of my 10 favorite MLS sides – ever – no matter how the season ends.
NYCFC: Showed a good mentality in bouncing back from that 4-0 hammering they took midweek.
FC Cincinnati: A very talented team, but not a very good one.3
San Diego FC: I (justifiably, I think) criticized him for letting Milan Iloski walk, but Tyler Heaps has been close to perfect otherwise, and I’d bet on San Diego being even better next year. Just to be clear.
Nashville SC: A much-needed win ahead of Wednesday’s trip to Austin for the biggest game in either club’s history.
Orlando City: A very good team whose ceiling is determined by the most mercurial No. 9 in the league.4
Seattle Sounders: They look spent, and are dropping like flies. Maybe with Morris, Rusnak and de la Vega all finally getting healthy at the same time they have one last act in them this season, but I doubt it.
TSG Charlotte: I know it’ll annoy some people if I state my opinion is that this is the same team it was before the nine-game winning streak.5 But here we are.
Minnesota United: Sure looks like the air went out of them with that US Open Cup semis loss. The good news: their final two games are home vs. Sporting KC and at the Galaxy. Couldn’t ask for a much softer landing.
Chicago Fire: Juuust about wrapped up their first playoff appearance since 2017, and now have a very good chance of hosting the Wild Card matchup with the Crew. Gregg Berhalter’s done a very good job.
FC Dallas: Honestly could have had all three points in Portland. Just one loss in almost three months and six points there for the taking in their next two against the Galaxy. I’m officially expecting Dallas to push into the playoffs.6
Austin FC: Giving them a mulligan for the squad rotation ahead of Wednesday.
Portland Timbers: Three wins in three months. The body language does not look good. A win at Seattle on Saturday, though, and suddenly everything’s ok.
RBNY: There were so many years over the past decade when RBNY were a sniper like Choupo-Moting away from being Cup contenders. They finally add him and the rest of the roster falls apart. And so just like that, a 15-year postseason streak goes into the bin.
Columbus Crew: Stealing a comment I saw on r/MLS: “I just asked ChatGPT to list the occupations with the highest injury rates in the US:
3: roofers 2: loggers 1: starters for the Columbus Crew”
Real Salt Lake: Biggest Rocky Mountain Cup in a while this weekend. It is a must-win.
San Jose Earthquakes: That’s the version of Daniel they’ve needed this year. They get it two more times and they’ve got a shot to sneak into the playoffs.
Colorado Rapids: Actually played decent but might’ve needed three points. The remaining schedule – at RSL, then hosting LAFC on Decision Day – is brutal.
Toronto FC: Lots of draws with the season cashed speaks well of the team’s fight. I’d have been happier with the overall showing if Jules-Anthony Vilsaint got the start up top, though.7
Houston Dynamo: Two wins in three months. No real hope of climbing into the playoffs – the chances have got to be less than 5% at this point.8 A few very significant expiring deals to think about this winter.
New England Revolution: 18-year-old CM Allan Oyirwoth has started getting minutes in recent weeks, which is good – he’s been better than Alhasan Yusuf. Interim head coach Pablo Moreira has done well there, and done well to keep the 3-4-1-2 in place while cycling through his cadre of available forward options. The best news on that front is that U22 signing Dor Turgeman made his debut this weekend and made a splash with 1g/1a9 in about half an hour. So there’s starting to be a little reason for optimism heading into next year (even as their SuperDraft position gets worse).
St. Louis City: I have some sympathy for Conrad Wallem, who’s mostly been pretty good this year but whose scuffed back-pass gifted LAFC a 1-0 lead they were never going to relinquish. He’s a guy who, I think, should be part of whatever the next era is for City.
I’m not sure how many other of the other players on the field with him on Saturday can say the same. Marcel Hartel certainly, and Eduard Löwen probably. And then a few of the kids – Brenden McSorley, Fallou Fall and Mykhi Joyner all got minutes.
But it really feels like this is going to be a multi-window teardown and rebuild, especially since there’s a ton of long-term deals on the books. It’s going to take time.Montreal Impact: Dante Sealy: very good! Prince Owusu: very good! Iván Jaime: starting to get a bit of data that suggest he is, in fact, very good!
Lots of work to come, obviously, but this hasn’t been an entirely wasted season.LA Galaxy: I’ve spent a lot of time crushing Greg Vanney for ignoring internal development over the years, so I’m now here to praise the job he’s done over the past six weeks since the season basically ended.
Mauricio Cuevas, Chris Rindov, Harbor Miller and Elijah Wynder have all been playing much more since mid-August and all are unambiguous developmental wins (many of them clearly better than the veterans they’re displacing). Cuevas and Rindov in particular look like potential starters heading into next season.
Winning on the margin like that is how you keep the floor high enough to avoid on-field catastrophes like the first half of this season, and roster build catastrophes like spending any sort of money on the Zankas of the world.Atlanta United: “We get to 20 crosses today, but we need to create more.” That’s a quote from Ronny Deila, and man… I know I promised I’d write more about the teams I mostly skipped in the Sunday wrap, but I don’t really want to when it comes to the Five Stripes. Too depressing.
Sporting KC: Unlike St. Louis, Sporting’s got a ton of money coming off the books this winter, which means a lot of guys are auditioning for jobs. It’s mostly, uh, not going so great. Which… I mean, all data is good to have if you know how to parse it correctly.
I will say I’m maybe more worried about the CSO hunt than I am about the roster build. I have heard some of the folks they’re considering and a few of them would be, I think, good hires. A few of the others would be… not that. In fact, so “not that” that it concerns me that they weren’t automatically excised from the list in the first place.D.C. United: Of course, when it comes to the process for hiring a new CSO, D.C. just set the new standard. My official prediction is that their next five years will somehow be worse than the past five, and I’ve yet to come across a D.C. fan who thinks that’s unreasonable.
Philly have just one win all year against teams in the fop four of either conference at the time of the meeting. It’d be a very nice time for them to make that two. ↩
The key to all of it is Nkosi Tafari suddenly playing like it’s 2022 again. This dude is so gifted. ↩
I wrote my theory on this at length in Sunday’s column. ↩
Also… man I bet they wish that Duncan McGuire fax went through. Dude hasn’t been the same since his injury issues began. ↩
During the winning streak they got on the right side of some lucky breaks and had a hot ‘keeper. Over the past two games it’s been the opposite. ↩
I could not be more thrilled that this push has come in conjunction with Dallas sort of rediscovering their “hey, let’s develop some players!” principles. ↩
Derrick Etienne, Jr. has zero goals this year and is almost certainly gone after the season. Vilsaint has looked useful in limited minutes, is younger, on a good salary numbers and is likely to be around.
I don’t understand the personnel choices being made. ↩It is not all Jonathan Bond’s fault, but he was a bottom-five ‘keeper in the league in his last go-round, and he’s been a bottom-two ‘keeper this go-round, and I can not, for the life of me, understand why they signed him and gave him all the minutes since mid-April.
Self-sabotage. ↩
Both came in transition, which is obviously where most good forwards eat. The real test for Turgeman’s upside will come when New England are playing more often in possession against actually good teams – it’s obviously much more difficult to be goal-dangerous in those situations.
But still, couldn’t ask for much more from a debut. ↩
