Sporting on a record pace (derogatory), Gil still running the Revs & more | Matchday 8
Nashville are a machine, Montréal get their new-coach bump, Cincy find some cohesion and there's a CSO having trouble counting stars...
I've spent most of this year writing about the best teams in the league from last year. That's on purpose – most of the teams that were good last season are good again this season, and 1) for the ones that are, the consistency is admirable, and that's fun to write about; while 2) for the ones that aren't, figuring out why is part of the job, and that's fun to write about.
For the ones that are still bad? Well, there's just a "hey, don't be a dick" angle to all this. Which is to say I feel compelled to let 2025's bad teams log at least a few miles before I start throwing dirt on them in 2026. It is hard to do what the Quakes and Rapids have done, and most teams come nowhere near that kind of year-over-year turnaround.
But we're two months in now. Nearly a quarter of the season is in the books. That makes everybody fair game, and it's time to take a look under the hood.
In we go:
Losing
This isn’t just a bad start from Sporting KC: it’s a full-system failure. The foundation hasn't cracked, it's disintegrated. The whole orchestra is out of tune. One domino falls, and instantly it’s the whole line going down.
Pick your own disaster metaphor and let 'er rip. Trust me, it'll fit. The numbers make that painfully clear, as Sporting's xGD/game, following their 3-0 beating in Vancouver on Friday night, is now -1.92.
- That's waaaaay more than twice as bad as any team's season-long xGD in the American Soccer Analysis database (-0.83 from last year's Sporting side, or -0.82 from 2019 Cincy, or -0.80 from 2013 Chivas USA).
- Think it's unfair to compare an 8-game sample to a full season? Well guess what? It's also the worst eight-game stretch in the ASA database.
I haven't really written about Sporting this year because I wanted to give new CSO David Lee and new head coach Raphaël Wicky time. Well, almost a quarter of a season is in the books now; that is time. And man, there's just been no progress. I can't see a single thing for anyone to hang their hat on.