While MLS has the longest offseason of any soccer league, it is still mercifully short compared to most other American sports. This means that in the collective soccer calendar, we’ve blinked, and a new season has begun. Five teams have already begun CONCACAF Champions League play this week, and the rest of the league joins in over the weekend. As the 2018 season begins, what are some storylines to keep a watchful eye on? Here are a few:
Toronto FC’s march towards immortality: TFC won a treble last year without seemingly breaking a sweat until the postseason. They are going to try to become the first team to repeat as MLS Cup Champions since the Galaxy won two in a row in 2011 and 2012, but all the while also trying to navigate the expanded and more difficult CONCACAF Champions League to become the first MLS team to win the competition. Seeing as last year they were as dominant as can be without being supremely healthy most of the way, it figures with TAM infused signings that make them even deeper, they should have no problem navigating these choppy waters, right?
This is MLS, and strange things can often happen, though Toronto FC in recent years has certainly bucked trends. How they manage the early part of the season when no doubt their eggs will be in the CCL basket might be their biggest question of the year. How quickly some of their new TAM signings can mesh with the squad is also critical to see how far they will go. But this team has potential like no other to redefine what MLS clubs are capable of. Now, they just have to go and pull it off.
Is LAFC more Atlanta or Minnesota? Certainly based on the buzz they’ve tried to create, they want to be more like Atlanta United than Minnesota. They have gone out and spent some considerable cash, but compared to what Atlanta did and has done, it doesn’t seem like they’ve redefined anything. As of this writing, Bob Bradley’s squad isn’t exactly deep, though it is intriguing. How he gets balance out of a team without much of a midfield to speak of will be a key part of their season, at least until the end of April when they finally play a home game or two. Minnesota’s build has been slow and steady, Atlanta came in and tried to smash doors down. It seems that Bob Bradley and LAFC will try to do a mix of both, but in a deep Western conference alongside a revamped LA Galaxy, that may be a tough tightrope to walk.
ATLU’s worrying imbalance: There’s no denying that Atlanta United’s attack is downright terrifying, and that was just last year. With Ezequiel Barco and Darlington Nagbe now in the mix, their attack is even scarier, though behind Josef Martinez, they don’t have much depth. But their attack is never going to be the concern. Their defending, and more specifically their midfield, is. They have been an open team in the past, and that was with Carlos Carmona trying to marshall proceedings. Without him, they are shockingly thin at that position, relying potentially on Jeff Larentowicz, converted defenders and talented yet unproven homegrown players to protect the back four. They will score goals, but they’ll ship more than a few too. And it is this imbalance that makes this observer particularly concerned at how high they can go.
Teams on the rise: As was documented extensively in this column, the LA Galaxy had a disastrous 2017 season. However, they had a fantastic offseason rebuilding the squad around the margins, which lifted them from awful to in some minds a Cup contender. First, it’s a matter of sorting the defense out for Sigi Schmid and who leads the backline. Having some stability in net with David Bingham will help, but questions have to be answered before the Galaxy can be crowned. But with the additions they made, and the eventual return of Sebastian Lletget to the attack, it’s hard to imagine the Galaxy floundering in the same way they did a season.
An Eastern conference team to watch in this regard is Orlando City. Not making the postseason in their first three campaigns has to be regarded as a massive failure, especially last season with a new stadium and a blistering start. But Jason Kreis rebuilt this squad from the ground up, and on paper, they’re a playoff team. But with a team that made as many changes as they did, how long is the process of putting the pieces together going to take? And there is a Cyle Larin sized hole in the frontline that still needs to be filled, and it’s an open question as to whether Dom Dwyer is that fit. However, this team does now look like those great RSL teams under Kreis, which means they may finally break through this season at last.
Sleepers and Slumpers: While some playoff teams from the West last year like San Jose, Vancouver and Houston are due for a bit of a slump, none of them can be discounted, though Vancouver’s team construction is the most concerning, especially with Tim Parker on his way out the door. The West’s terrifying team may just be Real Salt Lake, who quietly have put together a younger squad built on the backs of players like Justen Glad and Jefferson Savarino, and they seem poised to make a playoff return.
In the East, there are five teams that many will expect to be postseason bound, with the other six left to scratch for the other spot. Columbus and Chicago both had concerning offseasons leaving holes in their roster, and the Crew have more questions to answer off the pitch as well. DC United has a better and deeper squad than they’ve had in years, but they play two “home games” until the middle of July. They may be in too deep a hole to climb out of playoff wise when Audi Field opens up.
Chaos in the boardroom: While there was some tumult in MLS this offseason, there was more of it in US Soccer. Now that the federation is run by Carlos Cordeiro, and many are calling for some substantial changes, how does that affect MLS? The structure of the US soccer pyramid is more uncertain than ever, and MLS is continuing its rapid expansion. In this new era for both the federation, the league and the national team which MLS is so heavily linked to, what changes are coming, and how will they affect MLS as a whole? That storyline will evolve over time, but it is one that will hang over the league for some time until some of the dust settles.
There is a new season on the horizon, with blockbuster signings, a new expansion team and a club threatening to rewrite what’s possible in a salary cap, single entity league, and that may just be the first month or two of the season. That’s the glory of MLS with all of its weird quirks and features, and it finally begins to play out again this weekend.
