Welcome to our staff column collecting news, insights, and highlights from around Major League Soccer.
Major League Soccer knows how to do knockout games.
It doesn’t matter if it’s Roy Miller stealing a free kick from Thierry Henry or a double-post penalty shot or Shea Salinas dribbling half of the field at Disney against the Vancouver Whitecaps during a tournament called MLS is Back. Any MLS fan will tell you that they know to tune in for MLS After Dark and MLS With Actual Stakes.
Partly for that reason, the debut of the Leagues Cup this summer was a success. The tournament provided exciting knockout games and, as a result, high drama. It also had Lionel Messi doing Lionel Messi things.
That last part was…well, it was kind of important.
It is impossible to know just how much fans care about the Leagues Cup, or how successful a tournament it will be in the future, because this summer’s Leagues Cup was all about Messi. The Argentine legend announced his arrival to Inter Miami with a game-winning free kick against Cruz Azul and proceeded to run rampant the rest of the tournament, scoring 10 goals in seven games to lead Miami to its first trophy. It was must-watch television.
For that reason, Inter Miami’s 1-0 loss to FC Cincinnati on Saturday night was a devastating blow. The defeat marked the return of Messi to the field after an injury forced him to miss six of the Herons’ previous seven games in all competitions. It also marked Miami’s elimination from MLS playoff contention.
There will be no Messi in the MLS postseason.
MLS this season will debut a “play-in game” between the eighth and ninth seeds in each respective conference – an added wrinkle (along with a best-of-three games format in the next round) meant to give MLS a larger postseason inventory. The downside is that an expanded playoff field means bad teams will be rewarded. The upside is that this year it also gave Messi and Miami a chance to sneak into the postseason.
The payoff would have been monumental had Messi and Miami found a way to dig out of a last-place hole to reach that play-in game. Seeing a revamped Herons team in a must-win, do-or-die knockout game featuring Messi would have been as good an advertisement for the play-in game — and for MLS — as anything league executives could have imagined. We have already seen the types of audience that Messi drives to MLS and Apple TV. We’ve heard about the subscription surges and increased Spanish-language audiences. We’ve seen mainstream relevance come to the league in a way it hadn’t before, at least not since David Beckham. Messi’s presence would have been the one thing guaranteed to get Sportscenter and Stephen A. Smith talking about the league.
Instead, MLS will now be serving up matchups between highly flawed teams without anywhere near that level of star power. Matchups like Montreal vs. New York Red Bulls, or Chicago vs. Charlotte or San Jose vs. FC Dallas.
Sure, those knockout games — even between bad teams — will probably deliver entertainment value – especially for fans of those teams. The diehard MLS fans know that. But losing out on Messi in the playoffs meant losing out on a critical opportunity to expose casual sports fans to the rest of the postseason, to the fun that is MLS With Actual Stakes.
MLS has a finite amount of time to cash in on Messi’s presence. His missing the playoffs cost them a crucial stage in an already-small window of opportunity. How they seize the rest of the time is now even more vital.
– Paul Tenorio
Rooney left his job as D.C. United manager this weekend (IM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)
Rooney abruptly departs
In the weeks preceding D.C. United’s match against NYCFC on Saturday night, there had been much speculation about the future of United’s head coach, English legend Wayne Rooney. Just minutes after D.C. won that match 2-0 (and subsequently got eliminated from postseason contention based on other results) Rooney cleared things up.
“I will be leaving the club,” Rooney told reporters at his post-match press conference. “I think it’s just the right time. I’ve done everything I can to get the club into the playoffs. It’s not any single thing that’s happened. It’s about timing in your career. I’ve really enjoyed my time here. I had a lot of help from the owners, to (sporting director) Dave Kasper, to (technical director) Stu (Mairs) and (scouting director) Sean Howe… they have been a great help to me. I just feel it’s the right time for me to go back to England and firstly obviously see my family. I haven’t seen them for a long time.”
Rooney has been strongly connected in recent days to a potential move to English Championship side Birmingham City. The club has American ownership and recently brought NFL legend Tom Brady on as an investor.
“I’ve got nothing lined up,” Rooney said on Saturday.
GO DEEPER
Rooney leading candidate to replace Eustace at Birmingham
Rooney, who featured for United during a memorable run as a player in 2018 and 2019, arrived to much fanfare mid-season in 2022. He inherited a wayward ship from former United head coach Hernán Losada, and United’s ownership had high hopes. The remainder of 2022 was a relative wash, but 2023 showed moments of promise.For stretches, D.C. even played purposefully and attractively.
But things turned sour for United down the stretch, and Rooney was also forced to navigate a number of off-field issues as well, such as the departure of attacker Taxi Fountas amidst allegations of racial abuse. As the season progressed, Rooney’s frustration with results grew.
Still, Rooney was keen to stay in D.C. In September, he spoke publicly about his frustration with his contract situation, telling the Washington Post that he’d not yet heard whether D.C. would bring him back in 2024, the option year of his 2.5-year-long contract. United, on the other hand, wanted to wait and see how the rest of the season played out before committing to bringing Rooney back.
On Friday, after United concluded a miserable road trip to Vancouver and Austin that effectively ended their playoff hopes, Rooney’s fate seemed almost certain. It became even clearer after a meeting with United CEO and co-owner Jason Levien on Friday.
“We spoke a couple of days ago to see where his head was,” Levien told The Athletic in the moments after United’s season ended. “We speak relatively regularly. We started talking about the future. We started talking about the different possibilities, which included this season ending tonight. Wayne initiated that conversation, and I think we both agreed that this would be the next step (if we got eliminated.)”
Rooney’s time as a coach in D.C. may not have gone to plan but there seem to be no hard feelings between the coach and his former club. Levien spoke of his “close friendship” with Rooney and Rooney himself was full of thanks for United and its staff.
His ties to the club and his now-former players were on display in the moments after he told them all he wouldn’t be returning. In a hallway outside the locker room, Rooney threw his arm around the young daughter of D.C. captain Steven Birnbaum, whom Rooney roomed with as a player.
Birnbaum’s wife, Jeanne, leaned down to her daughter and reminded her who Wayne was.
“He bought you your first stroller!”
“D.C. United has got a huge place in my heart,” said Rooney. “If I didn’t feel like I could come help the club, I would not have come back. … I’ve really enjoyed trying to help this club move. I think the club has moved forward from where it was last season. Even though the goal was to make playoffs, I think it has made strides forward.”
– Pablo Maurer
Bouanga’s big week
A down year in terms of individual total goals across MLS led to a fun, wide-open Golden Boot race. Until this week.
LAFC star winger Denis Bouanga got the Golden Boot fitted for his foot this weekend with five goals across two big wins, storming to a three-goal cushion ahead of FC Cincinnati star Lucho Acosta. Both players have one game left in the regular season.
Bouanga has 19 goals in MLS this year, a constant performer in LAFC’s historically congested campaign across a run to the CONCACAF Champions League final, the Leagues Cup and jetting off for international duty with Gabon.
Denis Bouanga can’t stop scoring goals!
He now has a brace and leads MLS with 19 goals. #LAFC pic.twitter.com/kjTXRqXL6P
— Major League Soccer (@MLS) October 8, 2023
The picture looks even more impressive when you zoom out: The explosive winger has 32 goals and 15 assists in 3,528 minutes across all competitions. That’s a goal contribution every 75 minutes.
Bouanga already won the CCL Golden Boot. He’s 90 minutes away from adding the MLS Golden Boot and is firmly in the MVP conversation, though Acosta has pole position for that award.
LAFC head coach Steve Cherundolo was asked if Bouanga should be the MVP, a lay-up opportunity to publicly campaign for your guy. Oddly, he didn’t take it.
“I literally have no opinion on these awards,” Cherundolo said. “I don’t know how they are awarded, if there’s any objectivity, any facts, or if it’s just opinions.”
All American sports have an MVP award. All European leagues have a Player of the Year award. The World Cup has the Golden Ball. European soccer has the Ballon D’or. This isn’t a new or particularly complex concept.
Maybe Bouanga will have more to say on the pitch next Sunday and Cherundolo will have more to say in the press conference thereafter.
-Tom Bogert
Awards season is here
Yes, it’s silly that Lionel Messi got nominated for MLS MVP, announced at a point where he played less than 300 minutes in league play. But at least there’s an explanation: Clubs nominate players for end-of-season awards. This isn’t “finalists”, it’s nominations. And there are too many. It’s annoying. But as long as voters don’t do something dumb and put Messi on their MVP ballot, it’s a non-issue.
The more pressing concerns around MLS award season, for me, orbit around MLS’s Best XI. My qualms are two-fold.
First: MLS is too strict on positions and formation — and too many voters overlook the idea of making Best XI even loosely resemble a real team. As a result, many Best XIs are a collection of center forwards, wingers, No. 10s, a goalkeeper and maybe two defense-minded players. For instance, last season the Best XI was compiled of one goalkeeper, two center backs, a left wingback … three center forwards, three No. 10s and one winger.
That’s not soccer.
Sure, MLS clubs invest most of their money in the attack, but you should be able to see some semblance of a real-life team with your Best XI ballot, even if you have to squint to do so.
Second: There should at least be a second team beyond Best XI, much like the NBA has All-NBA second team (and a third team, too). MLS has plenty of quality for a second XI and it’d be a great way to highlight a wider variety of players. With 29 teams (and soon to be 30), it doesn’t make much sense to have only one XI.
It’s not the biggest topic of conversation regarding MLS’ future. Hell, at this point it may only be interesting to sickos like me (and you, if you made this far, dear reader) plus agents and executives negotiating contracts. But in the long run, more designations and recognitions are a good thing. It helps fans frame conversations better. It builds profiles and narratives around players, an integral facet of growing a league – and it does so based on their own performance.
– Tom Bogert
Four good reads
• You may have noticed Messi’s bodyguard; the mysterious man who seems to follow him everywhere, including up and down the touchline during Inter Miami games. Pablo Maurer set to find out more about the man, and whether any of the legends about him are true.
• Minnesota United parted ways Adrian Heath this past week. He’s the only head coach the club has known during ints time in MLS, and naturally his impact on the foundations of MNUFC are countless and wide-ranging. Still, given recent results, something had to give. Jeff Rueter wrote a nice pieces assessing the Heath Era of Minnesota United soccer, and what should come next.
• In a cruel twist of fate, Tom Bogert’s breakdown of where each MLS head coach job opening stands was published barely a day before Minnesota created one of their own, and just afew days before Rooney left D.C. United. Nonetheless, it’s a useful update on the types of candidates making the rounds as the couching carousel lurches into full gear.
• While MLS is almost entirely on pause for the international break, the NWSL is heading towards its first Decision Day with an absolutely ridiculous amount of playoff spots on the line. Get the full breakdown of what happened this past weekend with this week’s edition of Full Time (which is also a newsletter you can subscribe to).
One weird thing
You have to love the chaos inherent in D.C. United being mathematically eliminated from postseason contention….while still sitting above the playoff line.
(Top photos: Getty Images)