MLS Watch Grid for March 1st-2nd 2025

Iconographic Embodiment, The Blasphemer's Cup, and a formless, angsty slog of elbows and teeth

We didn’t learn all that much during Week 1, and the one major thing we did learn (Brian Gutierrez is a wrathful entity somewhere between man and god who will enact his vengeance upon us all in 2025) won’t even benefit us in Week 2. But Week 2 encroaches, nonetheless.

1:15pm Charlotte FC vs Atlanta United FC - Game of the Matchday

In my eyes, Charlotte FC is the most intrigue-laden MLS team in 2025. Expansion teams tend to have earned an identity by season four: Atlanta (2020), LAFC (2021), and Seattle (2012) entered their four seasons with multiple trophies in tow, holding themselves as league-level trend-setters. Nashville (2023) was built on ruthless defensive quality. Portland (2014) had the sheer gumption that drove early-2010s Porterball. Minnesota (2020) had crafted a competitor with proven league-veterans and unheralded foreign imports. Orlando (2018), Philadelphia (2013), and FC Cincinnati (2022) entered their fourth seasons as hapless travelers in search of some sort of direction. Vancouver (2014) had employed both Eric Hassli and Camilo Sanvezzo.

But who is Charlotte FC? They entered into MLS in 2022, concurrently or after many of the big expansion team ceilings to break were already broken: Orlando showed that MLS could take hold in the Southeast again after the 2001 contraction, Atlanta set attendance records and won championships, LAFC broke the single-season points record and went toe-to-toe with the best of Liga MX, Nashville had a big soccer-specific stadium, Miami engaged in accounting fraud, Austin had so many sousaphones in their supporter stand, New York City had overtaken Kansas City's record as the team with the longest tenure in a baseball stadium, and Cincinnati had managed to maintain an energized fanbase despite three straight last-place seasons. There was little left for Charlotte to do but put their heads down, work hard, and live an honest life as an expansion club, which they've done. They've built incrementally: 42 points in 2022, 43 in 2023, 51 in 2024, and they've done it without that much bullshit or gimmick. They've been admirable, self-assured, almost noble, in a manner that reflects their symbolic north-star, the humble Sir Minty.

So we have an intrinsic facon-de-vivre, but who are they extrinsically? Who hates them and who do they hate? By year four, Seattle had chopped down Roger Levesque in front of the Timbers army, Cincinnati had that odd in-goal scuffle against Columbus, and LAFC fans had worn fatigues to a road match against the Galaxy. Who is Charlotte's bitter rival? Who hates the Crown?

By regional proximity, this should be Atlanta, but they have yet to undergo the culminative collision that truly angries up the blood between clubs -- Zlatan's strike in the first El Trafico in 2018, Red Bull's Hudson Derby touchdown over NYCFC in 2016, Sporting KC's 4-1 shocker over St. Louis in the 2023 playoff edition of The River Runner Rivalry / The Missdourbi / the Dar-B-Q / the Show Me Derby / The Soccer Ball of the Veiled Prophet / any other acceptable names for that rivalry, and the Hell is Real comeback in those same playoffs... Charlotte and Atlanta has lacked this to date, but I can foresee this Saturday serving as a catalyst for a few reasons:

1. This early-afternoon time slot supports undivided broadcast viewership across the league and in-stadium support from both sets of fans. Charlotte has always shown out for home openers to begin with, and Atlanta fans be able to make the four-hour drive up and back within the day if desired, and they'll be even more incentivized to do so with such an exciting team this season. This means that we're due for a dense, mixed atmosphere in the stadium, which should translate into higher emotional stakes on the field. It's kind of rare for me to think "I'm glad they're playing this in an NFL stadium" for any MLS match, but this is the type of match in which more space to fill should benefit the atmosphere, rather than detracting from it. I think of the Fourth of July Rose Bowl matches between LA Galaxy and LAFC that we've had over the past two seasons as examples of this as well.

2. Both teams are laden with attacking talent and still-congealing defenses, meaning that this ought to get goalsy. We have two of the most intriguing strikers in the league facing off, with Atlanta's high-priced, high-energy, and high-jumping signing Emmanuel Latte Lath (aka Big Coffee) and Charlotte's breakout youngster Patrick Agyemang (aka The Hartford Hammer. Nobody else calls him that, and in fact I didn't call him that prior to writing this sentence, but one of my goals for this year is to try to coin nicknames and see if any of them stick). This should be the debut of Wilfried Zaha in Charlotte as well, after missing the week-one match against Seattle for the birth of a child. I don't know if it'll be the most fundamentally solid soccer, but the conditions for fireworks and drama are high.

3. I think we ought to be ready to lean into the iconographic clash between the two clubs. Gimmicky as it may seem to take focus-grouped iconography on as a sincere identity, it pays off. The Crew are best when they work hard, the Galaxy are best when the stars are out, the Rapids are best when they play fast, the Loons are best when they coo mournfully off in the distance. Teams ought to embody what they say they are, and there is an obvious contrast here: Charlotte leans into the royal iconography, Atlanta leans into the railroading iconography. We have a classic blue-blood versus working-man struggle here. This should be Vivaldi versus bluegrass, Champagne versus Miller Lite, Sirrus versus Achenar, a soccer ball wearing a crown and a cape versus a train horn that blares after goals.

This might be the beginning of something beautiful, should be exciting in and of itself, and it will have our full attention on Saturday afternoon.

6:30pm Philadelphia Union vs FC Cincinnati - Apple TV+ Game of the Matchday:

NOTE: I have no idea how many matches will be free for viewing on Apple TV versus available to Apple TV+ viewers on a given weekend this year. I will highlight one Apple TV+ match per Saturday each weekend, and I believe the Sunday Night games, which I'm always going to cover anyway, will be available through Apple TV+ too.

It's difficult to shock anyone during MLS opening weekend. Every team goes through so much turnover in a typical offseason as it is, plus the best teams end up rotating their best players to ensure fitness for Concacaf, so we're left without much of a sense of anyone's true quality during week 1. On its face, Philadelphia, in their first match of the post-Curtin era winning 4-2 in Orlando on Saturday evening should've been the most shocking upset of the opening weekend, but a) Orlando seems kind of listless to begin with b) We've seen Bradley Carnell's teams press well in the Spring before wilting in each of the past two years, and c) San Diego beat the defending MLS Cup champions on the road in their first-ever match a day later anyway. However, the Union look far from dead and certainly warrant a look in the 6:30pm window as they welcome Cincinnati, a team that looks as complete as I've ever seen anyone in MLS look so early in the season.

A couple of years ago, in their schedule release video (which I reference as if everyone remembers), the Union referred to Cincinnati as "Union Jr.", as FCC hired both their GM, Chris Albright, and head coach, Pat Noonan, away from the Union prior to their 2022 turnaround. The roles have now flipped, with Cincinnati having built a consistent competitor and the Union struggling to gain footing (which is congruent with their iconography at least, given that their mascot is a snake who grew legs). FC Cincinnati now comes into Philadelphia as the giant to be knocked down, one who is still only three matches into the Denkey/Evander era, one which is in all likelihood fatigued from playing those three matches in an eight-day span, one of which they traveled internationally to get to, and if the Union cause as much havoc and finish as well as they did in Florida last weekend, it'll go a long way towards re-energizing Subaru Park in 2025.

7:30pm DC United vs Chicago Fire FC - Artisan’s Choice Game of the Week:

There was a moment on MLS 360 last weekend in which Kaylyn Kyle asked Sacha Klestjian to explain who the "Keystone Cops" were after he evoked their name to describe the defensive effort on one of the goals given up by the Chicago Fire against Columbus. I've probably heard the phrase "Keystone Cops" to refer to the mistake and blunder-prone hundreds of times in my life prior to Kyle's question, but had never thought of its source. Klestjian couldn't offer it, either, instead giving the term's definition. My intensive research (read: A Wikipedia search) indicates that the Keystone Cops were a troupe of fictional policemen created by slapstick filmmaker Mack Sennett during the 1910s.

What a testament to the silent filmmaking prowess of Sennett, that these characters were so impactful upon audiences that they've lived on in analogy for so long. When he put together the likes of Fatty Arbuckle, Al St. John, Ford Sterling, and on one occasion Charlie Chaplin to play bumbling members of the law enforcement to provide levity while the rest of the world was getting trench foot and mustard gassed in the Great War, do you think he had any idea that his creation would inspire such off-handed usage by a soccer player-turned-analyst on a streaming-only whiparound show covering an American professional soccer league like that? That Arbuckle, St. John, Sterling, and Chaplin would one day by synonymous with Gutman, Elliott, Teran, and Dean?

In fairness to the Fire, DC United was also not immune from backline errors that led to goals in week one. In fairness to DC United, basically nobody else in the league was immune from backline errors, either. Jordi Alba donned the Keystone Cap of the Keystone Cop as much as Carlos Teran and Aaron Herrera did.

I am willing to attribute this to unfamiliarity and rust at a season's beginning, but I'm not so sure that a week of training will guarantee that the two teams come out all that much less error-prone than they did on matchday 1, especially with Christian Benteke and Jonathan Bamba approaching (sadly sans accompaniment from Super Saiyan Brian Gutierrez), so we ought to expect some goals to flow in Solider Field on Saturday evening.

9:30pm San Diego FC vs St. Louis CITY SC:

San Diego is a second home of sorts for me. I lived there for a while in my mid-twenties, earned a degree from San Diego State, did all of the touristy and local stuff, set or at least tied a record for the least time spent on the beach by a Kansan transplant to San Diego over multiple years lived, and took a small part in the city's changing relationship with soccer over the last decade. I was an inaugural season ticket member for San Diego Loyal, even if I only got to attend the one game they played during that season. I was one of the few people who attended a San Diego 1904 FC match during the NISA Showcase Season of Fall 2019. I love that city to death, I've seen its love for the sport up-close, even when it wasn't glamorous to do so, and I'm excited to see what the first home crowd for San Diego FC looks like. The traveling support for SDFC showed out tremendously well in Carson last Sunday, and they were rewarded with a great performance against the defending champions.

They welcome St. Louis, the most recent expansion team, one who famously rocketed out of the gates in a similar fashion in 2023. With their home win over Charlotte FC on March 4th of 2023, St. Louis improved the record of MLS expansion teams in their home openers to 12 wins, 7 losses, and only 3 draws. Ergo, history favors San Diego, but it also favors viewers in search of catharsis. Andres Dreyer provided it for San Diego last weekend and Simon Becher came very close to doing so for St. Louis.

Another important thing to monitor about this match is its impact on the Saint Power Rankings, aka the Blasphemer's Cup, a new competition I've just invented within the MLS Western Conference. Four MLS clubs play soccer matches in cities named for saints - Joseph (San Jose), Paul the Apostle (Minnesota), Louis IX of France (St. Louis), and now Didacus of Alcala (San Diego). MLS now leads all American major professional sports leagues in teams located in cities named for saints, passing Major League Baseball (San Francisco, Saint Louis, Saint Petersburg) and the National Hockey League (San Jose, Saint Louis, Saint Paul), making MLS the Holiest Major Professional Sports League in American History.

Each of these four teams will play one another twice in the 2025 season, meaning that, at year's end, we will have the closest empirically-researched answer in world history to the question of which Saint is the best, a title that I'm certain each of them would appreciate and eagerly accept being able to hold. Saturday night pits Didacus of Alcala, a missionary who routinely took bread from his monastery's pantry to give to the poor, against Louis IX, the Capetian French king who served hundreds of poor people on a daily basis during his reign. Let's see who's the most charitable!

Sunday 6:00pm Houston Dynamo FC vs Inter Miami CF:

It's been a year and a half, I've paid my dues (i.e. Bought a ticket at face value to the first leg of SKC's Concacaf round against Miami and didn't use it out of a desire to avoid frostbite), and I think it is time for me to start finding something kind of endearing about Miami. They just shouldn't have to compete the way that they do, they should be much more dominant than they are, they shouldn't be salvaging points at home in stoppage time like they do. We loved it when San Jose did that back in 2012, but we loved that because they did it with Gordon, Lenhart, and Wondo. Miami has Alba, Suarez, and Messi! It’s disgusting! If you’re gonna be good, just be normal good, just blow everybody out! Don’t play with your food for the whole game and then choose to salvage something late when you decide you care again. Who are you, The Kansas City Chiefs?¹

Writing about anything in the West at the moment is difficult, because the number of Western teams that I’m thinking probably do not deserve to make the playoffs is nearing double digits, which is a problem in a league in which the number of Western teams that make the playoffs nears double digits. I am clinging to the Vancouver Whitecaps as the paragons of consistency at this point. I can talk myself into Austin, St. Louis, Colorado, San Jose in third and don’t feel that disconnected from the material world. Houston, I feel sort of confident in stating, is not slated to be a competitor in the West, considering that they lost all of their best players and haven’t fully replaced them yet. I like Jack McGlynn, I want to see what he does as the driving force of a team, but I don’t know if I can fully get behind them. I don’t know what it means to lose to FC Dallas in 2025, either. I don’t know what it will mean to lose or draw to Inter Miami, either, given that Inter Miami just tends to win regardless of how they or their opponent play.

I only feel certain of the final positions of Seattle, LAFC, and Sporting KC in first, second, and fifteenth this year, respectively, but otherwise, the West strikes me as a formless, angsty slog of elbows and teeth. To state anything about the Houston Dynamo one way or the other here in March is a disservice to you, reader, but I will posit that they take a 1-0 lead in the first half, fail to put away a multitude of chances between minutes 45 and 80, then give up two to Messi and/or Suarez in the final ten plus stoppage.

So it goes!

1. I could build some sort of thesis out of the effect that having so many current American sports goliaths that win in such uninspiring, joyless, and flairless fashions has on the American psyche. Perhaps this can explain the recent socio-political shift towards totalitarianism — when faced with so many pretend generals, paper tigers, and Ryan Day-coached football teams filling (but hardly fulfilling) the role of the hegemon in our cultural lives, the American soul yearns for a congruously domineering presence. That could also be complete bullshit that I just made up. I respect the LA Dodgers, Dawn Staley’s South Carolina Gamecocks, and Dan Hurley’s UCONN Huskies for genuinely dominating as domineers, nonetheless.