Amid lots of bad soccer, MLS on pace to shatter scoreless draws record | OneFootball

If you have paid close attention to the 2025 MLS regular season and sensed the product just hasn't been very compelling this year, you might be onto something.

Through Saturday, the current campaign has been notable more for its failures than its successes. There's the LA Galaxy, who enter Sunday on the longest winless start in league history.

There's the fact that regardless of what happens Sunday, when Matchday 14 concludes there will be eight teams -- more than 25% of the league table -- still on pace to earn 1 point per match or less. Only four clubs finished 2024 at such a rate of futility, and only three in 2023.

And worst of all from the perspective of trying to draw casual fans to the league, for the second time in three seasons MLS is on pace to shatter its own record for scoreless draws.

Where have all the good goals gone?

With four more 0-0 results on Saturday, there have now been 24 scoreless stalemates played in 205 league fixtures. That rate of 11.7% would represent a Beamon-esque leap both in percentage and total number of scoreless matches from the previous MLS highs if it continued.

Most total 0-0 draws in MLS season

2025 pace: 60

The former MLS record of 8.8% was set during the 2011 season. The latter mark of 43 contests to finish 0-0 was posted only two seasons ago, with a scoreless rate of 8.7% also good for second on the all-time percentages list.

To put it another way, the 24 matches to finish 0-0 is already the sixth-highest raw total in MLS history, and we're still half a month shy of the season's midway point.

Yes, more teams leads to more 0-0 reslts. But ...

Concerning raw numbers, there is a bias against the present and recent past, both in the league expanding its season slightly to its current 34-match length, and its size growing three-fold to 30 clubs from the original 10 over three decades.

Most 0-0 results in MLS season, by %

2025 pace: 11.7%

But the percentage stats are very troubling. And given that this has been an issue twice since the MLS Cup Playoff field expanded to 18 teams, it's sensible to at least question whether that overly forgiving format has led to an overly unadventurous approach, particularly from clubs that would view mere postseason qualification as success.

The good news is history shows there's likely to be some regression. In early May two seasons ago, MLS was on pace for 54 matches to finish 0-0. The final number was 11 shy of that mark.

The bad news is that, while Saturday was unusually bleak, MLS was still on pace to break through the mark comfortably before Matchday 14 began.