Nashville's progression, Minnesota's shortcomings & more from Matchday 21 | OneFootball

Between the Gold Cup, the Club World Cup, the transfer market starting to percolate and a two-matchday week, my brain is mush in the best possible way. Nothing but wall-to-wall soccer as the gods intended.

In we go:

Under Control

Here’s what I wrote just over a month ago:

Nashville have been playing well, they’re finally getting results, and their DP forwards are starting to produce. They look like one of the better teams in the league right now – maybe one of the best teams in the league once Walker Zimmerman is back.

But they play five of their next six on the road. June is their most brutal month. We will know how good they actually are at the end of that stretch.

The ‘Yotes beat D.C. United 1-0 in D.C. on Saturday night, which was on the heels of Wednesday’s very good 3-2 win at New England, which meant they went 4W-0L-2D during this brutal stretch. Sam Surridge? He’s now atop the Golden Boot presented by Audi race with 16 goals (and has seemingly ended their interminable PK issues). Hany Mukhtar? Back to something approaching his very best.

Nashville overall? Eleven unbeaten in the league, up to third in the Eastern Conference standings and fourth in the Supporters’ Shield standings. They’re at the end of that stretch, and we know how good they actually are: clearly one of the best teams in the league. I’d feel that way even if they’d dropped points this week.

They weren’t great against D.C. – not precise and ruthless in attack as they have been for most of the past two months, and the final ball wasn’t really there. They managed just seven shots, none particularly great from open play (Surridge had the game’s only goal, which came from the spot). But they got that 1-0 lead midway through the first half and then shut the door for the subsequent 70 minutes, eventually killing the game off with the ball.

That's not something Nashville ever did in the past; it’s something they’ve needed to learn to do if they were going to take that final step towards legitimate contention.

“On tired legs and on a two-road match week, just the ability to close it out like that,” head coach B.J. Callaghan said afterwards when asked about the team’s philosophy towards seeing out results, especially during the grind of the early summer. “I mean, I think it shows that the group is so committed to each other, right? Like when you're feeling fatigued, it's easy to kind of go internal and worry about yourself. But guys were moving, guys were looking for the ball. They're running up to support.

“And we've talked about this before. That's the type – if we have the opportunity to kill a game off with using the ball, we want to do that. I thought that last, I don't know, 25 minutes was a good display of that. And at the same time, we still were able to go find a couple little moments there that we could have scored a second goal.”

Here’s what that looked like:

You can see Nashville’s legs are a little dead. But you can also see:

Nashville did this time and again over the game’s final half-hour. Gabriel Pirani got so frustrated by sequences like this one that he punched Gastón Brugman in the chest about 60 seconds after this clip.

None of that is sexy stuff, but it’s winning stuff, and it’s not-conceding-late-points stuff. You can’t just absorb-and-counter your way to a Supporters’ Shield; you need to do the above consistently in order to be among the best teams in the league.

Nashville are finally doing it this year.

D.C. have lost three straight and are now 10 points below the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs line. I don’t think they have a run in them.

Just Sayin/I Tried

That whole section directly above is me more or less sub-tweeting the now-dwindling cadre of Minnesota United fans who got mad at me for where I’ve had their team in the Power Rankings (generally lower than their spot in the standings), and for my rationale as to why (they don’t have any ability to see out results with the ball, and thus are completely reliant on the bunker).

That inability didn’t matter in their dominant, 3-1 midweek win vs. Houston. This column, mind you, is only about the weekend games, so I’m not going to break that one down, but I’ll note those are the exact type of game the Loons are built to win, and they deserve credit for doing so consistently. And my god, this pass from Julian Gressel had to make the column:

That inability did matter in their 2-2 draw at RBNY on Saturday, though, and is the difference between Minnesota and the very best teams in the league (whether they have their first-string ‘keeper or are down to their third-string, as they were for the game’s final 70 minutes). They simply had no facility for getting on the ball and using it to kill the match off when they were up 2-1. Instead, they spent the final 20 minutes defending in Alec Smir’s lap and eventually paid for it via a 90th-minute Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting equalizer.

“We're very comfortable defending the box for long periods and we had some really good moments on the transition that we would expect to have and we were just lacking that precision as the game went on,” is how head coach Eric Ramsay – who’s done a lot of good things in his 15 months in charge, I want to be clear – put it in the postgame presser, and fair enough. He’s right that his side are often dangerous, or even decisive, on the break.

“[We] didn't show the same level of composure… to handle the ball and bring the team up the pitch in a slightly more composed way when we couldn't attack really quickly,” Ramsay continued. “So… the comment I made to the players in the dressing room was for those of them that were here last year in this particular period, missing so many players, we lose those games. That's what we did last year and obviously Wednesday to today, that hasn't been the case.”

Two seemingly opposite things can be true here:

From the 75th minute onwards, Minnesota have a -5 goal differential. The only other playoff team that's -3 or worse is Austin FC, and they're narrowly hanging onto the final spot in the Western Conference.

There needs to be pressure at any point in this sequence, and there can’t be a completely open cross to a legitimately awesome poacher 1v1 off-ball in the six:

That’s the next step for Minnesota. If they take it, they really could win something this year. If not, they won’t.

The Red Bulls actually played well, and Sandro Schwarz’s red card gave us one of the most entertaining scenes of the weekend. But still, any momentum they might have found from a strong end to May has been frittered away during a winless June.

Still, if help really is on the way, this could go down as a landmark month.

A few more things to ponder…

12. A huge chunk of Portland’s year-over-year defensive improvement in 2025 has come from being better on set pieces.

Well, in their 3-0 loss at Toronto FC on Saturday night, they partied like it’s 2024. First James Pantemis set up a really, really weird wall on Alonso Coello’s direct free kick opener, and then about half the team switched off on Tyrese Spicer’s goal 11 minutes after the break, which ended the competitive portion of the program.

The Timbers have won just two of their last seven, and their underlying numbers are sounding a warning siren that’s jackhammer-loud. The upcoming schedule is relatively kind and they’ve got a nice cushion from a good spring, but they need to heed this warning.

Dominant win from the Reds, and it was good to see DeAndre Kerr back this week after a long injury absence. I wish he got credit for that third TFC goal, because his movement forced it.

11. FC Cincinnati took advantage – really, Evander took advantage – of a gift from Pedro Gallese in their hold-on-for-dear-life 2-1 win at Orlando. You can’t do this, man:

I’m not sure I agree with Kev that Evander’s the front-runner for Landon Donovan MLS MVP, but I’m not sure he’s not! He certainly looked it on this goal, and even more so later on when he completed his brace. You pay a lot of money for players like him to get you wins like this – i.e., wins in which you were clearly not the best team.

I don’t think anybody with Orlando should or will panic, but after a strong spring, Gallese’s been very dodgy over the past month. And Luis Muriel’s been missing in action since mid-May.

Can’t win if you’re losing the battle in both boxes.

10. NYCFC went up to Quebec and fell on their faces, losing 1-0 to a CF Montréal side that hadn’t won a home game since Decision Day of last year – 252 days ago. Armchair Analyst special correspondent Calen Carr was on the scene:

I’ll point out this started a stretch in which the Pigeons play five of six on the road, and they are just 1W-4L-4D on the road this year, and are just three points above the red line.

Hold onto your butts.

9. Carles Gil is just incredible, man. The Revs were dead and buried – down 3-0 with 35 minutes remaining – and he dragged them back almost single-handedly to a 3-3 draw.

The whole point of the shift to the 3-4-1-2 for the Revs has been to put more of the game’s deciding moments on Gil’s foot, and it’s largely worked.

At the same time, there have been diminishing returns over the past two months as the Revs have won just once in their past eight, and took just one point from their three-game homestand. They’re now just 2W-4L-2D at home on the year, and tend to find the gas only when they’re up against the wall.

That’s put a lot of pressure on their low-block defense, which has looked more and more vulnerable in recent weeks (extra center back or not). As with the Loons, they’ve got to be able to swing a different club.

“You saw in the latter stage of the game, when we were more aggressive pinning them back, then they had no transitions,” head coach Caleb Porter said. “And I think that's the lesson today is we need to be more aggressive in dictating the game and pinning the opponent back, which allows us now to force them deeper and makes it easier when we lose the ball.”

This was both a good and bad result for Colorado: A road draw made it a four-point week (it was done without their three most important players in Zack Steffen, Djordje Mihailovic and Cole Bassett), which may have extracted them from a months-long tailspin. At the same time, they blew a 3-0 lead, which… there’s no real joy to be found in that.

8. The Dynamo put together a completely dominant performance against St. Louis that resulted in a closer-than-it-should’ve-been 1-0 win at home, courtesy of an Ezequiel Ponce goal.

You look at this and see an ugly poacher’s goal:

I look at this and see a beautiful poacher's goal. You and I are not the same.

My issue with Ponce since his first steps in MLS is he hasn’t scored a lot of goals like this one, where he’s on the balls of his feet anticipating a rebound or something hammered low across the face of goal. The Argentine’s hold-up play is very good, and his link play is good; he also works hard defensively and is an asset in possession.

But he’s not a natural goalscorer in a sustainable way, bouncing around in the box looking for these types of one-touch finishes. If he were, he’d have more than just five goals on the season.

“Ezequiel was great, and he got his goal,” Dynamo head coach Ben Olsen said afterwards. “We talked to him about being patient and rewarding himself. We have to allow him to score goals, and those opportunities are where he is rewarded. Tonight, he was in the right spot at the right time, and that is what we are asking him to do.”

I should also note this game marked the end of Nico Lodeiro’s MLS tenure. At some point I should write more on that, but I feel comfortable saying he’s one of the half-dozen best signings in the league’s history and is the model for what teams should look for in a DP (in his prime, almost always available, and really, really gave a damn).

St. Louis are down to 28th in the Shield race, and the new-coach bump seems to have dissipated already.

7. The reason I can’t say it’s Evander leading the MVP race is because Anders Dreyer exists. The Dane has been excellent from the first matchday and had maybe his most impactful performance of the season in San Diego’s late, dramatic 3-2 win in Frisco over FC Dallas.

Dreyer had a goal and two assists, including the primary assist on Tomás Ángel’s 96th-minute winner. This came after he registered a hat-trick of helpers in Wednesday’s 5-3 win at Vancouver, a San Diego performance a friend on the scene described as “terrifying.”

Dreyer’s now got 9g/14a on the year, which would be a very good season for any DP winger. And los Niños, by the way, are now atop the Western Conference, having pipped the ‘Caps midweek and held their lead thanks to Saturday’s win. They took nine points from three games, all of them away dates, during June.

This team has got their match-winners (Chucky Lozano made his return in this one and was decisive off the bench), they have struck gold with local kid Milan Iloski (four goals midweek in Vancouver), and head coach Mikey Varas has already showed a ton of facility for both player development (he started a pair of teenaged fullbacks in this one, as well as a pair of SuperDraft picks) and tactical problem-solving.

They are authoring one of the greatest debut seasons in league history and have a real shot to become the first-ever expansion team to win the Shield.

Dallas have now won just once in their past nine. They’re not cooked, but they’re lightly seared.

6. I’m going to give Johnny Russell our Face of the Week for his reaction after heading home this absolutely wicked cross in RSL’s 1-1 draw at Sporting KC:

Russell did the “don’t celebrate against your old club” thing, which I respect. I’m not sure I would do the same, especially given how it ended, but I always respect it. In part because, you know, it actually draws more attention to what happened.

“It was a strange feeling,” Russell said with a smile when asked about scoring against his old team. “I made no secret about it, I wanted to stay. But the team didn’t want me. So I moved on."

Sporting got their equalizer via a second-half screamer from Erik Thommy, but have won just twice in two months and are going into the woodchipper over the next six weeks (they have one of the league’s toughest upcoming schedules). They’re six points below the red line; it feels like if they were going to make a playoff push, it would’ve come by this point.

5. It feels like Chicago’s playoff push is picking up steam (they are 5W-3L-1D since the start of May), as they’re now officially over the red line thanks to a more-dramatic-than-it-needed-to-be 3-2 home win over visiting Charlotte.

The attack has been very good. Philip Zinckernagel is a deserving All-Star – he had another goal and assist in this one – and while none of Jonathan Bamba, Hugo Cuypers or Brian Gutiérrez have been as productive as they could have been to this point, they’ve all been “very good” at the least. Add in Andrew Gutman overlapping like a menace from left back, and there’s an obvious reason the Fire are among the league’s leaders in goals per game.

There are a few obvious reasons they’re among the league leaders in goals allowed as well. Jack Elliott’s been great at left center back, but the rotating cast at right center back has been error-prone; the goalkeeping has been up-and-down; and d-mid remains something of a question.

Mauricio Pineda is the starter, and he’s a nice player, but lacks the range of passing necessary to make Gregg Berhalter’s system really sing. I thought it would be Kellyn Acosta’s job this year, but the veteran – who Berhalter brought to the 2022 World Cup, remember – has barely made a dent. They also went out and spent real money on Dje D’Avila, and the speed of the game, thus far, has been beyond him:

Yiiiikes. D-mid is an issue Berhalter has to solve if Chicago are going to push towards the top four.

Dean Smith, in Charlotte, has much more on his plate. The Crown have lost nine of their past 11, and while a lot of those have been on the road… I mean, you’ve got to occasionally take three points from an away date if you want to make the postseason.

Right now they’re three points out in 10th place, though the two teams ahead of them (Chicago and NYCFC) each have a game in hand.

4. The Galaxy put together maybe their best sequence of the year on Marco Reus’s equalizer in their 1-1 draw against San Jose in Palo Alto, which canceled out Beau Leroux’s first-half banger that had given the hosts a 1-0 lead.

Greg Vanney was clever in swapping wingers Joseph Paintsil (a right-footed left winger) and Gabriel Pec (a left-footed right-winger) out of their typical inverted roles and onto their natural sides midway through the second half. It made the Quakes defend wider, and opened up space for Reus to combine underneath:

It’s LA’s third result (two draws and a win) in four outings, and really was two points dropped by San Jose, who weren’t sharp coming off their long, four-game road trip.

Still, head coach Bruce Arena was sanguine.

“We traveled on Wednesday and played in difficult conditions and had to turn around and play on a Saturday, so that was very challenging,” Arena said. “So for us to get four points out of it is a positive. ... We got through the week. We didn’t play our best tonight, but that point is going to be important.”

3. The Sounders brought their Club World Cup form with them to Saturday’s date with Austin, putting together a dominant 65 minutes before cruising home for the 2-0 win.

One tactical note: Anyone remember this old pattern of play from the 2010s?

Don’t see the d-mid dropping to split the center backs anymore, but I love the idea of bringing it back. Get your most dynamic ball-progressor in possession earlier in the sequence and force the opponents to make some uncomfortable decisions. Austin didn’t look ready for it, and while the Sounders – who had Alex Roldan filling in at right center back on the night – didn’t exactly press the issue, it looks like a worthwhile thread for them to pick at going forward.

I'm also going to very gently mention how we've seen a bunch of this from Mauricio Pochettino's USMNT, and the US sure could use a No. 6 who breaks lines the way Cristian Roldan has for the past year in that role with the Sounders. Against all comers.

Austin… I know they’ve spent a lot of money, but man, they forgot to buy midfielders who can pass the ball. My buddy Phil West is trying to manifest a Tuti Andrade U22 signing (which has also been rumored in some quarters), and I will do my part to put that out into the world.

Whether or not it’s Andrade, they need to have something lined up for when the window opens on July 24, because right now this team does not have the firepower to hang onto the final postseason spot. They’ve got just 15 goals from 20 games, and while a lot of that is underperformance, a lot of it is also a lack of playmaking talent.

2. The Crew got a beautiful, classic Crew goal – wingback-to-wingback, baby – just before halftime, and made it stand during Sunday Night Soccer presented by Continental Tire in a 1-0 win over a Union team that didn’t manage to put a single shot on target.

Given the sheer volume of absent players on both sides, I don’t think we should read too much into this one. But it’s still noteworthy that 1) Columbus have now strung together three straight wins after a tough, winless, six-game stretch, and 2) Philly’s 11-game unbeaten run came to an end.

Is now a fair time to bring up how the Union don’t reeeeeaally have a signature win this year? Probably not; as mentioned, they were missing a bunch of players, to the point that Ale Bedoya was starting at right back. But they nonetheless really haven’t, and they nonetheless will get another shot at it next week when they take a trip to Nashville. Lose that one and they drop, at the very least, to second in the East.

Columbus have multiple signature wins, but haven’t yet hit fourth gear. There were a number of moments in this game where they were less crisp than you’d expect moving the ball through midfield, and the big switch – which they’ve hit more of this year than in the past two under Wilfried Nancy – was always on, but rarely taken advantage of.

1. And finally, I’m giving this sequence from Vancouver’s much-needed, 1-0 win at LAFC – it snapped a two-game losing streak – our Pass of the Week:

It was a minute of brilliance in what otherwise was an exercise of pure will from the short-handed ‘Caps, who were already missing seven regulars to injury and international duty even before Andrés Cubas limped off with an injury inside 20 minutes. All they were trying to do was survive, especially after that 5-3 midweek beating they took at the hands of San Diego.

Survive they did, and they ended the night atop the West on points per game.

LAFC looked flat and tired in their return from Club World Cup play, and in Olivier Giroud’s farewell. The big Frenchman had their best looks of the night before being subbed out on the hour, and true to his LAFC form, he was never able to test the ‘keeper.

The window opens in three-and-a-half weeks. I’d expect LAFC to be the busiest team in the league.