⚽Big Coffee, Pollo, and The Defending Champs: My MLS Week 1 Watch Guide
We go on a nice little road trip through Texas, Georgia, and California in Week 1
I told y’all I wanted to do two newsletters a week, so here we are. As a data consultant, I constantly tried to watch as much MLS as possible just to get ideas of how teams would play early on. We wouldn’t go through the metrics until week four or five to establish some sort of sample size, so a lot of it was based on what we saw. You never know how a team can change up their style of play and don’t want coaches to prepare based on last year’s information.
Since it’s literally the first matches of the MLS season, here are FAM’s golden rules as we enter The Non-Reaction Zone.
We don’t care about results. Last year, everyone was praising Toronto FC’s start, when they recorded 10 out of 15 possible points and had one loss. Guess what happened the rest of the season?
We’re looking for patterns of play and styles. How are the new coaches going to fare? Are the veterans going to have some tricks up their sleeve? How do they fare historically to what we know about them?
We need to see how the new players are acclimating to MLS. We cannot expect immediate returns and should not, but we want to see how they fit in and the ideas around it.
Finally, we’re looking for outliers. Is a team overperforming its xG early on? Are we seeing a downtick in passes? Is there a team playing super direct? We can identify those teams and put them into a separate group and know we need to prepare a certain way for them (think Red Bulls, DC United, Philadelphia).
The rules are set. Let’s see what are the three matches on the menu.
Sporting Kansas City at Austin FC
Q2 Stadium, 7:30 PM CST
We’re going to focus heavily on Austin. We’ll get a better look at SKC in their non-frigid CCC second leg vs Miami.
On the surface, this may not be the sexiest game of the week. You might say ‘Arman, you’re clearly biased. You worked under Nico Estevez and that’s the only reason why you care!’
I promise there’s more to it than that. Austin FC, just based on current roster transfer fees, is the second most expensive team in MLS. They broke their transfer record three times in less than a year. They needed to as well; the Austin FC attack ranked 28 out of 29 teams in npxG. So naturally, they brought in Brandon Vazquez and Myrto Uzuni on huge deals. Add Osman Bukari, who basically is a new addition, only playing in nine MLS matches, and this Austin team has to be better in the attack. If the team doesn’t improve on its 28th npxG finish, then well, there will be some serious issues down south.
Uzuni may not play due to him just entering the country, but the point stands. Austin has spent loads and Estevez must bring the best out of the team offensively. I’m not too worried about Estevez’s defensive system. In 2022 and 2023, FC Dallas ranked sixth in npxGA during both seasons according to FBRef. Austin will need that, as the team finished 25th in npxGA in 2024 under previous coach Josh Wolff.
However, with the amount of money Austin has spent on the attack, I’m interested to see what Estevez has learned from his team in Dallas. I mentioned how Estevez is a great defensive coach but offensively is a different story. During his tenure at Dallas, Estevez finished with the sixth-lowest npxG in MLS at 1.12 per match per ASA. Some guys during that time finished lower: Peter Vermes at SKC (1.05), and Oscar Pareja with ORL (1.1). Estevez’s Dallas team was never known to be super direct with the ball but not as indirect as many want to make it out to be; the team ranked 18th in average vertical completed pass distance at 5.87, while their expected pass percentage was the seventh highest in the league (but pretty damn close to eight/nine/ten).
If Uzuni isn’t good to start or play, we may not get a good idea of Austin FC’s style of play. Uzuni is fundamentally a different player than his projected replacement, Jader Obrian. Here are two questions I am looking forward to seeing answers to:
How will Brandon Vazquez be used as a target forward?
How will the midfield be? Are we going to see fluidity with Dani Perreira, Owen Wolff, and whoever the No. 6 is?
CF Montreal at Atlanta United
Mercedes-Benz Stadium, 6:30 PM CST
I originally had another match slotted here (CIN-NYRB) but could not resist talking about Atlanta United.
Look, Atlanta United has spent a ridiculous amount of money upgrading their team. From Emmanuel Latte Lath (Big Coffee) to the return of Miguel Almiron, to adding pieces like Mateus Klich, ATL has expectations going into the 2025 season. Aleksei Miranchuk had a full off-season to acclimate to MLS, making an evaluation of him much fairer than someone who played in nine league matches.
I’ve said this on multiple occasions but Atlanta has seven designated player-eligible players on their roster: Latte Lath, Almiron, Miranchuk, Klich (a DP on DC’s roster), Bartosz Slisz, Saba Lobzhanidze, and Stian Gregersen. On paper, they should be one of the most talented teams in MLS by a significant margin.
However, we know MLS isn’t a normal league. Sometimes spending huge amounts doesn’t result in immediate success. Enter in a coach that has had success; Ronny Deila, 2021 MLS Cup winner with NYCFC. How will he utilize all these pieces together and get the city excited again like they were in 2018 en route to their MLS Cup glory?
The way Atlanta United attacked opponents was not only the most interesting part of their team in 2018, it was the most entertaining aspect. Sure, they were the least direct team in MLS with their vertical distance, but the number (5.59) would’ve had them at 14th in the 2024 season. Delia’s 2021 NYCFC had a 6.23, being even more vertical than those teams. I’m interested to see if Delia goes vertical and attempts to utilize their dynamic attack paired with their strong midfield. Miranchuk will have all the focus in the world on the attack, with Klich and Slisz cleaning up the mess behind him. How will that help his game compared to what we saw in 2024?
Montreal comes into year two under Laurent Courtois with some new pieces. They added ball-comfortable center-back Jalen Neal alongside Joel Waterman and George Campbell. I’m interested to see how their style of play changes; Courtois had them playing indirect soccer, much like the club he came from in the Columbus Crew.
As part of the flurry of salary cap dumping moves, Montreal acquired Giacomo Vrioni for $50k GAM from the New England Revolution. A designated player. I’ll be honest with you guys. His metrics aren’t that bad. If you look at his G+ numbers, Vrioni’s receiving was .06 above the average ST. The rest of his numbers, in terms of passing and dribbling, were poor, but if you look at some of the other names in that receiving category (Luis Suarez, Ramiro Enrique, Monsef Bakrar), I think it’s worth the flyer for Montreal. He also had .45 npxG for NER on a team that had the third-fewest npxG in MLS (he produced around a third of their npxG). This may be a cap dump that may see some benefit for MTL.
Now, the questions:
How direct will Atlanta United be with its new pieces?
How does Jalen Neal fit into MTL’s game model?
LA Galaxy at San Diego FC
SnapDragon Stadium, 6:00 PM CST
I’ll start with the elephant in the room; I have a million questions about San Diego FC. I worked with Mikey Varas during my time with FC Dallas and have an idea of his style of play but again, things have changed from six years ago. Sporting director Tyler Heaps gave an idea of the style of play in an interview with my dear friend Joe Lowery at Backheeled. I feel like I could go on and on about them so there’s my take on SDFC.
For the Galaxy… there’s so many questions. They seem to be in cap hell with the buyout of Sean Davis and trading 2026 GAM for 2025 GAM. Will Kuntz has mentioned on multiple occasions how MLS ‘punishes you for having success’. I’m starting to believe that there’s a bit more to that statement as I detailed in my Dejan Joveljic piece.
The clear elephant in the room is how the team is going to replace star midfielder Riqui Puig. Let’s take a step back. According to ASA, Puig led the league in touch percentage at 14.6% in 2024 the entire dataset. That’s right; we haven’t seen a usage rate like that in MLS history. The closest to that number was 2018 and 2019 Nico Lodeiro at 14.2%.
LAG has not put Puig on the season-ending injury list yet, meaning that they believe there’s a chance he will be back for a playoff run in 2025. For reference, former FC Dallas midfielder Alan Velasco tore his ACL on Oct. 30, 2023, and came back on Aug. 31, 2024. That’s around 306 days, and as expected, he still wasn’t the same. Puig tore his ACL on Nov 30. 2024. If we follow the exact number of days (it can be different), we’re looking at an Oct. 2 return.
The Galaxy have two games after that and then it’s the playoffs.
I don’t expect Puig to be a contributor for the 2025 season. How will Vanney adapt his team to the Puigless world? They traded away two guys who filled his role in the lineup with Mark Delgado and Gaston Brugman. Edwin Cerrillo’s role as a ball-winning midfielder is established. Lucas Sanabria is an addition to the middle.
Someone else is going to have to step up to be that progressor. We’re going to see a completely different style of play without the closest thing we have to a heliocentric player in soccer. There has to be a change; no one can be Puig. We just spent all this time talking about him and haven’t even touched on the injured Joseph Paintsil and how they will replace him and Joveljic.
It will be fascinating to see them play.
How will the Galaxy replace Riqui Puig?
How will San Diego FC play?
Other Readings
For Backheeled, I wrote my predictions for the 2025 MLS Season. Full disclosure, I write for BH but they are running a 20% sale for a membership. It’s worth every penny for the coverage you get.
My friend Daniel Robertson has started a YouTube for betting picks. I don’t gamble on MLS but it’s interesting to listen to why the picks are made; sometimes you can take insights from the odds into the analysis of the game.
I’ll always boost
and his Concacast, which has become a must-watch during my lunch breaks.Finally,
(the man) did a tier list of all the teams in MLS. 9500 words, he is a madman. Strongly recommend the read.
Enjoy opening weekend! I’ll be at FC Dallas-Houston Dynamo freezing my ass off but it’s great that our precious league is finally back.