{"id":483167,"date":"2025-12-31T20:38:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T20:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/483167\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T20:38:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T20:38:11","slug":"western-conference-grading-every-teams-2025-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/483167\/","title":{"rendered":"Western Conference: Grading every team’s 2025 season"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a little holiday treat in between new signings \u2013 I hope you\u2019ve all got notifications for Tom Bogert\u2019s tweets<\/a> turned on \u2013 I decided to sit down and hand out my grades for 2025.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019m talking about the whole season here, not just their MLS performance. We\u2019re talking\u00a0Concacaf Champions Cup<\/a>,\u00a0FIFA Club World Cup<\/a>,\u00a0Leagues Cup<\/a>\u00a0and both the\u00a0US Open Cup<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Canadian Championship<\/a>. All of it matters.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m also factoring in both last winter\u2019s transfer window and what they did this summer, as well as how well they did promoting new and younger players into bigger roles.<\/p>\n

What I\u2019m\u00a0not\u00a0taking into consideration are signings, departures and SuperDraft picks that have happened since MLS Cup. Those will factor into next year\u2019s version of this column.<\/p>\n

And finally, I\u2019m not handing out letter grades here. I\u2019m instead going to go with “Exceeded Expectations,\u201d \u201cMet Expectations\u201d and \u201cBelow Expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reverse alphabetical order, because I want to start with something fun:<\/p>\n

Well, let\u2019s see: they stomped Miami<\/a> en route to an appearance in the Concacaf Champions Cup final, set a single-season club points record, won their fourth straight Canadian Championship, and then made it all the way to the MLS Cup final \u2013 where, this time around, Miami got some revenge<\/a> (though there was definitely no stomping).<\/p>\n

They developed a bunch of academy players along the way, as well as their first-round SuperDraft pick, all of whom were teenagers to start the season. Then they hit it out of the park with mid-career guys like\u00a0Sebastian Berhalter<\/a> and Tristan Blackmon<\/a>, and come summer they came out of nowhere to sign German legend\u00a0Thomas M\u00fcller<\/a>\u2026 who instantly integrated into the team and elevated everything everybody was doing in Jesper S\u00f8rensen\u2019s aesthetically pleasing game model.<\/p>\n

If, before a ball was first kicked in last year\u2019s preseason, you\u2019d asked me to simulate the 2025 Whitecaps<\/a> season 1,000 times, I wouldn\u2019t once have come up with something as great as what actually happened. Save for one crushingly disappointing night<\/a> in Mexico City against Cruz Azul, they were pure brilliance.<\/p>\n

Grade:<\/strong> Exceeded Expectations++<\/p>\n

Sporting director Lutz Pfannenstiel’s decision to bring in Olof Mellberg as head coach this time last year didn’t exactly pan out, and that is a significant part of the reason why he is now ex-sporting director Lutz Pfannenstiel<\/a>. Mellberg\u2019s conservative approach undid everything that had worked under John Hackworth, who\u2019d had the interim job the previous half-season. Meanwhile, the guy Hackworth replaced, Bradley Carnell, went on to win Sigi Schmid MLS Coach of the Year<\/a> in\u00a0Philly<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As with Toronto<\/a>, the best thing to come out of 2025 was that it all reached a point where everyone realized a reset was needed. For the Reds that meant a roster overhaul, while for St. Louis<\/a> it seems more pointed towards a cultural overhaul. New sporting director Corey Wray<\/a> and his hand-picked head coach Yoann Damet<\/a> both value ball-dominant, front-foot soccer, and I think that\u2019ll play well with a St. Louis crowd that\u2019s been starved for exactly that since the team\u2019s inception.<\/p>\n

Grade:<\/strong> Below Expectations, but real reason for optimism (though patience will be necessary)<\/p>\n

I really love the way Sounders<\/a> general manager\/chief soccer officer Craig Waibel approaches talent acquisition and roster building. He\u2019s not perfectly agnostic \u2013 nobody is \u2013 but both he and head coach Brian Schmetzer clearly trust guys coming through MLS NEXT Pro<\/a> or USL just as much as they trust guys who come in with multi-million-dollar price tags (or via clever trade packages, a la the\u00a0Jes\u00fas Ferreira<\/a> heist last winter). That\u2019s created an absurd amount of depth and allowed the team to keep the floor high even when the fixtures pile up.<\/p>\n

What I didn\u2019t expect was the ceiling to be raised so much as well. It started with their remarkable Club World Cup performance, and kept going right through their massive 3-0 win<\/a> over Lionel Messi<\/a> & Friends in the Leagues Cup final. That three-month stretch was the best soccer I saw anybody in MLS play this year, and the Sounders were doing it against the likes of Botafogo, Atl\u00e9tico Madrid and Cruz Azul in addition to the regular slate of MLS opponents.<\/p>\n

Add in the fact that they kept the Tacoma conveyor belt going (welcome to the first team,\u00a0Osaze De Rosario<\/a> and Snyder Brunell<\/a>), and it\u2019s hard to have asked for much more from the past year.<\/p>\n

Grade:<\/strong> Exceeded Expectations<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll put numbers to it: The Quakes<\/a> went from the Wooden Spoon \u2013 21 points, with a -37 goal differential \u2013 to the fringes of the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs with 41 points with a -3 goal differential. The underlying stats were in line with that, as they went from 14th in the West in 2024 with a -12.8 xGD to fifth in the West at +6.4.<\/p>\n

Along the way, they developed some very good (none great, I don\u2019t think, but we\u2019ll see) young players, while some veterans delivered at something close to their respective peak performance.<\/p>\n

Truth is, I expected this. Bruce Arena\u2019s been doing it in MLS for 30 years; the man knows how to win.<\/p>\n

What I didn\u2019t expect was for the goalkeeping situation to fall apart. All the underlying numbers say San Jose had the worst goalkeeping in the West, and that certainly matched the eye test. If they\u2019d had just average shot-stopping in net, they\u2019d have made the playoffs and finally gotten that first postseason home game at PayPal Park.<\/p>\n

Alas. There\u2019s always next year.<\/p>\n

They won the West, set the new single-season points total for expansion teams, and then canonized it by making a very credible run to the Western Conference Final before getting a valuable lesson from Vancouver.<\/p>\n

They developed more young players than anybody else in the league, seemingly stuffing multiple years of developing into guys like Manu Duah<\/a> and Luca Bombino<\/a>, each of whom seems destined for multi-million-dollar transfers to ambitious European clubs. And the vast majority of sporting director\/general manager Tyler Heaps\u2019 signings were hits, none more so than winger\u00a0Anders Dreyer<\/a>. He\u2019d have been the Landon Donovan MLS MVP in almost any other year; alas, he plays in the Messi era, so he\u2019s playing for second place (and got Newcomer of the Year<\/a>).<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to pile the game model on top of the above. Nobody valued the ball more than San Diego<\/a>, and that fits well in a league where, over the past few years, we\u2019ve seen a strong and growing correlation between possession and points per game.<\/p>\n

Could they have been more ambitious in the summer window? Yes, definitely. But even so, they\u2019re set up as well as almost anyone in the league going forward.<\/p>\n

Grade:<\/strong> Exceeded Expectations++<\/p>\n

They were coming off a record 59-point regular season in 2024, remember. Yes, they had sold Andr\u00e9s G\u00f3mez and Chicho Arango<\/a> was next out the door, but there was still real optimism in the group.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t pan out. Head coach Pablo Mastroeni and his squad deserve credit for digging in and making the push that got them back into the postseason this autumn, but it was a very quick trip. Which matched both their CCC and Leagues Cup showings.<\/p>\n

The new signings were almost all disappointing (thank God for Rafael Cabral<\/a> in goal), none of the holdovers took significant steps forward, and the midfield structure that had worked so well in 2024 seemed to disappear.<\/p>\n

Grade:<\/strong> Below Expectations. I don\u2019t think anybody\u2019s confident heading into next year.<\/p>\n

The 2024 version of the Timbers<\/a> was defined by their outrageously productive Designated Players and the rest of the team\u2019s inability to deliver anything like stability around them.<\/p>\n

Well, the most productive of those DPs (Evander<\/a>) was gone by the start of the year, sent to FC Cincinnati<\/a>\u00a0in an MLS-record trade, and soon thereafter another (Jonathan Rodr\u00edguez<\/a>) was injured for the season. But this time around \u2013 at least for half the year, anyway \u2013 the rest of the guys around them picked up (most of) the slack. They fought hard and didn\u2019t give away many cheap goals, and when an attacker or two got hot, they\u2019d actually string some wins together.<\/p>\n

But even when things were good the underlying numbers were screaming \u201cregression!!!\u201d and, at almost exactly the midway point, that regression hit: Portland won just three of their final 17 games in league play, despite making some very ambitious moves in the summer window.<\/p>\n

In the end, they went a round further in the playoffs and then put up a gutsy fight against a far superior San Diego side. But they had a marginally worse regular-season record and dangerously bad underlying numbers. So even though I like the roster construction and overall philosophy more than previous iterations, I\u2019m worried it won’t translate.<\/p>\n

Grade:<\/strong> Met Expectations. Barely.<\/p>\n

Just a massively successful season in so many ways. They set a club record for points, set a club record for an outbound transfer with the sale of Tani Oluwaseyi<\/a> to Villarreal, and set the world record for long throw-ins. Michael Boxall<\/a>, hucker of said long throw-ins, got my vote for Defender of the Year.\u00a0Dayne St. Clair<\/a>, meanwhile, got my vote for Goalkeeper of the Year and actually won it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

They then punctuated all of that by eliminating the Sounders in Round One of the playoffs despite being the better team for about two of the 270 minutes comprising that Best-of-3 Series. Seattle fans are still, collectively, past the brink of madness \u2018cause of that one.<\/p>\n

There was also some young player development on display, which is not something Minnesota<\/a> have done much of in their time as an MLS club. Nobody\u2019s going to confuse them for San Diego or Philly<\/a> here, but it does bode well for their future, especially if they can keep making mid-season additions like Nectarios Triantis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Grade:<\/strong> Exceeded Expectations. And obviously nothing has happened since the end of the season that could possibly sour the taste of such a landmark year, or give cause to question whether they\u2019ll be able to maintain this level into 2026 and beyond.<\/p>\n

Season 1: They played, from mid-February to the end of May, 20 games across all competitions and won just once. Their losses included a 7-0 defeat<\/a> at Red Bull New York<\/a> in what was a rematch of MLS Cup 2024, which came one week after a 1-0 defeat<\/a> at Sporting Kansas City<\/a> in which they held \u2013 do you remember this? Do you? I do! \u2013 Sporting TO ZERO SHOTS.<\/p>\n

Not \u201czero shots on goal.\u201d ZERO SHOTS<\/a>!! The Galaxy<\/a> lost a game in which the other team did not record a shot!!<\/p>\n

That version of the Galaxy is maybe the most cursed team in MLS history.<\/p>\n

Season 2: From May 31 onwards, they went 11W-8L-6D across all competitions, including a third-place finish in Leagues Cup that earned them a berth in the 2026 Concacaf Champions Cup. They weren\u2019t great, but they were pretty good, and head coach Greg Vanney finally showed some willingness to develop down-roster players, who almost uniformly outperformed the holdover veterans who\u2019d been so culpable for the miserable first half of the year.<\/p>\n

General manager Will Kuntz also did some nice work in selling homegrown winger Jonathan P\u00e9rez<\/a> for up to $1.8 million to Nashville SC<\/a>, which means the Galaxy actually have some General Allocation Money (GAM) in the coffers. Between that and, hopefully, the return of Riqui Puig<\/a>, 2025 felt like a useful gap year.<\/p>\n

Still, though, Galaxy fans are edgy these days. And I get it, because those first 20 games\u2026 woof.<\/p>\n

Grade:<\/strong> Below Expectations<\/p>\n

Like their neighbors down the 110, 2025 was a tale of two seasons.<\/p>\n

Season 1 was the Olivier Giroud Era<\/a> \u2013 remember that?? \u2013 during which now-former head coach Steve Cherundolo tried in vain to fit the legendary French striker into the lineup. The other weird part of that time period was the in-and-out nature of the third DP on the roster, which at one time included Turkish international Cengiz \u00dcnder<\/a> and then, when he was sent packing, in came (for a very brief spell) Javair\u00f4 Dilrosun<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It was a mess. But the rest of LAFC<\/a>\u2019s roster was so well-constructed that they thrived anyway, and in fact registered one of the biggest wins of any team in MLS history by beating Club Am\u00e9rica<\/a> in a qualifier to get into the Club World Cup proper, before showing quite well at the tournament itself.<\/p>\n

After a brief interregnum, Season 2 began with the arrival of Son Heung-Min<\/a> in early August. He and Denis Bouanga<\/a> created instant chemistry and a ton of goals, while co-president and general manager John Thorrington once again scrambled extremely well to upgrade the midfield and backline in the summer window.<\/p>\n

By the end of the year, they were very clearly one of the three best teams in the league, and probably should\u2019ve beaten Vancouver in the West Semis in what was one of the very best games in MLS history.<\/p>\n

In the end, no trophies kind of means this season was probably below expectations. But to me, that win over Club Am\u00e9rica was as big as any final, and I liked the way the game model evolved (watch that second half against the ‘Caps again), so I\u2019m giving them passing marks.<\/p>\n

They went big last offseason in purchasing a DP No. 10 (Manu Garc\u00eda<\/a>) from outside the league and splashing out on Dejan Jovelji\u0107<\/a>, who became their DP No. 9, from the Galaxy in the first cash-for-player trade in MLS history.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t work. Legendary manager\/sporting director\u00a0Peter Vermes was out<\/a> before spring was over, and it didn\u2019t get any better under now-departed interim coach Kerry Zavagnin. Sporting spent the entire year down at the bottom of the West and only narrowly missed out on the Wooden Spoon.<\/p>\n

The good news is they played a lot of young guys and cleared a lot of cap space for new president of soccer operations and general manager David Lee \u2013 who was\u00a0hired in September<\/a> \u2013 to work with. How he does with that will go a long way towards determining their 2026 grade.<\/p>\n

Grade:<\/strong> Below Expectations<\/p>\n

Things were always going to be tough for the Dynamo<\/a>, who sold Coco Carrasquilla and saw H\u00e9ctor Herrera depart almost immediately after being eliminated in the 2024 playoffs, and then got an offer they couldn\u2019t refuse for Micael just before the season began. In between, they also parted ways with long-time goalkeeper Steve Clark<\/a> (who, in my opinion, was underrated), which\u2026 yeah, that\u2019s most of the team\u2019s spine.<\/p>\n

It went predictably, as they dropped from 54 points in 2024 to 37 in 2025. Houston had moments where I believed, and I really spent a long time trying to talk myself into them. But their backline was bad, the DPs didn\u2019t deliver, their only reliable attacker was\u00a0Jack McGlynn<\/a>, and the goalkeeper situation was at the bottom of the league.<\/p>\n

2025 left me feeling like this team is directionless. The front office has a ton of work to do.<\/p>\n

Grade:<\/strong> Below Expectations<\/p>\n

Dallas<\/a> ended up in roughly the spot I expected them to: a mid-table West team that had a brief postseason cameo, but not enough quality to be a real threat to the top teams.<\/p>\n

They just did it in a way I didn\u2019t expect. What I\u2019d thought would happen is that Lucho Acosta and Petar Musa<\/a> would be instantly on the same page \u2013 genius playmaking No. 10 and natural goalscoring No. 9, right? \u2013 and that would patch over the rest of the roster\u2019s shortcomings.<\/p>\n

But Lucho pouted his way out of Dallas<\/a> (and probably out of MLS for good) after a miserable half-season. And that\u2019s when los Toros Tejanos started to win. Or, at least, to not lose.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t the prettiest soccer in the world, but head coach Eric Quill built a functional attack around Musa and got defensive commitment from all over the field, while rediscovering Dallas\u2019s homegrown pipeline.<\/p>\n

It certainly felt like a step forward from a cultural point of view, one that leaves me fairly confident they\u2019ll climb a few spots in the standings next year.<\/p>\n

Except for goalkeeper Zack Steffen<\/a>, who was remarkable \u2013 seriously, if he\u2019d been able to stay healthy all year, he probably would\u2019ve won Goalkeeper of the Year \u2013 the Rapids<\/a> regressed across the board. That includes both boxscore and underlying numbers, as well as (most) individual performances.<\/p>\n

There were two particularly frustrating things, I think:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. They still haven\u2019t come close to replacing Mo\u00efse Bombito, who was sold in the summer of 2024.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
      \n
    1. Now-former head coach Chris Armas was reluctant to develop any of the young wingers the team has spent so many resources on.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      The good news is that homegrown No. 9 Darren Yapi<\/a> took a big step forward, and that after selling Djordje Mihailovic<\/a> they went out and got aggressive, bringing in Paxten Aaronson<\/a> as the new DP No. 10.<\/p>\n

      Still, Colorado never looked like a playoff team (despite almost sneaking in) in 2025 after a promising 2024.<\/p>\n

      Grade:<\/strong> Below Expectations<\/p>\n

      They spent a huge amount on attackers who I was worried wouldn\u2019t quite fit, and\u2026 they didn\u2019t quite fit. And I was worried they wouldn\u2019t have enough midfield creativity, and\u2026 they didn\u2019t have quite enough midfield creativity.<\/p>\n

      But it was a good season anyway for the Verde & Black<\/a>, as they made their first-ever tournament final (losing the US Open Cup to Nashville in heartbreaking fashion), punched their playoff ticket and got a breakout campaign from young Owen Wolff<\/a>.<\/p>\n

      I think if you\u2019d offered that to head coach Nico Est\u00e9vez, who was appointed before last season, he\u2019d have taken it. And so would the fanbase, and I don\u2019t think either would have been wrong to have done so.<\/p>\n

      But the final three months of the season\u2026 they went just 4W-8L-3D across all competitions as their underlying numbers fell off, and then got bounced by LAFC in the playoffs. The gap was sizable, and sporting director\/chief soccer officer Rodolfo Borrell\u2019s hit rate on imports has been mixed.<\/p>\n

      How do they narrow it, then? If spending $30 million on attackers and getting an A+ outcome from a developing homegrown doesn\u2019t help reel in the league\u2019s best, what does?<\/p>\n

      Grade:<\/strong> Exceeded Expectations for their outcomes here, but I’m worried it doesn\u2019t portend further growth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a little holiday treat in between new signings \u2013 I hope you\u2019ve all got notifications for Tom…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":483168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[81968,44466,121797,15519,15755,70315,61116,9501,78395,66783,15520,21601,36219,37638,49872,62,125016,67,132,68,65858],"class_list":{"0":"post-483167","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-armchair-analyst-matt-doyle","9":"tag-austin-fc","10":"tag-colorado-rapids","11":"tag-fc-dallas","12":"tag-houston-dynamo-fc","13":"tag-la-galaxy","14":"tag-los-angeles-football-club","15":"tag-minnesota-united-fc","16":"tag-portland-timbers","17":"tag-real-salt-lake","18":"tag-san-diego-fc","19":"tag-san-jose-earthquakes","20":"tag-seattle-sounders-fc","21":"tag-sendtonews","22":"tag-sporting-kansas-city","23":"tag-sports","24":"tag-st-louis-city-sc","25":"tag-united-states","26":"tag-unitedstates","27":"tag-us","28":"tag-vancouver-whitecaps-fc"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115816110676183017","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}