A couple of Designated Player debuts (as starters, anyway) that were both promising and disappointing. A crushing loss for New York City FC, another win for Charlotte FC, and Nashville SC suddenly looking lost and trying to find their way.
But let’s start alllll the way at the top of the table, where the Philadelphia Union made a statement about exactly who they are.
Nearly six months ago, when Cincinnati and Philadelphia met in Chester, the Union laid down a marker. They were coming off a colossally disappointing 2024 season, which saw them miss the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs for the first time in seven years. They’d changed the coach, parting ways with club legend Jim Curtin, changed a bunch of personnel, and even changed the system. They were rebooting the project and attempting to return to what it initially was under sporting director Ernst Tanner.
And they weren’t supposed to be particularly good. Not bad, mind you. But… nothing special.
On the other hand, Cincy were coming into the season with great expectations, widely regarded as one of the handful of best teams in the league – a popular pick to win either the Supporters’ Shield, MLS Cup, or both. They, too, had changed personnel, bringing in Evander as their No. 10 and Kévin Denkey as their No. 9. Make it $28 million-plus spent on two DPs who have both been worth the money.
The Union won 4-1 back in March, laying down that aforementioned marker. Ever since, these two teams have been locked in a knife fight atop the standings, Cincy living up to expectations while Philly defied them. There was just one question in need of answering for the Union: Against the league’s best, what they’d accomplished during Matchday 2 against Cincy… could they do it again?
Up until Saturday night, they hadn’t. They had gone full buzzsaw against sides they were supposed to beat – 13W-1L-3D, with a +17 goal differential against everyone outside the Eastern Conference’s top eight. But against that top eight, since that 4-1 win vs. Cincinnati, Philly had gone just 1W-5L-3D with a -5 goal differential.
That is stark. They needed another win over an elite team, proof that they aren’t just flat-track bullies.
This was the weekend they got it. The Union swept the regular-season series against the Garys with a 1-0 road win thanks to a Bruno Damiani goal that came in textbook Philly style, pressing high and capitalizing on a very bad turnover as Cincy tried to play out of the back:
That was followed by about 35 minutes of furious 10-v-11 defending after Olwethu Makhanya got his second yellow at the hour mark.
“This type of game, the only thing important is to win,” said Damiani, who scored his sixth goal of the season across all competitions. “These kind of games show to ourselves, most of all, what are we made of and what we want this year.”
What they want, of course, is to win that Shield, which would be the club’s second (and their second piece of hardware overall). They’ve still got both the US Open Cup and, obviously, MLS Cup in their sights.
What they’ve done is show, beyond any reasonable doubt, that they are threats to win any of the three. Hell, maybe even all of them.
“I don’t think this team needs to prove that they’re a good team anymore,” is how head coach Bradley Carnell put it in the postgame. “I think we can see that. And now we just have to keep pushing ourselves, motivating ourselves, and finish off strong.”
Cincy also need to finish off strong, but have been doing the opposite. They’ve lost three of their past four, all by 1-0 at home. They’ve scored in just one of their past five games, and that lack of coordination/chemistry on the build-out above? That’s even more apparent in the attack, which isn’t generating chances commensurate with the amount of talent at the team’s disposal (even more so now with the return of Brenner, who re-debuted this weekend).
Numbers are down across the board – they’re generating about 10% fewer final-third entries and 20% fewer key passes. They’re crossing more often and completing them less often, and over the past six games, they’ve created exactly one chance following a successful 1-v-1 dribble.
It’s very static. And it’s not very good.
“Results, performances are below our standard,” head coach Pat Noonan said afterward. “I know that disappointment’s there with these players, with the fans, and that’s the way it should be. We’re not getting it done.”
A point on the road is technically a good result, and I think Columbus head coach Wilfried Nancy will be pleased about keeping the zero in his side’s scoreless draw in Harrison against the Red Bulls. It’s the first time the Crew have pitched a shutout in two months.
But the fearlessness on the ball that defined this team for the past two-and-a-half years has gone missing, and everything has become robotic since what felt like a huge 4-2 win over Cincinnati on July 12. Turns out, Columbus have won just once in league play since then.
Still, the Crew avoided the kinds of turnovers playing out of the back that have plagued them recently, and did so against an RBNY team that actually came upfield and pressed harder than we’ve seen from them throughout most of the summer (the weather in New York has been uncharacteristically cool over the past week, which might have had something to do with it).
“Red Bulls did what they like to do with the press,” Nancy said to the media afterwards. “This is the Red Bull side; they do it well. I think that we did a good [job being] patient when we needed to be patient against the press. After that, we found a way to be in their half, but… we didn’t score.”
New DP Wessam Abou Ali made his first start and had one or two moments, but lacked sharpness in front of goal. As did Dániel Gazdag, as did Diego Rossi:
It feels like the rest of the regular season is a race against time for these guys to build some chemistry, while at the same time, a race for the defense to rediscover the rhythm in their build-out patterns. As you can see above, when they’re decisive in breaking lines, they look like the Crew we’re used to seeing.
When they’re not, they look like the Crew we’ve all seen this summer. And that’s definitely not as much fun.
RBNY, whose new signing Gustav Berggren got a 15-minute cameo at the end, climbed a point above Chicago into ninth place. But:
- Three of RBNY’s final five games are on the road.
- Their two home games are a derby vs. NYCFC and hosting a Cincy team that’ll be out for blood.
- The Fire have two games in hand.
It’s a narrow path to the playoffs.
9. The hottest team in MLS right now is one of the hottest teams in MLS history: Charlotte ran their winning streak to eight games with a 2-1 victory up in Foxborough against the Revs, courtesy of a late Idan Toklomati winner. That’s the second-longest winning streak of the post-shootout era, and after spending most of the spring and early summer below the red line, the Crown have climbed up to third place in the East.
“Tonight wasn’t one of our best performances, but we’ve come here and done something that we haven’t done before in our history,” Charlotte head coach Dean Smith said afterwards about his team’s first-ever win at New England. “And, you know, gone and won our eighth game as well.
“You’re never going to have eight wonderful games of football where you’re on top of the opposition … that’s the nature of the game. The main thing is to make sure that the players keep calm and stick to the plan.”
The Revs have six games left and need to win them all to have any hope of reaching the playoffs.
8. NYCFC suffered one of the most brutal losses anyone’s taken all year, dropping a 2-1 result at home to a D.C. United side that’s already eliminated from playoff contention. I’m giving Christian Benteke our Pass of the Week for this through-ball on Gabriel Pirani’s winner:
The Pigeons would have jumped Columbus, Miami and Orlando into fifth place with a win. Instead, stay down in eighth on 44 points.
They’re still probably safe, four points ahead of the ninth-place Red Bulls and five ahead of the 10th-place Fire. But this was a very, very tough L for Pascal Jansen’s side, who couldn’t get any sort of penetration against D.C.’s low-block 4-3-3.
“To be honest, I don’t really have the answer,” said center back Justin Haak when asked about his team’s struggles against the bottom of the table this season. “We’ve already seen it twice this year versus [CF] Montréal. They were in last place when we played them, and we lost both of those games. So even when we played D.C. [United] away, it was a similar game a little bit – dominated the ball but couldn’t really score, and in the end didn’t get what we needed to take from these games to finish higher up in the standings.”
They took just one point out of four games against D.C. and Montréal this year. It is inexplicable.
7. That Montréal side did well to visit Toronto and get a point in the season’s final edition of the Canadian Classique, one that ended 1-1. Dante Sealy got his fourth goal in five league games, and new DP Iván Jaime debuted.
So… some hope for 2026.
6. Nashville continued their summer of discontent with their fourth loss in five, this time 1-0 at home to an Atlanta team officially in “let’s work some new guys in and start prepping for 2026” mode.
One of those making a big impression: d-mid Steven Alzate, who assisted Ronald Hernández’s game-winner on a restart. Another: 21-year-old goalkeeper (and, ahem, former UConn Husky) Jayden Hibbert:
Hibbert’s now got two straight shutouts and has conceded just twice in four starts across all competitions for the Five Stripes. He was recently called into Canada’s September camp as well.
Nashville, as you can see above, had their chances, as was the story of their loss against NYCFC two weeks ago.
They badly need this international break, which comes ahead of one of the biggest weeks in team history, with a US Open Cup semifinal at home against Philly sandwiched between road trips to Cincy and Orlando. Season-defining stretch for the ‘Yotes.
5. Colorado collapsed late, conceding three times in the final 20 minutes to turn a 2-1 win into a crushing 4-2 loss at Sporting KC. It’s a massive capitulation, a result that knocks them down into eighth place, just four points ahead of 10th-place Houston (who have a game in hand).
It’s their second bad loss in a row, coming after last week’s 3-0 shellacking by the Galaxy’s reserves.
And guess what? The next time the Rapids play, it’ll be in two weeks when they host the Dynamo. That one’s a true six-pointer.
“We know that the game in LA wasn’t good enough, and the second half tonight wasn’t good enough,” head coach Chris Armas said afterward. “And listen, what we end up knowing is it’s lots of little things that we can be better at. Whether it’s set pieces defensively, too many cheap giveaways that lead to transition moments, give up a goal on a throw-in.
“These little things cost you games. So, I think that it’s in our grasp. It’s in the bucket of controllables for us.”
Silver lining for the Rapids: Paxten Aaronson was super dynamic in his first start as their No. 10 in a new-look 3-4-1-2. He should’ve scored a goal, drew a penalty kick, and was dangerous as hell:
I’ve never been the biggest Aaronson fan, but if he keeps looking like this, I’ll change my tune in a hurry.
Sporting KC ended their six-match winless streak, which was bookended by wins over the Rapids.
4. Houston looked dead-and-buried after a six-match winless skid of their own, but a big 3-2 win at St. Louis on Saturday night kept their season on life support, and with a clear path toward getting back above the playoff line: win next week against LA, then go beat the Rapids in Colorado, and suddenly they enter the final month of the season in control of their own destiny.
Of course, that’s easier said than done – Houston haven’t won three in a row all year.
Key to this one was the play of DP center forward Ezequiel Ponce, who scored the opening goal and forced the second (a Henry Kessler own goal) with a nice double-move to get the inside shoulder rather than just doing his typical thing of drifting towards the back post.
That’s the version of Ponce they need in order to climb the West.
3. San Jose are absolutely leaving the door open, even more than Colorado. A week after they went to Houston and handled the Dynamo, they tripped all over themselves in Austin, coughing up two self-inflicted goals for the 3-1 final.
Head coach Bruce Arena didn’t mince words.
“The second and third goals are disgraceful. That has to be on me as the coach of this team. Give Austin credit, they capitalize on those mistakes,” Arena said afterwards before ticking off a litany of dropped points from avoidable mistakes.
“We’ve given away goals in this game, and the game at home against San Diego [FC], the game on the road against [Real] Salt Lake – these are all games where, in my opinion, we walk off the field with a point or three points.
“We can’t continue to do that. Obviously, if we do, our season ends in October for sure.”
Austin probably punched their ticket with the win. They’re not mathematically safe yet, but they climbed up to seventh in the West on 38 points, six ahead of the 10th-place Dynamo, and with a game in hand. Plus, they’ve now scored multiple goals in five of their last six games. Some of that is capitalizing on errors, as Arena said, but some of it is stuff like this:
That touch is NSFW. My goodness.
The Loons were not great in this one – they looked slow, both of thought and foot – but Lod is the type of player who can make a special play and get you a point.
That’s what he did in that moment. And so to the Timbers (who rotated the squad a bit while working in their three big summer signings), it must’ve felt like two points dropped.
“I’d say that we dominated the whole game. From start to finish, I thought we dominated the whole game,” head coach Phil Neville said in the postgame. “The game plan was good, tactically outstanding in the way that the players executed everything that we wanted to. We looked fluent, we looked mobile, we looked confident, we looked like we had a bit of swagger, and I was really pleased.
“I think if you think about the last three games against three top teams, I think there’s nothing to choose between us, and I think that’s the confidence we should take out of this game.”
1. With the late kickoff (10:45 pm ET!), the LAFC-San Diego blurb will be added later tonight.
