Eastern Conference: 5 teams with pressing tactical questions | OneFootball

By Matthew Doyle

We’re now just two weeks from first kick.

Most of the heavy lifting in the transfer market has been done, most of the roster holes have been filled, and every team has been in camp for almost a month. One – San Diego FC – has already kicked off the competitive portion of the year’s events, hammering LIGA MX grandes Pumas UNAM, 4-1, on Tuesday night in the Concacaf Champions Cup.

There were no questions about San Diego heading into the season; they already knew who they were, and man, did it show. But for a bunch of other MLS clubs, real questions around formation and tactical approach remain. And that’s what we’re here for today.

Here are a few of the teams I’m keeping an eye on at the moment. Western Conference was yesterday, Eastern Conference is below.

In we go:

Inter Miami CF

Lionel Messi as a false 9? True No. 10? Inverted winger?

Truth is, the two-time defending Landon Donovan MLS MVP and still arguably greatest player in the world will play all three spots over the course of the season. Miami will most likely once again play 50+ games and will certainly play in at least three different countries, which will necessitate a lot of positional and formational flexibility.

Head coach Javier Mascherano is up for it. He showed that last year. Messi will be up for it as well – he’s shown that for the past 20 years.

But if flexibility is how you get through a season, having a defined, first-choice XI with balance and clarity is how you win a title. I’d argue Miami didn’t have that through most of 2025, and I’d argue just as stridently that they found it in the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs when Messi was moved up to the false 9 role.

He started there in the final game of their Round One series against Nashville SC, which they won 4-0. He started there in the Eastern Conference Semifinal against FC Cincinnati, which they won 4-0. He started there in the Eastern Conference Final vs. New York City FC, which Miami won 5-1. And he started there in MLS Cup presented by Audi, which the Herons won 3-1.

Going +14 over a four-game stretch against the best competition the league has to offer is absurd. And Miami followed it up by bringing Luis Suárez back – which makes total sense; he’ll still chew up 3,000+ minutes across all comps, and probably register 12g/10a or something like that – and then spending their open Designated Player slot on…. Germán Berterame. Who can play on the wing, but is, factually, a No. 9.

So right now, my best guess at a Miami lineup is a basic 4-2-3-1 with Messi as a true No. 10 and Berterame up front. To be clear, that is a potentially devastating lineup. But it’s definitely not what worked so well in the playoffs last season, and I’m at least a little bit surprised that the front office spent their biggest offseason chip (that open DP slot) on a guy whose presence will actually make it harder to use Messi as a false 9.

Charlotte FC

Pep Biel, No. 10?

Ok, we’ve officially got a theme here, because I’ve got another question about the starting position of another team’s primary playmaker.

In this case, the No. 9 is off the board (Dean Smith’s not about to do that to Biel), but the right wing is very much in play. I won’t say it’s the betting favorite for Biel’s primary position – probably 80 percent of his MLS minutes came as a No. 10 last year. Still, he’s also played a bunch as an inverted playmaking winger on the right side, with an overlapping fullback pushing up to provide width and what I’ll call more “industrious” midfielders making up the central midfield trio.

There’s a lot to like from him in that spot, and adding more off-ball runners to central midfield is a way to create attacking misdirection.

But the best teams in MLS have DPs whose skillsets complement and amplify each other, and there was not enough of that between Biel and the team’s other DP, left winger Wilfried Zaha. You’d think that, when Biel was playing as a No. 10, these two guys would’ve just instantly figured it all out. It wasn’t that way, though; it was the other way.

Well, they’re going to run it back in 2026, I think, and my best guess is that Biel will start the year as a true 10 in a 4-2-3-1 with Zaha back in his usual spot on the left and Kerwin Vargas out on the right. Those are three guys who take up premium roster slots (same with starting No. 9 Idan Toklomati), and that’s how you want to build an attack, right? Put your highest-impact players in their best spots and create a framework for them to work together.

It makes sense on paper. I’m curious to see if it can better translate on the pitch this year, because for Charlotte to take a step forward – to become a team that doesn’t just make the playoffs, but actually scores goals and wins stuff – they need the guys in those spots to make each other better.

Orlando City

Will Orlando skew left this time?

It ended up being kind of shocking last year when Óscar Pareja, who’s been a long-time devotee of a vanilla 4-2-3-1 with a No. 10 and fullbacks who take turns overlapping, deviated from that system. In this case, it was a shift to the right to highlight one of those fullbacks, the now-departed Alex Freeman.

By every measure, Freeman wasn’t just the best attacking fullback in MLS last year, but the best and most impactful attacking fullback in league history. He was getting as many touches in the box as some forwards, and all the advanced data (stuff like American Soccer Analysis’s all-in-one “goals added” metric) had him more or less breaking the mold.

It was the kind of performance that gets you into the national team, or gets you a move to a Champions League-caliber LaLiga club. Or, in Freeman’s case, gets you both.

Point is, with Freeman gone there’s no pressing need to tilt the formation so drastically to one side of the field again, because there is simply zero chance that whoever Orlando get to replace him at right back will offer the same attacking punch that Freeman did. Which makes it a good bet that Orlando go back to the “one fullback stays, one fullback goes” system that has served Pareja so well over the years.

HOWEVER… I do want to make a point here: while they don’t have a like-for-like right back replacement for Freeman, they do have, in Tyrese Spicer, a left-footer who’s kind of a mirror image. Spicer’s mostly played on the wing in his career, and while he offers a lot, he’s not really goal-dangerous enough to be a starting winger in MLS (neither is Iván Angulo, to be fair).

When he’s been played as a wingback, though? Devastating. And Freeman’s job in attack in 2025 was, essentially, to be a wingback.

I do think Spicer could do a mirror image of that job, though there are two big concerns:

The left side is more cluttered because neither Pašalić nor Ojeda will stop tilting left (nor should they), and whether it’s Angulo or new acquisition Tiago, there will also be a left winger to account for. Freeman overlapping like mad actually balanced Orlando’s shape, while asking Spicer to do the same from left back this year could unbalance the whole thing.

So yeah, probably not going to happen. But man, I’d love to see them try it at least a little bit.

Columbus Crew

How much of Nancy-ball will the Crew keep?

General manager Issa Tall said it when he hired new head coach Henrik Rydström: “We collectively share a vision for how we can continue to advance and evolve the club’s dynamic style of play.” 

That’s not “change” or “discard” or “rethink” or “remodel.” “Evolve” feels like a carefully chosen word – one that indicates Rydström has been brought in to largely keep what Wilfried Nancy built over the past three years, and to iterate on it in marginal, but hopefully meaningful ways.

A lot of that makes sense as both Rydström and Nancy have reputations as attack-minded coaches who want their teams to have the ball and create with it. Nancy, in particular, came to the Crew when the correlation between possession and points per game in MLS was at its nadir. In three years, he won two trophies and rewrote the meta for what works in this league.

The part that I’ll be keeping my eye on: as free-flowing and improvisational as the Crew looked under Nancy, ask any player who played for him, and they will tell you that the whole thing was religiously drilled until the players understood in their very souls the importance of proper spacing and rotations. You could improvise within the framework – that’s why and how you’d see 2024 Defender of the Year Steven Moreira occasionally operating in the half-spaces as a No. 10 – but you absolutely could not break it. So when Moreira pushed up, someone else would drop back or slide over so that the Crew would always keep their 2-3-5 or 3-2-5 shape.

Rydström, meanwhile, is a stated proponent of “relationism,” which… well, it’s a system of play (or an anti-system, if you want to get into the metaphysics of it) that, taken to its logical extent, dispenses with the framework entirely. Just ball-winning and vibes, man.

I’m mildly worried that the evolution Rydström has in store for this team will be more profound than anyone’s really expecting.

FC Cincinnati

Can Cincy find balance out wide?

In retrospect, I don’t think I quite appreciated how crucial the two wingbacks, left-sider Álvaro Barreal and right-sider Santiago Arias, were to the success of Cincy’s Supporters’ Shield-winning 2023 side.

Arias, the veteran, provided a veteran’s know-how and calm on the ball, acting as a platform for long spells of possession, almost as a second or third deep-lying midfielder and always as a ball-progression hub.

Barreal, of course, was basically a secondary No. 10 for the Orange & Blue that year, and a match-winning one at that.

In pulling apart the difference between that great 2023 side and the lesser versions we’ve seen over the past two seasons (still very good teams, mind you), we’ve tended to focus – I’ve tended to focus – on Matt Miazga’s injury and Lucho Acosta’s departure. And I do still think those are the two most important factors at play.

But the balance and dynamism from those wide spots haven't been quite as good as they were three years ago, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Cincy have had to cycle through myriad wingback combos to try to replicate what they had at their very best.

If they’ve gotten it right this time, they’ll be back up above 60 points yet again and will enter the playoffs with a better chance of walking away with a trophy.