Philadelphia Union extend Shield lead, FC Cincinnati miss out & more from Matchday 37 | OneFootball

By Matthew Doyle

Let's try a new format, making our way through the top of the Supporters’ Shield table before pivoting to the Audi 2025 MLS Cup Playoffs races. Since that’s what matters most right now, right?

Ok, in we go:

Philadelphia steamroll D.C.

I don't think much of what we saw from the Union’s 6-0 win over D.C. United will be applicable come the playoffs. D.C.’s backline was a wreck throughout – go through the highlights and watch how many times one guy dropped when the other three stepped. By definition, you don’t face that sort of mess in the postseason (though… ok, both the Chicago and Columbus backlines have had their moments, so maybe this was good prep for what Philly could see in Round One).

But we’re not talking about the playoffs right now. We’re talking about the Shield race, and the Union are leading the race because of how they’ve overwhelmed disorganized backlines and indecisive midfields all year. They haven't found a ton of success against MLS’s elite, but they turn bad teams into utterly tragic cautionary tales:

They crush you if you’re out there begging to be crushed, and have done so in the face of injuries (Quinn Sullivan limped off early in this one), absences (they lost a bunch of guys to the Gold Cup), underperformance (Bruno Damiani has only recently discovered the goal) and a little bit of roster churn (mid-season addition Milan Iloski had 1g/2a in this one).

The teams directly behind them in the standings haven’t. Not to the same level, anyway. And so Cincy, Miami, Vancouver, San Diego… they’ve all been better against the league’s best, but they’ve all dropped easy points much more often than the Union. Now they’re looking up as the Union close in on everyone's favorite dinner plate.

And that’s it. That’s the story of the 2025 Supporters’ Shield if Philly cross the finish line first. The playoffs are a different race, and I think it’s fair to be skeptical about Philly’s chances in that field. But the regular-season marathon? It’s the Union’s to lose.

They've earned it. Nights like Saturday are how.

Cincy's Achilles' heel exposed

First, let me give you some numbers on Cincy this year, courtesy of Catalina Bush’s extremely useful shot-map tool:

5.6% of the shots the Garys take are categorized as “great” shots – the type that’d come from, say, quick and incisive combination play entering the final third at speed.

Cincy are way under that mark.

The problem waiting to happen, though? Fully 12.4% of the shots Cincy allow are categorized as great shots (i.e., high xG shots). And while they’re below-average to bad across almost all phases of defensive play (including set pieces), the real trouble comes when they allow shots off of opposing progressive passes, as 23.5% of the shots they allow from progressive play are categorized as great shots.

That’s more than 50% higher than the league average. That is brutal.

I’ve been trying to figure this out all year and haven’t really come up with a singular reason why a team with so much defensive talent (nobody has spent more on their backline) would struggle so badly with both rest and transition defense. My working theory now: they take so long to get into the final third on the ball that they get frustrated and bring more numbers up into the attack even when they shouldn’t. They then get impatient – they settle for way too many speculative shots and low-percentage crosses – which leaves them vulnerable whenever they lose possession.

But also, they have so much freaking attacking talent that sometimes they can enter the final third at a walk and exit with a lead anyway:

And yet Cincy are still less than the sum of their parts, which they showed constantly throughout Sunday’s very fortunate 1-1 home draw against Orlando. The talent is so overwhelming that it’s often hard to see, but it wasn’t in this one.

In this one, what was on display were those flaws – the lack of chemistry and cohesion, the way they can alternate between a lack of urgency and a lack of patience, and almost always with a lack of structure. As so:

The Garys finished the weekend in the same spot they entered it: second place. Now, though, they’re four points back of the Union with just two games left. To win the Shield, they need a Philly collapse.

Orlando probably deserved all three points, but what’s been clear for months is they’re not walking out of games against the league’s best with a win unless Luis Muriel’s on one. He’s not right now (just one goal in his last seven games across all competitions), so a point is all they’ll get.

It’s a very good one, and puts them in position to climb all the way into fifth if they win their game in hand. But still… a little bit more clinical in front of goal and they'd be there already.

San Diego still miss Iloski

Make it one win in five for San Diego FC, who are still doing the things they’ve done all year – smart, selective pressing; very few long balls; lots of possession trying to draw the opponents upfield, then playing the wingers in behind – and doing it well. Right up until they get into the box.

Then they’re bad. Or at the very least not good, as was the case Saturday night in a 1-0 home loss to San Jose, a result that basically extinguished any lingering Shield hopes for the hosts.

Some of this slump is “sometimes ball go in, sometimes no,” which is always the case in this sport of ours. Some of this, though, is just never getting the attacking personnel right since parting ways with Iloski in early July. I know I’ve been harping on this, and I’m sure San Diego folks are sick of reading it, but it’s stark, and it probably determined this year’s Shield race:

The above puts him at about 1.7 goal contributions per 90 over a sample size of almost a thousand minutes, which… again, unsustainable. In MLS history, only Lionel Messi has hit and maintained those numbers.

But also, Iloski’s underlying numbers – his non-penalty xG/90 and xA/90 – are elite over enough minutes to matter. And obviously San Diego miss him badly:

That latter tally now includes just four goals in their past five games. They absolutely had looks on Saturday, and there’s no guaranteeing Iloski would’ve finished any of them (sometimes ball go in, sometimes no). But I’d have liked their chances a lot more if he’d been out there.

The win – an utterly shocking one given how they’ve played lately – pushed the Quakes back up above the line into ninth place in the Western Conference for at least one more week. There were no structural changes from Bruce Arena, just some personnel shifts as a pair of rookies got starts on the backline and a pair of attackers got starts at wingback.

But really, this win was about one moment of opportunism from Josef Martínez up top and a full game’s worth of excellence from Daniel in goal. They’ll need more of the same over their final 180 minutes of the season if they don’t want them to be the final 180 minutes.

Vancouver and Seattle both look hurt and exhausted

These are the two teams I’ve probably enjoyed watching most at various points this year, but I think the grind of multiple competitions – Concacaf Champions Cup and Canadian Championship (the final of which is on Wednesday as the ‘Caps try to make it four straight) for Vancouver; Club World Cup and Leagues Cup for Seattle – seems to have worn them down both physically and emotionally.

Their 2-2 draw on Saturday was still kind of awesome, but in the way the 14th round of a heavyweight bout is awesome, rather than the way the fourth round (when both fighters are crisp, and still have their legs) is awesome:

Vancouver landed a punch. Then Seattle countered with two of their own. Then the ‘Caps, up against the ropes, found a way to land one more. And when the final whistle blew, both fighters collapsed in a heap.

We should be used to this, of course. Columbus ran out of gas after winning last year’s Leagues Cup, while Miami completely tanked down the stretch in 2023. And the regular-season struggles of MLS teams that make it to ConcaChampions finals have been well documented over the past decade. Hell, it’s something of a minor miracle that the ‘Caps are where they are in the standings given all the games they’ve played, and all the personnel they’ve lost to injuries: still fourth overall, still with an outside track to the Shield if they win out.

Anyway, both Alex Roldan and Yeimar Gómez Andrade limped off inside 20 minutes with what looked like muscle injuries for Seattle. For Vancouver, even squad rotation couldn’t save them as Brian White came on at the half, then hobbled off before the 80th minute with what looked like another hamstring strain.

This is on top of all the other absences: Pedro de la Vega and João Paulo made the bench for Seattle but didn’t play. Ryan Gauld’s back in training but not on the gameday squad yet for the ‘Caps, and three-fourths of their starting backline is done for the year (I know they’re holding out hope for Tristan Blackmon to come back during the playoffs, but I am very skeptical).

I don’t know how to finish this section other than to say I am sad that it looks like two of my favorite clubs of the 2020s are going into the most important part of the year so badly damaged.

It bums me out. Let’s just move on.

Miami miss their mark

I think there are two big takeaways from Miami’s 1-1 draw at Toronto:

Of the options we’ve seen – Jordi Alba, Mateo Silvetti, Telasco Segovia and Baltasar Rodríguez – I think it works best with Alba out there, even though when he’s playing as a winger, literally everyone knows what’s coming (everyone knows what’s been coming with him and Messi for a dozen years, yet nobody’s consistently stopped it).

Here is the problem when it’s Alba at left back:

Against Toronto, you can get away with leaving six guys in the box while the opponents sprint in the other direction. We’ve seen what happens to them against playoff-caliber teams in do-or-die games, though, haven’t we? 3-0 to the Sounders in the Leagues Cup final. 5-1 on aggregate to the ‘Caps in the Concacaf Champions Cup semifinals.

It’s a glaring imbalance that head coach Javier Mascherano has only bandaged, not managed to fix.

Miami could and probably should have won anyway, but Johnson was the best player on the field for either team. And Miami still could win the Shield – they’re seven points behind the Union but have two games in hand, and they have Messi. I’m not ruling them out.

But they no longer control their own destiny. They’ve used up their entire margin for error, and they need help.

In the playoff scrum...

8. Columbus are without half their starting field players, Wilfried Nancy rotated out slumping goalkeeper Patrick Schulte, and still it all went wrong during Saturday night’s 2-0 loss at Chicago. The Crew have won once in the past two months, are down to eighth in the East, and now look a fair bet to finish ninth behind Chicago.

The gist is that A) the injuries have been too much to overcome because B) GM Issa Tall’s new signings have almost all underdelivered. Brutal combo; the Crew look entirely cooked.

Chicago manager Gregg Berhalter was, it turns out, pretty clever for mirroring the Crew’s 3-4-2-1 with a 3-4-2-1 of his own. I don’t think it gave them perfect control of the game, but it certainly provided plenty of moments for them to get the wingbacks in behind throughout, including on our Pass of the Week:

God, that deserved a finish.

It would now be a genuine shock if the Fire miss the postseason. There is even a path, should things break right, for them to climb out of the Wild Card spots.

7. New York City FC’s attacking modularity – their ability to change whether they’re attacking on the counter, or via the press, or after long diagonal switches to create wide overloads – kept RBNY unsettled for the full 90 minutes in what eventually became a 3-2 win for the Pigeons. That state of affairs was aided and abetted by Nicolas Fernández Mercau’s continued usefulness as a false 9 (he was very good there midweek even as they lost 4-0 to Miami), as he had the Red Bull backline chasing shadows a step behind the play more or less from the opening whistle:

And that, along with Chicago’s win, just about ends RBNY’s league-record, 15-year playoff streak. There will be a lot more to say on this down the road, but the tl;dr is the roster wasn’t built for the way Sandro Schwarz wanted to evolve the game model, the young players didn’t improve, the TAM players didn’t deliver, and the front office didn’t make the kinds of summer moves they clearly needed.

6. The Loons got a good point at Colorado with a 1-1 draw as Nectarios Triantis continues to show he’s got in-the-gym range. Face of the Week from Zack Steffen here:

Still, it’s been 180 uninspired minutes for Minnesota since that brutal US Open Cup semifinal loss. They need to find that spark again.

Colorado have also won just once in five. They are eighth in the West, but that is precarious. If they lose Saturday’s Rocky Mountain Cup derby at RSL, they’re down to ninth at best.

5. That’s because RSL bounced back from the pair of drubbings they took against LAFC with a commanding 3-1 win over a heavily rotated Austin FC side (who are safe at sixth in the West on 44 points even with the loss, and justifiably had eyes on the midweek US Open Cup final).

Just as I wasn’t going to read too much into those games – LAFC are on a different level right now – I’m not going to read too much into a commanding home win over an Austin B team.

What I will say is that at this point, I’d rather be RSL than the Rapids.

4. I’d rather be FC Dallas as well, as their 2-2 draw at Portland gave them a 4W-1L-5D record over their past 10 games. It’s neither pretty nor great soccer, but it’s been effective, especially now that Logan Farrington and Petar Musa are starting together up top.

Farrington drew the PK that Musa converted for Dallas’ first goal. And then neither of them got assists on this, but:

Again: Not pretty, but very smart about understanding how to turn those box scrums into looks. And sometimes looks become goals.

Dallas are officially 10th in the West, but have a game in hand and are ahead of ninth-place San Jose on PPG. Their next two outings are a home-and-home with the Galaxy before visiting Vancouver on Decision Day.

Portland are almost certainly safe on 44 points, but they’ve got one league win in two months, and it’s unclear what their first-choice XI is (or should be). Bad times.

3. The other team still nominally in the West playoff race is Houston, but there’s no real chance for them after they took a 3-1 beating at Nashville. Calen Carr was on the mic for that one and on the keyboard here:

The direct ball out of bounds from the kickoff has become a trend across MLS and global football (perhaps most notably utilized by Luis Enrique at PSG in their UEFA Champions League title run). Its application is rarely so literal as to turn directly into a goal – as it did in Hany Mukhtar’s 68th-second opener – rather serving more as a “statement of intent” to put opponents on their heels:

Nashville kept at it in a relatively recent change to a 4-3-3 defensive pressing structure (vs. the 4-4-2 they previously employed) that allowed them to match up man-for-man with Houston’s initial build. It resulted in the early goal, as well as an Erik Sviatchenko turnover and DOGSO red card foul committed against Mukhtar. That paved the way for a Nashville win before Houston had a chance to realize the match had even started.

The varied ways the other goals came reveal the blueprint for Nashville 2.0 that has made them successful this season. Head coach B.J. Callaghan shows his Philly roots in an aggressive 4-2-2-2 build, including deep runs and wing progressions, but also some of his time under Berhalter with trademark USMNT patterns, perhaps best exemplified by Eddy Tagseth’s big diagonal in behind to Daniel Lovitz, stretching Houston and opening up space for Sam Surridge’s clever finish on the winner.

And while Nashville’s one win and six losses out of their previous seven might feel like they were trending in the wrong direction, 50 minutes was all it took to make it two in eight, and to get both attacking DPs goals and some rest (Walker Zimmerman also made a late appearance after missing the last two outings) ahead of maybe the biggest match in club history this Wednesday in Austin for the US Open Cup final.

2. Charlotte got an early goal from Wilfried Zaha, then took an early red from Adilson Malanda and proceeded to get crushed 4-1 at home by CF Montréal.

They’ve now followed up a historic nine-game winning streak with a two-game losing streak, and need real help to sneak into the East’s top four.

1. Finally, as mentioned above, LAFC appear to be on a different level right now. One more goal for Denis Bouanga and another brace for Son Heung-Min made it a 3-0 final in St. Louis, and made it 17 goals between the two of them – the last 17 LAFC have scored – over the past month. It’s absurd.

The note of caution I’ll sound: Since Son arrived, the only truly good team the Black & Gold have faced is San Diego. They lost that one 2-1, and their remaining schedule is Charmin soft.

So we won’t really have any data on how they stack up against the best in the conference until we see it happen in the playoffs. But it's fair to say expectations will be really, really high. And so far, that's more than justified.