MLS Tiers Revisited: Ranking all 30 teams | OneFootball

By Matthew Doyle

With a third of the year gone, it feels like a good time to reexamine my preseason tiers piece.

These, remember, are not hard-and-fast Power Rankings, but rather something a little looser in terms of talent level, cohesion, chemistry and all the et ceteras that make teams tick (or not).

I put them mostly in the order I thought they’d finish, but what really matters is the tier designation.

Ok, let’s jump in and see where I had these teams to start, and where they are now.

Tier 1: The Favorites

Miami are just about who I thought they’d be, with a deep (but ultimately fruitless) Concacaf Champions Cup run and regular-season form in which they’re cruising along at a 70-point pace. They're still not great defensively, though it has required truly excellent teams to exploit that (spare me your FC Dallas snark; we both know that came against a fully rotated Miami squad).

I straight-up do not think they’re as good as the other two teams in this group, but because of their personnel, it would not shock me if they won the Supporters’ Shield-MLS Cup double anyway.

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I had questions entering the season about the Crew’s overall talent level and the ability to survive the occasional injury, both because of transferring Cucho Hernández and trading Christian Ramírez.

I no longer have those questions. In Wilfried Nancy we trust.

To me, Vancouver look like the best team on the continent. They do a ton of Crew things without taking quite so many risks, which has made them elite on both sides of the ball.

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Tier 2: Real Contenders

The truth is, I should make a Tier 1.5 for Seattle, Cincinnati and LAFC. I just have slightly more qualms about them (top-end talent for Seattle; pitch control for Cincy; attacking dynamism for LAFC) than I do about the three teams who have solidified themselves as true Tier 1 teams thus far.

I remain bullish on all three, though. These feel like 60+ point teams to me.

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Oh my god, was I wrong about the Galaxy, Red Bulls and Atlanta. LA have become a full-on meme team – you saw what happened last weekend; they now need to play at a Shield-contending pace for the rest of the season just to make the Wild Card game – and Atlanta are not far behind. Neither should be anywhere near as bad as they are, but somehow there’s this deep, dark cloud hanging over both.

With the Red Bulls it’s more of an aimless malaise, which is the dark cloud’s cousin.

I was exactly right on Minnesota and Charlotte: Good teams who can beat basically anyone on their day, but need to do more in terms of varying their game models if they’re going to join the favorites.

It’s not out of the question that they get there! I don’t think, man-for-man, either Columbus or Vancouver have more overall talent than the Loons or The Crown. But they are much more comfortable and dynamic with the ball (as are, to be clear, Seattle, Cincy and LAFC), and Jesper Sørensen has worked miracles in player development.

Those things matter a lot.

Nashville and San Diego are secretly the third and fourth most fun teams in the league to watch (or maybe fourth and third; I won’t fight you about that). They’re both very good on the ball – San Diego are a full-on, ride-or-die, possession team – who have shown the ability to dominate games and beat good teams using it.

At the same time, both have obvious flaws: Nashville can’t finish their chances and San Diego have become increasingly vulnerable defensively throughout the season (though this past weekend was a valuable course correction).

Philly have gone full Energy Drink Soccer, and as with all Energy Drink Soccer teams, they have been lethal in the regular season. I wouldn’t be shocked by a run at 70 points, though I think I’d be truly surprised if they won the Shield, and am not holding my breath for an MLS Cup win. Raw talent has traditionally mattered too much in the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs.

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Tier 3: The Wide Middle

I’m going to go very quickly through the holdovers, and what’s kept them in this group rather than caused them to rise or drop:

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Am I selling too low on St. Louis? Maybe. A team that’s endured that many injuries and absences might deserve the benefit of the doubt. But they’ve been getting worse, not better, and Olof Mellberg’s hesitance to unleash the attack in any meaningful way has me really shook. Meanwhile, the defense has completely fallen apart over the past five games despite cramming a clown car’s worth of center backs into every starting XI.

I based my relative optimism for Montréal upon last year’s playoff appearance and the hope that they’d build on that in Year Two of the Laurent Courtois era. Courtois, of course, didn’t even make it a quarter of the way into Year Two, so that’s that. They are obvious Wooden Spoon contenders. Probably the favorites, to be honest.

RBNY’s malaise is not enough for me to drop them all the way to the fourth tier, especially with Noah Eile playing as well as he has been. But it’s close.

The Revs and Quakes have climbed past my expectations in opposite ways. In New England, Caleb Porter has done everything in his power to keep numbers behind the ball and get this team to lock in defensively while letting Carles Gil do the heavy lifting in attack. It hasn’t been pretty, and they are overperforming those underlying numbers, but it’s been especially effective over the past four games, and there’s real reason for optimism.

Over at the other end of the spectrum, San Jose are an attacking juggernaut who can’t stop anybody. They lead the league in goals by a little and xG by a mile, and have in turn allowed more xG than anybody in the league (though since Daniel is awesome, they are tied for 25th in actual goals allowed. And my god did they fall apart when he was sidelined for a few games).

Both these teams will stay in the playoff hunt. I wouldn’t wager a penny on either doing anything more than that, though.

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Tier 4: Building a Foundation

Houston are more or less who I eventually figured out they’d be – remember, in most of my preseason stuff, I kept trying to convince myself they’d survive without Héctor Herrera and Coco Carrasquilla. It was only after they sold Micael that I finally broke and accepted they were taking a big step backward this year. They’d just lost too much talent.

The good news is some of the new arrivals have been promising, and the team has collectively shown improvement over the past month. I still think 42-44 points is juuust about the ceiling, but that’s not a disaster, and it gives them something to build on heading into 2026.

New England and San Jose are better in the ways I’ve described above, while Philly and San Diego are better in the ways I’ve described waaay above.

St. Louis… man, those fans are too smart to settle for that soccer. Atlanta, meanwhile, are so much less than the sum of their constituent parts that it’s hard to find just one thing to pick on (though if you force me to, let’s start with their inability to win the ball in midfield).

Atlanta United: Lack of chemistry or something more?

Sporting KC have come up in life! With three wins in five since Kerry Zavagnin took over, they're clearly not going to be in the Wooden Spoon mix. That means they’re a level above where I had them to start the year.

To be entirely fair to me, though, I put them in the bottom tier because I never thought they’d make a coaching change, and they absolutely looked like a Wooden Spoon team to start the season. So I think I was mostly right about this one.

Tier 5: Rebuilding a Foundation

D.C. are on 12 points through 11 games, closer to the playoffs than they are to the rest of this tier. But their schedule has been the softest in the league, their underlying numbers are bad, their young players haven’t really developed and I just don’t see a compelling argument for them to be higher than this.

Toronto were my preseason Spoon pick, and they’ve more or less been what I thought. A touch better defensively, and DeAndre Kerr was fun before the injury. I don’t think there’s any surge coming, though.

I will confess that I still like Montréal’s spine – they have some talent in central defense and central midfield. This team shouldn’t be as bad as they have been.

The Galaxy are the worst team in MLS right now, tied with Montréal for the league’s worst record, and with both the worst goal differential and expected goal differential. Marco Reus has been a cipher, and the DP wingers are not much better. The U22 additions have somehow been less than that.

It’s incredible how much of a mess this has turned into, and Greg Vanney hasn’t been able to do anything about it.

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