Western 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. Eastern Conference coming tomorrow, Western Conference is below.

In we go:

Los Angeles Football Club

Does the Marc Dos Santos era mean a shift to the 4-3-3?

Three things I think we all should understand here:

And all indications are that LAFC will shift to a 4-3-3 as their primary formation this year under Dos Santos, who replaces the now-departed Steve Cherundolo. This isn’t a massive switch – LAFC played a ton of 4-3-3 last year before injuries crushed them in midfield, and they were good at it. That huge, $10 million win over Club América in the FIFA Club World Cup qualifier? 4-3-3. Their commendable performance at the Club World Cup itself? (Mostly) a 4-3-3. Their absolutely electric second-half performance against Vancouver in last year’s Audi MLS Cup Playoffs? 4-3-3.

The juggernaut-level version of LAFC we saw once Son Heung-Min arrived, though? 3-4-2-1. And it wasn’t just a team playing in a different shape; it was a team playing in a different shape, hitting different types of passes (they were much more direct, which is befitting a team with the hyper-mobile duo of Son and Denis Bouanga) and, as a knock-on effect, measurably less possession-oriented.

That’s a club Dos Santos will keep in the bag for 2026 and beyond, no doubt. But the main club they’ll be using is, I’m pretty sure, that front-foot 4-3-3. As I said above, they’re already very good at it. If, on top of what they’ve already got, they’re able to sign Canadian men’s national team midfielder Stephen Eustáquio, as has been rumored? Then they’ve got the type of regista who can pull strings and move the entire game around in a way that’ll turn all that possession into penetration.

And with Son and Bouanga getting onto the end of all those sequences, a mother lode of goals will likely follow.

Minnesota United FC

The end of "Ramsay Ball" in Minnesota?

Minnesota United FC defied expectations last year by climbing almost to the very top of the West and then spending basically the entire season in the top four of the conference, before eliminating Seattle Sounders FC in Round One of the playoffs (in frankly hilarious fashion). And they did it without ever completing more than three passes in a row.

Ok, that is a slight exaggeration for effect. The Loons actually had some sequences where they showed the ability to play pretty soccer and used possession well from time to time.

But overall, they were mostly allergic to the ball, a team defined by their love of long throws, set pieces and open space to counterattack into. They ended the season with just 39.2 percent possession, the lowest number for an MLS team in the Opta database (which goes back more than a decade). Their field tilt – the share of final third passes each team hits – was also a record low, at 37.3 percent. They had the lowest (as in, closest to their own goal) average defensive intervention location in the league.

As with LAFC, there’s a new coach in town: Cameron Knowles has replaced the departed Eric Ramsay. Knowles had three games as Minnesota’s temporary head coach in the weeks before Ramsay started the job back in 2024, and two years as head coach of the Loons’ MLS NEXT Pro affiliate before that. In that time, his sides were just as comfortable with the ball as they were without it.

Given Knowles’ proclivities and the personnel on hand at the Allianz (including the potential arrival of a true No. 10 who would definitely move the needle towards more possession), I’m expecting a pretty big shift in the blueprint.

They’ll still be killers on restarts, to be clear. That shouldn’t go away. But in between, I think they’ll be on the ball more, using it to create chances that someone, hopefully, will be in the box to finish off.

San Jose Earthquakes

Can San Jose defend from the front?

The Quakes parted ways with both their starting forwards from last year, Chicho Arango and Josef Martínez. The pair produced 27g/9a as San Jose scored 60 goals on 64.1 xG. Both marks were good for fourth in the West, while their xG differential of +7.3 was good for fifth.

The Quakes finished 10th. They conceded 63 goals, which was much worse than their mark of 56.8 xG allowed. So some of this was very obviously due to poor shot-stopping, a glaring weakness that still needs to be rectified.

But even when San Jose’s goalkeepers were performing well, the games were always spinning off the rails because the midfield was constantly chasing the play. And the reason it was like that is because the Quakes got nothing from Chicho and Josef (especially Josef) defensively. Neither guy worked to shut down passing lanes or keep opposing midfielders in their cover shadows, and as a result, one team after another was able to eliminate the first line of San Jose’s defense and force the remaining eight field players into a scramble.

Nobody looks good defensively in a structure like that. In the modern game, you can survive one forward who doesn’t defend. But two? Impossible. Teams are too smart, and film is too readily available.

In comes new Designated Player (DP) Timo Werner, and I’ll be shocked if he doesn’t fix a big chunk of this all on his own. Werner’s been one of the best defensive forwards in the world for a decade – a demon in the press and uber-responsible when forced to defend in a mid-block. San Jose’s midfield will look more connected and better-organized against the ball simply by having Werner out there.

If they add another good two-way forward alongside him (remember, they have two open DP slots right now and are definitely not done adding big pieces), then it's suddenly reasonable to expect San Jose’s xG allowed number to drop by 10 or 15 goals, and individual matches to feel more controlled.

That alone would be enough to get San Jose back into the playoffs.

St. Louis CITY SC

Will we see a free-flowing, possession-based scheme?

From the middle of 2023 onwards, there was a tug-of-war in St. Louis CITY's front office between a faction that wanted to play what I’d call a City Football Group (Manchester City, basically)-inflected type of possession game and a more attritional German approach. The CFG contingent eventually won out, and former chief soccer officer Lutz Pfannenstiel was shown the door last summer.

In his place comes Corey Wray, late of CF Montréal, but before that, an assistant GM in Columbus during the Wilfried Nancy era. Before that, he was an assistant GM in Toronto during the Greg Vanney era. What do those two teams have in common?

Yeah, they both won MLS Cup. In each case, they did so by getting on the ball a ton and controlling games with it.

That’s Wray’s lineage, and he went out and hired Yoann Damet, a head coach who comes from the same stock. His last two jobs? Assistant under Nancy in Columbus, and before that, assistant under Vanney in LA.

He’d run some hard yards before that as an assistant and, at times, an interim head coach. But what’s come through in all of that is he wants his teams to keep the ball and use it to disorganize the opponents.

This makes sense for a team in a city that’s always produced classy, ball-playing talent on every line. Tim Ream? St. Louis born-and-bred. Steve Ralston? St. Louis. Josh Sargent? St. Louis. Patrick Schulte, perhaps the league’s best goalkeeper with the ball at his feet? St. Louis.

There is a sense of alignment now between how the club wants to play and the type of player they can and hopefully will start rolling through their academy. It might not all work out immediately – playing with the ball is harder than playing against it – but there’s a long-term theory that works, and I bet we see some of it on the pitch from Matchday 1.

Real Salt Lake

Will RSL shift to a 3-4-2-1 with wingbacks?

Real Salt Lake are one of two teams in MLS who’ve made the playoffs for the past five years (Orlando City are the other). It doesn’t really seem that way, though, because for so long it’s felt like they were scrambling to identify a first-choice XI, a team shape and a formation. Rarely were they able to bring a game model from one year into the next. So even while making the playoffs, they’d have wild swings from 2024’s 59-point season to last year’s 41-point endeavour.

Another year means another set of adjustments, and in this case, that includes the parting of ways with two DPs (Rwan Cruz and Diogo Gonçalves), as well as veterans in midfield and along the backline.

The biggest arrivals thus far:

Also reportedly on the way is Juan Manuel Sanabria, a Uruguayan international who’s in his prime and likely headed to the FIFA World Cup this summer. Can he play as an overlapping left back in a back four? Absolutely. Is he at his best as a pure wingback, though?

Yup.

Now, will the formation change make for a material change in how they play, or their outcomes? That I’m not too sure about – as I said way back at the top, formations are flexible things, and tactics can be adapted from one to the next with some effort. But RSL’s roster moves point toward a shift to a 3-4-2-1 with true wingbacks, even if it’s framed as “flexibility.” Whether that actually changes their on-field identity or just repackages the same tactical uncertainty that’s defined them for years is still very much an open question.