American Soccer Sack

I'm pulling out a sack of various American soccer topics for this week's newsletter, something I'm thinking I might do more of in the future.

Before I jam my arm into the sack and pull out the first item, could you do me a favor and spread the word about the thing I'm doing? Repost a Bluesky post, email a friend, something of that nature. Thanks!

Guess I should point you in the direction of my other stuff while we're at it...links incoming.

Morning Kickaround is the YouTube show we're doing Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning at 9:30 AM ET. We're talking American soccer from the bottom of the pyramid to the top.

MK is working on a very exciting project that could have us out on-location covering one of the myriad cool soccer stories out there below the top levels. Stay tuned.

The Best Soccer Show is still fun and informative. Last week's episode was a classic and we'll be live again on Thursday (tonight!) at 9 PM ET.

WTF with me and Eric Wynalda is back to our regular daily schedule (4-7 PM ET) starting next week. SiriusXM is rolling out a new, lower cost plan this year so keep an eye out.

Right, the sack. Let's dig in.

At the risk of alienating my core audience, I'm going to say something that remains as true in 2025 as it was when I started spewing words on our weird American soccer thing way back in the relatively normal year of 2008:

American soccer fans are achingly insecure.

This shows up in obvious ways, like anytime the quality of professional soccer in America is brought into question (especially relative to things English and things Mexican), but it also colors the simple enjoyment of things that should be pretty easy to shut up about and like.

Things like Vermont Green winning the USL-2 national championship in Burlington this past weekend in front of a crowd of thousands, many of whom couldn't even get a ticket because of the massive demand. Combined with an environmental justice mission and a fun-loving spirit embodied by a logo that depicts a smiley face, everything about Vermont Green is joyous and unpretentious.

If Vermont Green played, oh, I don't know, Ultimate Frisbee or something, the team's success would be a funny little story that Defector could turn into a 10,000-word journey and sell some memberships off of. Five thousand fans and people clambering up shipping containers to watch Vermonters whip the bee?* That's so fun!

Did you know Bernie Sanders goes to the games? What a cute temporary distraction from our persistent existential dread!

But of course, Vermont Green plays soccer. Which means Vermont Green can't possibly just be a fun story about a club uniting a town under the banner of short-season summer soccer played by a bunch of college kids between semesters. It also must be an avatar for everything that's wrong with the sport in America.

Yeah, I know, I'm doing that thing of overvaluing the loudest voices at the expense of clocking the majority. There are plenty of people who watched from afar and did nothing more than cheer on Green and marvel at their success. Soccer people who directly participated waxed rhapsodic.

. @vermontgreenfc.bsky.social’s USL League Two Final win was unlike anything @empiregass.bsky.social has seen 🤯 Fans lining up 12 hours early ⏳ Thousands perched on chairs, construction sites & even storage containers 👀 Pure unmatched energy ⚡

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— Soccerwise (@soccerwisehq.bsky.social) August 4, 2025 at 8:06 PM

But man, that group that has to make it all about promotion and relegation? Or invoke Vermont Green (and clubs nominally like them) as the Rebellion to Major League Soccer's Empire? They can't help but try to ruin it for everybody.

Some of them are online ideologues because they see pro/rel as the only legitimate way to do soccer. They're true believers of a kind that elevates a system of organizing sports leagues to religious levels. This morphing of pushing for pro/rel into an American soccer fan's moral imperative, based as it is on the idea of soccer as intrinsically different from other sports, has always struck me as strange.

Wanting pro/rel because it's cool or because it could help drive more support for the game in the United States? Absolutely. Show me the plan and LFG. Casting pro/rel as a righteous cause that requires labeling anyone who isn't a zealot an enemy of the sport in America? Naw, chief.

But a lot of the people chirp who about pro/rel, or the value of MLS, or the work of American broadcasters, or the corniness of many an American soccer thing, or who turn to guys with accents in a quest to feel more "authentic" than others, do so because they're insecure about the way soccer works here.

I'm not even going to pretend I'm not sometimes guilty of the same insecurity; every time an American soccer neophyte does something embarrassing, I cringe in ways I know are ridiculous.

If only soccer in America didn't die a thousand deaths in the years when incubating a culture could have happened without constant comparisons to the sport in others places. If only the internet didn't make it easy for all of us to internalize the attitude of many Europeans and South Americans towards American soccer.

But alas.

Soccer's path in the United States shouldn't be compared to that of any other country, much less those famous cultures on the aforementioned continents. It can just be what it is, worth celebrating when it's good (Vermont Green) and castigating when it's not (see: US Soccer, MLS overreach, shady owners, etc., etc.).

There's a lot more I could say on this, but this sack isn't going to empty itself.

*In my head, this is how people talk about Ultimate; please don't inform me if this is incorrect.

As I write this we're headed in to the final night of Phase One of the 2025 Leagues Cup—brought to you buy Mexican exasperation.

How this for a pozole of discontent from Club Tijuana head coach Sebastián Abreu after Xolos' 2-1 loss to the Sounders on Wednesday night in Seattle?

He wants things evened out, he went on quite a bit about how MLS players are “eating pasta and salad and chicken and going to sleep,” while his team had to fly 4 hours after one game before flying back for the next game. Pretty reasonable complaints.

— Tim Ostlund-Foss (@timostlundfoss.bsky.social) August 7, 2025 at 1:38 AM

...very reasonable complaints and why this competition is tough for most of us to fully buy into.

If you're inclined to ascribe value to these games as a measure of Major League Soccer quality compared to Liga MX, it might be tempting to dive into the crisp clean waters of superiority. Because of the new format (more on this in a second), we have what feels like valuable datum that the American soccer league has zoomed right past its Mexican competition.

Some stats to dive home the point (ahead of Thursday's games):

MLS is 21-14-14 versus Liga MX in this all-cross border first phase.

MLS's combined goal difference is +19. Liga MX's is -21.

But of course, Abreu's comments about the travel schedule for the Mexican clubs, with all of the games taking place in the US (even if not all games are in the MLS club's home building), undercut any conclusions about MLS dominance. And very much like the issues MLS faces during the CONCACAF Champions Cup, Liga MX teams aren't exactly at full stride. The Clausura season was three matchdays in before the exodus north to face MLS clubs with ~25 games under their belts.

That's not really a fair fight.

And what's this about Liga MX coaches getting fined for criticizing the format?

Trying to thread the needle, I think Leagues Cup is proving something most of us already knew: The gap between MLS and Liga MX is generally pretty small across the bulk of the leagues, with special consideration allowed for the bigger spenders. I'm more interested in how the Mexican owners and Mexican fútbol public is going to handle it if the current trend continues and if MLS wins the competition for a third time.

I wouldn't blame anyone for giving the Leagues Cup no weight when it comes to league quality, but this might be emotion over logic. American soccer fans carry our inferiority complex wherever we go, but Mexican fútbol are guilty of the opposite.

When MLS flips the calendar (Childish Garbino's* comments indicate it's inevitable) we'll finally have a chance to judge the balance of power in North American more fairly.

What's not clear is whether the Leagues Cup will continue to be a field of battle. The calendar change could upend the future of the competition and then there's the little matter of legitimacy.

Beyond all of this, there’s also the problem that MLS always faces, maybe unfairly: almost any new endeavor it attempts will be met with open disdain from consumers of the sport at home and abroad, labeled synthetic or tossed aside as a cash-grab. That criticism is impossible to avoid when you’re constantly reinventing yourself and constantly adjusting your product in search of profitability and relevance. Leagues Cup, created out of thin air, certainly fits that bill.

That's from a piece on the Leagues Cup and its "evolution" from Pablo Maurer. Pablo's hits the mark with the kicker; we can't really judge the Leagues Cup until a few more editions play out.

But if MLS (and Liga MX, I guess), keep tinkering with the format, we'll never be able to get a real line on how important it's supposed to feel. This is the fundamental problem with the league's approach to everything—there's wisdom in being nimble and able to adapt as the league grows and changes but danger if sports fans (notoriously creatures of habit and consumers of tradition) don't feel the history of it.

Maybe there's nothing to be done about that, since everything MLS does is going to feel light on historical weight. At some point, though, you have to set it and forget it.

And it's the tinkering that has me wondering if the Leagues Cup will stand the test of time. Pablo writes that we need the rest of the decade to settle on a consensus. Even if there's intent on the part of those involved, nothing involving MLS and American soccer ever stays the same for very long.

It's more likely that the Leagues Cup is on its last legs than it is that is has 10, 20, or 30 years of editions to come.

*This is a reference to a joke from last week's edition of The Best Soccer Show. Listen to the show to get the joke!

Let's keep this short and to-the-point: Both Thomas Müller to Vancouver (age, turf, travel, et al) and Son Hueng Min to LAFC (age, travel, price) make for questionable signings by their respective Major League Soccer destinations. Lots of us would love MLS to be past the big name thirty-atric summer DP signing that smacks more of off-field marketing considerations than on-field performance ones.

And yet...

Son to LA is a no-brainer, even at the price the club paid to get him. No matter what Son does on the field for LAFC (and I think he'll be good to very good), he's already paid the club back in publicity. Whatever we wish for MLS clubs, every single one them needs as much new attention as it can get. There's no way to know for sure if Son's arrival will make a gaggle of new LAFC fans, but considering the unique place of Korean culture in Los Angeles and Southern California, an MLS-record fee makes sense.

We'll overlook the LA city councilwoman who got a little confused about which trophy Son will be working the help LAFC win...

LA councilwoman suggesting Son Heung-Min will help LAFC win the World Cup (?)

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— Steve Brewer (@sjbrewer.bsky.social) August 6, 2025 at 7:02 PM

Thomas Müller's move to Vancouver will have a lesser impact on that front. That doesn't mean it won't help get the Whitecaps more attention in British Columbia and perhaps it could even help the club find a new owner and get momentum towards a new stadium. For all the excitement around Müller, this feels like a desperate moment for the 'Caps and their future in Vancouver.

Müller on that BC Place turf makes me nervous, but if they can get him on the same page as Brian White relatively quickly, the Whitecaps could be truly blockbuster.

This quote from Müller is fantastic and worth a share.

Thomas Müller on being the Raumdeuter: "Nothing special about it. I am just quite good at football." What a guy. www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kYk...

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— Manuel Veth (@manuelveth.bsky.social) August 6, 2025 at 3:08 PM

That's it! That's the sack. Let's finish out with another request to kindly share the newsletter and the other things I'm doing and for a follow over on Bluesky.