MLS 2025 Matchweek 12 Review
MLS marches on as midweek games approach
Many players went into this week having played midweek in the Open Cup, but it’s just the start of an intense month as there’s a big slate of regular season games coming up Wednesday.
Ranked Highlights
If you only have the time or inclination to watch highlights from a few games, I’m providing my non-spoiler ranking of this week’s highlights. This uses my entirely subjective aesthetics that celebrate cool-looking goals more than close games, so if you’re going in cold, you can’t be sure what you’ll get.
Starting with the most fun highlights and working down to the least fun:
Teammates Cameron Harper and Mohammed Sofo top the list after their runaway win over LA Galaxy, though only Harper actually scored and two other Red Bulls (Eric Choupo-Moting and Emil Forsberg) scored braces off fewer xG. From this list, Albert Rusnák scored a brace and Martin Ojeda scored a hat trick.
Emil Forsberg leads this week after his massive two goal, two assist performance against LA. The next five players on the list all notched actual assists, a rare level of expected/actual conformance. NYCFC’s Andrés Peres sneaks on to the list despite playing just a half, fewer minutes than anyone else above him.
The Red Bulls are this week’s team that put up a big npxG number but then got some luck to push their score way into blowout territory. In this case, part of the over-performance came from a rare stoppage-time own goal. Poor LA Galaxy actually had, according to the underlying numbers anyway, a pretty good offensive performance, but they didn’t get any consolation goals to show for it.
Chicago won as well, but then there’s three teams that drew—Orlando, New England, and LAFC—before Austin FC, who lost. On the other end, Nashville SC managed to win despite their anemic offense. The same can’t be said for their neighbors at the bottom of the list this week. Real Salt Lake and Colorado Rapids have been down there off and on this season, but Inter Miami is a surprise.
Ben Cremaschi and Dejan Joveljić are the only “forwards” to go 90 minutes without a shot this week. Joveljić has ended up on this list a lot during Kansas City’s difficult season. Then there’s two New England players, but they still managed to get a draw. Luca Orellano is the only player on the list whose team won.
Matt Freese made some big saves to top the list. Sean Johnson and Luis Barraza come in at 3rd and 4th on the list after playing each other. I thought Brad Stuver’s saves looked particularly good but he statistically only came in at 5th.
John McCarthy had by far the roughest day, but considering the scoreline, and the fact that conceding an own goal counts as a full goal not stopped, I think this stat could have been a lot worse.