MLS 2025 Matchweek 9 Review
We're still focusing on the players, not the referees
The transfer window closes this week so I want to do a refresh of my transfer spending charts, but odds are it won’t happen this week. Maybe next week? I might get to refresh my top 90 lists, though. Fingers crossed.
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:
Liel Abada leads the attackers this week. He converted a high xG chance to open the scoring, then had most of the rest staring at a wide open net after bypassing the goalkeeper, but he shot it straight at the one defender covering the goal.
Daniel Gazdag took some shots in dangerous positions (half-chances, really, given the defender and goalkeeper positions) so he seems to already have some chemistry with his new teammates with the Crew, even if he couldn’t actually finish any of them.
Brandon Vazquez struggled a bit with chances too but eventually got in position for a tap-in. His missed penalty isn’t part of this total since I use npxG.
San Jose got two players on the list—Cristian Arango and Josef Martinez—like you’d expect after their wild shootout game with Kansas City. Kansas City only gets one, Dániel Sallói, but they got the goals to win (and then some) anyway
Two of the three players tied at the top played each other. I think of Denis Bouanga as more of a goalscorer but he notched an assist amid a lot of activity in this game. David da Costa didn’t get an actual assist but he still played an important role in Portland’s strong offensive performance.
Aleksei Miranchuk had the benefit of playing some decent minutes against 10-man Philadelphia, but his passing wasn’t enough and Atlanta’s extremely expensive attack got shut out for the second straight game.
He might have benefited statistically from playing a team down a man for much of the game, but even while San Diego was still at full strength, Pep Biel did really well to fight through a challenge and slip in Abada for the first goal.
San Jose led the league in expected goals with 4.1, but unfortunately for them they underperformed and only scored 3. Sporting Kansas City on the other hand notched five off of just 1.8. Sometimes you need some luck, and Kansas City hasn’t had much in their other games this season. Some help from the opposing goalkeeper also helps, as we’ll discuss below.
Charlotte FC is in second place after generating a lot of chances after the first half red card second yellow, though they only got one more actual goal.
Austin FC’s total includes their missed penalty and a last minute breakaway (that McCarthy saved in any case) so there’s a bit of game state flattery here, but this is still their best xG performance by a pretty big margin this season.
Meanwhile, you don’t think of Inter Miami as grinders, but they managed to grind out another win, this time against Columbus despite a huge expected goal differential.
Like the Crew, the Colorado Rapids similarly failed to capitalize on a big xG disparity against Houston but at least they got a draw.
Toronto ended up last in xG with only two shots, but they got an improbable win against Real Salt Lake thanks to a nice goal from Theo Corbeanu and a pretty dubious Diego Luna red card.
Orlando City looked so dominant offensively a few weeks ago against DC United, but injuries in midfield seem to have completely neutered their attack.
Alhassan Yusuf and Owen Wolff keep showing up on this list, but sorry guys, I realize you aren’t forwards. Send your complaints to FBref. Marcel Hartel isn’t a forward either, but he at least scored a goal…that was called back for offside.
The biggest name actual forward is probably Dejan Joveljić (okay, maybe it’s Federico Bernardeschi, but Toronto players on this list are no surprise). Joveljić has been on this list a few times this season and once again didn’t get any shots, but this week at least Sporting Kansas City didn’t need his help.
San Jose’s excellent starting goalkeeper Daniel was out and…oof. That certainly helped Kansas City score 5 goals on 1.8 xG.
I think Christopher Brady is somewhat hard done by the deflection on the field goal. Now the third goal was also considered a bad one, but I couldn’t see it well enough. He had a really nice-looking diving save near the end of the game, but Opta scored that as just 0.05 PSxG, I guess because it was from such long range.
Hugo Lloris has often been near the bottom this season, and this doesn’t even consider the fact he gave up a penalty.
Stefan Frei tops this list, but from the eye test his saves were fine but not all that impressive. I was more impressed by Dwayne St. Clair, for what ever that’s worth.
Maybe the most impressive was the goalkeeper at the top who lost, John McCarthy. I thought he made a great penalty save. He seemed to intentionally fake out Brandon Vázquez, hopping to his right and then diving back left to make the save. McCarthy also had a big stop on a 1-on-1 late in the game.