2025 MLS Season Previews: Los Angeles Galaxy, LAFC, Inter Miami
/Six Stars, Zero Cap Space
You hate the Galaxy. Chances are, you’ve hated the Galaxy since you started following the league. But let’s face it. You haven’t TRULY hated the Galaxy in a long time. In fact, for the younger generations, I’ll bet the booing was perfunctory. “Why are we booing this franchise? They are irrelevant.” Heck, going into MLS Cup, I saw a lot of tweets rooting for the Galaxy to prove the power of fan boycotts. Didn’t like that. You aren’t supposed to root for us. With Will Kuntz in charge, you may never root for us again.
It's good to be back.
Let’s start this preview by looking at some numbers on your 2024 MLS Cup Champions, LA Galaxy. The Galaxy led the league in xG at 61.24 and the third most goals at 68, while 22nd in xGA and 15th in goals against. In other words, incredible offense and shaky defense. The Galaxy offense was driven by the “Killer Ps” whose pretty wheels can be seen below:
But how exactly did the offense operate? What’s remarkable about the 2024 Galaxy is that they were elite at two entirely different styles of play.
Let’s start with possession. The Galaxy were third in both field tilt and possession, which means they were a team that dominated the ball. Usually, teams with this profile create shots through probing possession characterized by short passes. This was not the case for the Galaxy, who managed to achieve this with above average shot vertical velocity, in sharp contrast to other possession teams like Houston and Columbus.
The Galaxy managed this through a balance of opting for probing possession, or unleashing the most dangerous counterattack in the league. This fluid style was able to spread the goals around in a way that no MLS team has done before, with four players breaking the 10 goal mark for the first time in MLS history.
Yes. They truly were special.
Now take all of what you just read about last year and throw it out the window because I just wasted your time. The 2025 Galaxy will look drastically different than what we saw last year.
This Galaxy team is going to be very different
As Bob Dylan once sang, "The Times They Are a-Changin”, and, despite being a dirty communist, this lyric offers some profound wisdom on the nature of time. Things do, in fact, change, and the 2025 Galaxy will be one of the changiest of the changed in MLS.
The biggest difference you will see with the Galaxy this year is the absence of Riqui Puig, who suffered an ACL injury in the Conference Final game against Seattle, side-lining him till at least the summer. The loss of Puig will be a major blow to both the possession and counterattack side of the Galaxy attack as Puig was integral in both aspects, as you can see by where Puig’s g+ came from, and the volume of his long progressive passes.
While you can’t replace someone like Riqui, the stage is certainly set for Marco Reus to earn his salary, which, at the moment, is a precious commodity for the Galaxy.
Salary Cap Shuffle
After announcing the trade of Gaston Brugman for Sean Davis to clear cap room, Will Kuntz remarked to the media that the team was still against the cap. In the months to come, we saw the man wasn’t kidding. In addition to Brugman, fan favorites Mark Delgado, Dejan Joveljic, Gaston Brugman, and Jalen Neal, have been shipped out to keep the roster compliant, leaving a lot of open questions about how this Galaxy team will look. Sean Davis was later bought out to clear more room.
In their place, the Galaxy have once again turned to the U23 well, signing forward Matheus Nascimento (20) from Botafogo, and center midfielder Lucas Sanabria (21) from Nacional. Sanabria looks to be a box-to-box midfielder with a bit of on-ball skill, while Nascimento looks to be a forward of small stature and on-ball skill. My source on this is youtube videos, so it’s possible I have no idea what I’m talking about. Nascimento’s goal scoring record in Brazil is… sub-optimal. Nevertheless, it’s hard to see the Galaxy having success this season without at least one of these two signings having a good year.
The Galaxy have also bolstered their roster with MLS veteran forward, Christian Ramirez, as well as a centerback from Europe who goes by just one name—Zanka. By the laws of soccer, one name means he’s good. Since writing this preview the Galaxy have single handedly introduced a GAM futures market, trading 125k in 2026 GAM for 100k in 2025 GAM. We’re so close to Margot Robbie explaining allocation money in a bathtub.
As a Galaxy fan, I’m hopeful Will Kuntz will soon learn the ropes of getting the league to bend the rules because we’re the Galaxy, but, for now, it seems like we are playing by the rules, and the rules say our midfield can’t exist. Alas.
Continuity issues?
With the midfield gutted, a potential new backline pairing, and a complete question mark at forward, it’s entirely unclear how this Galaxy team will play. While percentage of returning minutes isn’t always the best predictor of success, it’s also been shown that the proximity of players without chemistry has an effect on scoring chances, which isn’t great news for a midfield trio of Reus, Sanabria and Cerrillo.
It might be a rough start for the Galaxy as they find their footing with this new team, compounded by the fact that star singer and goal scorer, Joseph Paintsil, will be sidelined for at least a month. Will they find a groove before Puig returns? How will Puig’s return affect the team? There are a lot of questions in the air surrounding this LA Galaxy team, making it impossible to draw predictions.
Predictions
The LA Galaxy will be your 2025 MLS Cup champions. Look to 2012. The script is right there. 7th cup, baby! Bring the hate.
Can LAFC Perform Ünder the Lights?
LAFC are the most charmed of expansion MLS franchises, flying out of the gates when they debuted in 2018 with a dynamic and creative attacking style under Bob Bradley, fueled by Carlos Vela’s elite playmaking. They very much felt like a Hollywood team in contrast with the floundering-at-the-time Galaxy, making playoffs in their first three seasons, before finally missing out in 2021, leading to Bradley’s dismissal. Steve Cherundolo has been shifting the ethos of how the club plays in the years since to a much more defensively compact, transition based team. This translated to immediate success, winning MLS Cup in his first season, and losing to an incredible Columbus team the following year. Then in 2024, Cherundolo attempted to expand his tactical toolkit, building back towards a more expansive style that was willing to play with the ball to leverage their consistent talent advantage. But then his team ran smack into the same buzzsaw known as the Columbus Crew in the middle of the year, losing 5-1 in the MLS Cup rematch, and Cherundolo blinked. After rolling with the 4-3-3 basically the whole season to that point, LAFC pivoted to a 3-4-3 and began to play bunker ball.
Whether it was a result of the formation change or the need to implement it, the two correlate. LAFC’s dribbling and passing attempts plummeted in July, and only slowly recovered as the playoffs neared. This impacted their goal danger as well. LAFC averaged at least 17 shots per game in March, April, and June. July? 15.8 shots per game. August and September? Nearly 13 shots per game! From August 31 to September 21, the Black and Gold took 2 points from a possible 15 before finally righting the ship into the playoffs and pushing into the first seed in the West. It seems like getting back into their rhythm on the ball was a big part of that into October, as Cherundolo’s team played a lot more like they did in May on paper.
But while LAFC’s tactics have gone aesthetically flat, do not be fooled. They are dangerous. LAFC easily topped MLS in expected goals for 2024 (81) and were in the top third for xG allowed (53.8). They remained a darling for the goals added model: 6th in MLS in both g+ for and against. I’ve waxed poetic on the podcast about Seattle’s depth, but unless De La Vega breaks out, the top end might not be there. With the LA Galaxy so depleted, there’s no question that the Black and Gold has the highest talent ceiling in the Western Conference going into 2025, especially with Denis Bouanga’s everlasting dominance on the break. There is a reason Kieran, Harrison, and I all picked LAFC to finish as 1 or 2 seed. Fear this team.
Le Coupe du Monde, le Coupe du… MLS?
John Thorrington really wants to win the 2018 World Cup. To that end, he brought in Hugo Lloris last year on a lark, who has proven effective against MLS competition after a shaky final two years in England. Olivier Giroud then followed his teammate in the summer, and was, ah, less effective. By goals added, Giroud was the worst striker to have played at least his 663 minutes in 2024. LAFC also hit their rough patch when Giroud began starting over Kei Kamara more. Now I see two plausible reasons for this. First, Giroud is a veteran in his mid 30s and jumped right into MLS mid-season after a full season with Milan and no real break. Second, his style of play is simply not a good match for Cherundolo’s conservative tactics. Yes, Giroud led France to glory without scoring a single goal or even getting a shot on target in Russia, but that was a single tournament.
In 2024 regular season MLS play, Giroud placed 2 shots on target in 16 attempts. LAFC replaced Kamara by signing Jeremy Ebobisse as a free agent, a great goal scorer in his own right, so this won’t all be on Giroud’s shoulders. But if LAFC are going to reach their potential and win a trophy, Giroud will need to be integrated better in 2025. Granted it was at zero degrees fahrenheit, but their Concachampions match in Commerce City this week did not portend well on that front.
The final piece of LAFC’s World Cup winning intrigue is the hypothetical addition of Antoine Griezmann in the summer. There isn’t a person on Earth other than Griezmann who knows how likely this is to happen, but Tom Bogert swears every other episode of SoccerWise that LAFC is trying, and I believe it. In the meantime, they are bringing in Turkish international Cengiz Ünder on loan through the summer to fill the void left by Mateus Bogusz and Cristian Olivera. Ünder is a goal scoring winger that has always been with talented teams, finding his best run of form and most minutes with Marseilles from 2021 through 2023. This is very close to how Griezmann plays in that role, indeed, how he played for France in Russia (Okayyy, I’ll stop now). The summer window is late this year, but if Cherundolo can really get his team humming, when the time comes and Griezmann really does swap right in for Ünder, it’s very possible that little time would be needed to integrate. This will be a big question hanging over this team as spring starts edging into summer.
One thing that isn’t a question for LAFC is how much they can rely on Denis Bouanga to break teams open week after week. In the regular season, Bouanga provided 29 goal contributions from 29 expected goal contributions, and provided the second highest goals added per 96’ in MLS from the wing, trailing only a certain Lionel Messi. And he has done it at this elite level every year since arriving in the summer of 2022. Venezuelan phenom winger David Martinez has also excelled in his limited 2024 minutes, so even when rotating, LAFC’s attacking talent barely falls off.
Now to witness a murder:
This is probably the biggest worry about the team. Mark Delgado and Timothy Tillman started this game as twin 8s, and it’s fair to say they have similar profiles. Both bring about 0.03 or 0.04 above average g+ value in passing and interrupting, and are average in the other g+ areas. But these are not profiles for midfielders that can deliver killer balls to half space runners. This roster is still built like it needs to stay compact and exploit space behind a committed opponent to create danger. Igor Jesus is a young Brazilian DM transferring from Portugal, and will hopefully be able to match Ilie Sanchez’s passing ability. The key acquisition here may be the loan of Odin Thiago Holm from Celtic, but he’s super young with low minutes and not exactly a history of being wildly productive from midfield.
Finally, LAFC’s defense remains consistent and solid. Let the record show that I was completely right about LAFC losing Chiellini last year. They were absolutely prepared to handle the loss (apart from playing Columbus maybe?). Ryan Hollingshead, Aaron Long, Eddie Segura, Sergi Palencia, and Maxime Chanot are all returning for 2025, and several reinforcements are being added to the defensive rotation: Brazilian CB Marlon (previously with Shakhtar Donetsk), American CB Nkosi Tafari (traded from FC Dallas) and U21 Ukrainian international LB Artem Smolyakov. This is an embarrassment of riches in defense, and it’s a huge reason why they are such massive co-favorites in the West with Seattle. Even if it does read like another bunker counter season.
So 2025?
Here’s the situation. LAFC signed a legendary forward for a ton of money to provide nearly no statistical production, and it doesn’t seem to matter. That’s how good the Black and Gold are. Their offense is on par with Inter Miami, and their defense is on par with Cincinnati. But they might be vulnerable to injury, and yes, they might have a really big synergy problem with Olivier Giroud. But every team not in the Club World Cup is vulnerable to injury this year, two thirds of MLS would love to have the other problem. LAFC fans should probably feel disappointed if this team does not have any hardware at the end of the year.
Miami Goes For Broke in Messi’s Sunset Season
Winning it all in the first full season would be way too easy for Lionel Messi.
The 2024 season oversaw one of the most dominant Supporters Shield runs in MLS history. From the brilliance of the greatest-of-all-time and his three all-world buddies, Inter Miami went from middling playoff team to absolute MLS powerhouse. So after setting the single-season points record, what needs to change?
Everything, according to Luis Suarez. Per a pre-season presser: “we need to change the image of what we did last year. We have to improve a lot."
Indeed, Miami’s shock first-round defeat to Atlanta signalled the winds of change. The manager and technical director were out, Messi stepped into a pseudo-GM role for his final contract year, and the 2025 overhaul was on. Messi’s ex-teammate Javier Mascherano took charge as Miami’s new manager, overseeing a line change of South American signings.
This season, the GOAT is riding into the sunset with all his friends. This time, it’s trophies or bust.
Changing the image of… the best season of all-time
To improve from last year, Miami has to evolve an attack dependent on individual brilliance. Miami scored a towering 78 regular-season goals from an absurd 50 xG (this excludes one own goal). That 28-goal difference between reality and expectations destroys the previous record in the ASA dataset that dates back to 2013, as does the 36-goal residual between actual and expected goal difference. This remains a projection oddity - our player level season projections pegged Miami for a +21 xGD (not far off their +30 GD, pretty good!). The only problem is they weren’t that. They were basically 0 expected goal difference. Their g+ was about the same. But the GD was real! How bizarre.
Distilling an offense to two or three players is often reductive, but in this case, the shoe fits. Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez combined for over half (40 goals) of Miami’s total haul, and combined with Jordi Alba for 72 goal contributions, over half of Miami’s 141 goals and assists.
Messi’s 2024 brilliance is worth mentioning at least once in data-driven media. The GOAT put together an all-time effort in his first full MLS season, slotting 20 goals and 10 assists in a MVP effort. Thirty goal contributions is familiar to MLS, but not when the spreadsheets said that he’d only score or assist 15.6 goals (11.7 xG + 3.9 xA). Messi’s 14.4-goal overperformance is a record that will not be broken for some time. When it is broken, I guarantee it won’t be broken in less than 20 games of work.
Miami depended on two all-time great performances in 2024. Luis Suarez also scored 20 goals (12.3 xG) and 8 assists (4.5 xA), placing him third in the all-time ASA dataset for both xG differential (+7.7 xG) and xGoalContribution differential (+11.1 xG). Magic, however GOATed, is fleeting: the Messi-Suarez buzzsaw is one year deeper into their late-thirties this season. Newer, younger attackers will need to create better chances to match this massive goal haul in 2025.
A world-beating attack is great, but defense wins championships
Taking Suarez’s words to heart, Inter Miami’s two-man spreadsheet-defying attack image was contrasted by a flailing, shapeless defense. The dominant Supporters’ Shield winners had a bottom-table defense, conceding a 7th-worst xG in MLS (54.6 xGA, 47 GA). The meme-worthy defensive system reeked of dubious marking in transition.
Inter Miami’s active defenders struggled in a defensive shape resembling a clumsy, gold-plated Jenga tower. Check out their goals-subtracted metrics:
Two players expected to set the defensive identity, center-back Sergii Kryvtsov and holding-midfielder Sergio Busquets, were absolute liabilities by g-, a measure of how much traffic they let through their zones of responsibility. This porousness limits the effectiveness of more active on ball defending, punctuated by Busquets’ 95th-percentile defensive goals-added performance among holding midfielders. Winning the ball a lot, but also a whole lot of ball progression through his zone. Seems bad structurally! Without a system of cover, Miami’s defense descended into a brutal caricature of aging attackers chasing ghosts.
That said, Inter Miami also contained breakout players that transcended meager salaries into high-value performances. In this case, holding midfielders Benjamin Cremaschi (who broke through to the USMNT with a 84th% goals-added among center-mids) and Federico Redondo played well next to Busquets; fullback Marcelo Weigandt ably opposed Jordi Alba. All three players also performed relatively well in terms of goals-added defensive actions (Weigandt placed in the 89th% of fullbacks, Redondo 79th% for center-mids). But all three players were better known for supporting the attack; the chart above shows they, as the rest of the starters, were liabilities when it came to holding any shape.
Buying a defensive identity, one international spot at a time
Inter Miami have embraced the necessary change in the offseason, purchasing six potential starters in the transfer window. They understand it takes a village to create a defensive shape, and they believe this village is located in South America. As such, Miami have been offloading expensive contracts and collecting international roster spots to fill squad needs.
One useful MLS signing is Fafa Picault. I’d normally bet against a 33-year-old winger coming off a career season with the Whitecaps, but let’s think about his skillset. His goals-added registered in the 85th percentile of 2024 MLS wingers. In particular, his ability to receive the ball in advantageous spaces (99th%), shoot (81st%) and draw fouls (89th%) suggest he’s a willing competent outlet for a stable of playmakers. This stable just happens to contain the Secretariat of creating chances for dudes who will run off the ball.
The rest of Miami’s signings could all challenge for starting positions. While there is not enough public data to analyze most of these players, these transfers seem tailored to add depth, youth, and speed:
In defense, Maximiliano Falcon, an experienced Uruguayan center back from Chile’s Colo-Colo, and Gonzalo Lujan, Argentine fullback who played on Mascherano’s U23 Olympic team, will be called upon immediately to shore up the leaks with center-back David Martinez’s loan from River Plate continuing as well.
In the midfield, Telasco Segovia, a 21-year-old Venezuelan central mid from Portugal’s Casa Pia, provides midfield cover and work-rate. He slots in as necessary competition for Redondo and Cremaschi’s development.
Up top, Tadeo Allende, a 25-year-old Argentine winger from Celta Vigo, will likely start over Picault on Miami’s non-Messi wing. Miami could be a breakout spot for him; he looked great in the preseason tilt against Orlando.
Verdict: Is Miami too good to fail?
Inter Miami is going all-in on Messi’s final contract season, and everyone, MLS included, needs this to work. The talent gap between the all-time greats (however old) and the rest of the league is stark, but the defense remains vulnerable to questions. Mascherano’s men, buffered by a line change of transfers, will be looking to win it all this year, but MLS Cup remains the top priority.
If everything hits, this is the most talented roster in MLS history. I see Miami resting their stars in the back half of the season to finish as low as possibly third in the East, but the defense will decide whether that’s enough to win it all.