What does failure look like in MLS?

Article by Matt Lichtenstadter 

In European soccer, it’s easy to tell what constitutes a failure. For a select group of clubs, failing to win a trophy/league title is a failure. For others, not making the Champions League is a failure, and for another group, it’s relegation.

Without the threat of relegation, and contintental competition not being the grand prize it is in Europe, the threshold for failure in MLS is very different. Is FC Cincinnati’s expansion season a failure in the classic sense? They were incredibly bad, even by expansion team standards, and it cost multiple people their jobs, but how big a failure is that? 

 Watching LAFC and Atlanta United slip up in their respective conference finals at home asks the question about what constitutes a failed season in MLS, because the league is so different to soccer elsewhere around the globe. In many ways, it makes more sense to compare this league to the other four North American leagues when asking that question. With parity being what it is, defining expectations, and therefore defining success or failure, is muddier than it otherwise would be.

 For LAFC and Atlanta United, the standards they’ve set means that anything short of a trophy, particularly MLS Cup, is a failure. This season’s LAFC team set every regular season record imaginable, yet failed to win a one-off game, coloring the entire legacy of the season. Atlanta United won two other trophies this year but failed to become the first team to repeat in seven years. These teams have earned the right to be judged by a new standard compared to their peers, which is why their relatively early exits do obfuscate their other numerous accomplishments.

  If Toronto FC or Seattle had lost in the conference finals, would their seasons have been judged as failures? Probably not. They would have been beaten by their conference’s biggest juggernauts on the road in a one-off environment, and both showed remarkable resilience and growth just to get to that stage. Toronto FC were coming off a bad year in the league in which they failed to make the playoffs at all, and the Sounders lost their best defender and one of the core members of their spine to retirement mid-season. Both clubs have established that they are going to spend and compete at the highest level every year, but both have also arguably been topped by the teams they beat to get to MLS Cup.

 The complexities of this topic are defined by another case: the Philadelphia Union. They do not spend with the biggest clubs in the league, they hadn’t won a playoff game in franchise history and went out in the second round of the postseason. But it would be hard to say they failed since they won a home playoff game, set a club record for points and developed young players as is their goal while doing so. For many teams in North America’s big four leagues that did similar, they would be remembered fondly, and so should the Union, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that they still underachieved. Minnesota United opened a new stadium and needed to make the playoffs, which they did, but did their early exit at the hands of LA Galaxy constitute a failed season?

 Such is the complexity of a narrative based discussion like this. MLS’ structure means that expectations are far more grey and fluid, rather than black and white and set in stone like in Europe. Neither Toronto FC or Seattle will look back on this season in hindsight as a failure even if they lose in MLS Cup and nor should they, but clubs in similar positions to them in other leagues globally might not be so kind to themselves retrospectively.

 As the league grows and parity becomes less and less relevant, the barometers for success and failure will become more defined, as LAFC and Atlanta United have proved. But defining seasons as successes and failures in MLS is not an easy task, because outside of that select group, expectations change wildly as the season evolves because parity still exerts that tug on all teams. 

 But as some teams weaken that tug, their expectations are more defined, and thus, it is easier to say that LAFC and Atlanta United, in spite of all that they did accomplish, didn’t do what they could have and should have, and for those clubs, that means they left something on the table. 

  Not often in MLS history could something like that have been written before.