MLS power rankings: Inter Miami’s ambitious plans are paying off

Welcome back to the Guardian’s MLS Power Rankings, where I have a beef with your specific team and your specific team alone. Please address your complaints to the desk of Garth Lagerwey, who really has nothing else on his plate. He’ll have time to address each complaint, I’m sure, because he definitely doesn’t have a roster to retool, a manager to hire, and a brand-new front office vacancy to fill.

Now, as a reminder, these aren’t your standard, run-of-the-mill power rankings. We’re still ranking teams from worst to first. But along with the rankings, we’re diving deep into a handful of teams from around the league who are doing particularly interesting things.

What to do when you have nothing to play for

29. San Jose Earthquakes

28. CF Montreal

27. New England Revolution

26. Sporting Kansas City

25. Chicago Fire

24. Nashville SC

Forgive me for being blunt, San Jose, but you have nothing to play for. You’re sitting dead last in points across both conferences. One public postseason probability model gives you less than a 1% chance of making the playoffs, which is about as close to flashing a big neon sign that says “ELIMINATED” as you can get with one number and one percent sign. When hopelessness sets in, where do you turn? In MLS, a league without any real consequences for being bad enough that you start to feel hopeless, you turn to next year.

In their final seven matches, San Jose have to sort out how club-record signing Hernán López is being used before the wheels turn towards 2025.

The Quakes splashed a reported $6m fee for the Argentine No 10 earlier this season. The issue? He doesn’t create many chances. He progresses the ball through midfield at a high level, but the guy isn’t producing in the final third. One way to tweak Lopez’s usage is to feed him more often. He takes 15.1% of his team’s touches in the final third, according to American Soccer Analysis, well below the league’s best attacking midfielders. Lucho Acosta averages 23.7%. Carles Gil averages 21.7%. Evander averages 18.7%.

Encouraging López to stay higher – and encouraging the players around him to find the Argentine more often – could be the first step towards a brighter future for the Quakes.

The West’s best bubble team

23. Toronto FC

22. DC United

21. Austin FC

20. FC Dallas

19. St. Louis City

18. Minnesota United

There are a few teams I tune into each and every week simply because they’re fun. I didn’t expect Minnesota United to be one of those teams when Emanuel Reynoso left the club earlier this year, but here we are.

Under the guidance of first-year chief soccer officer Khaled El-Ahmad and first-year manager Eric Ramsay, the Loons have become more tactically intricate than they were at any point under former boss Adrian Heath. And after adding several key pieces in the summer transfer window, they’re building quite the deep and balanced squad, too.

Ramsay has settled on a 3-5-2 shape. In that setup, Minnesota United want to move the ball quickly upfield when in possession – they have the seventh-fastest direct attacking speed in MLS, according to Opta.

Ramsay wants his team to play forward quickly, but it’s not just about spamming hopeful long balls into the opposing half. No, Minnesota almost always seem to have a sense of control in possession. With a slew of players comfortable breaking lines on the ball and forwards who love to break in behind, including new Designated Player Kelvin Yeboah, Minnesota United can carve through an opposing block at a moment’s notice:

Sitting in ninth out West, they’re still far from being a playoff lock. But make no mistake: Minnesota United are dangerous. They’re noticeably stronger now than they were before the window opened, and that’s before new DP central midfielder Joaquín Pereyra’s debut.

The Loons are the most entertaining (and the best) bubble playoff team in the West.

Change, change and more change

17. Philadelphia Union

16. Seattle Sounders

15. Orlando City

14. Charlotte FC

13. Atlanta United

12. New York City FC

Atlanta United have cleaned house this year. The latest individual to exit the club is vice-president and technical director Carlos Bocanegra. Bocanegra joined Atlanta United as their technical director way back in 2015, helping to construct their roster for the 2017 expansion season and beyond.

Though the Five Stripes were a smash-hit in the early days under the leadership of then-president Darren Eales, vice-president of soccer operations Paul McDonough, manager Tata Martino and Bocanegra, success became hard to come by after winning MLS Cup in 2018 and finishing second in the East in 2019. Since 2019, Atlanta United have finished 23rd, ninth, 23rd, and 10th in the Supporters’ Shield standings. This year, they’re in 20th.

Of that foundational leadership group, Bocanegra was the only through-line to 2024. No doubt, he deserves some credit for the initial roster builds. But things have soured since then.

Atlanta spending big-money on flops like Ezequiel Barco, Pity Martínez, and Luiz Araújo didn’t pay off. The same goes for higher-priced squad players like Jürgen Damm and Matheus Rossetto. They’ve whiffed on U22 Initiative signings. Their managerial hires haven’t worked. Bocanegra didn’t even call Marcelo Bielsa back, for Pete’s sake.

With club president and CEO Garth Lagerwey in his second season, it’s no surprise that he wanted to erase the board and start over. Lagerwey inherited a poor roster last year, one with Bocanegra’s fingerprints all over it.

It sure looks like Bocanegra helped hold Atlanta United back in recent years. His exit, then, should help them move forward. Knowing Atlanta, they’ll take some big swings in an effort to leap back up the table as quickly as possible – Inter Miami sporting director, who worked with Lagerwey in Seattle, could end up replacing Bocanegra. But there’s growing pressure, and a growing to-do list, around Lagerwey as he amasses more control.

There’s a technical director to hire. There’s a manager to hire. There are two DPs to sign. There are multiple U22 Initiative players to land.

Atlanta United aren’t back yet. But they sure are about to be busy.

Love and hurt in Houston

11. New York Red Bulls

10. Houston Dynamo

9. Portland Timbers

8. Vancouver Whitecaps

7. Colorado Rapids

6. Real Salt Lake

Ben Olsen’s Dynamo are lighting teams on fire. Not far removed from their promising performances in Leagues Cup, Houston absolutely dominated LAFC in Los Angeles last week. Sure, there’s important context around LAFC’s performance: it was their sixth game in three weeks and came after they spent real emotional energy in the Leagues Cup final and the US Open Cup semis.

But as I watch this sequence from the 24th minute, all of that context just seems to melt away. This. Is. Gorgeous.

The Dynamo do a better job of controlling games with possession than anybody in this league not coached by Wilfried Nancy. They’re second in MLS in possession, only behind the Crew. Up until this point in the year, all of that possession has primarily acted as a defensive mechanism. Houston sit eighth in MLS in non-penalty xG allowed per 90 minutes, according to FBref.

But now? After adding a couple of key pieces and getting time off after Leagues Cup? Now they’re starting to turn their possession into chances. They dropped three goals on Real Salt Lake last month, scored two against Toluca, and just bested LAFC by a wide margin.

Things are looking up for Houston. Or, at least they were before newly signed 22-year-old winger Lawrence Ennali went down with an ACL tear over the weekend. Ennali, along with striker Ezequiel Ponce, was a crucial summer addition for the Dynamo. He scored the game-sealing goal against LAFC. His injury is a sizable blow, for the player and club.

Houston and LAFC meet again on Saturday. How the Dynamo respond to a rollercoaster of a week will tell us a lot about their status as a potential contender.

More than a flash in the pan

5. LA Galaxy

4. FC Cincinnati

3. LAFC

2. Columbus Crew

1. Inter Miami

However you, dear MLS fan, feel about Inter Miami, you can’t deny this simple truth: they’re never dull.

Inter Miami weren’t good when they joined MLS as an expansion team in 2020, but they did break a handful of roster rules by playing with five DPs, two more than you’re allowed. They were caught and sanctioned, which doesn’t sound dull to me. They sure weren’t dull when Lionel Messi and friends arrived last summer. And now even with Messi still not quite returned from injury, they still haven’t been dull. They’ve won a crazy number of games without him and have three fingers on the Supporters’ Shield.

The latest example of the constant stream of intrigue that swirls around Inter Miami is the longest-lasting of all: Miami Freedom Park.

The Herons ditching their temporary home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and moving into Miami proper has been in the works for some time now. But word circulated, along with new renderings, earlier this week that the new 25,000-seat soccer-specific stadium will house the club starting in 2026.

Between Inter Miami opening a soccer-specific stadium in Miami and New York City FC doing the same thing in Queens in 2027, MLS continues to march towards an era of permanence that seemed impossible when the league first began play in 1996.

There are plenty more MLS teams in large markets with less than ideal stadium situations – New England Revolution and Chicago Fire, I’m looking at you. But to have one of the league’s most ambitious clubs sprinting closer to playing in one of the league’s best venues? That’s progress.

Even when Messi and his pals (and maybe even the man who made room for them all) are gone, Inter Miami are positioning themselves to be an attractive destination in the long term. They’re not leaving the headlines anytime soon.