MLS

Remember when soccer was being touted as the next big sport in the U.S.? Well, it looks like that moment has finally arrived.

Or not. It all depends on who you ask and how you interpret what they tell you.

On one hand, there’s the recent Harris Poll that found 72% of Americans profess an interest in soccer, a 17% increase from 2020. A quarter of those are “dedicated” fans and 1 in 5 say they are “obsessed” with the sport.

On the other hand, there’s the stark decline in attendance and TV viewership for the country’s top two domestic leagues, MLS and the NWSL, and the underwhelming crowds that showed up last summer for the FIFA Club World Cup and the CONCACAF Gold Cup.

LAFC fans lift up a banner honoring Carlos Vela during a ceremony to honor him before a match against Real Salt Lake at BMO Stadium on Sept. 21.

(Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images)

These contrary findings — a growing fanbase at the same time attendance and viewership numbers are falling off a cliff — come at an important inflection point for soccer in the U.S., with the largest, most ambitious World Cup kicking off at SoFi Stadium in fewer than 200 days.

“The short answer is yes, the World Cup will be a watershed moment for soccer in America. However, it’s unlikely to immediately lead to a significant increase in ticket sales for MLS and NWSL. Soccer fandom in America develops differently from that of other sports,” said Darin W. White, executive director of the Sports Industry Program and the Center for Sports Analytics at Samford University, which next year will launch a major five-year study to explore how soccer can become mainstream in the U.S.

“The World Cup will bring millions of new Americans into the pipeline. Over the next few years we expect these new fans to progress through the pipeline, giving soccer a substantial enough fan base to tip the scales and help make soccer part of the ongoing mainstream sports conversation. I am confident that the World Cup will enable soccer to reach that critical mass.”

Steven A. Bank, a professor of business law at UCLA who has written and lectured extensively on the economics of soccer, isn’t as optimistic.

“The risk isn’t that U.S. soccer will be in the same place in 10 years, but that it will have regressed,” he said.

“For the World Cup to benefit domestic leagues’ attendance, ratings, and revenue, as well as youth and adult participation rates in playing soccer, it will have to be the catalyst for more domestic investment in the game. The question isn’t whether the World Cup will convince enough people to become fans or to move from casual to dedicated or obsessive fans. It’s whether it will convince enough wealthy people and companies to risk the kind of money necessary to compete with the top leagues for the top talent.”

U.S. captain Christian Pulisic drives the ball during an international friendly against Ecuador at Q2 Stadium on Oct. 10 in Austin, Texas.

(Omar Vega / Getty Images)

That investment could be a boost to both first-tier domestic leagues, which saw their attendance and TV rating fall dramatically this year. After setting records in both 2023 and ‘24, MLS watched its average attendance fall 5.4% — to 21,988 fans per match — this season. According to Soccer America, 19 of the 29 teams that played in 2024 saw their attendance drop; more than half saw declines of 10% or more.

The TV audience also appears to be relatively small, although the fact Apple TV, the league’s main broadcast partner, rarely releases viewer data has hampered efforts to draw any firm conclusions. MLS said last month that its games attracted 3.7 million global aggregate viewers a week on all its streaming and linear platforms, an average of about 246,000 a game on a full weekend. While that’s up nearly 29% from last year, the average viewership figure is about 100,000 smaller than what the league drew for single games on ESPN alone in 2022, the last season before Apple’s 10-year $2.5-billion took effect.

NWSL also saw overall league attendance fall more than 5%, with eight of the 13 teams that played in 2024 experiencing declines. And TV viewership in the second year of the league’s four-season $240 million broadcast deal was down 8% before the midseason July break, according to the Sports Business Journal.

That follows a summer in which both the expanded Club World Cup and the Gold Cup struggled to find an audience. Although the 63-match Club World Cup drew an average of 39,547 fans per game, 14 matches had crowds of fewer than 20,000. The Gold Cup averaged 25,129 for its 31 games — a drop of more than 7,000 from 2023. And five matches drew less than 7,800 people.

“There’s a danger of taking this year’s decline out of context,” said Stefan Szymanski, a professor of sports management at the University of Michigan and author of several books on soccer including “Money and Soccer” and “Soccernomics” (with Simon Kuper). “Last year was a record year. It’s really about the diminishment of the Messi effect.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a moment of crisis. And the way MLS is looking at this strikes me that they’re entirely focused on a post-World Cup [bump], which they think they’re going to get. I’d be skeptical myself about that. I don’t think it will do that much for them.”

Szymanski said the World Cup could hurt the league by underscoring the huge difference in the quality of play between elite international soccer and MLS.

“Americans are not dumb,” he said. “They know what’s good quality sport [and] not good quality sport. And they know that MLS is low level. The only way, in a global marketplace, you can get the top talent to have a truly competitive league is to pay the salaries.”

Which brings us back to Bank’s conclusion that fixing soccer in the U.S. isn’t about the soccer, it’s about the money being spent on the sport. For next summer’s World Cup to have a lasting impact, the “bump” will have to come not just from an increase in attendance and TV viewership but in investment as well. And, as Szymanski argues, that means additional investment in players as well.

“If all it does is attract eyeballs for this competition,” Bank said “I’m not sure it does more than the Olympics does every four years when it temporarily raises the profile of a few sports for some people who were not casual fans before.”

Nathan Ordaz scored an easy tap-in in the 79th minute to give LAFC a 2-1 victory over Austin on Wednesday night to begin the best-of-three series in the MLS playoffs.

LAFC plays at Austin on Sunday for a chance to advance to the Western Conference semifinals.

LAFC took a 1-0 lead in the 20th minute on Brendan Hines-Ike’s own goal. Ryan Hollingshead beat his defender in the box for a cross in front of goal that was deflected in by Hines-Ike.

Jon Gallagher tied it at 1-all in the 63rd for Austin. A loose ball in front of net fell to the feet of Myrto Uzuni, who poked it to Owen Wolff for a feed to a wide-open Gallagher at the back post.

Son Heung-Min started the game-winning sequence with a long run to get into the area and draw defenders for a pass to Denis Bouanga, whose shot took a deflection to Ordaz at the back post.

Austin won the two regular-season meetings with LAFC this year by a 1-0 scoreline — both goals coming on headers off corner kicks.

When Steve Cherundolo announced last spring that he would be leaving LAFC at the end of the season to rejoin his wife’s family in her native Germany, he seemed excited about the reunion.

Six months later, with LAFC preparing to enter the MLS playoffs, that reunion is just a loss away. So now Cherundolo, who took LAFC to the MLS Cup final twice in his first three seasons as coach, is hoping to put off that departure for another couple of months.

“I’d love to stay until early December,” he said. “That would be ideal. That is what we’re all trying to achieve at LAFC.”

And that appears well within reach for LAFC (17-8-9), which has six wins and 19 points in its last eight games, the last a 2-2 draw Saturday in Colorado. As a result LAFC, the No. 3 seed in the conference, will enter the playoffs as the hottest team in the West and arguably the best team in MLS since the mid-summer acquisition of forward Son Heung-min.

LAFC has lost just one of the 10 games the former Tottenham captain has played in, with Son scoring nine goals and assisting on three others. He has also provided a big boost to winger Denis Bouanga, who scored 11 times in his last 10 games, giving LAFC the most dynamic scoring tandem in the league.

LAFC will open the best-of-three conference quarterfinals next weekend against Austin (13-13-8) at BMO Stadium. The second leg will be played in Texas with a third game, if necessary, in Los Angeles.

Austin is one of just two teams that beat LAFC twice this season, though it enters the postseason having lost three of its last four. Cherundolo said none of those numbers matter now. Not only do regular-season records get thrown out for the playoffs, but even the rules change. In the first round of the MLS postseason, for example, games that are tied at the end of regulation go straight to penalty kicks.

“It’s a new scenario. So it does change the way you play a little bit,” Cherundolo said. “I don’t think current form has a ton to do with it. Last season there were some surprises in the first round of playoffs.

“We’ll do our very best to make sure that doesn’t happen to us.”

Should LAFC, which has never lost in the first round of the playoffs under Cherundolo, make it past Austin it will face the winner of the Vancouver-Dallas series in the conference semifinals. That could be a matchup between Son and Vancouver’s Thomas Muller, who has seven goals and three assists since joining the Whitecaps from German power Bayern Munich two months ago.

The Western Conference playoffs will open with Wednesday’s wild-card match between Portland and Real Salt Lake. The winner of that game will meet conference champion San Diego in the first round. The other final first-round series will see No. 4 seed Minnesota face fifth-seeded Seattle.

Regardless of who reaches the MLS Cup, for the 13th consecutive season the league will not have a repeat winner. The Galaxy (7-18-9), which won the title last season, were eliminated from playoff contention a month ago and finished the season with franchise-worst totals for wins (seven) and points (30) in a full season while matching the record for most losses with 18.

They did end on a high note, however, beating Minnesota 2-1 in their season finale for their third win in their final four games. That allowed them to escape the conference cellar and finish two points ahead of last-place Sporting Kansas City (7-20-7).

Messi wins Golden Boot

Inter Miami star Lionel Messi celebrates after scoring against Atlanta on Oct. 11.

(Lynne Sladky / Associated Press)

Still think Lionel Messi doesn’t care about MLS?

Locked in a tight battle for the league scoring title entering the final month of the season, Messi took his game to another level — if that’s possible — and scored five times in Inter Miami’s final two matches to claim the Golden Boot by a wide margin over Bouanga.

Messi had a hat trick against Nashville on Saturday, putting the game away with a third goal in the 81st minute to finish with 29 goals in 28 games. That’s the fourth-best single-season total in MLS history. Bouanga finished with a career-best 24 goals, tying him for second place with Nashville’s Sam Surridge.

Messi also had five assists in three October games to finish with a league-high 19, tying him for fourth place on the all-time list there as well. Messi’s 48 goals contributions (29 goals, 19 assists) is second all-time to Carlos Vela, who scored 34 times and had 15 assists for LAFC in 2019.

Eastern Conference playoff field

MLS bills the final day of the regular season “Decision Day” because it’s the day the postseason field is determined. But in the Eastern Conference, the nine playoff qualifiers had already been decided by the final weekend. So had the conference champion, with the Philadelphia Union (20-8-6) having secured the league’s best overall record and home-field advantage throughout the playoffs two weeks ago.

Still, some playoff pairings were determined on Decision Day.

With its win over Montreal, Cincinnati (20-9-5) grabbed the second seed in the postseason tournament on a tiebreaker over Inter Miami (19-7-8). Both teams finished with 65 points, but Cincinnati had one more regular-season victory.

As a result Cincinnati will open the playoffs against seventh-seeded Columbus (14-8-12) while Inter Miami will face No. 6 Nashville (16-12-6).

With its win over Philadelphia, Charlotte (19-13-2) clinched a fourth-place finish and home field for its playoff opener with New York City (17-12-5) next weekend. The two wild-card teams, Chicago (15-11-8) and Orlando (14-9-11), will meet Wednesday in Chicago with the winner facing the Union in the conference quarterfinals.

HE IS the English striker formerly of Stoke, Yeovil and Weymouth in a  shootout for the MLS Golden Boot with Lionel Messi.

Sam Surridge, now of Nashville SC, is on 23 league strikes, just one behind the Greatest Of All Time — as well as LAFC’s Denis Bouanga — in the Stateside goalscoring stakes.

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The ex-England Under-21 international has the odds stacked against him as he has only one game left to take the crown, as opposed to Messi’s two and Bouanga’s three.

And, in an exciting twist of fixture fate, that solitary match is at home to the iconic Argentinian’s Inter Miami a week today.

Yet Surridge, who played in the Premier League with Bournemouth and Nottingham Forest, told SunSport: “I’ve probably got to get a hat-trick so it’s not going to be easy.

“But at the same time I’ll always back myself to score and it would be an amazing achievement.

“We’re fighting at a really good point in our league. We just won the cup and we need to get into the top four to get a good play-off spot.

“I’ll do as much as I can to do it.

“It’s great. Just to mention my name along with his is a huge achievement.”

Berkshire-born Surridge came through the ranks at Bournemouth under Eddie Howe and had formative lower-league loans at Weymouth, Poole Town, Yeovil, Oldham and Swansea.

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He had a half a season at Stoke before moving to  Forest, where he played 20 Premier League games in 2022-23 but netted only once.

His world has changed completely, however, since moving to the other side of the Pond in 2023.

He is now the main man with Tennessee side Nashville.

Though he has Messi to thank for convincing him to make the revitalising switch in the first place.

Surridge will hope his upcoming meeting with the eight-time Ballon d’Or winner goes better than the last one, when Miami won 2-1 thanks to Messi’s double — including a sublime free-kick.

The 27-year-old added: “At first I didn’t want to come here because I just wanted to stay in England.

“But then I saw Messi join Inter Miami and I knew they were going to host the World Cup and the size of the league was going to grow.

“Since I’ve been here, the standard has been getting better and better every year.

“Going into that game against Miami in July, we were on a ten-game unbeaten streak, I was on 16, he was on 14.

‘IT WAS CRAZY’

“I remember we gave a foul away on the edge of the box and you just knew he was going to score from it.

“It was crazy — you knew exactly where he was going to put the ball. And he did.

“You’re trying to focus on the game but at the same time you know he’s playing. It’s not easy.

“He is coming to the end of his career but he only won the Ballon d’Or two years ago.”

Surridge has been relishing his role as Nashville’s go-to guy up top and recently scored the match-winning goal to clinch the US Open Cup — America’s equivalent of the FA Cup.

It was the first piece of silverware in Tennessee in a long time, although Surridge was sent off right at the end of the game for two late yellows.

Surridge puts his inspired form in part down to the recent birth of son Noah.

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He added: “In the past, I’ve probably let it eat me up when I’ve had a bad game or not scored a goal.

“But now as one game is gone, I’m straight on to the next, back home with my family and being a dad.

“That’s a massive factor (in my form) this season, giving me that renewed focus.” Surridge is experiencing week in, week out the soaring temperatures that Harry Kane and the rest of the England team will have to deal with at the World Cup next summer.

And forward Surridge, who played with the likes of Marc Guehi for the Young Lions, said: “I know England are going to find it hard to cope with the weather over here because it’s not easy adjusting to it.

“There’s going to be a lot of South American teams that are used to it.

“Especially when you go to places like Miami, and places more south of Nashville, it’s not easy to play in the heat. There’s going to be a lot of toing and froing, sitting off and trying to break teams down.

“They should be pushing the games back because we play at 7pm most games and it’s still ridiculously hot.

“At the Club World Cup, I’ve seen them play at games at 2pm and 3pm in the 30-degree heat and it’s almost impossible.”

‘PICKING THE MOMENTS’

So what would his advice be for Thomas Tuchel’s side braving the heat?

The striker replied: “It’s not saving yourself in games, it’s more about picking the moments.

“Because as soon as you get into a full-on sprint in that heat, it’s hard to get your breath back.

“I think managers will set up their teams differently for that reason.

“You see pressing teams where they’re full-on pressing and, as soon as they break down, they’re going to struggle.

“It’s about conserving your energy where you can.”

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Max Bretos is a soccer broadcaster who has witnessed all the big arrivals in MLS, from David Beckham to Lionel Messi, and believes Son’s immediate acclimatisation makes his arrival unique.

“He landed on a Tuesday. On Wednesday he had the introductory press conference, and his visa process went through quickly, so by Friday he was on his way to Chicago to play his first game,” says Bretos.

“Then he played in the game, off the bench, and you could see it there. His second game was in New England, where they play on [artificial] turf. Generally, when the big stars arrive, they don’t want to put them on turf right away, for obvious reasons, but he started, played 90 minutes and assisted a goal.

“He’s played every game, and he’s played almost every minute of every game. This is unheard of. He was on the field immediately, and you can see the reaction of his team-mates – they loved him. It’s like he’d already been there for months.”

Big signings in MLS can often become the defining aspect of the franchise they join as everything becomes all about one player, but this has not been the case in LA.

“If a player like Cristiano Ronaldo arrived in MLS, he would move the needle in many ways, but if he arrived it kind of becomes his club,” adds Bretos.

“Much like in Miami with Messi – which is fine. But I think LAFC maintains its identity as Son Heung-min just blends into it, which I think is what he wanted. It’s a perfect marriage.”

A good example of this teamwork is the form of forward Denis Bouanga.

Since Son’s arrival, Gabon international Bouanga has scored 11 goals in nine games. This run has made him the first player with three consecutive 20-goal seasons in MLS, and put him level with Messi at the top of the 2025 Golden Boot race.

Between them, Son and Bouanga have scored LAFC’s past 18 goals, and with the end-of-season MLS Cup play-offs just around the corner, there are now shouts that LAFC could win it.