This is both kind of hilarious and kind of awesome from Kelsey. He definitely overruns the cross, but just a fantastic adjustment to lay it back on the spot for Lassiter.

One-time inch-perfect through-ball to crack open the entire defense down 1-0 at home with 25 minutes left? Pass of the Week to Jack McGlynn, folks.

Man this was just a superb team counterattack goal from Cincy here.

get him

Damn, we did it again

Bunker & Counter ftw. US dedicating this to Dean Smith, surely.

Am I wrong in thinking that McDavid is just going to shred us in 3v3 given all the open ice? Dude seems to get up to top speed so much faster than anyone else.

but then they'd look Gay and you know these Turning Puck USA boys can't handle that

Heated Rivalry has really changed how my wife watches hockey. That mini-breakaway where Celebrini ended up in Hellebuyck’s arms... “That was a really intense moment, you could tell.”

Is Hellebuyck the best American goalie ever? Him or Barrasso, right?

Welp, never gonna try Liquid Death.

Been kind of an amazing night for the #PlayYourKids movement.

Yeah but idk man maybe Papi should play some fucking kids? Look at how good Freeman was last year and Guske was tonight.

Cole Bassett’s first 30 minutes with the Timbers might be the best debut 30 minutes I’ve seen from a Timber. The best player on the field right now by a huge margin. #RCTID

This was nice soccer. Good control & awareness from Gressel to get it out into space as quick as possible.

Rydstrom taking the piss out of Doyle and play ing both of them

Morris opens his MLS account Shoutout to the setpiece haters 😈

Shout out to the Red Bull NY 12th man in Orlando, Tyrese Spicer

I think this should be Tyrese Spicer's final game for Orlando.

If I wrote this column and put it behind the $300 paywall i'd be able to retire by Thursday.

RBNY look great, but the word all preseason about Orlando was that the backline was a godawful mess. And, well...

Julian Hall for USMNT?

At the risk of overreacting to 20 minutes, it feels like I have my club back. We have a passionate manager unafraid to try new things and play optimistic soccer.

Thing we've repeatedly seen: Next Pro excellence among goalscorers translates up to MLS. In this instance Hall is just doing poacher shit, patiently waiting in the right spot as his teammates jogo bonito the shit out of Orlando.

in re: my earlier tweet about ordering delivery as a suburbanite... I ordered from a restaurant 2.9 miles away. The guy picked it up ~15 mins after it was ordered, drove 2 towns north and his car is now just sitting by a lake as he, I assume, gets high as fuck and eats my burritos.

It’s a risky strategy, Forsberg tends not to show up around kids

I kind of like the idea of dropping Bucha out of midfield to do the initial ball-progression, especially with Atlanta's front 3 sitting on Cincy's back 3. But if the second-order effect is that Nick Hagglund has to be more incisive pushing forward uhhhhhh

I'd mentioned in one of my season previews hearing some worrying whispers about Latte Lath and the worrying whispers were "actually he's just not good" and boy has he not done anything to stem my concerns in the first half-hour here. tacticsfreezone.ghost.io/2026-predict...

Mfw it's time for the discourse

Who's ready for the fuckin' discourse when Cincy are better & more organized without Evander. Got some good fuckin' discourse brewing.

Death, taxes, Kahlina. Incredible performance.

Man we'd have had one of the goals of the season in match No. 1 if Becher had finished this off. Also... one of several tough moments from Ream in open space this game.

Second half has been very good!

My "Simon Becher is a good soccer player" 2026 agenda is off to a flying start.

A fun thing is that I can now include this kind of thing in my Sunday column.

Fired off one last newsletter before First Kick, with my final, official standings predictions. And a big thank you to all of you. tacticsfreezone.ghost.io/my-final-off...

John, in his spare time, built one of the most useful tools I’ve seen for following MLS. Now imagine how good @futi.live, which he’s been working on for a year, is gonna be.

Here's the current list of sources: johnspacemuller.github.io/mls-daily/ Let me know who's doing the best coverage of your club: beat writers, blogs, newsletters, podcasts, videos, whatever. Not everything is technically feasible but I'm trying to get the good stuff

Fired off one last newsletter before First Kick, with my final, official standings predictions. And a big thank you to all of you. tacticsfreezone.ghost.io/my-final-off...

Always a treat when @kimischilling.bsky.social writes on MLS.

We did this live last night. If you like it, please subscribe - many more to come in the 31st season of MLS and 12th year for the Pigeons.

Pretty cool that over 600 people signed up for this off a few screenshots and I genuinely hope all of you will yell at me when the first one goes out in an hour about how to make it better

Do you want my thoughts on the Washington Spirit and D.C. United? This is where they're going to be. Introducing Green Line Soccer:

Here it is, my favorite column of the year: the 2026 Tiers of MLS! All 30 teams, ranked by tier, with about 9000 words of analysis on why it’ll work — and why, quite possibly, it won’t — for each. tacticsfreezone.ghost.io/ranking-all-...

The great @mattdoyle.bsky.social has tons of 2026 season content, including a look at who could be the main contenders for each year-end award on Tactics Free Zone: tacticsfreezone.ghost.io/2026-predict...

Here it is, my favorite column of the year: the 2026 Tiers of MLS! All 30 teams, ranked by tier, with about 9000 words of analysis on why it’ll work — and why, quite possibly, it won’t — for each. tacticsfreezone.ghost.io/ranking-all-...

▪️ Who's on the hottest seat? ▪️ Which player do we have the most stock in? ▪️ How will the conference standings look? With a new season of MLS kicking off this weekend, our experts weigh in on the biggest questions for the year to come 🔮 Read ⤵️