(nytimes.com July 2, 2025)
Before we kick off this post-mortem, a disclaimer: no one game of soccer, or even a handful of them, can adequately serve as a referendum on an entire league.
When U.S. Soccer worked to launch MLS as a condition of hosting the 1994 World Cup, the paperwork didn’t include a “must be among the world’s top five leagues by” deadline. When Inter Miami brought Lionel Messi’s talents to South Beach, it was a gambit that the other 29 franchises couldn’t parody. Miami is operating within MLS’s labyrinth of rules in a very different manner than every other club can — it doesn’t reflect the operational standard.
Still, the Club World Cup has come to the United States and FIFA let three MLS teams enter its grand experiment. Just as the Mamelodi Sundowns were an avatar for South African soccer, and many will base their perception of the J-League on three games of the Urawa Red Diamonds, MLS’s caliber in the global landscape was largely conveyed through Miami, Los Angeles FC and the Seattle Sounders. That’s just how these things work.
So, yes: Miami’s 4-0 drubbing at the hands of Paris Saint-Germain, which saw the reigning European champions go into full energy conservation mode for 45 minutes, brought MLS’s Club World Cup foray to a sobering end. Even if it technically did a little better than the “other” Inter fared in a bigger game vs. PSG last month, the half-hearted nature of the French power’s post-halftime approach showed just how little fight the MLS team was perceived to have — even with Messi.
Now that it’s over for the MLS trio, let’s take stock: what impression did the league provide to a global audience, and what did those closer to the circuit learn about its caliber and operation?
MLS is more competitive than some may think
For any team entering a global tournament that isn’t seen as a threat to contend, the prioritized side quest is to not be embarrassed. In a World Cup, each group’s minnow hopes to avoid what Thailand experienced against the U.S. women’s national team in 2019. Auckland City provided a perfect example, overcoming a brutal 10-0 thrashing in its opener against Bayern Munich to notch a famous draw against Boca Juniors in its final match.
At a glance, MLS’s results leave a record with much to be desired: one win, three draws and six losses. In terms of competitiveness, however, the result shows a trio of teams that gave opponents a game almost every time. Lopsided results were largely absent. Before PSG routed Miami, only three of nine games saw an MLS team lose by two goals, and none by a greater margin.
One doesn’t enter a tournament for moral victories, but it’s a start. So, too, is the fact an MLS team advanced from its group over a side from UEFA. MLS’s one knockout qualifier is equal to the Saudi Pro League, Portugal’s Primeira Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1 and Liga MX while giving it a greater knockout presence than, say, the Argentine Primera División and the Austrian Bundesliga. If you were bracing to barb MLS for all three teams getting grouped, be willing to contextualize what happens when one advances.
Teams also received plenty of praise along the way, and not just for harboring the sport’s most famous player. Before Luis Enrique’s side played Miami out of the tournament, PSG stuck its landing and won Group C by beating Seattle. While Miami has gone full Nick Fury to assemble mid-2010s FC Barcelona and LAFC had two members of France’s 2018 World Cup winners on-hand, Seattle was seen as a plucky underdog that had earned its place but was unlikely to thrive in the tournament’s toughest group.
Seattle arguably outplayed Botafogo — more on that below — days before the Brazilian club’s upset of PSG, and was outclassed by an Atléti side with a point to prove. PSG was its sternest test, but Seattle’s composed shape and tirelessness until the final whistle earned the praise of Brian Schmetzer’s opposite number.
“This is the Club World Cup; it’s impossible to have an easy match,” Enrique told DAZN after the match. “I think (the Sounders) compete really well, they play great football. It was difficult until the last minute.”
And yet…
The league’s roster restrictions are holding teams back
Any high-level team inevitably tailors its marketing plans around a few central figures. Any poster promoting these games will select the most famous guy or two to convey an entire team’s reputation. Inter Milan wants to hitch its wagon to Lautaro Martínez. Manchester City’s reinvention features Erling Haaland as its leading man. It’s never seen as a slight to Yann Sommer or Nathan Aké, who are both very good even if their likeness is never plastered on the side of buses. Their wages validate their impact, and they’ll get their flowers whenever they come through in big moments.
Over time, MLS has configured its roster rules to give oversized importance to those marketable men. The designated player rule, hatched to bring David Beckham to the LA Galaxy, allows teams to exceed the maximum salary, which is determined in multi-year windows via collective bargaining talks with the MLS Players Association. In 2025, the senior maximum salary is $743,750, or just under £10,500 per week at current conversion rates.
Teams are allowed two or three DPs depending on their squad-building model, and league-issued allocation money allows teams to sign a few more players above that maximum but below a $1.74 million threshold. Miami and LAFC’s squads each have nine players earning above $743,750 annually, while Seattle has eight. Other factors to consider are a salary cap ($5.95 million this year; DPs hit the cap at a figure up to the senior max) and a limit of eight international slots, although you can acquire extras via trade.
How MLS teams did at the Club World Cup
Only one game saw an MLS team log a considerable expected goal differential advantage, when Seattle still lost to Botafogo. MLS teams lost the underlying numbers ledger against a team from Egypt and only barely outperformed a side from Tunisia. Even the team with Messi, who famously defies xG models with regularity, had a negative xGD in all four of its games.
There’s simply no budget to bring in role players of Rodrigo De Paul’s quality, no license to cobble an entire roster under one coherent vision without cutting corners. Games aren’t won by one, or three, or nine players — it takes everybody who touches the field, plus a lot of worthy alternatives who are stewing about not being involved that day.
Last week, we learned as part of the MLSPA’s twice-a-year salary dump that Miami pays its roster $46,836,635 per year. Now consider that $36.7 million of that bounty is dedicated to Messi, Sergio Busquets, Jordi Alba and Luis Suárez. The other 25 players earn an average of $404,599, or £5,666 per week. Some of you can already see how this would put teams at a disadvantage, but let’s cite an example.
Before falling in the round of 16, Botafogo jolted the Club World Cup to life with its 1-0 upset of PSG. Talking with commentators and rival teams over the following days, and the consensus hallmark of that win wasn’t Igor Jesus’ imperiousness: it was the swarming defense under (shockingly, now-former) head coach Renato Paiva. Botafogo moved as a collective, closing passing lanes and hustling upfield behind a possession sequence to establish a high line of engagement to shrink the field.
Defenders of that caliber don’t come cheaply, but think like an MLS sporting executive for a second: if you only have two, or three — up to nine, if you’re clever — roster slots to pay players more than $743,750, how many of those will you utilize for defensive roles? Are you comfortable going all-in on that while relying on cheaper attackers and midfielders? No matter what, a bulk of your squad will have to earn less.
So while the results were credible and performances earned plaudits, the underlying numbers show a gap in quality between MLS and most of its opponents.
MLS brass deserves a lot of credit for ensuring the league weathered a nearly catastrophic period at the turn of the century. The work of commissioner Don Garber and his support suite of executives helped keep the league afloat before setting it on the ascendency through expansion, enacting an academy model, working into the global transfer market and helping teams see the importance of world-class stadia and training venues. However, quotes like this give a worrying projection of how much further MLS owners are willing to reach to contend at the levels to which he once regularly professed to aspire.
“I saw something in the news today about Transfermarkt values of each [Club World Cup] club, and clearly MLS teams are at the lower quadrant of Transfermarkt value,” Garber said earlier this month. “That’s something over time that I hope to be able to see continue to grow as our teams are investing more in players and hopefully generating more revenue to justify that expense.”
Compare that tone to his comments in 2015, when Tyler Adams and Alphonso Davies were still in MLS youth setups and a year after the LA Galaxy had won a third MLS Cup in four years with Landon Donovan, Beckham and Robbie Keane:
“I do believe in 10 years’ time or less, people will think of us like Serie A, La Liga, and hopefully the way they think about the Premier League. If we continue to do things right and stay to our plan.”
The terms most often used when discussing MLS’s approach are “stability,” stating a secondary aim of ensuring competitive parity. In truth, most justifications for MLS’s strict and limiting roster rules suggest a prioritization of profit over play quality. That’ll keep MLS’s group of billionaire owners happy, but it’ll hardly help the competition near synonymity with Europe’s top leagues.
Aging icons have their limitations
Reports of MLS being a “retirement league” have always been backed by shaky banter, especially in recent years. MLS hatched another rule to encourage teams to lean into signing players under the age of 22, building off of the outbound transfers of Adams to RB Leipzig, Davies to Bayern and Miguel Almirón to Newcastle United in January 2019. Nevertheless, some players in the twilight of their careers continue to appeal to MLS suitors, often due to a combination of sporting and marketing reasons. Some of these guys can still ball. Zlatan Ibrahimović was a force in 2018 and 2019, when he was pushing 40, before returning to (and starting for) AC Milan when it won the Scudetto. Giorgio Chiellini and Gareth Bale helped LAFC win its first MLS Cup. Messi’s impact speaks for itself.
However, this Club World Cup saw most of the involved teams’ most veteran members struggle against non-MLS opposition. Olivier Giroud’s frustrating stint with LAFC ended with an ineffective tournament. All three teams had a starting goalkeeper aged 38 or 39 years old. The defensive flaws of Alba and Busquets were laid bare, and even Messi wasn’t immune: despite taking 13 shots and creating seven chances, his only goal contribution was that famous free kick to topple Porto.
If pressed to pick the best MLS player of the tournament, it wouldn’t be a former FIFA Best XI honoree. It would be Cristian Roldan, a 30-year-old who joined Seattle a decade ago and has played 294 league games for the team. His work in the engine room helped his team go toe-to-toe with Botafogo, while his pressing work in tandem with Obed Vargas forced PSG to abandon the midfield and operate up the wings.
At this stage, aging icons often fare best in MLS as role players, often requiring some pay cuts to ensure a better roster around them to handle the hard work and allowing them to focus on their technical and mental strengths. Miami’s struggles in the current MLS season have also provided ample evidence that balance is necessary to maximize this type of signing.
Spotlight on the kids
We end on a promising positive, as seeds laid by the league to foster dependable youth development around 2010 have more regularly borne fruit.
In any top circuit, academies are a surefire way to support a squad’s headliners with young talent on controllable wages. These players can run longer and easier than their veteran leaders, and they can provide sparks of technical promise that swing results and hint at great things to come.
No player embodied the payoff of those efforts than Vargas, who partnered with Roldan to start all three of Seattle’s games. A 19-year-old born in Anchorage, Alaska, Vargas’ family relocated to Seattle when he was a teenager to realize his professional dreams. He became a coveted dual national, opting to represent Mexico instead of the U.S., and is already among the best two-way midfielders in MLS. He’ll likely be off to Europe, following a path previously trod by MLS homegrown midfielders like Adams, Aidan Morris and Tanner Tessmann.
Each teams had their own young standouts. Miami’s win over Porto was sealed by Messi, but saw three academy graduates earn starts in what proved to be a momentous match. Another trio of “U22” international signings logged considerable minutes for Miami. While LAFC didn’t see any of their homegrown products make a measurable impact, a couple of rising South American youngsters played over half of the minutes available.
And to whet the romantics’ collective appetite: this is also where the best narratives and the most sustainable bonds between fans and their teams are fostered. There’s something intrinsically worth cheering for when “one of your own” is playing for the team he, himself, grew up idolizing. If those players go on to leave the club and play abroad, that’s great for the club; if they stick around for a decade, they’ll be fan favorites. It’s an undeniably positive pursuit when done right.
This is the direction MLS needs to venture towards even more confidently. Soccer has long been a staple of youth sports, and working to eradicate pay-to-play models has made teams’ academies a more realistic possibility for a broader portion of the population. There’s still plenty of work to do to improve accessibility, the quality of education available to coaches below professional ranks and bridging the gap from the academy to the first team — but it’s clear these efforts will help drive the league’s future.
If there’s one last lesson to take from this tournament, it’s this: teams from beyond Europe can still stand toe-to-toe with the continent’s biggest clubs and walk away with a win. Brazil has rebounded from the pandemic in a big way, reinvesting in veterans and international players to bolster the well-established developmental pipeline and raise its already impressive standard. Botafogo and Flamengo didn’t just beat PSG and Chelsea — they did so looking like the better side. While the Saudi Pro League is still a project that makes many observers uneasy, Al Hilal’s 120-minute triumph over Manchester City will validate the ridiculous sums spent and likely only catalyze further investment.
The case that teams outside of Europe, and even South America’s best, can’t contend at the club game’s highest levels has been debunked. That’s an encouraging sign for a competition like MLS, although how proactively the league works to make up ground against its rival competitions will undoubtedly be the biggest story of the months and years to come. With the World Cup coming to North America next summer, there’s never been a better window to take bold action and close the gap.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6463505/2025/07/02/mls-club-world-cup-lafc-seattle-inter-miami/
