5 Bold Predictions for MLS in 2026

You miss every shot you don't take, after all

There’s a ton of MLS preview content out there, ranging from Joe Lowery’s remarkable effort at Backheeled to preview every team himself, to the in depth nerd previews at American Soccer Analysis, to the possibly AI written MLSsoccer.com previews. I thought briefly about writing my own previews, because I have thoughts. The problem is that nobody probably wants to read most of those thoughts. There’s too much, it’s a deluge.

Instead, I’m just going to throw out some bold predictions to come back to later.

Prediction 1: Wheel of Coaching

This one’s a double bill that reflects both the highs and lows of being a coach in MLS. First, I predict Phil Neville is fired before the World Cup break. Portland is not a great team, an odd assemblage of talent that reflects a disconnect between the front office and the management of the team. Plus, they have the hardest opening schedule relative to the rest of their season, and the third lowest predicted xPoints of the league in that time frame. They will struggle, the locker room will react, and the perception will be that Phil needs to go. On the other side of the coin, Mikey Varas will win Coach of the Year. San Diego has an extremely easy opening schedule, which will allow them to focus on CONCACAF Champions Cup while being competitive in MLS as well. They’ll enter the World Cup break sitting pretty and ride that momentum into the end of the year. Varas was a close candidate for CotY last season, and I believe that he’s a really good coach that works incredible well with Tyler Heaps. I believe in the project.

Prediction 2: Inter Miami finishes 3rd (or lower) in the East.

This is NOT in line with my models, where Miami is still the predicted best team, but I genuinely think they are worse as a team in 2026 than they were in 2025 in key ways. Everyone seems to be underestimating how hard it will be to replace Alba and Busquets. Even if the replacements were better (they are not) they do not have literal decades of experience playing next to their star. It matters. Mascherano is still kind of a crappy manager. The World Cup fatigue is going to be nasty. Outside of 6-7 players the team just isn’t that talented. Of course, Messi is still Messi. He has gotten better every year in MLS somehow. The talent is still pretty absurd at the top level, and they did add Micael to help solve some of the defensive issues.

Prediction 3: Evander does not finish in the top 8 of MVP voting.

I initially wrote top 5, but since he came in 4th last season that’s not much of a stretch. I think top 8 is a bold enough prediction to actually move the needle. There’s two reasons for this; first, there’s a lot of talent in the league now. Messi, Son, Muller, Bounga, Dreyer, and any of the three Nashville players are going to be competing for the spot. There’s been a lot of movement lower down with players like Nico Fernandez Mercau, Facu Torres, and others that will compete with him. It’s going to be tougher to stand out this year.

Come on now, this is absurd

The second reason is that Evander has been on a hot streak since entering the league that is bound to end. He put up 20 goals on just 9 xG last season, and added 15 primary assists on 10.92 xA. Almost doubling your expected goal contributions is just not going to happen twice. It’s not that Evander isn’t a great player; his +0.07 G+/96 puts him in very elite company. It’s just that he’s not hitting the +0.14 or greater that is in line with typical MVP candidates. I also think that Cincinnati will be much worse. They were barely positive on even game stat xGD, and actually pretty miserable on total xGD. It’s not a playoff team roster. They’re going to struggle, and it’s going to make Evander look worse.

Prediction 4: Taha Habroune is either Young Player of the Year or top of 22 Under 22

This is really getting out there, and there’s a lot of talented young players so it’s a really tough call. I really believe in Habroune, though. He’s always had bags of talent that was evident from an early age; great vision, technical skill, and a sense for the game. He’s just a little bit lightweight and spent a lot of his early pro minutes getting bodied on and off the ball. In return, with his time in Columbus he dropped a little deeper on the ball to give himself a little more time and space. The departure of MLS Icon Darlington Nagbe means that there will be an opportunity for Habroune to grab a major role in the midfield. With another year to get physically ready he should be able to push a little bit further up and take advantage of Henrik Rydstrom’s “relationist” tactical system.

In his 1048 minutes last season he put up +0.07 G+/96 (level with Evander) and he scores well above average in progressive passing, carrying, xA, final third passes per xA; you get the idea. To be a real contender for YPotY he will need to add minutes (probably an additional 1500 across all comps minimum) and get some goals. He had 1 goal on 1.72 xG last season on just 10 shots; he’ll need to get to at least 1.5 shots per 90 to be productive there. I do think Columbus will be pretty good and pretty fun to watch, so a lot of people are going to see Taha shine.

Prediction 5: This is the year of long shots

Tactical trends tend to trickle down from the top leagues slowly, being taken up by teams with lesser capacity and moderated by those teams’ ability to execute the game plans with fidelity. This is especially true with the data driven trends that have been more readily adopted by MLS teams, who are somewhat ahead of the curve in terms of adoption of data based principles. We’ve seen it happen with the aggressive high press that fueled the Red Bulls, Philadelphia, and LAFC. It happened again more recently with the adoption of long throws and other direct set pieces.

The hot new trend in the Premier League is the resurgence of long shots. As teams become more aggressive, defenses have responded by throwing bodies into the box. This has made it harder to pull apart opponents via careful possession play and led to a general decrease in open play goals. This has led to a slightly increased opening for players who want to take shots outside the box.

In MLS, long shots have decreased at similar rates. In 2013, the first year for which I have data, 36.4% of shots came from greater than 25 yards away from the goal. It has decreased consistently, bottoming out in 2025 with just 25.8% of shots from the same distance. My prediction is that the trend will reverse and we will see upwards of 28% of shots coming from 25 yards away or further. There’s already some shooters willing to rip it from deep in MLS, and Minnesota is adding long shot specialist James Rodriguez. As teams take the lead from what is happening upstream, those numbers will increase. It would take a total increase of about 300 long shots to hit 28%, assuming that total shot numbers remain the same. Evander might do that just by himself.

There’s a strong possibility I go 0/5 on all of these predictions; they’re certainly a big stretch, and not anything I’d bet on. Still, I think they’re all far more in the realm of possibility than most think; it will be fun to look back and see just how close (or far) I was.