Leagues Cup semifinals tomorrow
Columbus host Philadelphia at 7:30 pm ET and LAFC welcome Colorado at 10 pm ET. Check out the full schedule here.
Colorado transfer Bombito to Nice
The Colorado Rapids have transferred center back Moïse Bombito to French Ligue 1 side OGC Nice. The Canadian international defender departs for a club-record fee of reportedly $7.7 million, which could reach $10.7 million with add-ons. Colorado also retain a sell-on fee.
MLS legend Dax McCarty to retire after 2024 season
A legendary MLS career is in its final chapter, with Atlanta United midfielder Dax McCarty announcing Monday he will retire after the 2024 season. McCarty, 37, is playing his 19th MLS season. His 481 career appearances are the third-most in league history, trailing only Kyle Beckerman and Nick Rimando.
A few more days now and MLS regular-season games are back. Four teams are missing while they’re off trying to win Leagues Cup, but they’ll return eventually.
When MLS play resumes on Saturday, we’ll be nine matchdays away from Decision Day. That’s not a ton of time for teams to turn their lives around or for new players to get integrated, but it’s also two months worth of soccer. We’re going to learn a lot before we hit the Audi 2024 MLS Cup Playoffs.
To us here at The Daily Kickoff, it’s worth keeping an extra eye on these teams.
There are dangers to a deep Leagues Cup run. Ask Nashville SC 2023 version. They were a penalty shootout away from winning the whole thing last year and haven’t rediscovered that kind of form since. Adding extra mileage and testing your depth can be both a blessing and a curse.
The Rapids have to be especially wary now that Moïse Bombito is one his way to Ligue 1. He’s been a critical piece of their spine and the backline will take a step back without him. If Zack Steffen reverts to his early-season form, Bombito’s absence could become overwhelmingly apparent.
All that being said, the Rapids are a good team. Maybe a really good team. Just before Leagues Cup, they made it through a stretch of Red Bulls, LA and RSL with four points to sit three points ahead of fifth-place Vancouver and just three points behind RSL. Their underlying numbers are among the best in the league, with American Soccer Analysis putting their expected goal differential and expected points rates behind only LAFC. They don’t quite have the high-end talent (or the eye test value) to put them among the actual contenders in MLS, but there’s every chance they cause serious issues for more than one team in the playoffs.
Unless, of course, Bombito’s absence and some tired legs push all of that out the window. We’ll have to wait and see. The good news is Colorado have already played one more game than most teams. They get to space out their final eight-game run. Will that be enough to keep them in a home playoff spot? Could they even catch RSL?
Whether the Rapids can catch up or not depends largely on what RSL look like as, basically, a new team. At least it feels that way. Andrés Gómez is gone to Ligue 1’s Stade Rennais in a reported $11 million deal after putting up 13 goals and nine assists in his age-21 season. He’s one of the single-most productive U22s to come through the league since they invented U22s. It’s a huge loss for RSL.
But it’s not like RSL sat on their hands. DP No. 10 Diogo Gonçalves arrived this summer for a reported $3 million fee from FC Copenhagen. They also found a like-for-like U22 winger replacement in Polish youth international Dominik Marczuk. They even brought Benji Michel back to MLS and acquired Australian winger Lachlan Brook to help supplement the attack.
RSL have nine games to get them integrated and to find out if they can make up for Gómez’s absence enough to stay a contender in the West heading into the playoffs.
The Timbers had a relatively quiet summer window, but they’re still worth paying attention to down the stretch. It’s been a second since we’ve seen them on the field, but they were one of the hottest teams in MLS before exiting Leagues Cup.
They pummeled Nashville 4-1 and RSL 3-0 just before the start of Leagues Cup, beat Club León in the group stage and beat up on Colorado in a 4-0 win right after that. Somewhere around all that, Portland found ways to lose to FC Dallas, LA and St. Louis. LA is excusable of course. The others don’t feel so great.
The Timbers are a hard team to pin down. They’ve had a moment to collect themselves after the loss to St. Louis, just in time for them to return to MLS play this weekend against that same St. Louis side. From there, they’ll take on their most critical stretch of the season when they face Seattle, Colorado, LA, RSL and Vancouver over a brutal five-game run. We’re about to find out a ton about this team, their place in the Western Conference standings and their potential to go on (another) surprise run to MLS Cup.
It’s tough to see Charlotte and not think about what could have been. They were reportedly a medical away from signing Feyenoord No. 10 Calvin Stengs in what would have been a potential club-defining move. They were reportedly a little less close to signing Miguel Almirón, but it became a real possibility at some point. So, instead, they had to “settle” for a loan to bring in DP No. 10 Pep Biel from Olympiacos through the end of the season.
There are worse outcomes. And getting what’s basically a trial run on a DP is good business. If he fits, Charlotte have a purchase option they could exercise at the end of the year to bring in Biel for good. There’s a best-case scenario here where he’s everything they could have wanted from Stengs. The worst-case scenario is he doesn’t live up to expectations and they try again in the winter.
But if Biel can be the guy they were hoping for all summer, this Charlotte team is dangerous. Adding Tim Ream to an already stellar backline feels like overkill in the best way. They simply need Biel and newly returned DP Karol Swiderski to elevate their attack and they’ll essentially be a more multifaceted version of the best versions of Nashville. Even in the stacked Eastern Conference, that’s a frightening prospect in the playoffs.
Houston’s summer window ended up being delightfully straightforward. They saw their biggest needs and addressed them. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. And now they could be good enough to genuinely challenge for the West’s spot in MLS Cup.
By bringing in DP forward Ezequiel Ponce and U22 attacker Lawrence Ennali, they’ve added two attacking pieces that could finally provide the dynamism the Dynamo have been missing. We know they can defend and we know they can control games with the ball. Now we just need to see them blow teams away in the final third. If both players are a fit, Houston are good enough to make waves. Maybe not a wave big enough to take LAFC in the end, but still, big waves.
By the way, they’re just four points out of a home playoff spot with two games in hand.
Chicago are three points out of a playoff spot. Just three. With nine games to go. They don’t even have to stress about putting Xherdan Shaqiri on the field anymore. There has to be some freedom in that, right? Maybe, just maybe, this is the year.
- Here are the hosting scenarios for the Leagues Cup final.
- Joe Lowery looked at which Leagues Cup semifinalist is most likely to take home a trophy.
Good luck out there. Go out a legend.
