2026 MLS Previews: Sporting Kansas City, LA Galaxy, Toronto FC
/Our 2026 MLS Season Previews have started and today we hit SKC, the Galaxy, and my beloved Toronto FC. If you want to support this coverage of the league, you can head to our Patreon. For $5 a month you can get access to a lot of the data visualization tools we use to make these previews.
Y’all got any more of them soccer players?
Last season was a rough one for anyone with even a passing interest in Sporting Kansas City. After a winless six games to start 2025, Peter Vermes, who had been with the team in various capacities since they were the Kansas City Wizards, left the club by mutual agreement. The team ultimately finished with 28 points, fewest in the Western Conference, but tied with CF Montréal and Atlanta United for second fewest in the league. But contextually, how bad is that?
Turns out, historically bad. According to American Soccer Analysis data, SKC finished 2025 with the second lowest expected goals (xG) in MLS, 42.55, the highest expected goals against (xGA), 70.69, combining to a league worst -28.15 expected goal difference (xGD). For some 2025 perspective, the difference between SKC and the team with the second worst xGD, Toronto FC, was about the same as the difference between Toronto and Houston, which finished 13th.
When I say historically bad, there’s no hyperbole. Sporting’s -28.15 xGD in 2025 is the worst in American Soccer Analysis’ database, going back to 2013. Worse than 2019 FC Cincinnati. Worse than 2013 Chivas USA. The worst! In the wake of that, how does SKC’s 2026 look?
Who Is Going To Play?
Given last season’s results and the first offseason post-Vermes, pretty serious roster changes made sense. Sporting entered the offseason with just twelve players under contract, moving on from U22 players Logan Ndenbe and Robert Voloder, TAM-earners Joaquin Fernandez, Alan Montes, Nemanja Radoja, and Erik Thommy, as well as Khiry Shelton and Mason Toye.
While other teams are dealing with where players fit on the depth chart, SKC’s major roster question is more fundamental: who is even on the depth chart? What is a depth chart? Why is a depth chart? At the time of writing, the team announced a 20 player roster for the Coachella Valley Invitational and somehow, four of them are goalkeepers.
That signing Wyatt Meyer and Jayden Reid, who have 15 combined MLS starts, markedly improves the team’s depth illustrates just how bare the roster is entering 2026.
A complete tear down of the roster with the worst xGD since 2013 should mean better results the next year but that assumes the ensuing rebuild is completed. Right now, Sporting’s 2025 roster has to be an improvement on its 2026 one, if only because it had enough players to finish the season.
Seriously Shallow Midfield
Nowhere on the field is SKC’s roster issues clearer than in midfield. If the season were to start today, Sporting would almost certainly rank last in the league in an extremely scientific metric I just came up with: how many of a team’s midfielders have Wikipedia pages. (The answer is one of four). Looking down the depth chart illustrates just how precarious the center of the field is for SKC.
Manu García was a bright spot in 2025 as the Spanish Designated Player flashed good passing ability on a team in dire need of it. The team building conversation about whether or not García is a good value as a DP is almost beside the point right now - in 2026, SKC needs players on the field and he should be solid.
After Bartlett, things get dicey, fast. Kwaku Agyabeng, the team’s first round SuperDraft pick out of Clemson, and Homegrown midfielder Cielo Tschantret, who played with SKC2 in 2025 have gotten preseason minutes so far. Jake Davis, usually a full back, has also seemed to deputize in midfield in the preseason. Zamir Loyo Reynaga recently signed a Homegrown deal but he was born when Peter Vermes was already into his second season managing SKC, so there’s a slim chance for 2026 contributions to the first team. If you assume many of these well, replacements, will perform at a replacement level - a replacement level midfielder as defined by goals added is approximately a -0.1 g+ per 96 compared to the average. Probably should aim to play those guys less. But somebody has to play!
Searching For Positives
Dejan Joveljic, who will always be remembered as the first cashfer in MLS history, scored 18 goals (including five penalties), which, at first glance, seems like a solid return in his debut season. Obviously, you’d like more production than 0.44 xG/96 on just over two shots per game from a Designated Player. Goals added disagrees, however, rating Jovelic’s 2025 as one of the worst in the league despite his goalscoring. I would quibble with this, given the goal of a striker is the goals part, not the G+ part, and the entire lack of ball progression or any useful attackers in the same zip code as Joveljic hurts him a lot here.
Still, Joveljic is still just 26-years-old and if you’re building around one player currently on the roster, it’s him. He’s been good in previous seasons, too, so there’s proof of concept in thinking he can be a good enough MLS striker. The issue, as ever, is getting the striker the ball in dangerous areas.
Unlike in midfield, there are at least attackers to ask questions of, even if there still probably aren’t enough. Does Dániel Sallói still have anything in the tank? In 2025, he was not nearly as impactful as in previous seasons (-0.04 G+/96) in more than 2,400 minutes played. Shapi Suleymanov, who joined Sporting at about the same time as his former Aris teammate Garcia, contributed -0.07 G+/96 in more than 2,200 minutes. Calvin Harris has at least played MLS minutes and was an above average G+ contributor across nearly 1,500 minutes in Colorado.
Tasked with figuring all this out is Raphaël Wicky, who makes his return to MLS. Most recently, Wicky managed Switzerland’s Young Boys until March 2024 following his stint leading the Chicago Fire in 2020 and most of 2021.
Any sort of improved attacking season will depend on the midfield being able to get the ball forward to what should at least be a competent attacking group. Turning the league’s worst defense into something better will be a huge challenge, too, but at least that group has been (relatively) fortified this offseason and frankly we’ve got a word limit over here.
Turning the ship after Vermes’ tenure is bound to be a slow process. The most charitable way to frame the team’s inaction this offseason is that it hasn’t moved too fast chasing the wrong signings for the sake of quick returns. That doesn’t make the soccer any better in 2026, however, but it leaves the possibility that Sporting’s new soccer leadership can eventually get things right. It looks like it’ll be ugly in the interim, however. And they still need to sign some guys.
Lions, Tigers, and No Puig, Oh My
If you are a fan of the LA Galaxy, you may have realized this offseason that The Wizard of Oz has a terrible ending. Dorothy landed in a strange, magical world, unintentionally caused a death that triggered a blood feud, became embroiled in a political conflict with witches and wizards she hardly understood, and, most importantly, had her dog stolen by flying monkeys. But through these challenges, she found a way home! And, she did it with a motley crew overlooked in both rounds of the Oz Re-Entry draft, lacking heart, intelligence, and courage.
But perhaps Dorothy should have remained in her concussed state in the land of Oz. When she wakes up, she finds herself back in Kansas in 1939, a time when the twin crises of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl had rendered the Great Plains an unlivable hellscape. In other words, Riqui Puig, the player who should have been the 2024 MVP, is once again out for the season.
Puig’s promised return was the hope that Galaxy fans hung on to down their very painful yellow brick road that was 2025. It was a season with long stretches of very poor soccer, and the fourth-worst goals added (g+) differential in the league at -11.59 g+. Puig’s second surgery on his torn ACL, sustained while leading the Galaxy to the 2024 MLS Cup, raises the question of whether we will ever see a bar chart like this again—not just because Opta has cut off the data feed to FBRef. With the 2026 season swiftly approaching, the Galaxy cannot afford to grieve as they embark down the yellow brick road without Puig once again.
So, how do you replace someone like Riqui Puig? The answer is probably you can’t, but in their first trip down the road in 2025, the Galaxy and general manager Will Kuntz didn’t have many options either, and missing Puig wasn’t their only issue. The Galaxy also had to part with multiple key players from their championship squad to comply with roster regulations, using every cent of their allocation dollars to become compliant for the start of 2025.
In addition to Puig, losing Marky Delgado (2759 mins, 1.67 g+) and Gastón Brugman (1385 mins, 1.28 g+) removed two high-usage veterans with positive contributions from the midfield rotation. Not a single Galaxy midfielder, including the underwhelming Marco Reus, finished 2025 with a positive g+. The team finished second to last, just a tenth above the dumpster fire that was Toronto in g+ passing, with a meager 1.16, a figure that Puig tripled by himself in 2024.
The other significant exodus before 2025 was striker Dejan Joveljić, who, after scoring 15 regular-season goals, transferred to Sporting KC and signed a designated player contract in one of the first major moves of the cashfer era. Joveljić overperformed his expected goals during the 2024 MLS Cup-winning season, but in 2025, he scored only three more goals in 800 additional minutes for Kansas City.
While a year later, this still appears to be a wise decision for the Galaxy, the salary cap constraints prevented Kuntz from being able to acquire a true replacement for the Serbian, with last year’s striker rotation of U22 loanee Matheus Nascimento, Christian Ramírez, and Miguel Berry only scoring 7 goals on 9.61 xG in 3,152 minutes.
But Galaxy fans can be more hopeful the second time down the road, as Kuntz, free of the belt-tightening needed in 2025, has more options to enhance the Galaxy roster in 2026. A common theme in his offseason moves has been targeting veterans to stabilize LA’s spine. The team added Justin Haak from New York City FC and Erik Thommy from Sporting KC, both of whom should give immediate support in midfield.
Thommy gave valuable minutes and demonstrated an ability to progress the ball via the dribble, even on struggling Sporting KC teams, and should be a borderline starting option for Greg Vanney in the midfield and on the wing.
Interestingly, the club announced Haak as a midfielder upon signing, despite having made most of his starts as a left center back for NYC, after Pascal Jansen designed his defensive scheme around the Brooklynite’s ability to shift between the defensive line and midfield during different phases of the game.
In addition, the Galaxy used the wasted 2025 season to give young players like Elijah Wynder, who started next to Haak in the midfield during their first game at Coachella, U22 signing Lucas Sanabria, and Tucker Lepley significant midfield minutes. Those players were mostly extremely not good in 2025, but the investment of minutes into their development should help augment overall depth in 2026. It would be a bonus if they re-sign Diego Fagundez, who had his best performances during the Galaxy’s strongest run of form in the second half of 2025, and/or if they can extract any remaining juice from the pulp of Marco Reus’ soccer corpse.
Will this be enough to replace Riqui Puig? Definitely not, but it will at least raise the standard of midfield performances needed for the Galaxy to transition from cellar dwellers to a playoff team.
Joining Haak as a defensive reinforcement from the Philadelphia Union is 2025 Best XI CB Jakob Glesnes. How Vanney deploys Haak, Glesnes, and the incumbent defensive line will be something to watch as the Coachella Invitational begins this week, offering insight into how the Galaxy will tactically align this season. If Haak plays as a straight No. 6, as he did during the first game at Coachella, he should be an upgrade over Edwin Cerrilo. Still, with Haak’s positional flexibility and progressive play from the back line, it’s hard not to see a more defensive Michael Bradley, whom Vanney managed during the Giovinco years, flexibly transitioning between 4-ATB and 3-ATB formations.
On the attacking line, although Nascimento struggled, the Galaxy extended his loan from Botafogo through June, hoping for a better outcome in 2026. Additionally, the Galaxy invested considerable resources and Puig’s open designated player spot on the distressed asset João Klauss. Klauss is an expiring contract, meaning the fee paid for him falls away at the end of the season, opening the door for the Galaxy to significantly bolster their attacking depth in 2027 at the TAM level, while getting cute with one year of a DP slot now. The good news is that Nascimento won’t be the first option this season. Klauss is strong in the air and can play with his back to goal, but he has struggled to consistently create high-quality scoring chances the past two seasons. However, the xA he’s generating from the chances he does create is very nice.
The extent to which Klauss’ poor form resulted from individual skill rather than the shortcomings of a poorly assembled St. Louis CITY team will be a key factor in the Galaxy’s attack. If DP wingers Gabriel Pec and Joseph Paintsil, who may or may not be subject to transfer rumors, can stay healthy, having a capable player on the field who can excel in the air, pass effectively, and create space may be exactly what the Galaxy’s frontline needs. Needless to say, these are objectively the best players Klauss has partnered in MLS. The Big Brazilian has already set up his countrymen for a goal at the Coachella Valley Invitational.
While LA’s defensive structure in the outfield should improve significantly, one important area Kuntz has yet to address is the goalkeeper position. Among keepers who faced at least 100 shots, Novak Mićović ranked below average with a G/xG of 1.06, placing him 20th in the league. It’s the lowest-hanging fruit at a position that greatly influences results throughout the season and should be a prime target for an upgrade, particularly after moving veteran goalkeeper John McCarthy for some GAM and cap relief last summer.
Overall, Kuntz, unlike in the 2025 firesale, has implemented a coherent strategy to address the Galaxy’s roster issues by acquiring high-floor veterans. This approach could position the Galaxy for the playoffs, with the possibility of a higher ranking if progress is made by some of their young players. At the very least, this year won’t resemble 2025. However, things could always be worse. Puig might require a third ACL surgery, or, heaven forbid, you could wake up in Kansas.
I’ve Got A Bad Feeling About This
By Kieran Doyle
What do you get for a team who tried to do everything and succeeded at nothing in 2025? The answer, apparently, is a total roster turnover.
Enter Toronto FC, stage left. This team was bad in 2025. By expected goal difference, only the abject Sporting Kansas City were worse. Not only were they bad. They had no idea what they were trying to do. Using some of the cool team style data from our friends over at Futi, if you measure how varied the different style each team played was across the season, Toronto FC were the third most varied. They bunkered and countered, they controlled and regrouped, they launched and squished, they pressed and possessed. They also sorta kinda did none of those things. Because none of them worked.
As such, everyone is gone. Here is a list of all of the players gone from the club: Spicer, Longstaff, Bernardeschi, Rosted, Petretta, Johnson, Sharp, Flores, Mbongue, Insigne, Long, Edwards, Brynhildson, Dominguez. This is a team returning fewer than 50% of their minutes, probably because most of those minutes sucked.
A New Hope
With all that roster room, and a tremendous amount of cap room, surely there is lots of incoming business? Well, not really. Djordje Mihailovic joined in the summer and was admittedly quite good. Long time MLS stat darling Jose Cifuentes, on loan from Rangers until the summer with a purchase option, was just okay. The club replaced Raoul Petretta’s rancidness with a stat profile of a similar odour in Matheus Pereira for 800k from Santa Clara, who is yet to play in preseason.
They also went back to the known domestic talent well in free agent Walker Zimmerman. My feelings on Zimmerman will depend a lot on his final salary number, but we know it’s not a DP deal (important). Either way, CB was a gigantic Phoenix A of a blackhole for this team last season, and getting an objectively consistently positive and calming influence with this track record of performance is a huge win for the team.
Aside from that, it’s a lot of John Travolta Pulp Fiction meme. Not a lot of guys coming in. This is a team firmly betting that a solid core featuring Zimmerman can drastically improve the team from Spoon contender to playoff hopeful.
The Core Worlds
TFC have a sort of quite legit core for a team so bad. Zimmerman is a truly solid CB with a good track record of both staying on the field and being good when on the field. Defensive midfielder Alonso Coello is perhaps the single most underrated player in the league. Do you know how good you have to be to put up this g+ as a DM for a team this ass? Djordje wasn’t super productive as a creator due to something we’ll discuss shortly, but scored a lot mostly by getting into fabulous shooting positions. Add in career just-good-players Richie Laryea, Jonathan Osorio, and Jose Cifuentes, the team has a decent floor.
His Fate Is Uncertain
There are some fairly large question marks on this team. One, Djordje didn’t create anything because the striker position was a TON618 of a black hole. The team got seven goals from the striker position all season. In case you were wondering, this is a bad shot map. I’ve attached a good one for reference. Jules-Anthony Vilsaint and Deandre Kerr are nice squad strikers to have. Sub off the bench, rotation option guys. Young, worth betting on. But they need THE guy. 15 xG, +0.1 receiving per game type of dude. General Manager Jason Hernandez and owners Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment apparently agree, with the team tabling a whopping $18M deal for American striker Josh Sargent. Me likey. Now that’s a god damn shot map. This deal is yet to happen due to Norwich, but let’s hope.
The other fairly large question mark is exactly opposite, in goal. Sean Johnson had one of the best shot stopping seasons of his career by ASA’s G-xG metric, second only behind GKOTY Dayne St. Clair. I think this data is a lie. Johnson was such a colossal disaster of a shot handler, distributor, cross claimer (which is something ASA’s model, in my opinion, does not handle well) that it all evened out. This thesis will be put to the test by novice netminder Luka Gavran, who has been vaguely average in his MLS minutes so far, but was strong across his MLSNP and college minutes. Given the budgetary difference between the two and the current realistic projection of this team, it’s certainly worth the investment to find out.
Let the past die, kill it if you have to
Ultimately, this is a team who needs to figure out how to be successful again. Too long have they rested on the laurels of a roster built by perhaps the league’s greatest ever roster builder in Tim Bezbatchenko. He’s gone. Ali Curtis did a bad job. Bob Bradley did a worse job. Hernandez has, so far, done a good job of cutting out the dead tissue. Now, you build something. It’s easy to start a rebuild, it’s hard to finish it.