10 questions for the 2025 MLS season: Will Lionel Messi, Inter Miami win MLS Cup after early exit in 2024?

As LA Galaxy head coach Greg Vanney celebrated his team’s MLS Cup win in December, his team’s journey from 13th place in the Western Conference to the winners’ podium a year later offered a stark reminder of MLS’ unpredictability.

“There’s a lot of things that can balance teams out and small things often make the difference,” he said. “That’s happened many a time in this league and you see that around MLS a lot. Teams that maybe don’t have all the pieces one year have all the pieces they need the next year and things come together.”

That remains the case as the league approaches its 30th season, which starts on Saturday, adding layers and layers of intrigue to the start of the season – and forcing several questions about how things will shake out. The queries are not just limited to the fortunes of last season’s best and worst teams, though; the changing variables extend to the league’s overall reputation as it reaches a landmark season and ahead of a pivotal year in American soccer.

Here are 10 questions ahead of the 2025 MLS season.

1. Will Inter Miami win MLS Cup?

Let’s start with the question most MLS casuals are asking, which is if Lionel Messi and company will win the trophy that so far eludes them. If one dives a little bit deeper, this question splits into two – Is the strategy that led them to success in 2024 sustainable for another year, and will new head coach Javier Mascherano be a helping hand or a hindrance? An overreliance on aging stars comes with its challenges and feels more like a roster-building approach that was successful a decade ago in MLS than it is now, though Miami’s Supporters’ Shield win in 2024 may prove otherwise, at least temporarily. Mascherano is an unknown quantity, though – he does not have a lot of managerial experience and has not exactly earned rave reviews during his stints in charge of Argentina’s youth national teams. It should make for a fascinating season and one that could remind many of MLS’ entertaining idiosyncrasies, even if Miami go on to win the whole thing.

2. Will the LA Galaxy repeat as MLS Cup winners?

Miami may have won the Supporters’ Shield but the LA Galaxy took MLS’ top prize in 2024, doing so after a very strong season. They also cemented a winning roster-building approach that feels modern in MLS, luring younger talents from Europe with big paychecks to play major roles. This offseason has not been kind to Greg Vanney’s side, though – the league’s salary cap rules meant the Galaxy had to trade away MLS Cup goalscorer Dejan Joveljic and MLS Cup MVP Gaston Brugman to stay compliant. The policies have most recently drawn criticism from Galaxy designated player Maya Yoshida, in large part because he had to take a pay cut to return, but all of it forces a bigger question about how doable a repeat championship is.

3. How will Gregg Berhalter’s MLS return go?

After six years away from the league where he made a name for himself, ex-U.S. men’s national team head coach Gregg Berhalter is back in MLS not only to raise his own stock, but to make the Chicago Fire relevant again. It will be no small feat – they have missed the postseason in each of the last seven seasons, with multiple iterations of a rebuild falling flat. Berhalter himself will play a big role in the new rebuild as the head coach and sporting director, using his first offseason to construct a roster with young domestic talent and a handful of those with years and years of MLS experience. They definitely will not be the finished product in 2025 but creating a contender is the main objective this year, and Berhalter’s strong MLS reputation will take center stage along the way.

4. Which teams are mounting a comeback?

The Fire are not the only ones who hope to make a statement in 2025. Look no further than Atlanta United and the San Jose Earthquakes, who were busy in the offseason and enter the new season with a new look. Atlanta made a particular splash by signing Emmanuel Latte Lath from Middlesbrough for a reported record transfer fee worth $22 million, as well as bringing Miguel Almiron back from Newcastle United. The Earthquakes, meanwhile, added the likes of Cristian Arango and Josef Martinez as they hope to make the playoffs for only the second time in the last five years. Both will also have new head coaches – ex-New York City FC boss Ronny Deila is now with Atlanta, while the Earthquakes hired Bruce Arena in his first gig since MLS suspended him for making insensitive and inappropriate remarks in 2023.

5. How will San Diego FC do?

MLS welcomes its 30th team on Sunday when San Diego FC travel to the Galaxy for their first-ever MLS game. Even in a league where expansion teams enter the league with flash, San Diego seem like they might be a scrappier newcomer, slowly building a team of players with a wide variety of experience and boasting a young head coach in Mikey Varas. Hirving Lozano is the team’s big-name player and the expectation is that he will settle in well in MLS, but there’s always a big question mark on a team that’s never played together before. Perhaps an even bigger question, though, is if those links to Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah and Manchester City’s Kevin de Bruyne turn into a reality when their contracts are up in the summer.

6. How will the first cash-for-player trades pan out?

MLS is known for its hand-wringing rules, but they introduced something plainly simple this offseason – a cash-for-player trade, with teams using the mechanism to make a splash. Rising USMNT talent Jack McGlynn was the first homegrown to make such a move when he joined the Houston Dynamo on a $2.1 million deal, while the 2023 MLS MVP Luciano Acosta moved from FC Cincinnati to FC Dallas in a $6 million trade. Those two players will be especially intriguing to follow in 2025, especially since their acquisitions look like a sign of intent from the clubs to go up a level this season. No matter how well these two play this season, though, it’s a welcome rule change from MLS for its simplicity alone and will hopefully usher in some blockbuster trades.

7. How will the Columbus Crew replace Cucho Hernandez?

One of the big surprises of this offseason was Cucho Hernandez’s transfer deadline day move to Real Betis, which allowed the Columbus Crew to pocket a club-record transfer fee of $10 million. It’s not exactly clear what the Crew will do to replace Hernandez’s output, though – the 2023 MLS Cup MVP scored 58 goals for the Crew in 94 games, which will be hard to replicate. Hernandez’s successor might come in the summer, with the late transfer delaying the Crew’s ability to line up another like-minded player. How this impacts their season, though, is a big question.

8. Which young players will leave for Europe?

Hernandez joins a long list of young players trading MLS for a European league, and there’s no doubt that several current MLS talents are targeting similar moves across the Atlantic Ocean. The focus will primarily be on members of the U.S. youth national teams, who are likely to treat a move to Europe as a chance to grab USMNT head coach Mauricio Pochettino’s attention as preparation for the 2026 World Cup continues. McGlynn, a member of last year’s U-23 USMNT Olympic team and someone who impressed in January camp could be someone to keep an eye on, but the list of contenders is as wide and varied as the not-so-monolithic European soccer scene is.

9. Will MLS’ cup competition strategy work?

MLS caused a sizable outrage with its near-complete withdrawal from the U.S. Open Cup last year, and the league will stick to some version of this strategy in 2025, arguably out of necessity. The league’s 30 teams have been split between the U.S. Open Cup, the MLS-Liga MX creation called the Leagues Cup and the new-look Club World Cup, with no team in more than two competitions. The division was designed to combat fixture congestion, an increasingly widespread issue in soccer, but questions of validity and relevance will definitely follow each of these competitions again this year. While MLS has little say with the Club World Cup and is arguably hands-off with the U.S. Open Cup, the fact that those feelings will linger over the Leagues Cup for yet another year will add a layer of consternation to this year’s proceedings.

10. WIll MLS do enough to position itself for success in 2026?

Across the entire American soccer landscape, 2025 is considered the year to lay the groundwork before the nation’s – and the world’s – gaze shifts to the 2026 World Cup that the U.S. will primarily host. The tournament is being viewed as an opportunity to further fuel the growth of the sport in this country, which has been a major talking point in MLS since Messi’s arrival and the start of the league’s broadcast deal with Apple in 2023. Messi has undoubtedly brought new attention to MLS but at this point, it’s unclear how the league will convert the temporary awareness into long-term gains. The good news for them is that there’s still some time to figure it out, but it is currently hard to predict where MLS goes from here in both the global soccer landscape and the American sports picture.