An opening for Brooklyn Raines & an opportunity for Max Arfsten

Defining the MLS season to come via 10 players

I promised I’d use this blog primarily as a repository for my work on MLSsoccer and appearances elsewhere, so here I am fulfilling that stated obligation: Ten players who will define the 2025 MLS season

That piece includes the usual suspects – Messi, Cucho, new record signing Kévin Denkey and a few other folks who 1) are really good, and 2) play for teams that I think will be really good. Oh, and it also includes Coco Carrasquilla since I had the bad fortune of writing it and hitting publish about 45 minutes before Tom broke the news that Coco’s off to Liga MX. So now I’ve got to make two addendums:

1. Coco’s departure, in theory, opens up playing time for Brooklyn Raines, who’s currently with the US U-20 national team and was one of my favorite domestic teenagers in MLS last year. Raines just has that “smooth and unhurried on the ball” thing that I don’t think can be taught, and that actually translated to the first team in his 500ish minutes last year.

It is probably a stretch to expect him to start at the No. 8, a spot in Houston that was alternately occupied by one of the best CMs in Concacaf history (Hector Herrera) and one of the best CMs in Concacaf currently (Coco) over the past few seasons. Raines is great receiving the ball and good reading the game defensively which, when combined with his ability to cover ground, makes him a real asset.

But he’s not much of a passer at this point – at least, he hasn’t been with the Dynamo; I will be watching his time with the U-20s eagerly looking for hints – and Ben Olsen’s game model has demanded that the 8 exert of ton of control, via their distribution, over where the game is played, and what tempo.

If Raines suddenly has that in his bag… my god. No limits.

2. I initially wanted to put Max Arfsten on my list of 10 guys who’d define the season, but was persuaded to just go with the obvious thing and write a graph or three on how brilliant Cucho is. And look, that’s the correct decision: Cucho is the star. I think he’s the second-best player in MLS.

But to my mind, Arfsten is the hinge point for this Crew team. He was awesome the first two-thirds of last year, right up until the end of the Leagues Cup (which the Crew won).

He was not awesome after that. His total chances created per 90 crashed by almost 50%, as did his chances created after a successful 1v1, where he went from one of the five most prolific in the league (JUST AHEAD OF RIQUI PUIG AND LIONEL MESSI AND I AM NOT REMOTELY KIDDING ABOUT THAT) to outside the top 25.

To put it a different way: the unpredictable, borderline uncontainable on-the-ball danger Arfsten added from wide on the left was the third heat that made the Crew’s attack burn as bright as anything in the region. Once he wasn’t adding that heat – partially, I think, because teams changed how they played against the Crew and partially, I think, because he ran out of gas a little bit – they became a more manageable attack to deal with.

So the point I was going to make by including Arfsten in my list of 10 was that I don’t really have any questions about Cucho, or Diego Rossi, or even that third spot in the attack (which’ll be occupied by some combo of Christian Ramirez, Aziel Jackson and Dylan Chambost). Instead, the guy who’ll define how successful this season becomes for the Crew – the guy who could conceivably raise the ceiling to “best in the region” heights – is Arfsten.

If he’s the Best XI-caliber wide attacker he was the first 2/3s of last year, there is just no stopping this team.