The 10 best teams in MLS history
With Toronto FC hoping to seal an historic regular season with an MLS Cup, we look at the 10 best teams in MLS history.
Deciding on a sport or league’s best teams is extremely subjective by definition. It depends how much one values the many criteria that go into ranking them: trophies and championships won; regular season success; long-term effects on the sport/league; star talent and team quality; entertainment value; and, possibly the toughest, how much a given team’s era allowed for their success.
All of these will be taken into account one way or another in this list of the top 10 squads ever to grace MLS.
Before we get into it, a quick glance at the teams that just missed out:
— 2005 San Jose Earthquakes: The final year before the Earthquakes moved to Houston was also Dominic Kinnear’s second year as head coach. They are one of four clubs in history to register 2.0 points per game, taking 64 from 32 matches, en route to a Supporters’ Shield. They fell in the postseason to the Landon Donovan-led Galaxy, though, and became the base for the Dynamo team that won the 2006 and 2007 MLS Cups.
The team featured such recognizable names as Ricardo Clark, Dwayne de Rosario, Pat Onstad, Brad Davis and a young striker named Chris Wondolowski, who racked up five minutes all season. Future Real Salt Lake GM Craig Waibel played for the team.
— 2014 Seattle Sounders: The most notable year of the Obafemi Martins-Clint Dempsey partnership in Seattle, the 2014 Sounders won the Supporters’ Shield and the U.S. Open Cup on the back of the dominant 4-4-2 they employed. Martins finished with 17 goals and 13 assists while Dempsey racked up 15 and 10. Current stars such as Ozzie Alonso, Chad Marshall and Stefan Frei made up the nucleus of the team, and DeAndre Yedlin was the starter at right-back.
Alas, they lost in the Western Conference finals to the Zardes-Keane-Donovan Galaxy, another chapter in the rivalry that dominated the first half of the 2010s.
— 2012 Sporting Kansas City: This iteration of Sporting KC was not dissimilar to 2017’s: they were a brick-wall defensively (allowing just 27 goals) with Matt Besler, Seth Sinovic and Graham Zusi starting in front of a dominant blonde-haired goalkeeper (Jimmy Nielson then, Tim Melia now). Peter Vermes was the manager, and Kei Kamara was the leading goalscorer.
They were always overshadowed by the Quakes’ Goonies, though, as SKC fell two points short of the Shield and were eliminated by Houston in the playoffs. In classic Sporting fashion, though, they cruised to an Open Cup victory.
10. 1998 Chicago Fire
You can argue whether they are the best expansion team in MLS history — the ‘09 Sounders and 2017 Atlanta United have something to say — but the ‘98 Fire slip in at the 10 spot in this countdown.
Coming into the league alongside the Miami Fusion in the league’s first ever expansion, Chicago took advantage of the city’s eastern European heritage and signed three Polish players, including Peter Nowak, and Czech defender Lubos Kubik to go along with flashy Mexican keeper Jorge Campos and star midfielder Chris Armas, acquired in a blockbuster trade with the Galaxy. Surprising much of the league, they finished second in the Western Conference and went on to win MLS Cup and the U.S. Open Cup.
Future USMNT manager Bob Bradley, making his professional coaching debut, won Coach of the Year. This wasn’t even the second-best team of that season, though.