This MLS weekend treated us to 56 goals \u2013 that\u2019s an average of nearly four per game \u2013 and an exceptional amount of drama for April, even by the hectic standards of this league.<\/p>\n
History was both made and celebrated at Denver\u2019s Empower Field at Mile High on Saturday afternoon. The Colorado Rapids<\/a> welcomed Inter Miami<\/a> to their former digs for an anniversary commemoration of the founding MLS club\u2019s inaugural home match 30 years ago, and treated the 75,824 fans<\/a> who turned up \u2013 the second-biggest single-game crowd in league history \u2013 to a barnburner of a game positively dripping in juicy plotlines.<\/p>\n Matt Wells, the Rapids\u2019 first-year head coach, was quite open about it<\/a> in the lead-up to this occasion: This highly visible visit from the champs would be a stress test for the contender aspirations of a Colorado side brimming with intriguing talents (many of them quite young) but limited in pedigree.<\/p>\n And these \u2018Rapkids\u2019 did indeed show up, carving open the Herons with some slick soccer and a couple of swaggy finishes from Rafa Navarro<\/a> and homegrown Darren Yapi<\/a> to get that NFL-sized venue rocking. Problem was, they\u2019d already dug themselves a 2-0 hole with some self-inflicted early wounds that made it all too easy for Miami to snatch a halftime lead.<\/p>\n Just when it was all to play for again at 2-2, Lionel Messi<\/a> did what Lionel Messi so often does: Break hearts with a late dagger to take all three points, and leave Colorado ruing what might have been.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was one team on the pitch. I thought we were outstanding from start to finish,\u201d Wells said afterwards. \u201cIt\u2019s a travesty we didn\u2019t win the game. There will be moments \u2013 the goals \u2013 that we need to analyze and improve.\u201d<\/p>\n Admit it: Plenty of you out there are waiting for midnight to strike on the Cinderella tale that is the 2026 San Jose Earthquakes<\/a>. It\u2019s OK. This is an eminently rational response to a plotline that defies so much of what\u2019s considered logical around Major League Soccer.<\/p>\n Turns out, however, that you\u2019ll have to wait at least one more week.<\/p>\n With eight domestic products in their starting XI, a 20-year-old homegrown running the attack and only one recognized star name, Timo Werner<\/a>, in the mix, Bruce Arena\u2019s team just walked into BMO Stadium and handed a menacing LAFC<\/a> side their second loss of the season (and second straight), a 4-1 stunner<\/a> that drives home the staying power of Bruce Arena\u2019s year-two turnaround.<\/p>\n After another banner outing from Niko Tsakiris<\/a>, Ousseni Bouda<\/a> and Beau Leroux<\/a>, the reborn Quakes are 7W-1L-0D, and sit at the top of the overall table alongside last year\u2019s Western Conference champions, Vancouver Whitecaps FC<\/a>.<\/p>\n They are quite simply the most inspiring story of the year so far.<\/p>\n What is it about those early kickoffs north of the border? Two of the weekend\u2019s goalfests unfolded on Saturday afternoon in Canada.<\/p>\n First, Toronto FC<\/a> treated viewers to the latest in their string of wild, breathless home matches as Austin FC<\/a> hit BMO Field, the two sides repeatedly trading haymakers \u2013 and the lead \u2013 in an end-to-end encounter that wound up 3-3<\/a> yet could\u2019ve spun anywhere.<\/p>\n \u201cWell, I hope the fans enjoy all the goals,\u201d deadpanned TFC head coach Robin Fraser. \u201cI certainly don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n Two goals in five second-half minutes from Facu Torres<\/a> and Christian Ram\u00edrez<\/a> seemed to have grabbed the visitors a dramatic late win, only for TFC homegrown Kobe Franklin<\/a> \u2013 who later called it \u201canother crazy game\u201d \u2013 to dig out an 88th-minute equalizer.\u00a0As Phil West of ATX-based outlet Verde All Day noted, it’s the sixth time Austin have conceded a goal in the last 15 minutes of a game this year, a prime ingredient in their drift towards the bottom of the Western Conference standings.<\/p>\n Shortly afterwards and 346 miles (558 kilometers) to the northeast, CF Montr\u00e9al<\/a> got a classic \u2018new manager bounce\u2019 with a vibrant 4-1 dispatching<\/a> of Red Bull New York<\/a> at Stade Saputo, paced by Prince Owusu<\/a>, who scored a penalty and played a role in all three of his side\u2019s other tallies. It was the debut of interim coach Philippe Eullaffroy, who took over from Marco Donadel last week and managed to adjust both the lineup and the vibes.<\/p>\n \u201cThere’s one word we used perhaps most often, not the only one, but most often: Smile,\u201d explained Eullaffroy in French. \u201cWe wanted to bring smiles back to everyone on the team and staff. And the second word was intensity. So we wanted to be a very intense animal that does everything to win, but with a smile.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s just the second positive result of the year for the Qu\u00e9becois, both of them well-taken wins over RBNY. Even if that might signal a statistical outlier effect, no one in Blue-blanc-noir will complain. Might CFMTL\u2019s much-critiqued roster actually be capable of competing?<\/p>\n This weekend\u2019s action kicked off a bit earlier than usual thanks to a Friday night affair in Vancouver that keeps the home side atop the overall table. The Whitecaps\u00a0stylishly swept aside struggling Sporting KC<\/a> in a 3-0 thumping<\/a> that was actually more one-sided than the scoreline suggests; the expected-goals figures of 4.3-0.3 tell the tale more accurately.<\/p>\n With pace and trickery from wing wizards Emmanuel Sabbi<\/a> and Bruno Caicedo<\/a> providing a devastating contrast to the incisive orchestration of savvy veteran Thomas M\u00fcller<\/a>, the \u2018Caps stifled SKC from the jump, racing out to a three-goal lead before half an hour had elapsed and keeping a foot on their throat the rest of the way.<\/p>\n As my colleague Jonathan Sigal details<\/a>, Vancouver are in record-breaking territory<\/a>. They\u2019re just the second team in MLS history to stack up at least 22 goals in the first eight games of a season, and are on pace to set new all-time league marks with 89 points and 93 goals scored.<\/p>\n \n Around the grounds<\/p>\n Speaking of records: San Diego FC<\/a> thumbed their nose at the MLS conventional wisdom around expansion teams in 2025 with their remarkable debut campaign. Yet they appear to have run face-first into a deeply-rooted MLS phenomenon: The Concacaf Champions Cup<\/a> hangover.<\/p>\n With Saturday\u2019s 4-2 shellacking<\/a> at red-hot Real Salt Lake<\/a>, Los Ni\u00f1os are now winless in six games since their wild 3-2 Round-of-16 Leg 1 win<\/a> against two-time reigning LIGA MX champs Toluca in CCC play on March 11. They again made sloppy mistakes in their buildup play, the worst of them punished by\u00a0Diego Luna<\/a> just five minutes after kickoff, and look shorthanded in multiple areas, even while disaffected superstar Chucky Lozano remains on the books, still yet to find a new club.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is where you test who you are as a person,\u201d said head coach Mike Varas in Utah, \u201cand my job is to steer us through this moment.\u201d<\/p>\n However bummed they are in far Southern California, it\u2019s nothing compared to the sour situation at Atlanta United<\/a>. The Five Stripes were comprehensively second-best as they fell 2-0<\/a> at home to Eastern Conference-leading Nashville SC<\/a> on Saturday, their third straight league loss and sixth of a season that began with such optimism and nostalgia on coach Gerardo \u2018Tata\u2019 Martino\u2019s return.<\/p>\n \u201cNot even in my worst nightmares did I think we would have the start that we\u2019ve had so far,\u201d said Tata after this one.<\/p>\n Who\u2019s hot and who\u2019s not? It\u2019s not just SDFC and ATLUTD nursing painful winless skids.<\/p>\n Austin<\/a> have now gone six matches without a victory; D.C. United<\/a>, New York City FC<\/a>, Orlando City<\/a> and Sporting KC<\/a> are winless in four.<\/p>\n Conversely, San Jose have won four in a row, while New England Revolution<\/a>, Minnesota United<\/a> and Vancouver have reeled off three straight wins \u2013 and for all the sturm and drang around Miami, who just lost their head coach Javier Mascherano<\/a> with little to no warning, the Herons haven\u2019t lost a league match since opening weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This MLS weekend treated us to 56 goals \u2013 that\u2019s an average of nearly four per game \u2013…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[119492,119488,117405,119490,29202,117392,88,90,89,6532,119489,119491],"class_list":{"0":"post-276253","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose","8":"tag-atlvsnsh-04-18-2026","9":"tag-colvsmia-04-18-2026","10":"tag-lafcvssj-04-19-2026","11":"tag-mtlvsrbny-04-18-2026","12":"tag-national-writer-charles-boehm","13":"tag-rslvssd-04-18-2026","14":"tag-san-jose","15":"tag-san-jose-headlines","16":"tag-san-jose-news","17":"tag-sendtonews","18":"tag-torvsatx-04-18-2026","19":"tag-vanvsskc-04-17-2026"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}