To me, this one felt preordained.<\/p>\n
Inter Miami CF<\/a> and Vancouver Whitecaps FC<\/a> roll into MLS Cup 2025 presented by Audi on Saturday carrying more star power than any final this league has ever staged, as they\u2019ve both grown into the juggernauts their r\u00e9sum\u00e9s promise (2:30 pm ET | MLS Season Pass, Apple TV<\/a>; FOX, FOX Deportes; TSN, RDS).<\/p>\n For the \u2018Caps, it happened from basically their first kick of the season, and in spite of one injury after another. For Miami, it took longer, but the moment has arrived over the past two months.<\/p>\n So these are obviously not Cinderella stories; they\u2019re apex predators (yes, \u2018Caps fans; I know it might feel weird, but that\u2019s what your team is) whose late-season form virtually promised us this culmination. The questions now: Who executes at the highest level? Whose strengths bend the game? And who walks away with the Cup?<\/p>\n \n What we\u2019ve seen from Miami<\/p>\n Javier Mascherano\u2019s Miami have spent the last third of the season playing their most coherent, assertive soccer \u2013 a structured, possession-heavy machine fueled by Lionel Messi<\/a>\u2019s singular brilliance and a supporting cast that now fully understands how to orbit him.<\/p>\n As mentioned above, it took a while to get to this point.<\/p>\n Miami have shuffled players both young and old into more and less prominent roles as the season has gone along, and as the roster has evolved, Messi\u2019s role has evolved with it. The latest iteration brought us back to the Peak Messi years of the early 2010s: He\u2019s back playing as a false 9 in a 4-3-3, dropping in to get on the ball as a playmaker or drifting off the backline to disorganize the opposing center backs with his gravity as he sees fit. At the same time, he\u2019s now got two willing, direct runners in the channels in Mateo Silvetti<\/a> (2g\/3a in ~300 minutes in the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs) and Tadeo Allende<\/a> (8g\/2a in ~430 minutes in the playoffs) to attack the spaces he opens up.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how that looked via the network passing graphic from their emphatic 5-1 win<\/a> over New York City FC<\/a> in the Eastern Conference Final:<\/p>\n Network passing graphs can sometimes lie, but you\u2019d be right to make certain inferences from this one. For example, you could read this as the fullbacks coming up to form triangles (Jordi Alba<\/a> on the left with Baltasar Rodr\u00edguez<\/a> and Sergio Busquets<\/a>; Marcelo Weigandt<\/a> on the right with Allende and Rodrigo De Paul<\/a>) in possession in order to suck the opposing defense towards the ball and open up more space for Messi, and in my opinion that would be the correct interpretation.<\/p>\n The lie, however, would be Messi\u2019s positioning. It\u2019s not that he\u2019s getting more touches in the middle now. It\u2019s that the location on the graphic is the average location of his touches, and right now, because of Miami\u2019s structure, he\u2019s getting an almost equal amount of touches in both the right and left channels, and is actually getting fewer in the central channel than he did earlier this year when playing either as a pure No. 10 or an inverted right winger.<\/p>\n Mascherano deserves a ton of credit for this, obviously. Not only has it unleashed Messi \u2013 he\u2019s got 6g\/7a in five playoff games \u2013 but keeping the game largely confined to one channel or another has provided an even more massive defensive benefit for a Miami team that spent so much of the season being unbalanced in rest defense and gappy as they tried to recover.<\/p>\n Not to quote a really bad movie, but it\u2019s kind of an \u201caim small, miss small\u201d thing. Miami are going to get on the ball a lot no matter the system they play. Confining what they do to a more limited spot on the field makes it easier to either win the ball back immediately or to get pressure on the opposition if they win the ball back immediately, and thus spend less time trying to run down breakaways.<\/p>\n And so they\u2019ve conceded just four times in five playoff games, while scoring 17. Suffice it to say the tactical shift \u2013 and, I should mention, the personnel shift; Mascherano made one of the gutsiest calls in MLS history by benching Luis Su\u00e1rez<\/a> for Silvetti \u2013 has paid off.<\/p>\n \n What we\u2019ve seen from Vancouver<\/p>\n I had no idea who Jesper S\u00f8rensen was at this time last year. Now I am willing to go to war for that man, who has turned Vancouver into a ruthlessly balanced and aesthetically beautiful unit, no matter who\u2019s been on the field.<\/p>\n No Ryan Gauld<\/a> for seven months? That\u2019s fine, we can work around it. Lost our top four or five center backs? So it goes. Sliding in a rookie left back for some of the biggest games in club history? That\u2019s no problem.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve said it before and I\u2019ll say it again: this season S\u00f8rensen’s put together is the single most impressive coaching job in MLS history. It\u2019s not just that he compensated for the loss of Gauld or Sam Adekugbe<\/a> or Ranko Veselinovi\u0107<\/a>; it\u2019s that he compensated for all three, while developing young players like Tate Johnson<\/a> and Rayan Elloumi<\/a> and turning guys like Sebastian Berhalter<\/a>, Tristan Blackmon<\/a> and Brian White<\/a> into legitimate national teamers AND at the same time guiding the \u2018Caps to an appearance in the Concacaf Champions Cup<\/a> final \u2013 absolutely crushing a certain pink-clad team along the way \u2013 as well as their best regular-season record ever, and their fourth-straight Canadian Championship<\/a> title.<\/p>\n He did all this while putting together a new game model, one that pairs tactical discipline with an almost Crew<\/a>-like level of improvisation within the structure he\u2019s built. For the first part of the year, that came primarily out of a 4-3-3. But then in the summer window, they did a very un-‘Caps-like thing in adding a big-name, big-money legend: German superstar Thomas M\u00fcller<\/a>.<\/p>\n And look, this wasn\u2019t a slam-dunk. We have seen great players like M\u016bller come to MLS and crash out in the past, and this one felt especially fraught because 1) Vancouver had been so good all year without a star centerpiece, and 2) bringing in M\u016bller necessitated a formation switch to a 4-2-3-1. I thought it would work, but there was no guarantee.<\/p>\n Well, the Caps are 9W-1L-5D with a +24 goal differential across all competitions since M\u00fcller arrived. Their only loss came when an early red card reduced them to 10 men for 80 minutes. They are now a better version of the team that crushed Miami (5-1 on aggregate) in the CCC back in the spring.<\/p>\n M\u016bller is the biggest part of that, but hasn\u2019t been \u201cthe centerpiece\u201d in a \u201clet\u2019s build the team around him” way. He\u2019s just been Thomas M\u00fcller \u2013 a force magnifier who simply understands better than anyone exactly how he can fit into any scheme and make everyone around him better. What worked in Bavaria works just as well in British Columbia.<\/p>\n In short, the two best teams in the league are meeting in MLS Cup.<\/p>\n \n What will decide the match?<\/p>\n I think the \u2018Caps will come upfield with the ball because that\u2019s what they\u2019re best at, and they\u2019re fearless in doing so. I think they will cause Miami real problems with that \u2013 they\u2019ll make Busquets chase a ton, and probably flatten out that midfield three, causing a dislocation between them and the frontline unless the Herons\u2019 fullbacks start taking untenable risks.<\/p>\n