Soccer
The 2026 FIFA World Cup has reached its grand finale, with Argentina and Spain set to vie for global glory on Sunday, and MLS is back.
After a seven-week pause for the North American edition of the planet’s biggest tournament, the league kicked off the second half of the season on Thursday, and Matchday 16’s five games gave us plenty to chew on.
Here’s a rundown to keep you current as the sprint towards the Audi 2026 MLS Cup Playoffs begins.
ICYMI: The much-anticipated duel between Chicago Fire FC and Vancouver Whitecaps FC at Soldier Field had to be rescheduled due to poor air quality brought on by wildfires on both sides of the US-Canadian border.
— Major League Soccer (@MLS) July 18, 2026
Stunned in Seattle!
Routs hit harder when it’s your oldest, most hated adversary, and Thursday’s nightcap smashed Seattle Sounders FC like a ton of bricks. On a night when the Rave Green inducted club icons Kasey Keller, Sigi Schmid and Jimmy Gabriel into their ‘Eternal Sounders Circle of Legends,’ Kevin Kelsy’s 2g/1a outing powered a raft of Cascadia Cup history-making.
The 5-1 result was Seattle’s worst loss to the Timbers in the half-century they’ve been battling across multiple leagues. It’s the first time Seattle have conceded five goals in a competitive home match since they entered MLS in 2009. And it’s the Timbers’ biggest margin of victory over the Sounders in the MLS era, matching and avenging a 6-2 Seattle win at Providence Park five years ago.
Mind you, this game was 1-0 at halftime, which underlines just how quickly everything spun out of control for the Rave Green, who played this one on Lumen Field’s World Cup grass pitch before it gets removed.
“Not good enough. Not even close to the standard that we set at the club,” said Seattle head coach Brian Schmetzer postgame. “Zero excuses for that performance.”
Remarkably, Portland’s triumph was engineered by an interim coaching staff, with Jack Cassidy at the helm in the wake of Phil Neville’s dismissal in late May.
Sonshine in El Tráfico
Los Angeles is Black & Gold for the time being, after LAFC claimed the first El Tráfico of 2026 with a 3-0 win at the LA Galaxy’s house that was both opportunistic and emphatic.
Despite the Galaxy holding the lion’s share of ball possession, they were undone in transition moments that led to 1g/1a from their former standout Mark Delgado – a key architect of the club’s 2024 MLS Cup run – and a goal each from LAFC’s star strike duo of Denis Bouanga and Son Heung-Min.
Sonny’s tally was the third, an exclamation point on this impressive win. Yet it might turn out to be the most important, as it snaps a three-month goal drought for both club and country for the South Korean idol – a span that had prompted “so many comments, so many people crying” among fans and pundits, as LAFC head coach Marc Dos Santos wryly put it afterwards.
This was the Galaxy’s first match without Gabriel Pec, who last week was transferred back home to Brazilian side Cruzeiro for a club-record fee (reportedly up to $13.5 million). Surely, LA are mulling over how to utilize their now-open Designated Player roster spot and bring in reinforcements alongside Joseph Paintsil and Marco Reus.
St. Louis shut down SKC
Whether you call this simmering cross-Missouri clasico the I-70 Derby, The Darbecue or prefer to wait for another moniker to stick, you can count on goals when St. Louis CITY SC and Sporting Kansas City face off.
As my colleague Alex Calabrese notes, STL-SKC matches have featured an average of 3.9 goals per game, and Thursday served up another fun one that St. Louis took by a 3-2 score.
After Sang Bin Jeong and Marcel Hartel staked the home side to a 2-0 advantage at Energizer Park, STL let it slip away as Sporting rallied to equalize at 2-2 via Capita and Dejan Joveljić with a quarter-hour to go.
That set the stage for late drama: a contentious Video Review penalty-kick decision that allowed Eduard Löwen to lash home the winner. The German is nails from the spot, converting 11 of 12 PKs during his CITY SC career.
Nashville find a way
The league’s pacesetters during the first half of the season with 33 points from their first 14 matches (10W-1L-3D), Nashville SC most definitely did not produce their best performance as Southern neighbors Atlanta United visited GEODIS Park on Friday night.
The Five Stripes defended doggedly and deftly disrupted NSH’s rhythm for long stretches, looking to kill the game and head home with a road point.
These clever Coyotes are made of sterner stuff, though.
Substitute Alex Muyl lofted a perfect cross to Shak Mohammed – handed just his second career start due to injuries to Cristian Espinoza and Warren Madrigal – to snatch a dramatic 1-0 win for Nashville and keep the Coyotes on their current record-setting pace.
Canadian Classique runs cold
Well, they can’t ALL be classiques, can they?
Montréal–Toronto is a ferocious rivalry built over centuries; it transcends sports. Yet this edition of the derby lacked the creative verve the likes of Sebastian Giovinco and Ignacio Piatti brought to its peak years a decade or so ago.
The hosts at Stade Saputo were wasteful, while the visitors failed to produce a single shot on goal in what was a “messy … sloppy … not a really precisely executed game,” in the graceful words of TFC coach Robin Fraser.
It’s only the second 0-0 draw in 38 meetings between these adversaries. Credit due to man of the match Walker Zimmerman, who looked like his dominant old self with a game-high 14 defensive contributions, completing 90% of his 81 passes for Toronto.
Behind him, Luka Gavran made three saves to post just the second clean sheet of the season for the injury-ravaged Reds, who finally welcomed back playmaker Djordje Mihailovic from a lengthy stint on the sidelines.
Read MoreRaleigh Motsinger