It’s the Friday of the international break before Decision Day. It’s probably the most painful day of the MLS calendar. It’s time to put a bow on the regular season, wrap up storylines and dive headlong into the playoffs. Instead, we’re stuck in a waiting room, tapping our phones and avoiding eye contact with everyone else while a muzak version of the MLS anthem plays in the background.
In my view, that means we get to open the newsletter topic playbook all the way open and see what we can find. So today, I want to talk about the best Supporters’ Shield-winning teams of all time. Mainly because I got intrigued by where Inter Miami would rank statistically relative to their peers who have lifted a Shield. As usual, that meant swiping the brilliant mathematics work of others and force-feeding my dumb non-STEM degree brain’s ideas into the same machine that produces the good ideas and seeing what came out.
I went into American Soccer Analysis’ database and pulled the numbers on every Shield winner in their database (back to 2013). I grabbed each team’s actual points per game rate, each team’s expected points per game rate—the points per game you would generally expect to have based on the chances you create and allow—and each team’s much too complicated to explain but still very notable “goals added” (G+) differential. Then, I ranked the 12 teams relative to other Shield winners in each category and added up their three-category rankings. Lowest score wins. Here’s what I got.
2013 New York Red Bulls | Points: 12th | Expected Points: 11th | G+:11th
This feels like a team from a bygone era where you could win the Shield with only 59 points. Then again, only a few Shield-winning teams have ever had a lower points per game than 1.74 and they existed back when things like the Tampa Bay Mutiny existed. Well, except for the 2009 Columbus Crew, who somehow won the Shield on 1.63 points per game. If we had the data for those years too, I have a hunch they would have ended up last on this list.
2024 Inter Miami | Points: T-1st | Expected Points: 12th | G+: 12th
The Herons are currently tied with 2021 New England for points per game. They can obviously pass that if they win on Decision Day and set a new points record. It won’t change their place in these rankings though. It will never stop being fascinating that, of all the teams to come through MLS, this is the one that somehow caught the most breaks. The 2021 Revs are the only team that really compares, but they didn’t do it with the entire MLS world keeping a watch on their every move. The fact that the most famous MLS team of all time pulled this off is going to cause brain pain for years.
Remember, we’ve looked at this before and it isn’t solely “Messi and Suárez good” powering this. The supporting cast has caught a ton of breaks too when it comes to finishing. For Miami’s sake, thank goodness they did. If this year had ended up being even remotely close to their underlying numbers, we would have been talking about what a total disaster this experiment has been besides one Leagues Cup and a bunch of merch sales. But sometimes the ball goes in, and having Messi and Suárez around to make the ball go in helps a whole heckuva lot. Even if it’s just their presence forcing teams to make terrible mistakes at critical moments.
2014 Seattle Sounders | Points: 9th | Expected Points: 7th | G+: 7th
The only Sounders team to win the Shield came up short in the playoffs. They lost in the conference finals to the Galaxy. From my understanding, that’s just how MLS worked back then though.
2020 Philadelphia Union | Points: 5th | Expected Points: 9th | G+: 9th
I got worried for a moment that the 2020 team would end up having the best numbers of anybody and we’d have to remind everyone how weird that season (and time to be alive) was. Let’s move on quickly.
2016 FC Dallas | Points: 10th | Expected Points: 5th | G+: 6th
This is the team from before I started covering MLS that confuses me the most. It’s just hard to envision a season with Dallas on top. It just feels weird. Like was everyone ok back then? Did it hurt? I don’t know y’all, not convinced this happened. But to their credit, if it did happen, their numbers were actually really impressive.
2021 New England Revolution | Points: T-1st | Expected Points: 10 | G+: 10
A wonky schedule due to post-Covid rules, an all-time great shot-stopping season from Matt Turner, an MVP-caliber season from Carles Gil, a handful of high-level attackers that could break you at any time, mid underlying numbers, a points record, and a team/season that still doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. It feels appropriate that they’ll likely be dethroned from the points record by the only team that’s more statistically upsetting.
2017 Toronto FC | Points: T-6th | Expected Points: 7th | G+: 6th
If we were going off eye test alone, you could talk me into this team being higher. This group had a ton of talent and nearly won every single trophy possible. Sebastian Giovinco, Jozy Altidore and Michael Bradley were all outstanding at this point in their careers.
2023 FC Cincinnati | Points: T-6th | Expected Points: 4th | G+: 8th
Maybe we took this team for granted last year. Lucho Acosta won the MVP award, Matt Miazga won Defender of the Year, Brandon Vazquez and Alvaro Barreal both made big moves in the offseason and everything the group did clicked… until the last few minutes of the Eastern Conference Final.
2015 New York Red Bulls | Points: 10th | Expected Points: 3rd | G+: 4th
This is the only Shield winner in this group to actually underperform their expected points rate. They could have been higher on this list with just a few breaks.
2022 LAFC | Points: 8th | Expected Points: 2nd | G+: 2nd
Just imagine what this team’s points total could have been like with a little stability. This group had multiple personnel changes throughout the season before finally settling on the group that would win MLS Cup. They were excellent all year despite some changes and subsequent ups and downs. Before 2024 Inter Miami came along, this felt like the most talented collection of players in MLS history.
2018 New York Red Bulls | Points: 4th | Expected Points: 5th | G+: 3rd
The 2018 Shield race remains the best in recent memory. 2022 has a claim, but watching this Red Bulls group go head-to-head with an Atlanta United side that could have ended up near the top of this list with a couple of extra points is as cinematic as that race has ever been. The Red Bulls finally took control on Decision Day and cemented themselves as one of the best regular season teams of all time.
They bulldozed teams into looking helpless week after week. And looked set to keep running over folks on the way to MLS Cup until… well, mistakes were made in the Eastern Conference Final.
2019 LAFC | Points: 3rd | Expected Points: 1st | G+: 1st
There’s a principle in soccer statistics called “The Messi Test.” For a long time, if you were trying out a new metric and you wanted to make sure it was getting things right, you’d check to see if it put Lionel Messi on top. 2019 LAFC is the MLS version of the Messi test. If it doesn’t have them on top, you did something wrong. They’re the most dominant team we’ve ever seen in this league. And, gut call here, they’d run the two teams with more points than them off the pitch.
- Matt Doyle explained what we learned from the New England Revolution and Nashville SC this season.
- Gerardo 'Dado' Valenzuela discussed his role models in the latest edition of The Pathway presented by Allstate.
- Take a look at the September standouts from MLS NEXT.
Good luck out there. Dig around the couch cushions, you might find some loose soccer.
