There was no question over the stand out team in the 2018 MLS season. That crown went to champions Atlanta United, winning the tournament in only their second year in the league, thanks mainly to the phenomenal goal-scoring of Josef Martinez.
Martinez, who finished the campaign as the MLS MVP, scored 31 goals in the regular season and another 3 in the play-offs to surpass Roy Lassiter’s 1996 record, is not likely to return next season, but with coach Tata Martino pulling the strings, Arthur Bank providing the funds, and the raucous Atlanta crowd creating an intimidating arena, the building blocks of an MLS dynasty are in place.
Atlanta were highly rated by sports betting experts ahead of the season, following their run to the play-offs in 2017 and implied probabilities on the Bigbetbookmakers.com site made them the favourites to claim the MLS Cup and they didn’t let their backers down.
They weren’t the top team at the end of the regular season: that honour went to the New York Red Bulls, who scored a season record points haul of 71 points to pick up their third Supporters Shield in six seasons. Yet once again, the Red Bulls went missing in the play-offs, losing to Atlanta 3-1 on aggregate having knocked out the consistent Columbus Crew in the Conference Semi-Finals.
The big disappointments of the MLS season were Toronto. After their dominant performance in 2017, there was talk of a Toronto dynasty but they struggled early on as they tried to compete in both MLS and the Champions League and were never able to make up the ground. New York City FC also disappointed, losing their manager Patrick Vieira part way through the season and finishing a long way behind the Red Bulls, though it was Atlanta who eventually ended their campaign.
The big surprises of the season came on the east and west coasts. Nobody was predicting a strong performance from DC United, yet the opening of a new stadium and the arrival of Wayne Rooney seemed to spur DC to greater things. There were astute moves from the front office as well, as
defenders Frederic Brillant and Joseph Mora strengthened the defence, and their eventual fourth-placed finish in the Eastern Conference capped a remarkable season of over-achievement.
In the west, LAFC continued the good record of newcomers to MLS, producing some genuinely great performances, ending up third in the Western Conference – nine points ahead of LA Galaxy – and reaching the semi-finals of the US Open Cup. And two of the western stalwarts in MLS produced one of great tussles in the tournament’s history in an epic Conference Semi-Final that saw Portland win the first leg, then hold off a Seattle charge to edge out their bitter rivals on penalties.
Like last year’s MLS Cup Final, in which Toronto saw off Seattle, the 2018 version was relatively one sided as Atlanta had little difficulty in overcoming Portland 2-0. But can they defend their title in 2019 without Martinez? It promises to be another absorbing MLS season.
