Downfall Watch Update after Matchday 11

With the dust settled after Matchday 11 in Major League Soccer, a few developments emerged regarding Downfall Watch for several teams. For these purposes, Downfall Watch refers to teams that entered the season with at least a semi-reasonable expectation of trophy contention, but who already find their seasons on life support before their 2026 campaigns hit the halfway point.

Here's a status check on the four clubs I've tagged with the Downfall Watch label – and their chances of pulling out of it.

Inter Miami

Matchday 11 result: 4-3 loss vs. Orlando City SC
Downfall Watch Status: Full-on teetering

This is the most obvious pick after their debacle of a performance on Saturday against Orlando City SC, which saw Miami blow a 3-0 lead against their struggling rivals and end up losing 4-3. They're now winless in their first four matches at Nu Stadium, with three draws and this truly horrific loss. They're also engaged in a public beef with one of their beat reporters, which is always a sign that things are going super well and that your priorities are in the right place. It might seem crazy for the team with Lionel Messi and all this star power to be teetering on the brink, but that seems to be exactly what's happening in South Florida. They already parted ways with one head coach, and their interim boss, Guillermo Hoyos, seems like he's in over his head. Sending Noah Allen and Ian Fray out to face the media after all these bad results is a good illustration of the state of affairs at the moment.

I'll stop short of declaring them fully cooked, mainly because their top-end attacking talent is still such that they can win any given game, regardless of the vibes. But it's becoming increasingly difficult to see the path this group has back to being a Supporters' Shield and MLS Cup frontrunner. I predict their form will correct itself to some degree, but it feels equally possible that the whole operation could go off the rails entirely.

Portland Timbers

Matchday 11 result: 2-0 loss at Real Salt Lake
Downfall Watch Status: Full-on teetering

The Timbers showed a brief sign of life when they beat LAFC a couple of weeks ago, then got another win at San Diego FC to close out April. They came crashing back to earth at RSL on Saturday, though, getting burned by Diego Luna and Zavier Gozo in a 2-0 defeat that has them down to 13th place in the Western Conference and averaging exactly 1 point per game (3W-6L-1D record; 10 points).

That's not going to be enough for Phil Neville to secure the contract extension I've long advocated for. The question here is, how long does the club brass let this continue before they make a change? I'm on record as predicting that if Neville can get the points-per-game back up towards 1.5, it's a virtual certainty he'll at least finish out the season. But if they keep languishing near the bottom of the table, we might be seeing the dawn of a new era in the Rose City.

San Diego FC

Matchday 11 result: 2-2 draw vs. LAFC
Downfall Watch Status: Still a chance to salvage the situation

After their historic expansion season of 2025, San Diego haven't recaptured the magic to start 2026. Their 2-2 draw vs. LAFC on the weekend was kind of a microcosm of their season. It started off incredibly well – they took a 2-0 lead against a fatigued LAFC side dealing with fixture congestion from Concacaf Champions Cup and were literal seconds from seeing out a big 2-1 victory, but they choked an equalizer to Ryan Hollingshead in the 104th minute. It was a brutal ending, and it leaves them in the No. 12 spot on the West table going into Matchday 12, when they've got a difficult road match against Seattle at Lumen Field.

All is not lost in San Diego, though – at least not yet. They still have one of the best game-changers in the league in Anders Dreyer, and there are still a lot of pieces on this roster that delivered for them in that wildly successful 2025. The biggest thing will be getting Jeppe Tverskov healthy and hoping that helps stabilize a defense that's coughed up 19 goals. It might be asking a lot of one guy to make that big a difference, but Tverskov is one of the best No. 6s in the league, so it's not unthinkable that he could have a huge impact. You can at least see a path back to competence and relevance here in a way that's tougher to rationalize for Miami and Portland.

Minnesota United

3-2 win at Columbus Crew
Downfall Watch Status: Seemingly righted the ship

When Minnesota lost 6-0 at Vancouver back in March, it seemed like they might be fully cooked before April. Eric Ramsay was gone. The offense looked toothless, and James Rodriguez didn't seem like the answer. It really felt like this could be a year when the wheels come fully off for the Loons.

To their credit, though, their results since then suggest that the debacle in Vancouver was more an outlier than a reflection of their overall quality. They put some wins on the ledger in April, beating the Galaxy, San Diego, Portland and FC Dallas. Then, they opened May with a 3-2 win at Columbus. That's not exactly a murderer's row of opponents, but beating all of them arguably shows that they don't deserve to be mentioned in the class of bottom-feeders.

I'm still selling this Loons team as genuine trophy contenders. But I also can't dismiss that they're back up to 1.82 points-per-game, and it seems like they're gravitating away from the extreme tactics of the Ramsay era, which I think we should all be able to support.

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