A dynastic reign is among the most revered feats in sports, a way to guarantee a legacy that lives long beyond the players and staff involved. A young baseball fan’s education isn’t complete without studying Babe Ruth’s New York Yankees in the 1920s, or the late-1990s vintage led by Derek Jeter. Every great NBA team is measured against Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls of the 1990s and the modern era is still largely reactive to the 2010s Golden State Warriors. The Houston Comets didn’t allow any other team to win the WNBA until the league’s fifth season.
The U.S. Women’s national soccer team have certainly come close to dynasty status. No other nation can match their four Women’s World Cup titles and the United States has also won five Olympic gold medals since women’s soccer joined the list of events in 1996. But the U.S. Has never won three consecutive major tournaments, with three titles often requisite to cement a team as being dynastic.
This isn’t just an American fascination with sustained greatness, either. The history of soccer is littered with similar feats, from Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United to the dominance achieved by Spain and Argentina’s men teams. Brazil won three of four World Cups from 1958 to 1970 thanks to Pele’s generational gifts.
Europe is currently grappling with recurring champions in each of the big five leagues except for Italy. Paris Saint-Germain has won six of the last seven Ligue 1 titles. Manchester City has enjoyed an identical win rate in the Premier League. In 2023-24, Bayer Leverkusen pulled off a shock by taking the Bundesliga title away from Bayern Munich for the first time since the 2011-12 season, while Barcelona and Real Madrid have won 18 of the past 20 La Liga campaigns, with Atletico Madrid claiming the other two.
Real Madrid have won three of the past five La Liga titles. (Thomas Coex / AFP via Getty Images)For a league that habitually must balance its influences from American sporting customs and global soccer, MLS is a curious outlier. It, as with the similarly structured NWSL, now seems immune to fostering such dynasties. This is seen as a desired outcome given the league’s curated commitment to sustaining competitive parity.
MLS has had two great dynasties — D.C. United in the late 1990s, and the 2010s LA Galaxy of David Beckham, Landon Donovan and Robbie Keane — but both came at a time when there were fewer league mechanisms to strictly define how clubs could build their rosters. The league has also evolved rapidly since Donovan won the last of his record six MLS Cups in 2014, with an expansion push nearly doubling the number of teams and owners spending far more on their rosters and facilities alike.
In a week Patrick Mahomes, a co-owner of the NWSL’s Kansas City Current, may achieve a feat that no other NFL quarterback has managed, MLS fans have seen one of the greatest teams in recent memory get picked apart just over a year after their greatest triumph. That’s just the way it goes in American professional soccer at its highest level.
When the Columbus Crew won MLS Cup in 2023, the team seemed well-positioned to sustain their excellence.
The Crew’s squad was built around Cucho Hernandez, an ideal attacking centerpiece who could score 20+ goals in a full season and dole out double-digit assists. He was supported by Uruguay international Diego Rossi, two tireless wing backs providing wide service, a top-class engine room with homegrown midfielder Aidan Morris and modern MLS legend Darlington Nagbe, a defense that seldom let games get stretched, and a number of veterans expertly executing their roles. Behind them all was rising USMNT goalkeeping prospect, Patrick Schulte. They were brought together by general manager Tim Bezbatchenko and led by head coach Wilfried Nancy, whose game model won hearts and minds — with Thierry Henry among his vocal supporters — with aesthetic panache and dependable efficiency.