10 predictions for the 2016 MLS season

2015 was a big year in MLS, but if recent trends continue, 2016 will be even bigger. Here are 10 predictions for the new season:

1. More expansion

Don Garber began laying the groundwork for another league expansion as early as April 2015, when he announced that MLS would push past its 24-teams-by-2020 goal. He had little choice. With David Beckham’s group moving forward in Miami and Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Minnesota already guaranteed teams, MLS had hit the 24-team mark with plenty of cities still interested in expansion. It’s a good problem to have, especially considering where the league was just over a decade ago.

Sacramento is expected to get the next team, and, with financial muscle, a stadium plan and outstanding support for its USL team, the city arguably in better shape than any of the four cities that have been granted expansion, let alone several teams already playing in MLS.

But it’s not just Sacramento. St. Louis is a candidate, as is San Antonio, as is Indianapolis. Keeping in mind that the other four major American sports leagues all have 30 or more teams, and keeping in mind that just this fall several MLS owners predicted that the league would end up with 40 teams, it seems impossible that MLS won’t continue adding teams.

SEE MORE: MLS expansion to 28 teams seems reasonable … and inevitable.

What further expansion will do to the league competitively remains to be seen. An MLS1 and MLS2 with 20 teams each is a possibility, but one that is a long way away. In any case, MLS seems to want to expand now, and figure out the consequences later. Expect Sacramento to get the green light soon.

2. LA Galaxy will continue to win

If LA really has traded Omar Gonzalez and Juninho for Ashley Cole and Jeff Larentowicz, it’s fair to say that the offseason in Carson has been soul-sucking. But the Galaxy will be fine. Better, probably. Bruce Arena’s pedigree in MLS -– five Cups, four Western Conference titles with the Galaxy, a handful of Supporters’ Shields -– is not to be doubted. He knows what he’s doing.

The 2015 team wasn’t good enough by a long shot, and changes needed to be made. Arena and Chris Klein have done this before. LA hasn’t missed MLS Cup in back-to-back seasons since the Frank Yallop-Ruud Gullit era.

Juninho was an absolutely terrific servant of the club, but he didn’t mesh with Steven Gerrard in midfield and wanted a pay raise that LA couldn’t easily provide. As for Gonzalez, he was more often than not part of the problem down the stretch last year. As his continued absence from the U.S. men’s national team has suggested, his development has stalled. A fresh start was needed.

SEE MORE: Cole links are the perfect addition to LA’s nonsensical offseason.

I’m not going to pretend to understand the impending Ashley Cole signing, but I do think that Gerrard and Gio dos Santos will be better in year two, Gyasi Zardes and Sebastian Lleget will be superb, the goalkeeping will be better and moving AJ DeLaGarza to center back permanently will be a boon for the club.

The sky isn’t falling in LA. Arena has proved remarkably adaptable in his career in MLS, and as long as he’s around, the Galaxy will continue to compete.

3. Both Sebastian Giovinco and Andrea Pirlo will make Italy’s Euro 2016 squad

Photo credit: AFP.

MLS has completely revitalized the career of Giovinco, who made an appearance on The Guardian’s list of the top 100 footballers of 2015. With Italy short of attacking talent, he looks a good bet to make the trip to France for this summer’s European Championships.

Pirlo endured a difficult start to life in America and was duly left out of Italy’s last two squads. Azzuri boss Antonio Conte has been skeptical of Pirlo’s move to New York City FC, and has said that he’ll make his decision on Pirlo’s future after MLS resumes in March.

But Conte and Pirlo are close from their time at Juventus, with the latter speaking very highly of the former in his autobiography. Pirlo can still pass, and there’s no question he’ll be motivated by the battle in front of him to make the squad. For a number of reasons, I think Conte to take him to France.

SEE MORE: Giovinco’s on track to be MLS’s most important player ever.

4. Jason Kreis won’t be unemployed for long

Only two of the league’s 20 teams decided to make coaching changes last year. That number confirms MLS is a great league for coaches to work in, and that the league’s owners value stability much more than their counterparts around the world, even if there’s no way that that number will be so low in 2016.

So despite getting fired by NYCFC and passed over by the Chicago Fire, this wasn’t such a bad offseason for Jason Kreis. His presence continues to dominate the MLS managerial market.

Kreis has allies from his Real Salt Lake days running both the Seattle Sounders and Toronto FC, two clubs with under-fire managers. Should either team start slow, Garth Lagerway and especially Bill Manning won’t hesitate to make a change. Kreis won’t be out of work for long.

SEE MORE: If Kreis is in trouble, so is NYCFC.

5. TV numbers will be stagnant

2015 always promised to be a good year for MLS ratings wise, with more games on national TV than ever before and set time-slots on Friday night and Sunday, but there were only incremental increases in viewing numbers. It’s clear that there just isn’t a big appetite for MLS on TV. The league’s fans tend to be young and watch less television anyway, and be very much locally instead of nationally oriented.

Attendance will continue to rise, MLS will continue to do very well on social media, and owners will keep making and spending more money. But, at least until the next World Cup year, it just seems unlikely that we’re going to see any seismic shift in TV ratings.

SEE MORE: Are MLS’s attendance numbers a game of smoke and mirrors?

6. Big signings will come in the summer

Photo credit: AFP.

Over the last few years, MLS’s winter offseason has been about nitty-gritty transactions and roster building. Flash and big name signings have come in the summer. It was certainly that way last season, as Andrea Pirlo, Didier Drogba, Giovani dos Santos and a handful of other, lesser-known Designated Players flocked to the league at the conclusion of the European club season.

Carlos Vela, linked to Colorado, Chicago and San Jose, heads up the list of possible summer signings, but expect new names to emerge in the wake of Euro 2016. The Copa America Centenario, staged this year in the US, will only add fuel to the fire of players wanting to make their move stateside.

7. Toronto will be legit

TFC has been plugging away for nearly a decade, and they’re finally figuring things out.

Two winters ago, Tim Lieweke came in and made three huge DP signings with Michael Bradley, Jermaine Defoe, and Gilberto. Last winter, Lieweke went about correcting those huge DP signings – swapping Defoe for Jozy Altidore, and dumping Gilberto to make room for the transformational Giovinco.

The stars were more or less in place last season, but the role players weren’t. So this winter, with Lieweke departed and former Real Salt Lake president Bill Manning in charge, TFC went about filling out their roster. They traded for Vancouver fullback Steven Beitashour, signed Colorado captain Drew Moor and traded for Portland captain Will Johnson an impressive haul of existing MLS talent.

All three players are well-liked professionals who know how to win in MLS. Throw in a new goalkeeper, who will be arriving shortly, and Toronto have their best team ever by miles. It’s not just talented; it’s now full with serious people who will not be easily embarrassed.

45 minutes spent re-watching the first half of the Wild Card game against Montreal is all the reminder necessary of why that’s important. I’m still not sure about Greg Vanney’s ability, but if he can’t win with this group – in the East, no less – he has no business as a manager.

8. Chicago will be better

It took two miserable years of Frank Yallop, but Chicago finally has the right people in place. New general manager Nelson Rodriguez had an impressive crop of coaching candidates to choose from, and his selection of Veljko Paunovic raised plenty of eyebrows. Paunovic –- who played a year in MLS with Philadelphia –- comes in fresh off leading Serbia to the under-20 World Cup championship in New Zealand in the summer.

Courted by several big European sides, Paunovic chose to come to Chicago. He’s a bright young coach with big ideas, and he’ll have plenty of time to learn the ropes of club management.

The rebuilding job he and the Fire face is a big one. The existing team is unbalanced and thin, and the DPs on the books have hardly inspired confidence. But Chicago does have flexibility. Harry Shipp, Matt Polster, Sean Johnson, possibly David Accam, and Gilberto are all keepers. They went hard after Will Johnson and should be in the market for Seattle’s Osvaldo Alonso as well. Add in a couple of solid defensive players, and a team starts to emerge.

It doesn’t take much time to turn a club around in MLS. The Fire will be refreshed in 2016, and they should be competitive.

9. Philadelphia will be strong, too

The Union also hit a rock bottom of sorts in 2015, and it led them to do what had only been a pipe-dream for the team’s fans: fire CEO Nick Sakiewicz. It was easy enough to see why the change was finally made. Philly was the only club in the league with decreasing attendance since its first year in 2011.

Bringing in former US international Earnie Stewart as sporting director from AZ in Holland was a coup. He’s the right man to entrust with a franchise that has looked little more than moribund for the last three years. Philadelphia only has thirteen players on the book for 2016 at the moment, and Stewart and young manager Jim Curtin will have plenty of space to try and build a competitive roster.

This team is still a long way from thinking about a championship, but the Union is trending the right way for the first time in a very long time. Look for their fans to respond in kind.

SEE MORE: Philadelphia makes MLS take notice with hiring of Stewart.

10. Mediocrity will continue to be flushed out

Seattle head coach Sigi Schmid talked early in the offseason about how the mid-level players in MLS were about to fall on hard times – being squeezed out by younger players making less and star players making more. That may or may not be a good thing, depending on your vantage point, but one thing is clear: There aren’t going to be as many mediocre players in the league going forward.

Mediocre managers are falling by the wayside as well. Frank Yallop, who just four years ago won a Supporters’ Shield in San Jose, is now coaching Arizona United in the USL. Coaches in the league are increasingly younger, and coaching and soccer personnel hires are increasingly ambitious.

In fact, outside of the big three of Arena, Schmid, and San Jose head coach Dominic Kinnear, there are very few managers who have coached more than one MLS team in their career. Assistants are very rarely getting head coaching looks. Jobs are going either to former players –- a class that didn’t even exist 10 years ago –- or fresh faces from outside the league.

If Chicago, Philadelphia, and Colorado really do improve, there might not be any bad teams next year. There will be last place teams, but there might not be any walkovers. And that’s fantastic news for MLS.