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Major League Soccer’s 30th season starts Saturday, and the season looms as an intriguing one in the league’s history.

For one, it is the final year of Lionel Messi’s contract with Inter Miami, though it’s quite possible the team can get him to re-up, considering that he has said Miami will be his last club and his level of play — he’s the reigning MLS most valuable player — still is at a pretty good level, even if he’s not playing a lot of minutes.

It’s also the last full season before the 2026 World Cup comes to America (and Canada and Mexico), which will be an even bigger deal than the 1994 World Cup that led to the creation of MLS. This time, it will throw a monthlong stop sign in the middle of the season and could be the impetus that finally moves MLS to the same schedule as most of the rest of the soccer world, starting in August and ending in April or May, with a winter break around Christmas. (The impetus to not do it can be found outside right now.)

While the league is still keeping its purse strings tight — still only three designated players who can greatly exceed the salary cap per club — and complicated, it did give teams a bit more room to move by allowing them to acquire players from other MLS clubs for cash, genuine coin of the realm, rather than for general allocation money, league-issued dollars that have no value outside the league.

That change opened the floodgates for big-dollar player moves. Disgruntled attacker Evander got out of Portland, with Cincinnati acquiring him for $12 million. Cincinnati needed Evander because it had traded its top attacker, Luciano Acosta, to Dallas for $5 million. In the league’s first player-for-cash trade, the Los Angeles Galaxy sent Dejan Joveljic to Sporting Kansas City for $4 million, which then made Joveljic a designated player, something the Galaxy couldn’t do because they already have three of them. That trade narrowly beat out Philadelphia dealing Jack McGlynn to Houston for $2.1 million.

These moves would not have happened under the old system, leaving the players either to be unhappy where they were, a bad fit for their current team or forced to move out of the league.

That’s one of many things that have happened since last season ended. Here are other things to know as the 2025 season gets started:

A newer team

City SC is no longer the newest team in the league, as San Diego FC enters, bringing the league’s total of teams to 30.

San Diego opens on the road against the Los Angeles Galaxy and then plays City SC next weekend in its home opener. The team will play at Snapdragon Stadium, best known in soccer circles for being used too much and having a terrible playing surface (though it got a new field installed in January). The team has two designated players: Mexican winger Chucky Lozano, who was most recently with PSV Eindhoven but who also had long stints with Napoli in Italy and Pachuca in his native Mexico, and Danish winger Anders Dreyer

Coaching carousel at full tilt

Twelve teams start the season with new head coaches. Among those new faces are some familiar faces, including two who have coached the U.S. national team.

Gregg Berhalter, who at this time a year ago was still coaching the national team before the disastrous run at Copa America got him fired, has taken over the Chicago Fire, where he’s also the director of soccer, overseeing personnel as well.

Bruce Arena, who at 73 is 10 years older than any other coach in the league, returns as the coach of the San Jose Earthquakes, as well as being its sporting director. He’d been out of coaching since Aug. 1, 2023, when he was put on leave (he eventually resigned) by New England over charges of “insensitive and inappropriate remarks.�

The Earthquakes have made the playoffs just three of the past 12 seasons. The Fire have missed the playoffs for the past seven seasons.

Former City SC coach Bradley Carnell was hired by the Philadelphia Union, replacing Jim Curtin, who had coached the team for 11 seasons and is likely high on many teams’ lists of candidates for when they next need a coach.

Who’s best?

No team has repeated as MLS Cup champion since the Galaxy did it in 2011 and 2012. The Galaxy are the defending champions going into this season, but repeating won’t be easy, especially with midfield star Riqui Puig missing most of the season after tearing his ACL in the Western Conference final.

Miami’s roster of all-world players, starting with Messi but not ending there, won the Supporters’ Shield last season and will always make it a contender, though it would help if its defense was a lot better.

Cincinnati was already a very good team and then spent an MLS record $16 million transfer fee to get Kevin Denkey of Togo, the leading goal scorer in the Belgian league last season, and getting Evander from Portland should make up for the loss of Acosta. That transfer record didn’t last long before Atlanta paid a $22 million transfer fee for Emmanuel Latte Lath, a striker from the Ivory Coast who had been playing with Middlesbrough in the English Championship. Atlanta spent a lot of money in the offseason to be a contender again.

LAFC has two great goalscorers in Denis Bouanga and Olivier Giroud and finished tied for the most points in the Western Conference last season with the Galaxy. Columbus has been a dependable team at the top of the standings, but the departure of Cucho Hernandez will be a negative. Seattle is another team that is always in the mix and has a deep roster that should help it through anything that comes its way.

But one thing about MLS is just about everyone has a chance. The past three MLS Cup champions did not make the playoffs the previous season.