The dominance of American teams in the Major League Soccer (MLS) doesn’t look as guaranteed for the current season.
Of the three Canadian teams playing in the MLS, it’s the Vancouver Whitecaps who are looking solid in the playoff rounds of the 2025 season. CF Montreal and Toronto FC failed to make the playoffs.
Canadian teams in the MLS went through a rough time the past couple of seasons, and while some of them made it to the playoffs, none of them advanced far.
The last significant run by a Canadian team came from Toronto FC when they reached the MLS final but fell short against the Seattle Sounders in the 2019 season.
Two years prior, Toronto made history as the first and only Canadian team so far to be an MLS champion when they defeated Seattle 2-0.
But now, it’s the Whitecaps who are looking to be the next team to join the list, and they have shown merit for at least moving far into the playoffs.
The current season couldn’t have been better for the West Coast team.
In the Canadian Championship, a domestic competition, the team lifted its fourth consecutive trophy of a total of five after beating Vancouver FC in the final 4-2. It also qualified the Caps for the Concacaf Champions Cup, where they reached their first final in history by knocking out big North American teams on their way, such as Monterrey, Pumas and Inter Miami.
Unfortunately, they lost by a 5-0 rout in the final against Cruz Azul, marking a bitter end to their dream continental run.
The Caps closed out the regular season second in the Western Conference, just behind San Diego FC, which they tied in points with 63, but because San Diego won more games than the Caps, they claimed the top of the conference.
At one point, Vancouver notched a 14-game unbeaten streak in all competitions. In MLS, their longest streak was nine games.
Both their defence and offence performance were superlative, especially in the Western Conference.
They were the Western Conference team with the greatest number of goals scored in the MLS, with a total of 66, putting them in third behind Inter Miami's 81 and the 68 goals by the Chicago Fire. The Caps also had the fewest goals conceded in the west, with a total of 38, and second in the MLS, just behind Philadelphia Union with 35 goals.
The Whitecaps' squad's display of football has left fans since the start of the season amazed by their quality and strength. It was a significant turnaround of performance thanks to Danish coach Jesper Sørensen, who joined the team in January.
He changed the team's chemistry and strengthened the players’ quality from last year, when the team ended with 47 points in the eighth position in the regular season.
Signings such as Germany's World Cup champion Thomas Müller made their contribution since the first game, getting the armband and becoming the team’s captain.
With the playoffs already underway, the Whitecaps qualified for the MLS quarterfinals after knocking out Dallas FC in two games to win the best-of-three series 2-0.
They are set to face Los Angeles FC in the next round, looking for revenge from last season when the team was eliminated by Los Angeles in the round of 16 in the 2024 season.
It’s looking closer than ever to seeing a Canadian team fighting for the gold.
