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Five bold predictions for Nashville SC: Can Hany Mukhtar rebound in 2025 MLS season?
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- Five bold predictions for Nashville SC: Can Hany Mukhtar rebound in 2025 MLS season?
Change is in the air for Nashville SC .
Nashville begins its first full season under coach B.J. Callaghan on Saturday at Geodis Park against the New England Revolution . While stars Hany Mukhtar , Walker Zimmerman and Sam Surridge are returning for 2025, Nashville has brought in 13 new players since Callaghan was hired in July.
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With so many differences from last season, the range of plausible outcomes for NSC spans wide. Will the team fully adapt to Callaghan's promised aggressive attack ? Will Mukhtar return to form after his worst MLS season? Will new faces help propel Nashville back into the playoffs after it missed out in 2024 ?
Here are five bold predictions about Nashville SC this season:
Nashville will score — and concede — at least 50 goals
This season should feature more scoring — by Nashville and by its opponents — than NSC fans have ever seen.
In its first five seasons in MLS, Nashville scored 208 goals and allowed 182. Its games featured an average of 2.45 goals scored by both teams combined, well below the league average of 2.90. But in nine MLS games with Callaghan on the touchline last season, Nashville scored 12 goals and allowed 15, showing more ability to produce looks at goal while at the same time giving more up.
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With offensive-minded additions such as Edvard Tagseth , Gaston Brugman and Ahmed Qasem , Nashville has the weapons and system to be far more dynamic than ever. But a more free-flowing attack also means sacrificing some of the defensive organization that made Nashville so tough to break down under Gary Smith.
One — or both — of Hany Mukhtar and Sam Surridge score 15 goals
Mukhtar and Surridge should be the main beneficiaries of Nashville's new-look attack, at least on the scoresheet. Surridge scored five goals in the 11 games he played under Callaghan across all competitions. Mukhtar had three goals and three assists in his final six games.
A rebuilt midfield featuring a deep-lying playmaker in Brugman and all-around workhorses like Tagseth, Alex Muyl and Patrick Yazbek should allow Mukhtar to play closer to goal than he did last season, when he often had to drop back to support Nashville's weakest unit in possession. Surridge, meanwhile, showed what he can do with solid service in a preseason hat trick against Lexington SC.
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Considering Mukhtar has three previous 15-goal seasons to his name and Surridge hit that mark across all competitions in 2024, it's not far-fetched that one of them does so this MLS season, and maybe even competes for the Golden Boot.
A teenager will play a key role
There's far more youth on Nashville's roster than ever. NSC has three academy products under contract — Adem Sipić , Isaiah Jones and Chris Applewhite — and signed Matthew Corcoran and Maximus Ekk this preseason.
All five are teenagers, but Callaghan showed last season he wasn't afraid to trust young players, giving crucial starts to Jonathan Perez and Julian Gaines , at the time both 21 years old.
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During the preseason, Nashville veterans have raved about Applewhite , a 17-year-old center back, for his maturity and professionalism. Callaghan has also praised Corcoran's technical ability in midfield. Sipić, a big, goal-scoring striker, fills what currently looks like Nashville's biggest position of need .
Nashville reaches the U.S. Open Cup semifinals
Nashville SC midfielder Hany Mukhtar, left, and Lexington SC defender Kendall Burks chase the ball during a preseason match at Geodis Park Saturday, Feb. 1, 2025 in Nashville, Tenn.
Nashville's best chance at winning a trophy will come outside league play.
Nashville is one of 16 MLS teams that will compete in the U.S. Open Cup . Nashville didn't enter the U.S. Open last season due to its participation in the CONCACAF Champions Cup and Leagues Cup, but failed to qualify for this year's edition of either — MLS limited 2025 Leagues Cup participation to the 18 teams that reached the playoffs in 2024.
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The upshot is that of the 16 MLS entrants in the Open Cup, only six were playoff teams last season. Supporters' Shield favorites like Inter Miami , FC Cincinnati and the defending MLS Cup champion LA Galaxy are not among them. Nashville — which reached the U.S. Open quarterfinals in 2022 — can take advantage of their absences.
MORE: Nashville SC signs Ahmed Qasem, 21-year-old midfielder from Sweden
Nashville avoids the play-in game
A team with a former MVP still in his prime and a two-time MLS Defender of the Year is generally a playoff team unless something goes terribly wrong. Things went terribly wrong in 2024, yet Nashville came within four points of making the Eastern Conference's No. 8 vs. No. 9 seed play-in game.
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It's hard to know what to make of a team that turned over nearly half its roster during the offseason. But the core pieces of a squad that made four straight playoffs from 2020 to 2023 — finishing seventh, third, fifth and seventh in its conference in those years, respectively — are still present. If Mukhtar, Zimmerman and Surridge play to their standards, seventh place might be Nashville's floor.
Jacob Shames can be reached by email at jshames@gannett.com and on Twitter @Jacob_Shames.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville SC bold predictions: Will NSC make 2025 MLS playoffs?
