Every season, MLS has Rivalry Week presented by [insert corporate sponsor here]. Most of the time it involves teams that could reasonably be considered rivals, but sometimes it creates new ones.
After seeing maps of college football and NBA rivalries, I wondered what such a map would look like for MLS. Some rivalries are pretty obvious, like Hell Is Real between the league’s two Ohio teams, El Trafico in Los Angeles, and NYCFC and the Red Bulls competing in the Hudson River Derby. But maybe there are some Trillium Cup, Brimstone Cup, Dylan Wolpers Derby, or Heritage Cup truthers out there.
The only way to truly answer who fans think is their biggest rival is to ask them. So I created a Google Form and, with the help of r/mls and Matt Doyle, collected data.
After receiving submissions from 5,450 fans, the data was collated and cleaned for trolls, e.g. anyone who said that San Diego was their team’s biggest rival, to 5,087 valid submissions.
By taking the rival most reported for each team, I created the rivalry map in the low-fi style of r/cfb.
Detailed results are below in random order for rivals that received at least 5% of each team’s votes.
St. Louis City SC (300 submissions)
Sporting Kansas City (267, 89%), Chicago Fire (19, 6%)
Unsurprisingly, SKC is seen as St. Louis’ biggest rival by a commanding percentage of fans. A small minority seem to want to continue the Cardinals-Cubs rivalry from baseball.
New York City FC (132)
New York Red Bulls (103, 78%), Philadelphia Union (22, 17%)
The Hudson River Derby reigns supreme in the minds of NYCFC fans. Although a solid, but small, percentage see Philly as the biggest bad guys.
Seattle Sounders FC (396)
Portland Timbers (359, 91%)
Continuing the obvious choices, Sounders fans consider their Cascadia Cup rivals, Portland, as their biggest rival. This was not the case for Cascadia Cup’s third wheel, Vancouver, who received a single vote. Additionally, getting serially beaten by LAFC has convinced 3.5% of Sounders fans that the Black and Gold are their biggest rival.
Sporting Kansas City (197)
St. Louis City SC (129, 65%), Real Salt Lake (31, 16%), Houston Dynamo FC (15, 8%)
Sporting Kansas City see the Soccer Capital/I-70/Darbecue/Heartland/Cease & Desist Derby (it’s only been a couple years, they’ll settle on a name eventually) against St. Louis as their biggest rivalry. However, old foes that existed before St. Louis, in RSL and Houston both received non-negligible vote shares.
Inter Miami CF (34)
Orlando City SC (28, 82%), Nashville SC (3, 9%)
While Inter Miami may have 17 million followers on Instagram, only 34 fans completed the rivalry survey. Of those, the vast majority see the in-state Orlando City as their biggest rival. Expansion siblings and Inaugural Leagues Cup co-finallist Nashville also received votes.
