The 28th season of Major League Soccer has taken a league famed for its frequent changes and Americanized innovations and shifted the format once more.
With the inaugural Leagues Cup stuck into the middle of a long, arduous season, MLS’s 29 teams entered the postseason already considerably fatigued. Upon arrival, they’d find an expanded playoff format allowing nearly two-thirds of the league’s teams into a postseason race that started with drawn-out best-of-three series. Victors in that round were then treated to an international break – further beleaguering their star talent – before the conference semi-finals arrived this past weekend.
Over the course of that break, I followed Dániel Gazdag to Hungary to observe the Philadelphia Union’s integral designated player balance Major League Soccer’s strange playoffs with Euro 2024 qualifying in Budapest.
Beneath the celebratory din of 59,600 Hungarians rallying their national team at the Puskás Aréna last Sunday, a name familiar to both Philadelphia and Budapest wove through the midfield, pressing high and peppering passes. Gazdag, like many of his colleagues in MLS, spent the past week more than 4,000 miles away from his club team, tasked with competing for qualification right in the middle of the postseason.
“Luckily, I didn’t get injured,” he told me after the game with a smile, later adding that the flights are long, but spending time with his Hungarian teammates is always a good thing. They had a job to do and they got it done. “Oh, it’s amazing. We reached our goal. We are so happy, and we are trying to prepare for next year.” As he said this, I could hear music blasting from the locker room, where a booming celebration could still be heard an hour after the final whistle, when Liverpool’s Dominik Szoboszlai celebrated his brace in the 3-1 victory over Montenegro by taking a shot with fans.
That aura of elation crescendoed at the final whistle, but for the supporters packed in and singing, it started far before the match began and continued throughout the match. But if somehow you focused your eye on the quick-footed work of Gazdag and tuned out the crowd, you might mistake the match in Budapest for one in Chester, Pennsylvania, where the 27-year-old from Nyíregyháza has made a name for himself with the Union. His movements would be familiar to fans watching from Philadelphia’s River End: connect the lines, fire quick passes, create opportunity, draw defenders out of place.
Since signing for Jim Curtin’s side in 2021, Gazdag has gone from an exciting young talent to an irreplaceable creative force whose offense often headlines what’s been an often-dominant MLS club in recent years. Plucked from the ranks of his boyhood club, Budapest Honvéd two years ago, Gazdag had a breakout year in 2022, ending a record-breaking season for Philadelphia with 22 goals and 10 assists, good enough to garner MLS Best XI honors.
That ascendance has caught the attention of the Hungarian football-watching public. One fan I spoke to readily rattled off not just Gazdag’s club performances, but every Hungarian that has played in the US, with a special nod toward Kansas City. MLS is not the world’s top league, a few said, but it’s a good league, and one that could lead to even bigger opportunities for talented players like Gazdag.
Gazdag started Hungary’s second match of the window against Montenegro, marking his 23rd appearance for the Magyars against the very team he played in his first cap. Since that debut in 2019, Gazdag’s time with the national team has featured four goals, including one sent past England in a Nations League trouncing last June.
But there have been disappointments, too, including an ill-timed injury in 2021 that caused Philadelphia’s newly signed Hungarian to miss out on that summer’s Euros after he was initially named to the squad.
When I spoke with Gazdag, he noted how much it meant to him to qualify with his team this November, providing another chance to play in one of the pinnacles of international football next summer: “I was invited. I was in the roster for the last Euro but I got injured just before the tournament, so it was really unlucky for me. I’m so happy that we qualified for the next one and I can play.”
Hungary were shuffled into a difficult group last time around. Despite taking two points, they placed last behind France, Germany and Portugal, and did not progress from the group stage.
With their eye on a more favorable fate next summer, Gazdag also emphasized how important the match with Montenegro was for them. They’d already qualified for their third-straight European Championship a few nights earlier in Bulgaria, but a win could help shape who they face once the draw is made on Saturday: “It was really important. We needed a win to be in the second group in the draft in December.”
Flying across the Atlantic to battle for European glory in Bulgaria and Hungary in the middle of MLS playoffs had been less than ideal for Curtin’s No 10. Doing so at the long, lingering end of a difficult season was taxing: “It’s not easy. You know, Hungary is so far from the USA.”
Gazdag wasn’t the only MLS (or Union) player to travel in that window. Across the league, teams risked further injury or fatigue to rosters already beset them in a bloated season.
Perhaps nowhere was the resulting weariness more evident than across the players and staff of the Union. Coming off a decorated year in 2022 when they’d fallen just short of the Supporters’ Shield and MLS Cup trophies, the Union played more 50 games across all competitions in 2023. They entered the postseason with injuries to key players, and came up just short of anything to show for it.
Said Gazdag: “Obviously, it’s a good thing that we have a lot of players that go to their national team. But we had key injuries in the last games, which made us a little bit weaker, I would say.”
Despite the fatigue, he emphasized his faith: “But our squad is deep enough. So I think we could go all the way this year as well.”
For Gazdag, despite the exhaustion, there was also rejuvenation in that window spent with Hungary. There was hope that the victory curve of redemption with his national team could follow him to Cincinnati, where Philly would meet the 2023’s Supporters’ Shield-winning club in the Eastern Conference semi-final.
“I got the week to prepare for the game against Cincinnati, which is going to be a huge game for us,” he said. “You know, we would like to win there. And we’d like to go to the MLS Cup finals this year as well.”
As it happened, Philly came close but fell short in Ohio, 1-0. A controversial non-call of an arguably offside stoppage-time goal added one last dose of disappointment to a faltering year. Yerson Mosquera, who’d spent the previous week vying for World Cup qualification with Colombia, sent the decisive death knell past Andre Blake – who himself had just returned from a two-legged joust with Canada to earn Jamaica’s spot in the Copa América next year.
Gazdag’s hope to put a trophy on this season ended there. But for Major League Soccer, the bloated season presses on.