Nashville SC's 2025 season ended on a low note. Players sat on the turf in Ft. Lauderdale, ruing mistakes and missed chances after a dismal 4-0 loss to Inter Miami that sent them home after Round One. It was a brutal way to end such a positive season.
And despite the ending, Nashville SC's 2025 season was a major positive.
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Drastic individual improvements
In the lead up to the 2025 season, I set out the following benchmarks for success in 2025:
- Be fun to watch again.
- Continue playing and developing young players
- Get Hany Mukhtar back to form
- Continue preparing to reload even more for 2026
Nashville should firmly be a playoff team in 2025, while still in the midst of a longer-term rebuild. Anything beyond that is a bonus.
Nashville nailed every one of these goals and more. In their first full season under BJ Callaghan, they developed a clear identity and a style of play that allowed them to, at times, compete with and beat the best teams in MLS. At their best, they looked like a legitimate Supporters' Shield contender, and held their own in a stacked Eastern Conference.
Ben Wright
After back-to-back subpar seasons in 2023 and 2024, Hany Mukhtar return to form. With 17 goals and 12 assists in MLS, he was among the best players in the league, thriving as the primary chance creator in Nashville's system. Next to him, Sam Surridge flourished in a career-best year, scoring 31 goals in all competition and breaking out as the best No. 9 in MLS.
Several others had breakout campaigns. Jeisson Palacios established himself as a game-winning center back. Eddi Tagseth and Patrick Yazbek thrived as a midfield buzzsaw. Andy Nájar had a career-best season, avoiding the injuries that had plagued him in prior seasons and becoming a crucial piece of Nashville's identity on the right flank. Similarly, 34-year-old Dan Lovitz flourished on the left. The list goes on.
While Nashville still averaged the second-oldest age of any team in MLS, they gave real, meaningful minutes to young players for the first time ever. 19-year-old Matt Corcoran played 16 matches, including starting the first game of the season and the last two playoff matches. 18-year-old homegrown Chris Applewhite played in eight matches and became the first NSC homegrown to start a match. For the first time, young player were shown an actual path to break into the first team.
Historic team success
All this resulted in the best season in Nashville SC's history. Their 54 points in the regular season were tied with 2021 for the most since joining MLS, and would have been good for fourth in the Eastern Conference last season. Their 58 goals were the most they've ever scored in a season. They returned to the MLS Cup Playoffs after missing out last year, and their 2-1 win over Inter Miami marked the first playoff win at Geodis Park.
There was also the 15-match unbeaten run, the longest in club history, featuring their US Open Cup win over Orlando and Hany Mukhtar's last-second winner against Philadelphia, scoring in front of a sellout crowd after playing with 10 men for the final 30 minutes.
Most importantly, Nashville won the first piece of silverware as a club. Lifting the 2025 US Open Cup would have made the season a success, barring anything else. But the way they did it was even sweeter. Grinding out a win in Orlando, blowing DC United away at home, and a dominant performance over Philadelphia – getting to the final was anything but a fluke.
What a moment! First trophy in club history. First Tennessee professional sports team to win silverware! pic.twitter.com/ZeDRNlvoDT
— Ben Wright (@benwright) October 2, 2025
While the season ended in Miami, the lasting memory of 2025 will be lifting the Cup and the first taste of silverware the city of Nashville has ever experienced.
Roster rebuild
All of this came in the midst of what was internally viewed as a multi-window rebuilding process. The roster was turned over last offseason, with 13 players departing and 13 new players signed to replace them. There could be a similar amount of change this winter, with nother 13 players either out of contract or in option years. As Jacobs and Callaghan attempt to assemble a group that can truly contend in 2026, they'll continue to re-shape the roster from a build for Gary Smith's more reactive style to one that can play and truly excel in the Nashville 2.0 model.
And there's plenty of work to do and needs to be addressed. The fact that Surridge and Mukhtar scored 40 goals between them while no other player had more than four is a concern. Nashville have needed more consistent scoring from the rest of the roster for years, and while they found a way to manage in 2025, their reliance on Mukhtar and Surridge hampered them at times.
Another concern? 2025 was yet another season with a second-half dip in form – the 'Yotes averaged 1.71 points per game in the first half and dropped to 1.47 in the second, a 24% reduction. They've been worse in the second half of the year in every season since their 2020 expansion year. This season, the dip in form cost them a spot in the top four and set them up with a Round One series against Miami, when they would have been favorites against most other sides.
As it stands, this is still an incomplete roster in the first year of a long-term project under BJ Callaghan. But the fact that Nashville achieved so much with an incomplete roster makes the prospect of a reloaded and more cohesive squad in 2026 even more mouth-watering.
This year was just the start.
