AUSTIN, Texas — There are few pieces I look forward to writing every year more than this one.
Here at Backheeled, we’ve now rated the MLS All-Star skills challenge four years running. Is that something to be proud of? Almost certainly not. But is it an objective fact? You betcha.
When you watch enough professional soccer, the skills that definitely are hard start to look easy. It’s the Darlington Nagbe effect. Nagbe never breaks a sweat in midfield and also somehow never loses the ball, making the whole ‘being a professional athlete’ thing look very attainable. That’s why I love the skills challenge, contested between a group of MLS All-Stars and Liga MX All-Stars on the eve of the the game itself — it’s chock full of soccer players making very hard things look very easy.
What’s not to like?
I went to the skills challenge at the lovely Q2 Stadium on Tuesday night ready to be impressed by how these players do some of the hardest things in the sport with such ease. I wasn’t disappointed.
While I sat and watched the skills challenge, I put together some super in-depth, highly detailed, and extremely serious ratings for each event.
Goalie Wars
Rating: 11 “Brad Stuver was right”s out of 10
You won’t believe this, but following MLS All-Star ‘training’ on Tuesday morning, Austin FC goalkeeper Brad Stuver was more excited to talk about Goalie Wars than he was about how Brandon Vazquez’s season-ending injury changes the team’s fortunes for 2025. Shocking stuff, I know. Stuver, just like every goalkeeper and human being on the planet, loves Goalie Wars.
