MLS PREVIEW 30 Aug 2026: Gazdag may face Columbus days after leaving, and St Louis take a record run into Sunday night

Most of this matchday was played overnight; two fixtures are left, and both are worth waiting for. Columbus Crew host New England Revolution at half past four eastern, a game moved from Saturday by agreement between the clubs to give Columbus travel time after a Leagues Cup quarter-final in California they lost two-nil to Club America. They come into it without a win in four across all competitions.

The subplot arrived on Friday. Columbus and Daniel Gazdag agreed to terminate his contract, a little over a year after he joined for four million dollars, and he is expected to sign for New England — the club that turns up at Lower.com Field on Sunday. Whether the paperwork clears in time for him to play against the side that has just released him is the question nobody could answer at the time of writing. Laurent Courtois, meanwhile, has been rebuilding: roughly a dozen new players in five weeks. "We're investing in the version of us that could be," he said. Columbus are without Wessam Abou Ali, out for the season with a knee injury, along with Sekou Tidiany Bangoura, Rudy Camacho and Jamal Thiare.

New England arrive off a one-one draw with New York City and a three-nil win at D.C. United, and start a four-game road stretch that keeps them away from Gillette Stadium until the middle of September. Their outstanding recent business has been Jack Harrison, signed from Leeds United in July, who has become the fastest player in the club's history to reach five assists. "Jack has done that, not just obviously with his performance on the field, but with his energy to compete," said Marko Mitrovic. Tylon Smith, Luca Langoni, Ilay Feingold and Leonardo Campana are out.

St Louis City host FC Dallas at six central to close the night, and they do it on the best run in the league's regular-season history: eleven matches unbeaten, a mark that passed LAFC's ten, and twelve unbeaten in all competitions. They have built it while losing their leading scorer, Marcel Hartel, to Hannover 96 and trading their captain, Eduard Lowen, to San Jose this week. Simon Becher has scored in three straight matches, Dante Polvara scored his first goal in the league to beat Houston two-one last time out, and Yoann Damet was named coach of the matchday for it. Celio Pompeu, Kyle Hiebert and Brendan McSorley are out.

FC Dallas end a nine-game road stretch here and arrive in poor order, beaten five-nil at Vancouver with a heavily rotated side. "We never really regained ourselves after the first goal, and that was disappointing," Eric Quill said afterwards. "We usually have a resilient group that can bounce back after giving up a goal, but we didn't have that tonight, and it got worse and worse." Petar Musa leads the league's scoring charts, and Dallas will need him: this was the third time in five league matches they failed to score.