NEARLY 20,000 IN Orlando’s Exploria Stadium fall silent as Nashville SC attacking midfielder Hany Mukhtar eyes a shot 35 yards from goal in the MLS Cup playoffs. He might as well shoot from EPCOT. But Mukhtar is the reigning MLS MVP with 19 more goal contributions than anyone else since his 2020 debut. Nashville swiped him from Europe, promising to build a franchise around him, for Mukhtar’s penchant for rendering the extraordinary ordinary. For moments like this.
His shot corkscrews and knuckles. Orlando City’s Pedro Gallese, an MLS Goalkeeper of the Year finalist, is wrong-footed; he shuffles to his right, back left, and leaps. His left index finger barely deflects the ball, hit with such force that Gallese falls to the turf and hails trainers. Mukhtar’s shot caroms off the crossbar and upward into the night, the echoing clang drenched in allegory. The final whistle blows and Nashville lose 1-0. The second leg of the best-of-three series is now an elimination match at Nashville’s Geodis Park tonight at 9 p.m. EST.
Mukhtar’s four seasons in Nashville have been punctuated this way: Thunderous, awe-inspiring, but lamentably short. Nashville were inches from winning the 2023 Leagues Cup, losing 10-9 in PKs to Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami in the final. They suffered quarterfinal MLS Cup playoff exits in 2020 and 2021, on two extra time goals and in PKs, respectively.
Mukhtar was raised in Berlin; he rose through Hertha BSC’s academy and debuted for the senior team at 17. He captained Germany’s 2014 U-19 European Championship run, failed catch on at Benfica and Red Bull Salzburg, but found purchase in Denmark at Brondby.
Now 28, Mukhtar is amid a rare dry spell; he’s contributed to 58.8% of Nashville’s regular and postseason goals as an MLS club — an astounding 100 total since an injury-shortened 2020 — but he hasn’t scored since late September. An unprecedented second straight MVP evaporated.
Before winning the MVP in 2022, Mukhtar was the 2021 MLS MVP runner-up then signed a contract extension. This summer, Nashville received a $7 million bid out of Qatar. Mukhtar demurred. He wants to win trophies here. He met his wife, Ashley, in Nashville. He got married at Geodis Park.
On the same night as Mukhtar’s near miss, 4,500 miles away from a rattled crossbar in Orlando, the biggest moment in MLS history happens without a pitch in sight. At Paris’ Theatre du Chatelet, a 36-year-old Messi accepts his eighth Ballon d’Or. He does so an MLS player, receiving the statue from Inter Miami co-owner David Beckham.
Mukhtar isn’t the wunderkind that clubs from the big five European leagues look to poach, nor is he over the hill. He’s played his prime in the United States. But he is a prominent face of the MLS, once a victory lap league for aging global stars that has now grown into a bona fide European factory line.
Mukhtar’s journey to Nashville — his desire to stay, thrive and bear witness to the further development of MLS — isn’t just a flourish on how far the league has come since Beckham’s L.A. jaunt; it’s also a harbinger of where it’s headed.
