You won’t find club officials lining up to take photographs with this award if their club wins it. League officials won’t present it, and it’s not even listed on the official MLS honors page. It’s an award that definitely exists, but one that no one wants.
I am of course talking about the MLS Wooden Spoon.
It’s a two-foot block of lumber with a cracked spoon fixed to its face with pin nails, and it’s awarded to the team that finishes dead last in the regular-season standings. Major League Soccer’s unofficial bottom of the league trophy.
Due to the fact that no team wants to win it and that the league have no interest in promoting failure, many fans don’t even know the MLS Wooden Spoon award exists. Which is why I have explained exactly what it is, where it came from, and why it is awarded in this article.
If we want to celebrate success, we must also accept failure, and that’s where the Wooden Spoon award comes in.
How it’s Won and All Previous ‘Winners’
To be clear, it’s not the bottom team in each conference that wins the MLS Wooden Spoon, it’s the one team with the worst regular season record across both conferences. Just like the Supporters’ Shield is award to the team with the best cross conference regular season record, the Wooden Spoon is awarded at the opposite end of the standings.
Nothing complicated about that.
It was only introduced in 2016, and unlike the Supporters’ Shield, it was not awarded retrospectively. However, people still refer to last place finishers from before 2016 as wooden spoon winners, so for completeness, this table shows every team to have finished last in the overall standings every year:
| Season | Last-place team (overall standings) |
|---|---|
| 1996 | Colorado Rapids |
| 1997 | San Jose Clash |
| 1998 | New England Revolution |
| 1999 | MetroStars |
| 2000 | San Jose Earthquakes |
| 2001 | Tampa Bay Mutiny |
| 2002 | D.C. United |
| 2003 | Dallas Burn |
| 2004 | Chicago Fire |
| 2005 | Chivas USA |
| 2006 | Columbus Crew |
| 2007 | Toronto FC |
| 2008 | San Jose Earthquakes |
| 2009 | New York Red Bulls |
| 2010 | D.C. United |
| 2011 | Vancouver Whitecaps FC |
| 2012 | Toronto FC |
| 2013 | D.C. United |
| 2014 | Montreal Impact |
| MLS Wooden Spoon Awarded | |
| 2015 | Chicago Fire |
| 2016 | Chicago Fire |
| 2017 | LA Galaxy |
| 2018 | San Jose Earthquakes |
| 2019 | FC Cincinnati |
| 2020 | FC Cincinnati |
| 2021 | FC Cincinnati |
| 2022 | D.C. United |
| 2023 | Toronto FC |
| 2024 | San Jose Earthquakes |
| 2025 | D.C. United |
*The Wooden Spoon is listed as being first awarded between the 2014 and 2015 seasons because although it was actually created in 2016, it was awarded retrospectively for the previous season only, which was the 2015 season.
As an example of what I mean, people sometimes refer to the San Jose Earthquakes as five time MLS Wooden Spoon winners, because even though they have only officially won it twice since it was created, they have come bottom of the overall standings 5 times in their history.
Since the award follows the league’s official standings, there is no need for rules about tie-break situations or anything like that. In effect, it follows MLS’ own procedure since it is based on the official league standings. So if two teams finish on the same low points total, the award goes to the team with the fewest wins, then worst goal difference, and so on.
The trophy is awarded by one supporters group to another at a small ceremony during the Independent Supporters Council’s annual conference, with the previous holders handing it over to the latest recipients. It’s usually good humoured, with a light hearted acceptance speech to make it official.
A Trophy to Replace Promotion and Relegation?
The thing with MLS, is there is no real penalty for doing badly.
If your team finishes below 9th, your season is over, there is no playoff run for you, but there is no direct negative consequence for the very worst performing teams. In other leagues around the world teams are relegated to lower leagues so there is real jeopardy at the bottom of the table, but in MLS, finishing last is no worse than finishing 10th. There is no promotion or relegation in Major League Soccer.
The MLS Wooden Spoon was created to address this, and you might be surprised to learn that it was soccer fans who came up with it. Yes, supporters created an award that none of them ever wanted to win.
It was actually the Independent Supporters Council (ISC) who were behind the creation of the wooden spoon – the same people who introduced and still manage the Supporters’ Shield (via the Supporters’ Shield Foundation), which is now seen as a major trophy. So you never know, perhaps the MLS Wooden Spoon could one day be formally recognised, too? Though I doubt it.
It’s easy to write off the wooden spoon as a joke, or a way to poke fun, and although there is some truth in both of those things, there is a bigger meaning to it. Since there is no sporting consequence for finishing last, clubs that are mismanaged by the ownership could be left to drift aimlessly for far too long. There is not enough incentive to make a change provided the finances are alright. The wooden spoon exists to highlight this, and create accountability through.. well, embarrassment.
Fan Reaction
Unsurprisingly, not everyone is on board with the idea of getting a trophy for being the worst performing team in MLS.
Despite being a fan led trophy, plenty of supporters unaffiliated with the ISC have an issue with the Wood Spoon. It’s more widely accepted and understood these days, but initially, some fans could get quite angry about it.
When LA Galaxy won the MLS Wooden Spoon in 2017, it was the first time they had ever finished bottom of the standings. For a supporter base used to success – they had won a record 5 MLS Cups by this point – coming bottom was a bitter pill to swallow. The ISC awarded the Wooden Spoon to Galaxy’s official supporters group, who decided the best place to keep it was at CoG Studios, home of the Corner of the Galaxy Podcast.
The podcast also went out on Youtube, so people could watch as well as listen, and according to host Josh Guesmen who was interviewed in ESPN, he was once approached by a very aggressive fan who told him to “get that wooden spoon off the podcast”.
The San Jose Earthquakes supporters accepted the award the first time around, but then kept it out of site and kind of ignored it, whereas the Chicago Fire supporters group, Section 8, went in the opposite direction. They embraced it and then some, taking the Wood Spoon award to tailgates before matches and public events.
In many cases, it is used as a way to get back at owners or club officials whom fans believe are letting them down. This is the real purpose of the trophy, because it brings awareness to a bad situation when all of the attention is usually focussed at the top of the MLS standings rather than the bottom.