Mike Jacobs joined Nashville on the cusp of its transition to MLS. Now, he’s helping steer the best team in MLS.
When Mike Jacobs first moved to Nashville in 2017, he used to take pictures of flags in yards and text players when he saw fans wearing their jersey in public. Nine years on, that version of Nashville SC and the city it calls home seem a relic of a bygone era.
Jacobs joined Nashville SC as General Manager in the USL Championship, the second-highest tier of American soccer pyramid, on the cusp of the club’s move to Major League Soccer. Nashville became the first of a slew of metro areas given expansion franchises in the late 2010s with a target debut season of 2020, handing Music City a third professional sports team and a fourth to Tennessee. Jacobs came with substantial MLS credentials after a successful spell as the assistant technical director for league mainstay Sporting Kansas City, but faced a new sort of assignment in Nashville: to oversee the club's transition to the highest level and build a team capable of competing within it.
The project was promising, if unpredictable. Six years after their jump to MLS, the Boys in Gold have become one of the most reliable and consistently competitive professional teams in the state, pack the largest soccer-specific stadium in the nation week after week and chase the biggest available prizes. A club that was once a plucky underdog in a league looking to break into the sporting mainstream has developed into one of its premier franchises and a staple of the Music City community. Nowhere did that become clearer than a 3-0 road win at New England and 3-2 home win against LAFC in May, sending the club past 100 wins in all competitions and atop both the Eastern Conference and Supporters’ Shield tables.
The gravity of that accomplishment, especially considering the club’s humble beginnings, is not lost on Jacobs. But it’s also no cause for complacency.
“We appreciate how hard it is to be that competitive, but the next step for this group, over we hope the next 100 wins, we’ll not only be a team that can sustain success and be competitive, but one that can compete against the elite teams consistently,” said Jacobs, now the team’s President of Soccer Operations and GM. “One that can not only get results on the day, but one that can do it consistently, both in the league and in North America.”
One of Jacobs’ foremost goals — alongside owner John Ingram and then-CEO Ian Ayre — when building Nashville’s inaugural MLS roster was to avoid the pitfalls that can all-too-easily befall expansion franchises. New-look squads who have not played together before, combined with the increase in competitive rigor, create a difficult cocktail for new teams, one that often leads to disappointing debut seasons.
This is evident among many of Nashville’s expansion contemporaries. FC Cincinnati — a longtime rival of the Music City club dating back to the USL Championship — went 6-22-6 in its inaugural season in 2019, setting a league record for goals conceded. Austin FC won nine games and lost 21 in its debut campaign in 2021. Even 2025 MLS Cup champion Inter Miami, which joined the league at the same time as Nashville, lost 13 games in 2020, finishing 10th in the East.
Contending immediately would be, to put it mildly, a tall order. Instead, Jacobs said, the goal was to “blend in,” using astute signings to let the club grow and improve organically.
“The hope was that when you looked out in the field,” Jacobs said, “you couldn't tell which team was the long-standing MLS team, and which team was an expansion upstart.”
Nashville succeeded on that front. The Boys in Gold secured an impressive seventh-place finish in the Eastern Conference with an 8-7-8 record, beat Miami in the play-in round of the MLS Cup Playoffs and downed Toronto in the first round before bowing out in the conference semifinals. On the way, they developed a reliable core of players — five of whom are on the 2026 roster — that would carry Nashville to even greater heights in the six seasons that followed.
Nashville made the playoffs again in 2021, this time as the third seed in the East after a 54-point season. They finished fifth in their conference in 2022 as Designated Player Hany Mukhtar — the only Nashville player to eclipse 100 club goals — won both the MLS Golden Boot and MVP award. 2023 delivered a Leagues Cup Final thriller against Inter Miami and the addition of Sam Surridge, now one of the league’s best strikers.
Nashville made history throughout its first four MLS campaigns. But perhaps no season has been more defining for the club, its culture and its recent trajectory than 2024. That year was the first — and to this date only — season Nashville missed the playoffs. Its inaugural appearance in the Concacaf Champions Cup ended in heartbreak against surging Miami. And by year’s end, the Boys in Gold found themselves 13th in the Conference, four points adrift of the postseason cutoff.
It was, by Jacobs’ admission, the most difficult year of his tenure and the toughest in club history. But it was also the one with perhaps the most outsized impact on the team’s eventual revival in 2025 and renaissance in 2026. Jacobs sought to refresh the squad and build a team that would never experience that sort of heartbreak again, prioritizing resiliency, togetherness, toughness, heart and players with something to prove.
That often came from unorthodox places. Andy Najar, a former MLS wonderkid and Rookie of the Year who spent most of his career with Belgian giant RSC Anderlecht, joined as a 31-year-old from the Honduran Liga Nacional. Jeisson Palacios played for teams in Colombia and Cyprus before coming to Music City. Eddi Tagseth became the club’s second acquisition from the Norwegian Eliteserien after Australian international Patrick Yazbek joined in the summer of 2024. That’s not to mention Brian Schwake, who developed in the Scottish and Spanish lower divisions before spending a year as backup to longtime goalkeeper Joe Willis, transitioning into an MLS All-Star in 2026.
“The phrase ‘Moneyball’ gets thrown around, and that means different things to different people because of a book or because of a movie,” Jacobs said. “But the reality is the Moneyball principle, in simplest terms, is to acquire the undervalued … I think what's made all of our groups we’ve had here, and specifically this one, even more so, is that we have more players who have come in, perhaps have been undervalued other places, but have come in with this huge chip on their shoulder, something to prove. No one in this group is entitled.”
“When an organization has a great culture, you really don't talk about culture,” Jacobs added. “You can just see it.”
Under the stewardship of head coach B.J. Callaghan, hired midway through 2024, the two years since have been the best in the club’s history.
In 2025, the Boys in Gold won the U.S. Open Cup, the club’s first-ever trophy. They set records for wins and goals scored and featured three MLS All-Stars (Najar, Surridge and Mukhtar). They took eventual champions Miami to a decisive third game in the MLS Cup Playoffs, running them closer than any other team.
They’ve ascended to new heights in 2026, too, adding league-best-level players like Cristian Espinoza and Maxwell Woledzi, and young stars like Warren Madrigal and Reed Baker-Whiting. They downed Miami, one of the preseason tournament favorites, over two legs in the Champions Cup Round of 16. They became the first MLS team to win a competitive match at Estadio Azteca to reach the Champions Cup semifinals. They lead the league in wins, have the fewest losses and have conceded the fewest goals, the best start of any MLS team in 25 years.
That’s not to mention Nashville’s landmark 100th win at New England or 101st against LAFC — accomplishments that by Nashville’s immense standards in 2026 seem almost routine.
Jacobs was quick to point out, however, that for all the history Nashville has already made, there’s still 60% of the league season — and the entirety of Leagues Cup — to go.
“This group definitely appreciates the fact that we've accomplished quite a bit this first 40% of the season” Jacobs said. “We really have not done anything yet in league play to merit anything more than just getting a chance to keep going.”
Jacobs can’t count the number of flags he sees outside houses nowadays. Nashville jerseys adorned with a smattering of player names litter Broadway. GEODIS Park is stuffed match after match, rain or shine, with regulars and first-timers looking to see what all the hype is about, roaring in celebration for milestone goal after milestone goal. Jacobs has a hard time picking a favorite.
Part of being a GM, he said, is that it can be hard to celebrate individual games. Once the referee blows their whistle, all the work Jacobs does behind the scenes makes way for 90 minutes where he has no control on the outcome. Winning a match often provides more relief than it does ecstasy. But that hasn’t stopped him from appreciating the culture of the club or the increasingly tight bond it has formed with the city it inhabits — one that despite its “glitz and glamor” has always been “built on hard work, toughness, and determination.”
“This group always seems to rise to the occasion,” Jacobs said. “What's amazing is to see, with different players and different coaches who have come and gone, that the integrity of our groups remain the same, that this is one of those groups that you think that teams hate to play against, because they're never out of the fight.”
Success begets success, and should Nashville stay on its skyward course, even greater triumphs look sure to follow. If this team’s history has taught us anything, it’s not done climbing or striving to grow. Not by a long shot.
“I think teams that do those things once, they celebrate them as something unique,” Jacobs said. “We celebrate the fact that that's the initial time it happens and our entry through the door to be the kind of elite team that we think we can be.”
