A round that split neatly between the obvious and the awkward

The round mostly followed the shape Fipster drew, but not always the script.

Two STAR calls and six TICKs is a decent return in a 15-match slate, especially when several of the misses were not wild swings but close games that turned on one unexpected scorer or one late twist. The model was often in the right neighbourhood. It just kept finding the wrong front door. That is annoying, but also oddly reassuring: the structure was there, even if the finishing touch was not always.

Colorado was the cleanest win for the model.

The Rapids’ 2-0 win over Sporting Kansas City was exactly the sort of call Fipster wanted to make. The home win landed, the scoreline landed, and Rafael Navarro was again part of it. That mattered because the pre-match case was built around Colorado’s home scoring edge and Rafael Navarro as their most reliable attacking outlet. When a prediction is this tidy, it usually means the model has read the room properly rather than merely guessed at it. On this occasion, it did both with unusual politeness.

The miss that stung most was Los Angeles FC against San Diego.

This was where Fipster leaned too hard on LAFC’s usual attacking profile and too lightly on how thin margins can be when nothing goes to plan. The model expected a comfortable home win and named several likely scorers from LAFC’s side, but San Diego took it 1-0 through Anders Laustrup Dreyer late on. In other words: the forecast trusted volume, while the match rewarded restraint and one decisive moment. Football does enjoy making a spreadsheet look faintly embarrassed.

The round belonged to a few familiar names — and one or two uninvited guests.

Hany Mukhtar was one of the clearest examples of Fipster getting its read right. He scored twice for Nashville, and he had been flagged pre-match as a key threat. Samuel Surridge also scored after being called, which made Nashville’s attack look exactly as dangerous as advertised. Lionel Messi also hit for Inter Miami after being named in advance, even if Nashville’s result made sure nobody got too comfortable about it.

'Uncalled' is where this round got interesting. Simon Becher scored twice for St. Louis City without being on Fipster’s list, Bruno Damiani did likewise for Philadelphia Union, and Emil Forsberg added another unpredicted goal for New York Red Bulls. Those are not just random footnotes; they are exactly the sort of scorers that turn a decent read into a miss when they arrive from outside the model’s frame. On top of that, Brandt Bronico and Liel Abada scored in Charlotte’s win without being called there, while Tah D’Avilla Dje and Finn Surman popped up in Chicago’s game to keep that one from looking like a simple script too.

What comes next is simple enough: keep trusting the strong structural reads, but stop assuming every favourite will finish its dinner.

This round showed that Fipster can still find solid home wins and identify major attacking pieces when they behave themselves. It also showed how quickly things wobble when an undercalled scorer appears early or late and changes the whole tone of a match. That is not failure so much as housekeeping. The model has enough right ideas to keep faith with; it just needs fewer surprises arriving with their boots already on.