The Wooden Spoon. Not just any wooden spoon: the Wooden Spoon. Notice the capitalisation. It’s a proper noun, because it’s an award, a trophy and, depending on who you ask, a badge of honour.

I’m Australian, which means the Wooden Spoon is ingrained in the sporting culture I grew up in. In both rugby league and the AFL, opposition fans turn up with real wooden spoons to wave at struggling sides. I even found a photo of some huge decorative ones at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG).

I’d love to say we invented this idea. But the Wooden Spoon started at Cambridge, where the student with the lowest marks among those who still passed their maths exams got one. We just industrialized it.

Now, in what I believe is only the second time in history, feast your eyes on a poem within a work of Howler Magazine.

Unfortunately I cannot claim credit for the below work. It is a stanza from “The Wooden Spoon,” published in The Cambridge Tart, an 1823 compilation of poems by students. Aptly named.

“And while he lives, he wields the boasted prize. Whose value all can feel, the weak, the wise; Displays in triumph his distinguish’d boon.The solid honours of the Wooden Spoon.” 

If you, like myself, are an artistic soul, I am sure you also shed a tear.

After all this, you can only imagine my delight in discovering that the Wooden Spoon exists within MLS as well. A league with no relegation has always struck me as a design flaw. The worst team in the competition risks nothing worse than a stern look from the owner. A group of supporters decided that wasn’t enough, and about a decade ago they built a trophy to shame them.

The Independent Supporters Council, the same group that looks after the Supporters’ Shield, introduced the Wooden Spoon around the start of the 2016 season. Chicago Fire had finished last in 2015 and would again in 2016, so the job of building the first one fell to the Fire’s supporters, and in particular to Daniel Giroux, a craftsman at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He wanted it to look cheap and be impossible to miss. By his own description it was “90% plywood, wood glue, malört and hatred.” It took him about five wooden spoons to find one that didn’t shatter when he nailed it on.

I can’t think of an Australian equivalent of malört, but I have tried Fernet-Branca before, which is apparently quite similar. It was not enjoyable. Despite the bonfire which is Manchester United, I am thankfully not yet at Daniel’s level of despair.

At the base he added a plaque naming it the Andrew Hauptman Memorial Spoon, a memorial to a man who was very much still running the club. When the LA Galaxy finished last in 2017, their supporters renamed it for Anthony Precourt, who was then trying to move the Columbus Crew out of Ohio. Whatever else the Spoon is, it has never been shy about naming its targets.

The hand-over takes place every January in a hotel conference room at the ISC’s annual meeting, usually to laughter. Reaction from the recipients has been mixed. FC Cincinnati’s supporters, last three seasons running, made peace with it by joking that they’d wanted trophies and forgot to say which kind. San Jose’s group took it after the Earthquakes finished on 21 points in 2024 and decided to embrace it. Toronto’s supporters offered theirs to the club and were turned down, so it spent time in a storage locker. MLS told ESPN it has no role in any of this.

The only official consolation for finishing last in MLS is the first pick in the SuperDraft. D.C. United, bottom in 2025, used theirs on NC State defender Nikola Markovic. He’s made 21 appearances this year, a respectable return from a draft that rarely produces first-team regulars.

In the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL, the worst teams get first call (or the best lottery odds) on the best young talent. MLS gives you a conference call and a plywood spoon.

Which brings us to this year, and two clubs who have spent months sprinting toward the bottom.

Sporting Kansas City are the only one of MLS’s original clubs never to have finished last. That streak is on life support. After 32 games, Sporting have six wins, 22 losses and 4 draws for 22 points, a club record for regulation defeats. On Wednesday they conceded three more goals at Minnesota, taking them to 80 and past the MLS record of 78 set by San Jose in 2024, the same season that earned San Jose the Spoon. It’s SKC’s third straight season out of the playoffs.

They signed Brazilian winger André Luiz for a reported fee of up to $22-million, who has had a goal contribution every time he’s played more than 45 minutes, and still lost 2-1 at home to Austin, the club directly above them in the West, and then 3-1 at Minnesota. Sporting’s Jacob Bartlett says the Spoon is “not really our main concern.” That’s a brave thing to say about the only trophy left to play for.

Montréal’s season began with a head coach and has ended up with an interim one, after they fired Marco Donadel in April. They lost 7-1 at Inter Miami in August. They sit on 25 points from six wins, 19 losses and 7 draws, last in the East, and their playoff hopes ended on Saturday with a 2-0 loss to Nashville, a result that handed Nashville the Supporters’ Shield.

So on Saturday the trophy everybody wants was clinched at the home of a team still in a fight for the one nobody does. Prince Owusu has scored 15 goals. In August they signed Alexis Sánchez, 37, who once played across the pond in Manchester red. Similar to Montréal’s season, his start has been underwhelming, which, as a United fan, I’d call on brand. Nashville’s own preview said much the same, and since he signed they’ve won two of 14 league games, so the answer to “too little, too late” is probably yes. 

Sporting trail by three points with two games to play, and both clubs are on six wins. That matters, because the tiebreaker is wins, which is how the Galaxy took the 2017 Spoon after finishing level on 32 points with D.C. United but one win short. If Sporting outscore Montréal by three or more points over the final two games, they finish ahead, and their brutal goal difference (minus 42 to Montréal’s minus 30) won’t come into it.

The run-in:

I read a great post in the Kansas City Soccer Journal recently by a fan who ran a million simulated finishes before last weekend and had Sporting KC finishing last about 70% of the time. Both clubs lost again on Wednesday, so it’s not looking any better.

Wednesday’s game at Bank of America Stadium was the one I was watching. Charlotte had beaten Montréal 2-1 in September, with Idan Toklomati scoring the winner in the 81st minute, and this time they won 4-0. I have to acknowledge Liel Abada, who came off the bench in the 65th minute and scored a hat-trick just 18 minutes later. It was the third-fastest in MLS history. To borrow the line I’ve seen everywhere for the last 48 hours: how Abada that? 

Regardless, a Montréal point would have dragged Sporting a step further from safety. Instead, Charlotte did Kansas City a favour by leaving Montréal on exactly the same total. Sporting then went and lost 3-1 at Minnesota. Spare a thought for the fans. 

If you force me to name the worst team in MLS, I’m picking Sporting Kansas City. The record goals-against total, a goal difference 12 worse than Montréal’s, and a three-point gap with two games left all point the same way. I’m saying it with sympathy.

But who cares about my opinion?

Whoever takes it home in January, Sporting have one thing left to protect: they’re the last original club to have avoided it. The Spoon doesn’t care. It’s a piece of plywood. It can afford to be patient.