When trying to assess who would be the favorites at the MLS is Back Tournament, there were several lines of thinking. Being that this was a short tournament with a World Cup-style format, maybe it would be the veteran squads. There was another line of thinking that deep teams with lots of young talent would excel given the short training window beforehand. Maybe it would simply come down to talent.
The prevailing thought, however, seemed to be that the teams would do best would be the ones who were simply the most motivated. In a league like MLS where the talent margins are already pretty thin and given all the other aspects of this tournament that give it a surreal quality, it made sense that the teams who simply wanted to be there would be the ones who were there longest.