Preview: MLS All-Star Skills Challenge, maybe the best thing about All-Star Week

MINNEAPOLIS – It's one thing to see some of the best players to feature for Major League Soccer and Liga MX competing on a pitch for the bragging rights that go along with the All-Star Game's new league vs. league format, which successfully debuted in 2021. 

And then it is quite another to see those same athletes competing in five wacky events, including one that I've dubbed cornhole skeeball. 

That's the magic of the All-Star Skills Challenge, in the third installment of its current iteration on Tuesday night (7:30 p.m. CT, ESPN2 or TUDN). The five events — which we covered in laugh-injected detail on the most recent edition of the Westward Ho podcast — combine to provide a soccer-adjacent diversion to the week's festivities. 

As Swoontower Soccer's Steph Crugnola put it, representing a branch of the fandom that finds its way to Q2 Stadium for 17 Austin FC home matches a year, "If this is just what soccer were, I would be so happy."

Brought back in 2019, the Skills Challenge was a staple of West vs. East versions of the match in the early 2000s — which famously brought us legendary events like Goalie Wars, rumored to be making a comeback of sorts. 

You might not be able to tune in to see grown men throwing soccer balls at each other — maybe that's what The Striker's Instagram account is for, wink wink. However, you will be able to see players go after in five events ending with what I've dubbed "the Golden Snitch of Skills Challenge," the Crossbar Challenge event, with a point system not all that far off from Quidditch. 

Here's what you'll get to marvel at on Tuesday night. 

Shooting Challenge presented by AT&T 5G       

This is essentially a FIFA shooting drill come to life. Three players from each team will shoot at 11 targets inside a standard MLS goal ... including a moving target! Each player gets 60 seconds to get as many points at possible, giving a very rushed, Pop-A-Shot feel to this event. Get your snacks and drinks ready before this one starts. 

MLS All-Star Touch Challenge presented by Old Spice  

Dubbed by the official press release as "this ultimate test of touch," three players corral balls (including ones catapulted by a ball launcher), trying to land them in the holes of a platform that looks like a cornhole board overlaid with skeeball holes — hence, skeeball cornhole. This is where things really begin to ramp up in both the competition and silliness levels. 

Cross & Volley Challenge presented by AT&T 5G

Last year's version of this event brought us the spectacle of Nahuel Guzman faking injury and Ricardo Pepi shooting past him anyway to win this event. This link to the MLS site will give you all of the writhing and commotion, but this is what counted on the scoreboard.

The best thing about this event? As the press release notes, with emphasis mine, "Creativity and skill will be on display, as players connect with a teammate to score goals in style. The more style, the more points." Give me all the subjectivity and players trying bicycle kicks. 

Passing Challenge presented by BOUNTY

One player each gets 60 seconds (in up to three different attempts) to try to hit four different targets, and then moving to attempt what's dubbed as the Final Pass on the Bounty target to win the round. I wish this one involved more than one player per team, but Bounty's presence as event sponsor lent itself really well to puns in the podcast. This might be the least awesome of the five events, but when it's all awesome, it's okay to have a "maybe it's time to get a snack" option in there. As I told Chris Bils yesterday in our ongoing debate about Kansas City barbecue, "I said inferior; I didn't say bad." 

Crossbar Challenge presented by GilletteLabs

It all comes down to this. No, really, seriously, it all comes down to this — you can biff it as a team for four events and still recover and win the Skills Challenge if you have players who can hit a crossbar. To put it in Quidditch terms, your chasers and beaters can have a really poor game and you can be down by even 140, but as long as your seeker gets the Snitch, you win. To put it in soccer terms, it can be a smash-and-grab 1-0 win on an 89th-minute counter. 

Here's a sketch of how it works. 

• Each team lines up three players in Zone 1, located at the top of the 18-yard box, plus four players in Zone 2, located 40 yards out from the goal. 
• The team with the least points, based on what they did in the four events before, starts with their Zone 1 players trying to hit the crossbar. 
• The goal for the Zone 1 players is to get to five points. Let's say MLS has 3 points and Liga MX has 2 points heading into the Crossbar Challenge. If MLS hits the crossbar twice, it gets to five points. 
• Once that threshold is reached, it releases the Zone 2 players, who will then try for The Victory Shot. Whichever player hits the crossbar from 40 yards out wins it for his team. 

If you want The Striker with you for the journey, click on the Live section of the home page as you're settling in, or just look for the live blog in the lead spot. Chris and I will be documenting all that's going on, including some of the behind-the-scenes items you won't see on TV — that is to say, Goalie Wars.