3777: MLS Diary: The Play-Offs...

by : Bill Urban

All that for this? Thirty-two regular season matches, a couple Open Cup ties, and the meaningless in every sense except the league’s bank account friendlies all lead up to eight of twelve teams participating in what should be the highlight of the Major League Soccer season.

Eight of twelve teams qualify, including sides with sterling playing records such as the New York Red Bulls (9-12-11) and the Colorado Rapids (11-8-13), a veritable testament to the quality of the quantity of the sides participating in the MLS season-ending bacchanal.

The MLS play-offs, Embrace the Mediocrity...

With a two conference regular-season format, both conferences play conference semi-finals on a home and away basis, with the top-placed team meeting the fourth-placed side and the second- and third-placed teams doing battle in the other semifinal. Following the semifinals, the conference finals are single matches rather than home- and-away ties, with the highest remaining seed given the advantage of hosting the final conference match.

That’s a good question: I don’t really know why the semifinals are home-and-away but the final is not. At one point, the league had the possibility of three matches being necessary to determine the winner of a play-off tie, so let’s just count the relative play-off format blessings and move along.

Each conference champion qualifies for the MLS Cup Final, this year, similar to the 2005 Final, scheduled to be played in FC Dallas’s home stadium, festooned with the egregiously corporate moniker Pizza Hut Park. Note that, unlike the FA Cup Final, held in a national stadium, or the FA Cup semifinals, chosen from a pool of acceptably large venues, the MLS Cup Final will be in Dallas, no matter if FCD manages to emerge from the Western Conference play-off muddle.

Twice in MLS seasons past, there has been a “home” team in an MLS Cup final, DC United beating Colorado 2-1 in 1997 at RFK Stadium, and Steve Nicol’s Revs losing at home 1-0 in Gillette Stadium against the Los Angeles Galaxy in 2002. Surely the league has adopted a policy of “showcasing” its newly-built stadiums to as wide an audience as possible, a sensible business strategy that completely ignores the tremendous advantage one side would have over the other playing the most important match of the year within comfortable and familiar surroundings.

Business over soccer? Perish the thought.

In the Eastern Conference, the Supporter’s Shield-winning DC United side enter the play-offs on the back of a horrible end of season run of form, staggering into the semifinal against the arch rival Red Bull franchise rather than confidently taking their place as conference play-off favourite.