We are down to the final four in the Audi 2016 MLS Cup Playoffs.
The four MLS Cup contenders left standing – two in the East and two in the West – will play the first match in their home-and-home Conference Championship series on Tuesday night, with the eventual survivors advancing to the MLS Cup final on Dec. 10, when one team will hoist the Phillip F. Anschutz Trophy.
While the opening Knockout Round of these playoffs was straightforward – winners moved on and losers went home – the Conference Championships will work in similar fashion to the Conference Semis and will be decided over a two-leg, aggregate-goal series. Here's how they work:
Conference Championships
In the Eastern Conference it will be two Canadian rivals facing off for the right to play in MLS Cup as No. 3 seed Toronto FC and No. 5 seed Montreal Impact meet in the postseason for the second straight year. In the West it will be the No. 2-seeded Colorado Rapids squaring off against the No. 4 seed Seattle Sounders.
The lower seeds host the first legs on Tuesday night. The higher seeds, who earned an advantage based on higher regular season point total, will get to play the second legs at home. Why is hosting the second leg considered an advantage? If the series is tied after that second match (see below) and extra time or a penalty-kick shootout is necessary to determine a winner, those tiebreakers will unfold on the higher seed's home field.
Aggregate-Goal Format
The title of the format used for the Conference Championships sounds more complicated than it actually is: Basically, the team with the most total goals over the two legs advances.
If the teams score an equal number of goals over the course of both matches, the first tiebreaker is away goals: The team with the most road goals in the series advances to MLS Cup (this tiebreaker rewards and encourages attacking play away from home).
If at the end of the 180 minutes the teams are tied on both total goals AND away goals, then the teams will play two 15-minute extra time periods in which away goals DO NOT serve as a tiebreaker. If that's still not sufficient to break the tie, a penalty-kick shootout will be used to determine a winner.
MLS Cup - December 10
The two teams left standing after the Conference Championships face each other in MLS Cup – a winner-take-all final on Saturday, Dec. 10 at 8 pm ET on FOX, UniMás, TSN, and RDS networks.
Hosted by the team with the most regular season points, MLS Cup will go to extra time and, if necessary, a penalty-kick shootout to break any tie in regulation. The away goals tiebreaker used in the two-leg series does NOT apply.
And with that, the curtain will close on the 2016 season, roughly nine months to the day that it kicked off.
