Decision Day cometh.
The final matchday of the 2024 MLS regular season is upon us, a gluttonous feast of soccer from coast to coast that can, in a flash, make or break the nine months that led up to it.
Twenty-eight teams will duel this autumn Saturday evening across simultaneous kickoff times for the Eastern Conference (6 pm ET) and Western Conference (9 pm ET) matches, ensuring the drama unfolds in real-time and MLS Season Pass on Apple TV is activated across North America and beyond.
This is where the final tickets to the Audi 2024 MLS Cup Playoffs are booked (and/or blown), and the postseason bracket takes shape. In the East, there’s a fight to the finish among a desperate quartet, while the West’s final seeding could, and probably will, shift significantly throughout Saturday evening, giving several teams a ton to play for.
Here are five major storylines to track.
Year-end awards and the debate that swirls around them are like a tasty appetizer to the playoffs: They’re not the main point, but they prime the palate. And there’s plenty still up in the air on this year’s batch.
Golden Boot presented by Audi
First, there’s the matter of the Golden Boot presented by Audi. With 23 goals in 29 matches, Christian Benteke clearly holds pole position, trailed by Denis Bouanga and Cucho Hernández on 19 apiece. With his D.C. United side needing a win or draw vs. Charlotte FC to clinch a playoff berth, Benteke has ample reason to keep hunting on Decision Day. It’s less so for Cucho and Columbus, who are locked into the East’s No. 2 seed.
Bouanga’s international call-up to Gabon ruled him out of LAFC’s rescheduled match vs. Vancouver over the weekend, so he didn’t have the chance to cut into Benteke’s lead by dunking on one of his favorite victims. It’s a long shot, but with the Angeleños having beaten the Whitecaps without him, LAFC can now draw level with the LA Galaxy atop the West table should their crosstown rivals lose at Houston on Decision Day. And if they blow out San Jose at home, Bouanga & Co. could conceivably snatch first place on the second tiebreaker, goal differential.
Landon Donovan MLS MVP
How about the race for the Landon Donovan MVP award? Despite Sacha Kljestan and other pundits asserting, with logic, that Lionel Messi simply missed too many games to be considered (he played less than half of Inter Miami’s available league minutes due to call-ups and injuries), there’s a widespread sense that he’ll win it anyway because he’s the GOAT, and because he's nevertheless produced an astonishing 32 goal contributions (his G+A per 90 is an unreal 1.73, miles ahead of the field).
If the MVP hardware somehow dodges the Messi Effect, it’s a wide-open field, with Cucho, Lucho Acosta, Evander, Benteke and Luis Suárez in the mix and able to use Decision Day as one last chance to make their case.
Points record
Remember, too, that Miami can set a new single-season points record by beating New England at home, and with Carles Gil – the engine of the 2021 Revs team that set the current mark – out with a hamstring strain, odds are the Herons will do it.
The permutations can get confusing, but Decision Day’s highest stakes revolve around a simple concept: four from two in the East.
Tied on 40 points apiece, D.C. United and CF Montréal hold the final two postseason slots, and both play at home on Saturday, vs. Charlotte and New York City FC, respectively. All they need to do is avoid defeat, and they’re in – though if one gets a better result than the other, they’ll finish eighth and get to host their Wild Card matchup.
If either lose, however, that opens the door for them to get pipped at the finish line by...
Atlanta visit Southern rivals Orlando City on Decision Day, while Philadelphia host FC Cincinnati. The Five Stripes and the DOOP squad must win their games and hope one of the teams above them fall short. That would set up a tie on 40 points each and also create a deadlock on total wins, the first tiebreaker. Philly and ATL, in that order, have significantly superior goal differentials to D.C. and Montréal, and thus would edge ahead of them in the standings on that second tiebreaker.
As an example: if D.C. draw Charlotte, Montréal lose to NYCFC, Atlanta beat Orlando and the Union defeat Cincy, D.C. would finish eighth on 41 points and a three-way tie on 40 points among MTL, ATL and PHI would be decided by goal differential – thus, Philly would grab the final playoff ticket.
Still with us? Best believe that keeping track of all four of these games simultaneously in real-time will implode your brain, in the most entertaining sense of the term.
Many would consider the Cascadia Cup, a cherished competition dating back to 2004, well before its three teams entered into MLS, the league’s premier regional rivalry. And this year we get the rare thrill of stirring its most hateful fixture, Seattle vs. Portland, into the Decision Day stew, with the trophy itself on the line.
Seattle can claim the Cascadia Cup with a win over the Timbers at Lumen Field. For Phil Neville and the Rose City side, a draw in the hostile territory of “the fishing village,” in Cascadian trash-talking parlance, will be enough to hoist the hardware. Though both clubs are already qualified for the playoffs, both need a strong performance to feel good about their prospects for the postseason.
Oh, and the Decision Day urgency is sky-high for Vancouver, too, even though their humbling 3-0 home loss to Seattle earlier this month dashed their hopes of keeping hold of the Cascadia Cup. Winless in their last six, the ‘Caps have gone ice-cold at just the wrong time, slipping down the standings and making it that much more important to show well in Saturday’s visit to Real Salt Lake. A win, plus a helpful result in Minnesota vs. St. Louis, could enable them to rise past the Loons and thus avoid the Wild Card round.
It’s tempting to glance at the flux of the standings, throw up your hands and decide that getting into the playoffs is all that really matters, be it in first place or ninth. And indeed, you could argue that was the case under previous formats in past seasons, where underdogs often roared.
That’s much less the case lately, as the rise of one-game rounds and the return of the Best-of-3 series heightened the value of the home-field advantage enjoyed by higher seeds. It’s become quite rare for a team outside the top four places in each side of the bracket to advance even as far as the Conference Finals, let alone to MLS Cup presented by Audi, and hosting rights can make the difference when the margins get razor-thin in the run of play.
That’s why LAFC want to reel in the Galaxy and go first in the West, and Portland will vie to finish eighth instead of ninth. It’s why NYCFC will aim to beat Montréal and hope Orlando slip, so they can leap over the Lions and snatch fourth in the East. And with the Wild Card round imposing an extra 90-plus minutes of wear and tear on its participants, it’s why Minnesota and Vancouver really, really want to reach seventh (or higher, in the Loons’ case) so they can avoid that midweek test altogether.
For those with serious MLS Cup ambitions, merely making the playoffs is not nearly enough.
