Only the one Sunday game to get to. Here’s what you need to know.
Mateusz Bogusz opened the match with the second-fastest goal in LAFC history and Ilie Sánchez closed the match with a late winner from the top of the box. Credit to Vancouver for sticking around in this one, but having lapses at the start and end of a game is no way to live.
LAFC will enter Decision Day three points behind the first-place Galaxy. With LAFC taking on last-place San Jose and the Galaxy taking on Houston, there’s suddenly a ton of pressure on the Galaxy to earn a point on Saturday. An LAFC win and a Galaxy loss would very likely give LAFC the top spot in the West based on goal differential. There is a world where goal differential isn’t enough, though, and we have to go to the third tiebreaker on the list: goals scored.
Meanwhile, the Whitecaps are in trouble. They’ll head into Decision Day in eighth place with a road trip to Real Salt Lake waiting for them. They need a win and some help from St. Louis to jump Minnesota for seventh place, but that’s as high as they can go now. There’s a real chance they end up getting jumped by ninth-place Portland at the end of the night. In that case, they’d have to go to Providence Park for the Wild Card round. They absolutely don’t want any part of that.
I want to begin the week with an invocation to the supernatural beings tasked with controlling the outcomes of sporting events. I’m just asking for a little bit of chaos. That’s all. As of now, I’ve got to be upfront and say that this might be one of the calmest Decision Days in recent memory. Not even the West - a cluttered, “left your wired iPod headphones in your pocket” tangled mess for the majority of the season - could avoid falling relatively neatly into order before the end of the year. We know who all nine Audi MLS Cup Playoffs teams are and we know who the top four teams are. Maybe the lack of chaos in that case is actually chaotic considering how tight those races seemed just a couple of weeks ago.
Anyway, we try to be optimistic around here. There are still chances for weirdness on Saturday. Stuff that will have you scrambling to find the MLS tiebreaker rules again. And all we’re asking for from the powers above is that just a few of them come to fruition.
The four-way tie in the East
The only playoff spots left to decide on Decision Day are the final two Wild Card spots in the East. Four teams have a shot at them. Right now, D.C. United and CF Montréal are in the driver’s seat on 40 points. Philadelphia and Atlanta United are three points behind them on 37 points. None of those four teams play each other this weekend.
That means a scenario where all four teams end up on 40 points is real. And all four teams would have 10 wins on the season. We’d have to go to our third tiebreaker: goal differential. Annnndd that’s where the fun would stop. Philadelphia and Atlanta would advance on goal differential and there’s no way around it. Still, you’d have four teams on 40 points and the teams in 11th and 12th jumping into playoff spots on the final day.
The tightest of ties for fourth
Orlando City are sitting in fourth place in the East with 52 points. New York City are on 50 points. An Orlando City draw would put them on 53 points and an NYCFC win would put them on 53 points. If that happens, both teams would be on 15 wins. We’d have to move to the goal differential tiebreaker. But let’s say NYCFC win by three goals. Even better, let’s say they win 4-1 and Orlando play to a 0-0 draw. Both teams would have a +10 goal differential and 58 goals scored. That means we’d be in the very plausible scenario where someone has to scramble and look up what the fourth tiebreaker is to decide who hosts who in Round One.
Folks, the fourth place tiebreaker is …(try and stay in your seat)... ”Fewest Disciplinary Points.” I actually do not know where to find the official “disciplinary points” table. But the rules say that a team gets one point for a foul, two points for a “technical staff warning,” three points for a yellow card, and seven points for a red card.
I have zero idea where Orlando and NYCFC are when it comes to disciplinary points, but for the sake of the exercise let’s assume they somehow tie. At that point, we’re on to “away goals differential.” And, oh, hey would you look at that, Orlando and NYCFC are both entering this weekend on a -3 goal differential in road games. That would, unfortunately, be where this has to end. With Orlando at home and NYCFC on the road, our opportunity at getting all the way down to the fifth tiebreaker goes out the window. One day we’ll get it though. I’m not going to stop dreaming, and neither should you.
Man, is that really it?
I swear I looked really hard for more. The chaos math just isn’t mathing this year. Almost every other tie on points that’s possible is decided immediately by the first tiebreaker. I can only assume that this level of Decision Day calm means we’re in for the wildest playoffs we’ve ever seen. And hey, even if we don't have full-on chaos scenarios in play, we always have the inevitable late winners and losers that will decide playoff positioning and maybe even the final spots in the East. I’ve got my fingers crossed at least.
Good luck out there. Create the ending you want.
