When MLS introduced its 2024 playoff format — a best-of-three Spherical 1 collection with no mixture rating monitoring adopted by single-game knockouts to the Cup — many followers cried foul.
The purpose of the playoffs has all the time been that something can occur throughout a one-game knockout; by pushing the primary spherical to a few video games, MLS handed a significant benefit to the league’s deepest squads. The brand new playoff construction felt like a transparent ploy to make sure marketable headliner groups stayed within the event for so long as attainable.
Flash ahead to now, nonetheless, and that ploy seems to have backfired. The Columbus Crew, MLS’s defending champion, was eradicated by the seventh-seeded New York Crimson Bulls in a surprising two-game sweep.
However Columbus is way from the one high workforce going through an early departure from the playoffs. Inter Miami and Los Angeles FC, the highest groups within the East and West, misplaced the second video games of their respective collection in dramatic trend. Each take the sphere for Sport 3 this weekend; if both workforce loses, it is going to be eradicated from MLS Cup competition, and its season can be over.
