The MLS playoffs are about to be wild

Knockout football is arguably the most exciting form of the sport.

Knockout football in the MLS is a whole different level.

You don’t win the league by being the best over 34 matches. You then have to go and win 5-6 matches to win the cup. With the unpredictability and randomness of knockout football, this playoff edition is looking to be incredible both in matchups and potential excitement.

Sure, the quality might not be on par with many of Europe’s and South America’s top leagues, but the entertainment is there and provides for some excellent viewing. And for all you scouts out there, there is a ton of talent in the MLS. We’ve seen players like Thiago Almada, Miguel Almirón, Ricardo Pepi, Alphonso Davies, and more get transfers to top teams worldwide and this year’s playoffs are boasting some really good players.

This is also the first year we’ll see Messi & Co in the MLS playoffs to see if they can continue their impressive season after breaking the regular season points record.

Let’s first look at how the playoffs are set up

Some quick notes on this year’s playoffs:

• The first round is a best-of-three series

• The higher seed hosts the matches; in the best of three they alternate

• No goal differential, away goals, or draws; One team has to win in every match

Let’s look at some of the teams, what to expect, and make some predictions.

Teams that should win it all

Inter Miami

This Inter Miami team is possibly the best team the MLS has ever seen.

Over the season they accumulated:

• 74 points

• 78 goals (2.3 per match)

• 55% possession

• 6 clean sheets

It almost feels inevitable that this team will win the cup because of their incredible talent. It’s hard to look past having multiple players who have won league titles, international cups, a gazillion personal awards, and more and not put your money on them. They are also stacked with really good young talents like Federico Redondo, Diego Gomez, and Benjamin Cremaschi.

Last year we saw Messi essentially win the Leagues Cup by himself, so I won’t be surprised to see them go right on ahead and win this one too.

Where I’m worried about this team is if they have an off night. We’ve seen teams have really good spells against this Miami team especially against the backline. Busquets is about as fast as drying paint so if he loses the ball which we’ve seen a couple of times, it’s basically a free-for-all at this Miami defense… and they aren’t great at stopping it.

They conceded 49 goals and it almost felt like Miami was just playing the old “We’ll score more than you so it doesn’t matter”.

Well, it mostly worked but we did see on a couple of occasions where it didn’t.

Either way, this Miami team should be the favorites going into the playoffs.

Columbus Crew

The Columbus Crew are the defending champions and probably the most solid squad from front to back in terms of experience and skill level. They were led by a solid frontline touting Cucho Hernández and Diego Rossi, scoring 73 goals throughout the season. They usually dominated possession in matches and did a much better job of keeping clean sheets as they had 13 in comparison to Miami who only had 6.

To show how well they dominated matches, they ended up with a +.41 xG differential per 90 which is the highest by far of all the teams in the East. Usually, if you can separate yourself that far from the competition you’re bound to do great things.

The thing I don’t know how they are going to fair in is when they go against tougher competition in the East. They lost 2-1 and 3-2 to Inter Miami and then to Cincinnati they lost 1-2 and drew 0-0. It is a little worry I have that they might end up having an off day and then getting knocked out early.

LAFC

LAFC won 5 matches in a row at the end of the season to clinch the number one seed in the west and are on a hot streak going into the tournament which can be a big boost. They finished third in the league in xG at 59.2 and had the league-best +.57 xG difference per 90.

This team has the capability to put 4 goals past you and do it in a heartbeat. They somewhat struggled in the beginning of the season as they had just brought in Hugo Lloris and weren’t sure if their leading scorer Denis Bouanga was going to stay with them long-term until the first couple of weeks in the season. But they’ve seemed to figure it out since then.

In my opinion, the Oliver Giroud transfer hasn’t played out as expected as he’s gone 10 matches so far without a goal in MLS play and has only generated 1 xG throughout those ten matches. Yikes.

This team is very solid all-around which should help them to be the favorites to come out of the West, especially since they have home-field advantage until the final.

Teams that can make a surprise run

Real Salt Lake

Real Salt Lake is my second favorite to make it out of the West as long as they get superstar performances from Chicho Arango.

For most of the first half of the season, RSL was first in the west and didn’t seem to be able to be stopped. Chicho Arango started hot and Andres Gomez (who ended up being sold halfway through the season) was on fire.

But the fountain of goals seems to have dried up from Chicho as he hasn’t scored since July 6th…

RSL has done some really good business and has brought in some additional pieces to build a solid team. Diego Luna has been incredible this year and the midfield has been very solid with Braian Ojeda and Emeka Eneli.

If this team gets hot, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them upset both the LA teams.

The problem for them has been the goalkeeping position as neither Zac MacMath nor Gavin Beavers seems to want to claim the position. It will be interesting to see if one of them gets the call the whole time or if there are rotations like we saw in the regular season.

Colorado

Colorado is a team that is arguably lower in the ranking than they should be. They ended the season poorly with 5 losses in 6 matches and that included a 1 to 3 loss to their first-round opponent Galaxy.

But the thing that interests me is the underlying numbers in the attack were actually really good during the regular season.

They finished 4th in the MLS in expected goals generated over the MLS season with 58.7 xG and 61 goals scored throughout the season. They have the ability to attack in a league that isn’t known for its defense, so if they can keep the goal-scoring up they should be able to make some noise. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them beat the LA Galaxy in the first round.

Their main issue though has been their defense. Zac Steffan has been pretty poor as he allowed 57 goals in the season on only 45.9 PSxG. That’s not good.

Defense is a key part of winning a knockout tournament so this team has me questioning exactly what their future holds.

The Rest of the East

I don’t see any team from the East making a surprise run. The two best teams in the league are in the East and the lower half of the bracket is worse than the West so I wouldn’t really expect anyone outside of Columbus or Miami, mayyyybeee Cincinnati, to represent the East in the final.

I’d love to be surprised though.

Teams that might underperform

LA Galaxy

The Galaxy are the 2 seed but have a very very deceptive first and second round. Colorado is better than their record states as we talked about and then they have Real Salt Lake most likely.

The Galaxy finished third in the league in goals at 69 and did an average job in their defense as they allowed 50 goals. Scoring didn’t seem to be an issue for them and they ended up with four players over 10 goals in the season.

This Galaxy team has a habit of turning off if the competition is perceived as weak as they lost 8 matches and 5 of those came to teams that aren’t in the playoffs. They also lost twice to LAFC who seem to have the mental edge over the years in El Tráfico.

I’m worried they are going to switch off against either Colorado or against a possible matchup with Real Salt Lake and end up losing in penalties or by a late goal.

They are talented but the emotional and mental aspect is what ends up being their downfall.

Seattle

Seattle was an interesting team to watch throughout the season as they started off the season with only 2 wins in 10 matches. They’ve had some really bad moments but have seemed to pull it together in the latter half of the season to be able to clinch the 4 seed.

What this team does to win games is they play really good defense while trying to keep the ball. But they haven’t figured out how to actually score that well and they have been losing or drawing low-scoring matches. Houston vs Seattle is going to be interesting because it is two of the lower-scoring teams in the West versus two of the better defensive teams.

I have them underperforming mainly because historically they have been a top dog in the West but this year that feels different.

Teams that just don’t have a chance

Houston

Honestly, I don’t know what to make of this team.

They have a lot of good players but they can’t seem to figure out the scoring and generating chances thing. They finished at only 42.5 xG throughout the entire season and are the only other team besides Montreal (who got knocked out in the wild card) to have a negative xG differential at -3.4.

The bright side is they have been pretty good at limiting the chances other teams get, usually by dominating possession as they averaged ~ 59.5% of possession during matches. A lot of low-scoring wins got them to the 5 seed so maybe that’s what they will rely on as we’ve seen some teams do in the past.

I don’t believe they will be good enough to beat Seattle in 2/3 matches and then go and beat LAFC, possibly RSL or LA Galaxy, and then the winner of the East all on the road.

Minnesota

Minnesota is a pretty streaky team and I just don’t think they really have a strong enough squad to win the 5 matches required to win the cup.

They had a lot of players score goals but didn’t really have a dominant goal scorer which is who you need to lean on in these MLS Cup tournaments to upset teams. Their leading goal scorer, Bongokuhle Hlongwane, only scored 11 goals in the season whereas top teams in the playoffs this year usually have a goal scorer sitting above 17 goals.

This team isn’t bad by any means where they scored 58 goals throughout the season and then only allowed 49 goals throughout the season. I just don’t think they are going to be good enough to win matches if they don’t have someone they can lean on to get them through the matches where they are underdogs.

Everyone in the East above seed 3

Sorry, but as mentioned before, I just don’t think anyone in the East is going to be able to beat both Inter Miami and Columbus which is what is most likely the needed outcome from a team to get to the final.

Red Bulls, NYCFC, Atlanta, and Charlotte are all underperforming on their goals to expected goals differential meaning they’ve struggled to finish their chances this season. If you want to pull off an upset against a team like Inter Miami, you have to finish your chances because you’re going to get a decent amount.

Charlotte has the best chance in my opinion to upset Inter Miami because they have had stellar goalkeeping throughout the year.

Avoiding easy goals for Miami and then finishing your chances is a good recipe for an upset.

Final Predictions

We’ve talked a lot about some really good teams, some teams that can make a surprise run and some teams that might disappoint.

My final prediction is Inter Miami beats LAFC 3-2 in the MLS Cup Final.

I know it’s usually not very usual that the two number one seed reach the final but this year these two teams feel a step above the rest.

I’m looking forward to a couple of upsets as well as I think Colorado can upset the Galaxy and then on the East side I think Cincinnati will end up upsetting the Columbus Crew.

The hard part about tournament football is it’s very unpredictable and has a lot of variance so take my predictions with a grain of salt but hopefully, we have a very entertaining MLS playoffs.

Let me know in the comments or if this is an email who you are picking to win it all!