Allow Me to Sell You on the MLS Conference Semifinals

After a bizarre first round and a weeklong breather, four matches await this weekend

That should say semifinals… This is the cross one who makes graphics for their blog posts in ballpoint pen and then scans them must bear

It’s been a fraught, controversial, complaint-ridden year around MLS — The half-in-half-out business with the Open Cup, the mid-year intrusion of Leagues Cup, the laser-focus on Lionel Messi and Inter Miami from the central broadcaster, the complex formatting makeup of the playoffs, the abnormally wide scope of playoffs, the international break we have to deal with right in the middle of the playoffs, the roster construction rules that have opened not enough for some and too much for others, a proposed schedule-flip that might or might not happen that would solve some problems while introducing others, San Diego’s logo, and the ad where a group of friends apparently gathers around a TV in generic MLS Shield apparel along with one salesman from Discount Tire.

The surrounding chatter too often overshadows the actual on-field play in this league (and in this sport in general), which is unfortunate, as it’s been really good this year. We have a phenomenal soccer weekend ahead of us in America: The USL-C and NWSL finals are today, the Men’s and Women’s NCAA Tournaments will get cut down to their final sixteen and eight, respectively, and we have a phenomenal slate of Conference Semifinals matches in the Major League. Let’s get ready -

The West:

Los Angeles FC (1) vs Seattle Sounders (4) - 9:30pm CDT Saturday

This match is but one node on the perhaps the most drawn-out revenge plot currently running in Major League Soccer. Five years ago, the Seattle Sounders handed the nascent LAFC its first real humiliation, ending the Black and Gold’s record-setting season in the Western Conference Final, kicking away 2019 LAFC’s chance at holding the title of “Greatest Team in MLS History” like Nouhou Tolo to a can of Dos Equis hurled from the stands at then-Banc of California Stadium. LAFC was, at the time, still MLS’s hot new thing, the paradigm-shifter, the ones redefining what it meant to be a great tof ten matches in a eam in MLS — much like Seattle had been a decade prior. It was a simple set of narratives in 2019: The savvy veteran power in the Northwest met the moment while the newly-ordained darlings couldn’t fulfill what they felt was destined. Those brash, early Sounders teams had taken their lumps from Houston, Salt Lake, and the Galaxy before eventually breaking through in 2016, and in 2019, it was the Sounders’ turn to deliver said lumps to LAFC.

This set the LAFC project off-course for a bit. They tumbled to a 7th-place finish in the West in 2020 and found themselves swiftly knocked out by Seattle in the first round. They fell out of playoff contention entirely in 2021. Quietly, late in that season, the winds began to shift: After a 2-0 loss at Lumen Field in May, LAFC answered with a 3-0 home win on October 26th. This win was not enough to get LAFC above the playoff cut-line (they’d lose it officially two matches later on the road in Colorado) and only made a marginal difference in knocking Seattle down from their spot in the first in the West. But it was the first match in an unbeaten streak of ten (and counting) over the Sounders that’s reached an absolutely abhorrent peak in 2024.

The 2024 MLS season opened with a 2-1 LAFC win in Los Angeles. This loss sent the Sounders down a miserable spiral — They were winless in their first five matches and only picked up six through their first ten. They managed to salvage things in the summer, winning six of seven from June 15th to July 17th, with a home match against LAFC set to cement their momentum into the Leagues Cup break… which they lost 3-0.

A month later, on August 17th, the Sounders were again feeling their oats. They’d made it to the Leagues Cup quarterfinals with a 3-1 win over the LA Galaxy and a 4-0 win over Pumas UNAM, setting up another match with LAFC. Again, they’d lose 3-0.

Just eleven days later, they faced LAFC again in the US Open Cup semifinals. This was, again, a chance to return to form. Seattle used to run the US Open Cup, winning four in their first six years as an MLS outfit. Even in a tough year, they could salvage something by taking that trophy for the first time in a decade. They had not only a home match, they had a home match at their intimate alternate ground in Tukwila. To make their chances even greater, LAFC was coming in fatigued, travel-weary, and demoralized only three days after losing the Leagues Cup final in Columbus. LAFC still won.

LAFC is 4-0 over Seattle in 2024, with a 9-1 aggregate score. They’re on a six-match winning streak against Seattle, one which includes last year’s Western Conference semifinals as well! The Black and Gold have fully avenged the failure of their 2019 team. They’ve won three trophies since they last lost to the Sounders. They’ve also lost four finals since they last lost to the Sounders.

Saturday night, they’ll play again. LAFC is back atop the West, and they’ll have homefield advantage throughout the remainder of the playoffs. Seattle sits in the middle of a protracted pseudo-rebuild. Lodeiro is gone. Ruidiaz has turned ineffective. Jordan Morris and Cristian Roldan are both approaching their tenth seasons in rave green. This year’s new addition, Pedro De La Vega, has been hurt at times and has disappointed in these playoffs. This year’s breakout player in Seattle has been Paul Rothrock, who (though he’s probably been my favorite MLS player in 2024) wasn’t the type of star signing they expect in Seattle. After reaching the mountaintop in the 2022 Concacaf Champions League, they seem to have fallen prey to malaise, and every time that they’re in position to take a step forward, they get smacked back to Earth by LAFC again.

Let’s not forget, though, that the Sounders’ best postseasons have come from outside of the league’s penthouse. They had to win on the road to qualify for the two MLS Cup finals that they won. In the four years in which they won the Western Conference, their highest regular-season finish in-league was 4th. LAFC may seem unbeatable to Seattle now, but they seemed that way to the league as a whole back in 2019. Seattle again has a chance to rewrite their narrative.

Minnesota United FC (6) at Los Angeles Galaxy (2) - 5:00pm Sunday

This was the matchup that I most wanted to see in the playoffs when the final whistle blew on Decision Day. In an ironic twist, it came at the expense of what had been my favorite regular-season series in the chaotic Rocky Mountain Cup games between Colorado and Salt Lake. The shine wore off of those two as the year went long, with injuries and transfers sanding down both teams into shells of what we’d seen in the summer, leaving them prey to these two exciting, attack-minded sides who found their form at the right time in round one.

I find no two teams more endearing than these two at this point. Minnesota started surprisingly strong without a coach, then suffered awful growing pains in the summer as the team acclimated to Eric Ramsay and a host of new signings. They lost six straight matches in the summer as they struggled to simultaneously plug holes in the lineup due to injuries or international duty and integrate the eight new signings they brought aboard. They crashed out of the Leagues Cup despite getting a nice victory over Necaxa due to phenomenal goalkeeping by Dayne St. Clair. This is what I wrote about them at the time:

This break represents less of a pragmatic avoidance of distraction for a team on the right track and more of a chance for a team in a downward spiral to right the ship. They've lready made a few signings to shore up the defense, they added a DP forward in Kelvin Yeboah, they will have Tani Oluwaseyi back in full alongside him in an attack featuring Robin Lod, Bongokuhle Hlongwane, Sang-Bin Jeong, and Franco Fragapane. It is within the realm of possibility that we get a decent month or two out of Teemu Pukki. Much like with Dallas, I can see a version of this Minnesota team that gets as hot as their attack should seem to be able to get, gets into the playoffs, and makes a nice little run out of the opportunity.

Diagnosis: FIGURE OUT WHAT YOU DO

The Loons have thoroughly figured out what they do. They integrated midseason CB signing Jefferson Diaz into the backline to great effect — they’ve only given up two goals in their last seven matches. Joaquin Pereyra has been an effective starter on the left wing. Kelvin Yeboah has scored seven goals in his nine matches. This was already a team that I found plenty talented in attack, and they now have the luxury of bringing in Tani Oluwaseyi and Sang-Bin Jeong off the bench against tired legs. They’ve been able to overrun opponents with goals, they’ve been able to suffocate opponents defensively, they just gutted out two straight penalty shootouts.

I find them endearing, this team that struggled greatly at points but coalesced at the right time in the late-summer. I find them enviable as well. Last year, that middle-market midwestern team struggled under a long-tenured manager/sporting director. They replaced him, hired a coach from outside of the league who I’ve come to like a lot, and made really good signings when they had the opportunities to do so. Mine is sticking with the long-tenured manager/sporting director who got us here and the last two underwhelming transfer windows have me pessimistic about the opportunity for new personnel to salvage next season. I like watching them play, and they meet a team that I like watching play even more.

The Galaxy have dealt with an identity crisis since the mid-2010s. What used to be their domain (the star players from overseas, the prominent USMNT and El Tri players, the winning) has been usurped by LAFC, Miami, and Toronto to varying levels of sustained success ever since the Arena era died in a penalty shootout in Commerce City in late 2016. There have been fits and starts back into life: Zlatan dragged them to the playoffs in 2019 and that uneasy Chicharito/Jovelic partnership found its way into the Western Semis in 2022, but nothing’s been sustained past those brief single-season flickers. From 2017 to 2023, the Galaxy had, at their best, briefly attained mild success by halfway rekindling what they once did well. They seemed destined to join the Chicago Bulls and Washington Commanders (or the Chicago Fire and DC United for that matter) as teams perpetually grasping at what they once were, unable to adapt into a future that had left them.

This year’s team has been absolutely delightful in light of all of that. The heliocentrism of Riqui Puig, the speed and finesse on the outside from Gabriel Pec, Miki Yamane, and Joseph Paintsil, and the suspect but generally good enough back-line and goalkeeping play all coalesced into this team that I grew to treat as appointment viewing. I proselytized about the Galaxy to my friends with the same nervous fervor I did for Weezer’s White Album and Sonic Generations: “I know it’s hard to believe this is coming from them, but I swear it’s not even just that they’re at the level of quality they used to have, it’s that they’re doing it in a way I haven’t seen from anyone else.” They finally ceded the old Galaxy façon de vivre to Miami, LAFC, and Toronto and brought in something fresh, which, in a sense, has them feeling more like the edge-setting, dazzling, successful Galaxy of old.

It’s almost perverse how much I’ve enjoyed the 2024 Galaxy. I’ve pictured how odd this would hit 19 year-old me back in 2014, back when they were the Death Star and the league’s favorites, the ones who got the rules to change when they needed something new, the ones who brought reality to plucky underdogs like San Jose and New England, crushed forward-minded ideologues like Salt Lake and Seattle, and at least brought those nagging Dynamo teams that always beat us to heel in the finals. This year, I got those nostalgic heart swells watching the Galaxy come back to beat LAFC in the late summer normally reserved for when a thirty-something NBA vet I watched in college comes off the bench to hit a clutch shot in the playoffs. I was downright giddy seeing that stadium in Carson come back alive. I might as well have been a fan of theirs. Didn’t I used to hate this franchise’s guts?

Something about both of these teams speaks to me. I see two teams here that recognized deep-seated problems, took measures to solve their problems, and have moved into an exciting present with eyes towards a brilliant future, and I admire them both for it. I enjoy them both for it. I envy them both for it.

The East:

Orlando City SC (4) vs Atlanta United FC (8) - 2:30pm Sunday

When all the Barcelona guys touched down in Miami last year, I figured that we were at the end of an era for the Orlando/Atlanta rivalry. Orlando could turn their ire fully southward to the team that had finally spent its way to relevance as their greatest season in nine years of MLS history went under the radar. Atlanta could focus their ire two states northward at the team struggling to establish themselves in the region that they’d claimed in the late 2010s. I apparently didn’t actually finish the piece in which I laid that out, but I’ll give you an excerpt from a draft prior to their match July 15th, 2023:

This may be a tad histrionic, but I think this will be the final match of a particular era of Major League Soccer in the Southeastern US. Atlanta and Orlando were the only two MLS teams in this region for a three-season stretch between 2017 and 2019, and they hated one another intensely. At least, Orlando hated Atlanta intensely and Josef Martinez relished scoring on Orlando intensely…

With one signing, Miami will soon matter significantly more than they ever have. From my far-off vantage point, it seems like beating Atlanta has been more important than beating Miami to Orlando up to this point, but now, winning the state, considering the ballyhoo surrounding Miami, will become more important than beating United. That September 24th match between Inter and Orlando at Exploria will be the most significant meeting of the two teams since their first match to kick-off the MLS is Back Tournament in 2020. 

I’m not down there myself, but the past year feels as if it’s played out that way. This iteration of Inter Miami has been the perfect foil for Orlando City. Their early struggles left Orlando as the league’s perpetual teeth-gnasher; the furious underdog; the kid who got bullied in junior high, hit a growth spurt Freshman year, and now plays gym class dodgeball against those old bullies with a worrying glint in his eyes. They are built to seethe and ball their fists while glaring up at the glitzy giants down south that got everything they wanted without having to work for it.

In the late-2010s, that glitzy giant was Atlanta. Orlando spent three years suffering under them, and, save for 2021, have spent the 2020s thoroughly outclassing their northern foes to the point that it’s not that interesting to them anymore.

For my fellow Great Plainsians, this is like when Bill Snyder’s K-State teams really overtook Kansas in 1994 and spent the rest of the 1990s frothing in anger at Nebraska. “Orlando is MLS’s Kansas State” is probably one of my stronger analogies, but the overlap between the two sporting worlds in which they exist is so narrow that it won’t hit readers properly. They’re both purple, too.

Now, they stand in a position that’s beginning to grow uncomfortably familiar. The road to glory is wide open to them. For the third time in five seasons, they will host the Eastern Conference Semifinals in Orlando. They lost the prior two: In 2020, they fell 3-1 to Carles Gil and a New England Revolution team just about to turn from a Cinderella into a juggernaut. Last year, they fell 2-0 to Cucho Hernandez and a Columbus Crew team just about to turn from a promising but unorthodox project into one of the best teams on the continent. A third loss, this time to the lowest-seeded team ever to make the conference semis, will turn this series of unfortunate happenstances into a pattern of inability to get the job done as favorites at home in the playoffs.

They have a chance to exorcise their conference semifinal demons against the team that so frequently and thoroughly crushed them as they tried to gain a foothold in the late-2010s.

Atlanta’s suffered from a much less-protracted version of the identity crisis I described with the Galaxy. They were the class of the league for three years, then the decade turned and COVID hit, and ever since, they’ve struggled to maintain a sense of self. In the 2020s, they’ve spent big and employed dynamic players like Thiago Almada and Ezequiel Barco, but they haven’t brought the success that Miguel Almiron and Josef Martinez did. The Five Stripes don’t carry the same mystique that they once did.

That, as much as anything, has been a self-replenishing problem of Atlanta’s in the 2020s, but their last five matches reflect a team that’s finally unburdened by their past successes. Against Miami, they relished the underdog role and played it well. They subverted fans’ expectations of them: The first round’s heroes weren’t the imported supernovae for which Atlanta was once known, they were battle-worn veterans like Brad Guzan, Dax McCarty, and Jamal Thiare.

This semifinal match is entirely built on subverted expectations. There was supposed to be a southeastern rivalry played out in the Eastern semis, but not this one. Orlando’s never been the one with the high expectations, the clearest path to the finals, and pressure to win as the favorite, but they are now. Atlanta’s never been the one punching above their weight, riding on good fortune and positive momentum, and out-efforting others for road upsets, but they are now. Neither of these teams were supposed to be major characters in the story of these playoffs, but they surely are now.

New York City FC (6) vs New York Red Bulls (7) - 4:30pm Saturday

This is year ten of the Hudson River Derby. In these ten seasons, the two participants have combined for three league-level championship trophies and eighteen playoff appearances. These have been two of the most consistently high-quality sides in the league. They’re almost always in the postseason together… and yet, this is the first time that the two have met for a playoff match.

It has been slated to happen, most infamously in 2016, when Red Bull took the top seed in the Eastern bracket and City took the second. If all went chalk, we were slated for a collision between two intense regional rivals in a dramatic conference final round to determine whether not just their shared region, but the entire Eastern Conference, was Red or Blue. We ended up getting precisely that, only with a Canadian caveat: City fell to Giovinco and Toronto, the Bulls fell to Drogba and Montreal. We haven’t really come that close since.

It’s been strange to see. Every other big MLS rivalry seems to earn a postseason showdown within a few seasons of its inception. We had playoff Atlantic Cup in its first season, playoff El Trafico in its second, playoff El Capitan in its second, playoff Cascadia (the Seattle/Portland wing of it, anyway) in its third, playoff Montreal-Toronto in its fourth, playoff Hell is Real in its fifth. How has the Hudson Derby taken ten years? It’s not even a Rocky Mountain Cup situation where one of the participants is the Rapids and rarely qualifies for the playoffs; both of these teams have been really consistent!

At first glance, 2024 didn’t appear as if it would bring us a playoff Hudson Derby. The Red Bulls started the year hot and gradually cooled off over the year. They dropped three of their last four matches, the final of which saw them give up three goals at home to a Columbus Crew they were slated to meet in the first round. New York City was best defined as streaky, they won frequently in the year’s first half and drifted through the second, feasting on low-scoring draws en route to a series with an FC Cincinnati team who, despite having clearly regressed from their form in 2023, still seemed a class above that of the Pigeons. Just like in 2016, the slate was poised to give us one regional rivalry match, but reality proved otherwise.

They finally meet in a moment of anti-climax. 2024 for Red Bull felt like a proof-of-concept season setting them up for next year, it felt for City like an unspectacular mid-point between eras, post-MLS Cup win but pre-whatever comes with the World Cup and the new stadium. We’re well-past Viera, Villa, and Lampard versus Marsch, Wright-Phillips, and Kljestian. These are not the star-studded New York teams that used to snatch headlines, both of these teams are unglamorous, oddly considering the metropolis they share with Judge, Rodgers, and Brunson.

City is a tremendous defensive suffocator built on quality domestic defensive players like Keaton Parks, James Sands, Tayvon Gray, and Matt Freese. Their attack runs through Santi Rodriguez, one the best attacking midfielders in MLS, who is somehow underappreciated despite being the best player in New York. The Red Bulls have looked at points like a phenomenal team unit under Sandro Schwarz, piloted by Lewis Morgan and Emil Forsberg, and it finally came to fruition against Columbus. This edition of the Hudson Derby, though bereft of the ballyhoo of the mid-2010s, nonetheless will be the biggest and perhaps most tactically intricate of its first decade.

It’ll happen at Citi Field, City’s second home, which will be restricted in attendance because the Mets had already started the winterization process after falling in the NLCS. In perhaps the best accidental metaphor of the 2024 MLS playoffs, fans in New York will need to walk by the circus across the street to see this.