The MLS Decision Day Outcome That I Crave the Most
What does NYCFC do in the event of a Subway Series?
There are four obvious games to pay attention to at 6pm Eastern this Saturday in MLS — DC vs Charlotte, Montreal vs NYCFC, Orlando vs Atlanta, and Philadelphia vs Cincinnati.
The first-order reasoning for this is obvious: We have two playoff spots open in the East and four teams still alive to claim them. DC (8th, 40 points) and Montreal (9th, 40 points) can stay in with draws, Atlanta (11th, 37 points) and Philadelphia (12th, 37 points) can break through with wins and losses by either of the two teams ahead of them. Somehow, for the second year in a row, a team on the cusp of playoff qualification (Toronto, in 10th) is off on Decision Day and is guaranteed to miss out on the playoffs. It will be a simpler race than on previous Decision Days, as if all teams end up with 40 points at the day’s end, they’ll also end up tied on the first tiebreaker (10 wins each) and there’s a significant disparity in the second tiebreaker of goal differential for each, one which would vault the two lower teams ahead of the higher teams if all four ended up at 40.
I feel like this is self-explanatory stuff: These four teams are fighting for the chance to play another week. Their ceilings are merely the Wild Card round at this point, but as we saw last season in the case of Sporting KC, one’s fate is not sealed to an immediate exit against the top seed if they qualify for the Wild Card round. Hope is on the line, the 2024 season is on the line, a chance for a home stadium to sell-out hosting Lionel Messi again is on the line — they just need to take care of business this Saturday.
But I find the second-order intrigue far more interesting: Outside of Cincinnati, who is locked into the third seed in the East, the opponents of our friends straddling the cut-line will jockey for seeding in the middle of the pack. Orlando sits currently in 4th with 52 points, NYCFC sits currently in 5th with 50 points, and Charlotte sits currently in 6th with 48.
These teams will not be playing with the sense of desperation that drives their opponents, but evidence from last year’s limited sample size indicates that finishing in fourth provides some extra benefit to teams. Sporting KC was, ultimately, the only lower-seeded team to progress out of the first-round; the other 7 contests went in favor of the higher-seeded team. It would be sensible for these three mid-table teams to give weight to these final matches, as it might be the difference between progressing and checking out after a single round.
That one of the teams with a must-win game, Philadelphia, is not only playing but hosting a Cincinnati team locked into third-place, also adds intrigue here. On paper, this is the toughest matchup of any of the four, but FCC could basically take the match off and see nothing change for them if they so desired.
For my sake, though, we have an absolutely delightful conundrum staring us down if only a few contests go a few specific ways this weekend.
Consider if this is a feasible sentence, reader:
Atlanta travels south to Orlando and wins; New York City travels north to Montreal and wins.
I think you could consider that feasible, couldn’t you? Montreal has come up short of their goal on the each of the last three decision days (though ‘making the playoffs’ in 2021 and 2023 is a far different goal from ‘Winning the Supporter’s Shield’ as it was in 2023). Atlanta, at one point, used to dominate Orlando. If this scenario takes place (or even if Orlando draws with Atlanta and NYCFC beats Montreal by 4 goals), we’ll see New York City finish in 4th place, dropping Orlando City to 5th place, setting up a first-round series in which the Pigeons host their 2015 expansion brothers in Game 1, which should take place sometime between October 26th and 29th if last year’s schedule is predictive.
Now, gentle reader, I know that many of you likely have little to no interest in Major League Baseball, but I should tell you that, at time of writing, it’s very feasible for both the New York Yankees and New York Mets to advance to the World Series. Both are alive, even in good positions at time of writing, in their respective League Championship Series. The World Series, if this outcome occurs, would then take place between these two teams between October 25th and November 2nd, with days taken off on Sunday the 27th and Thursday the 31st.
This would leave the Pigeons in a bit of a bind. Ideally, they’d host their first round game at Yankee Stadium. To this point in their history, they’ve hosted 7 playoffs games, five of which took place at Yankee Stadium. Each of those home playoff games at Yankee Stadium (which I should denote was primarily constructed for the purpose of hosting Major League Baseball games for those unaware) came after the conclusion of the New York Yankees’ season, be it from a playoff loss or a failure to qualify for the playoffs entirely.
In the cases that a Yankees playoff series has intersected with an NYCFC playoff game, the Pigeons have moved to their secondary home of Citi Field (also primarily built for baseball’s New York Metropolitans (aka Da Mets) franchise). This happened first in 2019: The Yankees were in the ALCS against Houston and had a chance to be in the World Series on October 23rd, 2019, when NYCFC’s first playoff game against Toronto FC was scheduled. This was announced all the way back on October 1st, 2019. The Mets were well out of the playoff picture at this point, so it just made logistical sense, even if the Yankees’ season ultimately ended on October 19th anyway. NYCFC’s 2022 playoff game against Inter Miami was also moved to Citi Field for the same reason.
The trouble here is this: If Yankee Stadium has been in use, or even been in the position to potentially be in use, NYCFC has historically been able to move a home playoff game to Citi Field. If the Yankees win two more games and the Mets win three more games in the NLCS, though, Yankee Stadium and Citi Field will both be in use during the span of time in which the first round of the MLS Playoffs would take place. Both NYCFC’s preferred and fall-back baseball stadia would be in use.
Though there are days in which one or both venues wouldn’t be in use during the World Series, City has twice needed to move out of Yankee Stadium to host games that didn’t actively interfere with Yankee games, so I think it’s possible that the Yankees don’t want NYCFC hosting in Yankee Stadium while the Yankees themselves are still in play. I would assume that the Mets would act the same way — Why would you allow your stadium to be briefly reconfigured for soccer during the World Series?
If this is the case, and neither stadium is open for the Pigeons to use, then what do they do? I guess that’s the question at heart here.
The most obvious path would be to travel across the Hudson to Red Bull Arena, but that’s their rival’s stadium and their fans notoriously dislike traveling there for home matches. Do they bear the indignity of doing so? Would The Red Bull allow them to do so?1 During situations in which Yankee Stadium, Citi Field, and Red Bull Arena are unavailable (Most recently for Concacaf play in 2022), NYCFC has used Rentschler Field in East Hartford, Connecticut, as a home ground, but that’s even further away than Red Bull Arena is. Would they have to use Belson Field at St. Johns in Queens, where their giant-killing Open Cup Cinderella MLS Next Pro team plays? Would we see a switcheroo akin to the 2012 Eastern Conference semis, when Hurricane Sandy pushed MLS to flip hosting dates between DC United and The Red Bull?
We likely won’t need to find out — I think it’s quite likely that Orlando takes care of business and renders this entire discussion moot (though it’s not impossible that a Subway Series could disrupt the second game too) but I would like to see it. I love it when this sort of thing happens, and I know with NYCFC’s new stadium in a few years, it won’t even be a problem anymore.
You just can’t seem to shake this sort of thing fully out of MLS, though. Maybe there’s less visible duct tape holding the whole endeavor together now, but we catches glimpses of it peeking out from time to time, a little glint of silver in the autumn sun. Soccer in America rarely presents to us what we think we ought to have, but it always presents us something fascinating to behold through the right lens.
So, to our friends in New York, Atlanta, New York, and New York, please pull through. I want to see where this goes.
Yeah, probably. Almost certainly.