And so, with the conclusion of Decision Day, Major League Soccer’s 29th regular season is in the books.

Let’s do our usual thing: In place of my typical Sunday night column, following Decision Day we look at where everybody stands heading into the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs (check out the bracket here).

For teams that didn’t make the postseason, post-mortems have been trickling out over the past month, with another big batch coming later this week. But here and now, into the playoffs we go…

Play the Audi 2024 MLS Cup Playoffs Bracket Challenge

I’ve said all year long that this is the best MLS team I’ve ever seen. Now, it’s a little bit difficult to make that case during a season in which they didn’t win the Supporters’ Shield and didn’t post outrageous underlying numbers. But I’m gonna do it.

Here, for reference, are those underlying numbers (regular season only):

• Expected goal differential per 90 is +0.44, as per FBRef. That’s second-best in the league.
• American Soccer Analysis’s even more granular “goals added” metric has them as a historically excellent but not quite best-of-the-best side at +0.35.

What separates the Crew and elevates them to “best MLS team I’ve ever seen,” then, isn’t what they do in the regular season. Rather, it’s what they do in tournament play, and “tournament play” by definition means more intense games against better teams.

Across the 2023 Leagues Cup, US Open Cup and playoffs, the 2024 Concacaf Champions Cup and Leagues Cup, as well as Campeones Cup, Columbus have played 25 games. Over those 25 games, they are 16W-3L-6D with a +24 goal differential. Pro-rate that throughout an MLS season and that’s not just a Shield-winning pace, but a “hey they set the single-season points record!” pace.

Again, these are tournament games, so these are better opponents! That record they’ve posted includes an unbeaten mark (tournament ball only) against the two other teams in this tier, as well as six games – and an unbeaten record – against Club América, Tigres and Monterrey, who are effectively the three biggest clubs in North America.

The Crew’s xGD/90 across that 25-game sample, as per Opta, is +0.67 – more than 50% better than their regular-season mark this year. Over the past dozen years, only six MLS teams have gone better than +0.67 across an MLS season. And remember, we’re talking about doing that against a schedule filled with the San Jose Earthquakes and Chicago Fires of the world, and no LIGA MX gigantes to worry about.

So the Crew have done it in life-or-death situations against the very best teams in Concacaf, and they have done it again and again and again and again. Unlike other historically great, ball-dominant MLS teams that would either crumble against playoff-caliber opponents (2019 LAFC) or go into a shell and play on the counter (2018 Atlanta, 2014 LA), Columbus do it their way. They never stop using the ball to impose their will on the opposition, and in so doing they have ripped the souls out of good teams.

Consider: In a 23-game span leading to the Leagues Cup final, LAFC had lost to exactly one team: The Columbus Crew. 5-1. At home. They then lost again to Columbus in the final, making them 0W-2L-0D, with a -6 goal differential in those two games.

Against all other comers, which includes teams from three different leagues, LAFC were 19W-0L-3D and +45.

And the Crew just killed them. They are the best MLS team I have ever seen.

None of what I wrote above might matter a damn because Inter Miami have Lionel Messi.

He is not all they are – there are lots of good-to-great players on this roster, including a match-winner in goal. But the Herons can be terrible for 85 minutes and win 3-2 against anybody because Messi, Luis Suárez and Jordi Alba will dominate the high-leverage moments, and Sergio Busquets et al will do just enough to cover for that error-prone central defense. Add in the occasional dose of set-piece dominance, and you’ve got a recipe for a record-setting, 74-point season.

As great as I think the Crew are, I am not stupid enough to pick against a fully fit Messi. If that’s what the playoffs present, then Miami are the favorites.

I’ve written a lot about how many games the Crew have played this year – it’s 47 – thanks to their extended runs in both CCC and Leagues Cup. LAFC? They’re at 46. And like the Crew, I think they suffered a little bit for it in the regular season, as they collectively lost their legs through the final three weeks of summer. That led to a five-game winless skid to start September that had everyone worried.

Then the Black & Gold beat Sporting KC in the US Open Cup final a month back, hoisted a trophy, and found the accelerator again. They closed the regular season with five straight wins, conceding just three times, have mostly integrated Olivier Giroud, have elevated another difference-maker in David Martínez, and still have the most lethal counterattack on the continent thanks to Denis Bouanga and Mateusz Bogusz. As long as they’re not missing too many center backs, they feel like prohibitive Western Conference favorites to me.

Would I pick them to win MLS Cup on the road against either of the above teams? No. But it wouldn’t be a massive upset, either. LAFC are a wagon.

By the way, all three of these teams are playing for a double. Leagues Cup/MLS Cup for the Crew, Shield/MLS Cup for Miami, USOC/MLS Cup for LAFC.

I wanted to drop the Galaxy down a tier because I simply do not believe in their ability to stifle elite attacking teams in big moments. They are in the bottom half of the West in both goals allowed and expected goals allowed (John McCarthy’s unheralded year has kept that first number respectable), and have pitched exactly one shutout since June.

They concede a lot of chances off set pieces. They can struggle when defending in a low block. They are great when they’re on the same page:

But they get absolutely gashed on the counter when the pieces on the board have been rearranged like that and turnovers happen.

The upside is they pile up goals and haven’t lost all year in Carson, which is why Andrew Wiebe made me create a special Galaxy-only tier. With a home-field advantage that strong, and an attack that potent, they at least have a path to MLS Cup. If they get there, could they win a shootout?

They will have the best player on the field in most games, which is always a good starting point. And while the defense has mostly been a mess since Matt Miazga got injured four months ago, the individual talent level remains high, and the pieces still fit (in theory).

Lucho Acosta’s healthy, Luca Orellano’s a willing and able sidekick, the defense figures it out and one of the forwards gets hot? I mean, I wouldn’t bet on it happening – especially in this star-crossed year for Cincy. But that’s the recipe.

I’ve repeatedly made the point that since Martín Ojeda was moved to the No. 10 spot in early July, the pieces have snapped into place and Orlando have become one of the best attacking teams in MLS. They are 11W-3L-3D across all competitions since then, and have the seventh-best xG/90 in the league. Decision Day loss aside, they’re humming.

Less remarked upon is how good they’ve been defensively since moving Ojeda to that spot. Doing so created actual field balance, and you can see it in all the numbers, both basic and advanced: six shutouts and the league’s second-best xGA/90 over the past four months.

The schedule has been soft through most of this run. But still, it’s a hell of a run, and between Ojeda, Facu Torres and a full stable of center forwards, they’ve got the types of match-winners you need in the playoffs.

They might not have the kinds of match-winners you need in the playoffs. I have genuinely loved watching the Sounders since Jordan Morris was moved to center forward – he’s been awesome, and his movement has breathed life into/created room for the rest of the attack – but there’s no Cucho or Bouanga or Lucho or even a Facu on this team.

There are no obvious weaknesses either, which is one of the reasons why they’ve got the best by-the-numbers defense in the league. They will not give games away.

But we saw in last year’s playoffs, and then again in the US Open Cup semifinals, that all it takes against the top team in the West is a single moment. When that happens, the Sounders don’t have the ability to respond.

They’re a match-winner short unless Morris goes supernova or Pedro de la Vega is finally ready to shine. I can’t entirely rule that out, but we’re on the fringes of plausibility here.

I’ve been such a fan of DynaBall over the past 15 months that I feel contractually obligated to put them at this level, especially after they did exactly what I wanted (DP striker, U22 Initiative winger) in the summer window.

Alas, we all know that the U22 winger, Lawrence Ennali, is done until next summer with a torn ACL. And Ezequiel Ponce, the DP striker, has been… ok:

Still, they showed in last year’s Open Cup triumph that their blueprint and personnel work. As long as that midfield’s fully fit and ready to roll next weekend, I’m keeping my Dynamo stock.

I originally had the Claret-and-Cobalt down a tier, but Producent Anders made the argument for plausibility in the Extratime group chat. His words, not mine:

I’d move RSL into plausible case. I know they have not been good recently, but:

• We have seen it this year.
• They have an 0-tier player in Chicho Arango. If he gets hot, there’s every chance they can beat LA or LAFC in a one-off Conference Final.

That, to me (hi, this is Doyle again) is a pretty good argument, even if Chicho hasn’t been that guy for four months. But when you add it to RSL’s playoffs xDAWG history under Pablo Mastroeni… ok, plausibility achieved.

Weird one, right? We mostly think of NYCFC as a young team, but they’ve got four starters who are veterans from the 2021 MLS Cup winners, and three of them are in their respective primes. Their very awesome young(ish) goalkeeper has played – and played well – in an Eastern Conference Final. They’ve got depth at center back, and difference-making fullbacks.

Are Santi Rodríguez, Alonso Martínez and Hannes Wolf postseason match-winners? Santi’s shown glimpses in the past, but the other two guys are playoff unknowns.

Mostly they’ve been really good against bad teams and not good enough against good teams. And they squandered a big chance with that Decision Day loss at Montréal.

Their only real path to MLS Cup likely involves winning a bunch of road games, which they haven’t done all season.

The Loons had one of the best summer windows of anybody, and in Kelvin Yeboah they’ve got arguably the hottest striker in the league. He’s a match-winner. I’m not sure DP No. 10 Joaquín Pereyra (who’s playing more as a half-space merchant on the left side in Eric Ramsay’s 3-4-2-1) is, but it wouldn’t shock me – given his numbers in Argentina – if he was able to hit that level.

I love Robin Lod. I love Bongi Hlongwane. Dayne St. Clair can be an adventure, but he can also be a super-elite shot-stopper for months on end.

The central midfield and central defense… just not good enough for multiple rounds.

The real issue for Charlotte is that when they emphasize using the ball to attack, they haven’t figured out a way to stay compact and defensively solid. Things get bad. They start leaking goals.

So then they go back to the low-block-and-counter approach that worked so well for them to start the season, but one-dimensional teams like that almost never win more than a round or two in the playoffs (last year’s LAFC being the one major exception). Not these days, anyway.

The sort of well-rounded balance true contenders have has eluded them. The combination of Kristijan Kahlina and that counterattack is enough for them to pull off an upset or maybe even two. But beyond that?

The argument for the Timbers is simple: between Evander, Jonathan Rodríguez, Santi Moreno and Felipe Mora they have enough attacking talent to outscore anyone. And if they’re smart about how they defend – a massive, season-defining “if” – they can rely upon those four guys to do the heavy lifting, which then allows them to defend with six and take minimal risks.

The argument against the Timbers is simple: they have not consistently done the above all year. And they are miserable on the road, which is not great for a team seeded this low.

No matter what happens from here on out, 2024 is going to go down as a massive success for the Rapids. Fifty points, a third-place finish in Leagues Cup (and a subsequent berth in next year’s ConcaChampions), and a bunch of big swings (primarily Djordje Mihailovic and Rafa Navarro) paying off? You love to see it.

But this team plays open, fast-paced soccer that risks leaving space in behind, and with the summertime sale of Moïse Bombito, they don’t have an all-world athlete back there to run opponents down in the open field. They also don’t have a reliable goalscorer coming in off the wing. And Cole Bassett missed the past month with an injury, and then Djordje was stretchered off on Decision Day with one of the nastiest-looking ankle sprains of the year. It’s too much.

Add in how they’ll be on the road for most of their playoff journey, and I’m not expecting Colorado to duplicate that Leagues Cup run.

They’ve been pretty good when they’ve had both Emil Forsberg and Lewis Morgan fit and healthy, and some of their young players are potentially elite (center back Noah Eile in particular jumps out). They are also, at times, much more aesthetically pleasing than they’ve been in a half-decade or more.

But Red Bull global has again left them at least one DP attacker short. Same song stuck on repeat for 15 years.

The ‘Caps, to their credit, went out and got another DP this summer, signing Scottish midfielder Stuart Armstrong. It has been a stop, start, stop-again integration into the first XI, as the EPL veteran had managed just 120 minutes across all comps heading into Decision Day.

How does he fit with Ryan Gauld and Brian White? We don’t know. Can he and Pedro Vite play in front of Andrés Cubas in a 3-1-4-2? We don’t know. Where does Fafà Picault fit in now? We don’t know.

Vancouver are probably better, on pure talent, than they’ve ever been before. That still leaves them as a bottom-tier playoff side that almost certainly doesn’t have the horses for anything more than their customary hello-goodbye postseason stay.

CF Montréal’s late run – 5W-1L-1D to climb into the host’s seat for the Wild Card game – really does feel like it came out of nowhere. Caden Clark scores four goals and adds four assists after doing nothing all year for Minnesota? Josef Martinez turns back the clock half a decade immediately after head coach Laurent Courtois had more or less called him a fraud who’d turned his back on the team?

What the hell? How is this even happening? Montréal aren’t dominating the ball during this stretch, nor are they creating significantly more chances than they had been. In fact, their xG/90 has dropped from 1.34 per game over the season’s first 27 contests to just 1.09 over the final seven.

“They’ve got two guys on a heater” feels like the whole of it. And that’s fun! They’ll be favorites on Tuesday.

This makes even less sense than Montréal! Atlanta had been significantly worse in the second half of the season by both the eye test and virtually every single metric, boxscore and advanced. They sold around $40 million worth of players and brought in a No. 10, and that guy has been… not great. As recently as three weeks ago, they were dead and buried.

Yet they somehow stitched together six points from their final two games – including a Decision Day win at Orlando that’s pretty easily their best performance since Gonzalo Pineda was dismissed waaaay back in the spring – while D.C., Philly and Toronto tripped all over themselves. Real “Kevin from The Office with the chili.gif” stuff.

Yeah, I don’t know. I’m not remotely about to talk myself into either of these teams. I just hope they give us an entertaining Wild Card game before one or the other is sacrificed on Messi’s altar down in Fort Lauderdale.