Inter Miami, a galacticos-style staff led by Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez and Sergio Busquets, was eradicated from the MLS Cup playoffs final week by ninth-seed Atlanta United. It wasn’t simply the largest upset in MLS Cup historical past; it was one of many largest upsets within the historical past of American sport, interval.
The surprising rise of Atlanta and precipitous fall of Miami appeared to generate unprecedented curiosity within the MLS Cup playoffs. The primary match of the best-of-three sequence noticed a record-breaking variety of viewers tune into Apple TV.
But when these followers have been in search of extra MLS video games to observe, they did not discover any. In a head-scratching growth, MLS adopted up the primary spherical of its 2024 playoffs — that includes a few of the most partaking outcomes of the season — with a momentum-killing two-week break.
That is proper: the MLS playoffs are pausing for 14 days. The offender? A sneaky worldwide break when groups throughout the globe will compete in friendlies, Nations League matchups and World Cup qualifiers. (The U. S. Males’s Nationwide Crew is enjoying a two-legged Nations League quarterfinal towards Jamaica throughout this window.)
It is not unusual for soccer leagues to pause throughout worldwide breaks like this one; all of Europe’s main leagues do it. However none of these leagues are pausing in the midst of a tense, championship-deciding postseason like MLS.
It did not must be this manner. If MLS had run a tighter postseason that includes fewer video games, it may’ve simply kicked issues off on the opposite aspect of this worldwide break and eradicated this momentum-killing pause. However within the curiosity of holding extra video games — and thereby decreasing variance that would eradicate large groups like Inter Miami — MLS opted for a bloated, best-of-three Spherical 1 that wound up alienating everybody from gamers to journalists.
To make issues worse for MLS, that variance-killing technique did not even work. Three of the league’s prime 5 seeds — Inter Miami, the Columbus Crew and FC Cincinnati — have been eradicated in Spherical 1.
No staff has suffered extra from MLS’ wild playoff construction than the Los Angeles Galaxy. The staff blasted via its first-round sequence in a two recreation sweep, beating the Colorado Rapids 5-0 and 4-1 in fast succession. Its reward for that show of dominance? A 22-day break in its playoff cycle whereas it waited for the remainder of the league to catch up.
Galaxy attacker Riqui Puig rightfully referred to as it “insane.”
For MLS, a rising league attempting to draw and maintain new followers, this postseason format is an unbelievable show of short-sightedness. It is simple to see why MLS thought it could entice extra viewers, however even when the likes of Lionel Messi and Inter Miami had certified for the subsequent spherical, it is exhausting to think about these viewers staying engaged over two empty weeks of play.
The MLS playoffs return with the Convention Semifinals on Saturday, Nov. 23. There are many fascinating storylines in these matches which are worthy of protection and a spotlight.
However due to MLS’ weird playoff format and interminable waits, these matches will possible obtain neither.
