Inter Miami, a galacticos-style team led by Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez and Sergio Busquets, was eliminated from the MLS Cup playoffs last week by ninth-seed Atlanta United. It wasn’t just the biggest upset in MLS Cup history; it was one of the biggest upsets in the history of American sport, period.
The shocking rise of Atlanta and precipitous fall of Miami seemed to generate unprecedented interest in the MLS Cup playoffs. The first match of the best-of-three series saw a record-breaking number of viewers tune into Apple TV.
But if those fans were looking for more MLS games to watch, they didn’t find any. In a head-scratching development, MLS followed up the first round of its 2024 playoffs — featuring some of the most engaging results of the season — with a momentum-killing two-week break.
That’s right: the MLS playoffs are pausing for 14 days. The culprit? A sneaky international break when teams across the globe will compete in friendlies, Nations League matchups and World Cup qualifiers. (The U. S. Men’s National Team is playing a two-legged Nations League quarterfinal against Jamaica during this window.)
It’s not uncommon for soccer leagues to pause during international breaks like this one; all of Europe’s major leagues do it. But none of those leagues are pausing in the middle of a tense, championship-deciding postseason like MLS.
It didn’t have to be this way. If MLS had run a tighter postseason featuring fewer games, it could’ve easily kicked things off on the other side of this international break and eliminated this momentum-killing pause. But in the interest of holding more games — and thereby reducing variance that could eliminate big teams like Inter Miami — MLS opted for a bloated, best-of-three Round 1 that wound up alienating everyone from players to journalists.
To make matters worse for MLS, that variance-killing strategy didn’t even work. Three of the league’s top five seeds — Inter Miami, the Columbus Crew and FC Cincinnati — were eliminated in Round 1.
No team has suffered more from MLS’ wild playoff structure than the Los Angeles Galaxy. The team blasted through its first-round series in a two game sweep, beating the Colorado Rapids 5-0 and 4-1 in quick succession. Its reward for that display of dominance? A 22-day break in its playoff cycle while it waited for the rest of the league to catch up.
Galaxy attacker Riqui Puig rightfully called it “insane.”
For MLS, a growing league trying to attract and keep new fans, this postseason format is an incredible display of short-sightedness. It’s easy to see why MLS thought it would attract more viewers, but even if the likes of Lionel Messi and Inter Miami had qualified for the next round, it’s hard to imagine those viewers staying engaged over two empty weeks of play.
The MLS playoffs return with the Conference Semifinals on Saturday, Nov. 23. There are plenty of fascinating storylines in those matches that are worthy of coverage and attention.
But thanks to MLS’ bizarre playoff format and interminable waits, those matches will likely receive neither.
