After a busy Decision Day on Saturday, the MLS playoffs are finally here. The multi-week postseason begins Tuesday with a wild-card matchup between Montreal and Atlanta United, and will end at the MLS Cup Final on Dec. 7.
Inter Miami CF, led by Lionel Messi, took home the Supporters’ Shield this season. The franchise, which has never made it past the first round, will now attempt to make a deep playoff push to match its regular-season success.
Meanwhile, two teams will be looking for history to repeat itself. Last season, the Columbus Crew defeated LAFC in the MLS Cup. Both teams are back in the 2024 playoffs, with second-seeded Columbus seeking a repeat, and first-seeded LAFC seeking revenge.
But before these teams can think about the Cup, they’ve got to get through the first round. Here’s everything you need to know about the 2024 MLS playoffs.
Playoff format
After introducing it last year, MLS is once again sticking with its new playoff format. The playoffs will begin with two single-elimination wild-card games between the No. 8 and No. 9 seeds in each conference. The winners of those matches will face the No. 1 seed — Inter Miami in the East, LAFC in the West — in the next round.
After the wild card, the remaining 16 teams will face off in a best-of-three series for the first round. The round follows a home-away-home format: the higher seed hosts Game 1 and the lower seed hosts Game 2, with an as-needed Game 3 returning to the higher-seed’s city.
There are no ties in this format, and aggregate score is not used. Instead, each game will have to finish with a winner. However, there will be no overtime, and teams will go straight to penalty kicks to break the tie.
Following the first round, the winners of those series will advance to the conference semifinals, followed by the conference finals. Both of those are single-game elimination matches hosted by the higher seed. The games will follow a standard extra time-penalty kicks format in the event of a tie.
The final event is the MLS Cup, a single match hosted by the team with more regular-season points. The Cup will take place Dec. 7.
Wild-card round
The MLS playoffs get started Tuesday with a pair of wild-card matchups:
Tuesday, Oct. 22, 7:30 p.m. ET: No. 9 Atlanta United at No. 8 C.F. Montréal
Montréal, which had a relatively easy schedule to finish out the season, won five of its last seven games; one of those victories was against Atlanta, with a 2-1 win on Oct. 2.
Wednesday, Oct. 23, 10:30 p.m. ET: No. 9…