THere’s a TV commercial that airs on Apple TV during MLS games for Lowe’s hardware stores. Lionel Messi carefully places a soccer ball on a pitch, ready to take a free kick. He is flanked by Lionel Messi and Lionel Messi. On the sidelines, manager Lionel Messi, assisted by Lionel Messi, gesticulates. Lionel Messi releases the ball to Lionel Messi, who crosses it to Lionel Messi. Lionel Messi hits it and throws it into the net and is mobbed by another half-dozen Lionel Messis (or is it Lionel Messi?).
Facing Inter Miami in the ongoing MLS playoffs must feel more or less like living in that commercial. Before Saturday’s Eastern Conference final against New York City FC, Messi had scored or assisted on all 12 goals Miami had scored in the playoffs. Messi destroyed the championship this year, but he saved the real savagery for the playoffs.
On Saturday, Inter finally recovered from their own case of Messipendencia – the Argentine contributed just one assist in a resounding 5-1 win over NYC FC.
They are so much fun, this Miami team. Seeing Messi in his glory, chasing another trophy and training his club until he develops enough speed, has been fun. These MLS playoffs, even though the favorites have excelled, have been fun.
There were only four upsets – and only one among teams seeded more than one spot apart, when fifth-seeded NYC FC beat top-seeded Philadelphia – but the draw was filled with drama, reversals of fortune and cinematic climaxes.
Would a few more rounds of regular season games have allowed Messi to achieve the same performances, or ignite the fireworks we’ve seen in MLS in recent weeks? There’s no placebo group here, but that’s doubtful.
The Vancouver Whitecaps-LAFC Western Conference semifinal was an epic, a ding-dong affair tied to a Heung-min Son free kick in the 95th minute.
The Whitecaps ended extra time with nine men due to a red card to defender Tristan Blackmon and an injury. But they outlasted LAFC by hitting both posts and the crossbar in one sequence and won on penalties.
Playoffs!
They are fun and don’t care what kind of football is played. In the NWSL, Gotham FC upset the Washington Spirit in the championship final, thanks to a splendid finish from Rose Lavelle from the edge of the box. It was only after Juan Carlos Amorós’ team had already toppled the No. 1 and No. 4 seeds. Gotham was the lowest-seeded team (No. 8) to ever win the title, breaking its own record from two years ago when it was seeded sixth.
It could be criticized that Gotham being ranked so low was a fluke, considering their continental title in the Concacaf W Champions Cup just six months earlier, injuries to key players and a four-game winless run to close the regular season that saw them fall in the rankings. But then, in the final seconds of overtime in the quarterfinals, they squeaked by a Kansas City Current team that had blown away the league during the regular season. Gotham, a team that won just nine of its 26 regular season games, beat the club that set a record point total. And then they only went to eliminate the defending champion Orlando Pride with a 97th-minute winner on their only shot on goal all game, advancing to the championship match.
Playoffs!
Was all of this, or any of it, right? Of course not.
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But very entertaining? As long as you’re not a fan of any of the other teams, yes, absolutely.
And ultimately, the whole point of professional sports is entertainment; fairness comes after that.
Analyzing what exactly makes competitive sports attractive, consultancy Twenty First Group once identified “quality, risk and connection” as the key ingredients of attractive competitions. Pound for pound, playoff games will offer more than a regular season game. This is, of course, partly a self-fulfilling prophecy. As Gotham demonstrated, rankings can start to feel like a pass-fail entrance exam in reality, reducing most of the season to a qualifying event. But that does a service to all but the die-hard fans: it concentrates the action – the danger – in far fewer games. In better games.
Purists cringe at the erosion of the simple rankings – the type used to determine the champions of most of the world’s top soccer leagues since their inception.
But there is some inconsistency that is overlooked here: some of the most popular football competitions – the World Cup; the UEFA Champions League and its half-siblings, the Europa League and the Conference League; euros; Copa América – draws much of its appeal from the fact that it, too, is largely a playoff series. In games that matter, they are, anyway. This is where all the good things happen, the theater, the excitement and the anxiety.
After Vancouver’s 3-1 victory over 10-man San Diego in Saturday’s other conference final, we’ll have a Thomas Müller-Lionel Messi final to redeem this sordid year of our lord, 2025.
Playoffs forever.
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Leander Schaerlaeckens’ book about the United States men’s national soccer team, The Long Game, will be released in spring 2026. You can pre-order it here. He teaches at Marist University.
