Wild Card games tomorrow and Wednesday
CF Montréal host Atlanta United at 7:30 pm ET tomorrow and Portland host Vancouver Wednesday at 10:30 pm ET. Check out the full schedule here.
There’s no time to waste now that Decision Day has come and gone. Whoever wins the Wild Card games gets a shot at the first seed in a Round One Best-of-3 Series of the Audi 2024 MLS Cup Playoffs. Here’s how the four teams shake out on the potential chaos-meter.
It remains confusing exactly why the Timbers weren’t able to climb out of the Wild Card spots in the first place. Evander, Felipe Mora and Jonathan Rodríguez are one of the most productive attacking trios we’ve ever seen in MLS – we’re talking a combined 45 goals and 32 assists between them – and they have more firepower behind them in Santiago Moreno (6g/14a) and Antony (6g/6a).
The only reason they’re not a top-four team is a leaky defense that allowed 56 goals on the season. The Rapids and CF Montréal are the only two teams to allow more goals this year and make the playoffs.
Here’s the thing though: there’s evidence to suggest the defense is at least competent.
Across the entire year, Portland have allowed 1.47 xG per game. That’s not great or even good, but it is better than Colorado, Inter Miami, LA Galaxy and Montréal. That being said, they’ve been a far different team over the second half of the season. In their final 17 games of the season, they allowed just 1.29 expected goals per game. Only Seattle posted a better defensive record in that span and only one team equaled it: Portland’s potential Round One opponent, LAFC.
For whatever reason, those underlying numbers didn’t translate into success on the scoresheet. But the bottom line is they’ve become a team capable of limiting quality chances while still putting forward an attack filled with dynamic players who can rip you apart at a moment’s notice. They’re much better than their record.
The problem is they’re about to run into LAFC. They don’t match up particularly well there because, well, no one except Columbus do. Still, if any of these Wild Card sides is going to pull off an upset or two in the playoffs, it’s this Portland side.
We talked about Portland’s bad luck defensively. The reverse is true and magnified for Atlanta United this season. Per American Soccer Analysis, Atlanta underperformed their expected point total by more than 10 points this season. Basically, the numbers suggest they were closer to a 51-point team rather than the 40-point team they ended up as.
That’s in large part due to their remarkable finishing numbers. They led the league in xG underperformance in attack this season, scoring about 11 goals fewer than their xG total. Only five teams since 2013 have underperformed by a larger margin. Part of that is because Atlanta have a number of players who clearly aren’t prolific finishers. The other and much larger part of that is Atlanta have had some miserable luck.
Does that mean they’ll suddenly regress to the mean all at once in the playoffs and become a juggernaut? No, almost definitely not. But it is one reason to buy into Atlanta being a potential chaos team. The other reason is Atlanta, weirdly enough, seem to have Inter Miami’s number. Atlanta United took four points off the Herons this year. You know who else did that? No one. Not a single other team. And Lionel Messi played in both games.
There’s something poetic in an MLS way (think bad open mic night) about the statistically luckiest team in MLS history by a huge margin failing to beat the unluckiest finishing side in the league. It doesn’t really mean Atlanta will be able to pull it off again of course, but at least there’s precedent.
I don’t mean for Atlanta being higher in this list to be dismissive of Montréal. Atlanta got the higher spot solely on their record against Inter Miami. But don’t forget this Montréal side did technically take down Miami back in March and they definitely took down Atlanta in Atlanta just a few weeks ago. That, of course, followed up their July win over the Five Stripes in Montréall They’ll be hosting their Wild Card matchup and, based on how the season results went, they’re more likely to advance to Round One.
But this isn’t about the Wild Card. This is about what kind of chaos you can cause once you can get past that. CF Montréal have been hot down the stretch to the tune of 1.78 points per game in their nine games since Leagues Cup, but the underlying numbers tell a different story. ASA has their expected point total all the way down at 1.00 point per game. They’ve been catching a few breaks thanks in large part to the performance of Josef Martínez and Caden Clark. The pair have combined for 10 goals and four assists since Clark arrived in Montréal and they should be feeling more confident than ever heading into this.
That being said, I’m not sure that’s enough to get past Inter Miami in a three-game series. Or to even really consider it a possibility.
They don’t even get to host their own Wild Card game, and we’ve seen multiple times over the last few years what happens when they go up against LAFC in meaningful games. I don’t mean to be dismissive… but I kind of mean to be dismissive. They just haven’t proven they can get the job done against elite teams. There’s no proof of concept or reason to believe that will change all of a sudden against Portland, let alone LAFC. Sorry, ‘Caps. I hope you prove me wrong.
Good luck out there. Inform friends and family members you will be busy soon.
