Excitement, Excitement, Excitement: The MLS Cup Playoffs Roll On

By Jo-Ryan Salazar | Nov 14, 2014

Dec 6, 2013; Kansas City, MO, USA; The Philip F. Anschutz Trophy on display at The Power & Light District. Mandatory Credit: Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports

I am not just excited for the weekend of Nov. 23 because the team I follow, Bruce Arena’s Los Angeles Galaxy, are still in the race for the MLS Cup. I am excited because we now have four teams that are worthy MLS Cup winners. The Galaxy, of course, have been at the top of the mountain four times and are the one team remaining that has a chance of returning to the coveted position of league champions. However, the other three teams still alive in the race have the potential to make their own history.

No team deserves to finally shed their bridesmaid status more than Sigi Schmid’s Seattle Sounders. Seattle are arguably the most well-supported, most richly-talented, most pioneering (that was in jest, to an extent), and most hyped team in the competition.

Obafemi Martins, Clint Dempsey, Lamar Neagle and Osvaldo Alonso are just a few faces that headline this club. U.S. Open Cup champions and Supporters Shield winners, the Sounders come into their series with the Los Angeles Galaxy as favorites, since they defeated the Galaxy in their last meeting to win the Shield. Thanks to Osvaldo Alonso, the dream of the first Treble in American club soccer history is alive and well in the Emerald City, and if Seattle are able to prevail against Los Angeles, the MLS Cup may as well be theirs.

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However, if there is one Beast from the East that knows what it means to make it to the MLS Cup Final, it’s Jay Heaps’s New England Revolution. They have been in the competition’s showpiece event for a few times, all ending in defeats. But 2014 could be the year where that all changes. Armed with two of MLS’s top players in Jermaine Jones and Lee Nguyen, the Revs are ready to finally break their hoodoo and finally lift the Cup.

“The rest is the most important part of soccer,” Revs captain Jose Goncalves told MLSSoccer.com’s Craig Forde. “We need to take advantage of this time to rest, to have everyone 100 percent for the next game. Also, to relax your mind, because we have been working very hard the last few weeks.”

”At the same time we’ve already started preparing for the next week,” added Heaps, “because we want to be ready for a good New York team.”

“You want keep the rhythm,” New England defender Chris Tierney said. “When you have had a run of results like we’ve had here, you want the next game to come quick. We’ll make sure we push each other in training this week. I think we’ve done a good job at that. We’re not taking our foot off the gas because we realize how important this momentum is.”

Meanwhile, in New York, Metro Playoff Fever will be extended until at least the end of November, with Mike Petke’s New York Red Bulls eliminating D.C. United on aggregate for a meeting with their neighbors to the Northeast. It is sure to be the swan song for Thierry Henry, who could be calling it quits. And with Bradley Wright-Phillips piling on the goals for New York, New England will need to come up with a game plan to slow down his form.

“The credibility he brought us is just not something we could have achieved without him,” Don Garber, the M.L.S. commissioner, said last week to the New York Times’s Jere Longman. “When I travel around the world, there isn’t a soccer person in any country that doesn’t know that Thierry Henry is playing in the United States in Major League Soccer.”

Four teams. Four dreams. One with a Drive for Five. The other with a drive for their first star. This is the MLS Cup Playoffs, and we’ll continue to give you our special end-to-end coverage here on the MLS Multiplex.