Among the most entertaining dates on the MLS calendar, Decision Day once again lived up to the hype as the 2024 regular season came to a conclusion.
The Eastern Conference had plenty up for grabs, with 11 teams entering the day still in postseason contention. When it was over, Atlanta United and CF Montreal snuck into the final two spots while D.C. United and the Philadelphia Union watched their postseason hopes slip away. At the top of the table, Lionel Messi’s second-half hat trick added another record to Inter Miami’s season.
The Western Conference dramatically closed the night with the Houston Dynamo playing spoiler to LA Galaxy’s battle for the top seed with LAFC.
After 52 goals in the 14 games, here’s how the final day shook out.
Messi’s hat trick helps Miami secure MLS record
By halftime, it seemed as though Inter Miami had overcome the only adversity it would endure against the New England Revolution — a team already eliminated from postseason contention. The visitors had shocked Miami early, scoring twice to put the Supporters Shield winner at a 2-0 deficit inside 35 minutes. Luis Suarez led a Miami push, however, scoring in the 40th and 43rd minutes to bring the game level and shake the Revs’ collective spirit. And 10 minutes into the second half, Miami pulled its ultimate ace: Lionel Messi, nominal supersub.
His first touch was enough to seal the win: a sublime ball over the back to Jordi Alba, who crossed it centrally to United States international Benja Cremaschi. Messi scored a hat-trick to close the game. Despite missing 15 of the schedule’s 34 games, the Argentina captain finished the regular season with 20 goals and 16 assists.
Celebrations continued after the game, with a surprise appearance from FIFA president Gianni Infantino who announced that Miami will be the “host” team at the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup — a bit less awkward than if New England had held its lead. Miami finished with 74 points, setting an MLS record that has recently been challenged on a near-annual basis.
MLS’ rapid expansion has made comparing eras a difficult task. When the Galaxy set its highmark in 1998, it was one of a dozen MLS franchises. That number has grown from 12 teams in 2005 to 18 in 2011, 20 in 2015 and will reach 30 in 2025.
Unsurprisingly, the league’s points record has changed hands far more frequently; while the 1998 Galaxy held the honor for 19 years, the ensuing records haven’t stood for longer than three seasons at any time thereafter.
With the record in their custody, Miami must now shift focus to overcoming historical precedent. Of the six teams that have set a new single-season points record, only one (Toronto FC in 2017) went on to win that year’s MLS Cup.
— Jeff Rueter
The Dynamo secured a win in the final moments of Saturday’s Decision Day. (Thomas Shea, Imagn Images)
Houston spoils Galaxy’s battle for LA
The last few minutes of Saturday night’s action could not have been a better advertisement for Decision Day … and really for Apple and MLS Season Pass.
The final memorable scenes of the night were not necessarily of the action on the field — though the goals in stoppage time brought plenty of drama — but rather up in the stands. After the final whistle blew on LAFC’s 3-1 win over the last-placed San Jose Earthquakes at BMO Stadium in Los Angeles, the broadcast showed people on their phones watching the final minutes of the LA Galaxy’s game against Houston Dynamo.
The cameras caught the disappointment of the fans as 23-year-old Gabriel Pec buried his high-pressure penalty in the sixth added minute to pull the visiting Galaxy level and push them back on top of the Western Conference. But five minutes later, the cameras were still locked in to capture the celebration spreading through the stands at BMO when, in the 101st minute, Daniel Steres beat Maya Yoshida to a header to give the Dynamo a 2-1 win and put LAFC on top of the Western Conference ahead of their crosstown rivals.
“Houston just scored,” one fan said as he turned to those around him in the section, his phone in his hand. “Houston just scored!”
WHAT JUST HAPPENED?!? 🤯
DECISION DAY DRAMA 😲@HoustonDynamo takes down the @LAGalaxy with a 101st minute goal and LAFC fans are loving it.@LAFC clinch the top seed in the West! 🚨 pic.twitter.com/I9kkEwiCR4— Major League Soccer (@MLS) October 20, 2024
It was so close to a storybook ending for the Galaxy.
They started this year with massive changes to the front office and a belief they could turn things around by taking a different path than they had in the past. The focus became less on celebrity players with their designated player spots, instead targeting younger contributors. That it was Pec stepping up to score the key goal cashed in on that philosophy. LA paid a $10 million fee for the winger, and his penalty on Saturday was his 16th goal of the season, to go along with 14 assists.
But Denis Bouanga hit the 20-goal mark for the second straight season to get LAFC back into the game after trailing 1-0 at halftime, and goals from Eduard Atuesta and Marlon provided the goal differential to push the home side top of the west.
The Galaxy went 13-1-3 at home this season, so to lose home-field advantage was no small thing. That prize now belongs to LAFC, which lost just twice at BMO this year.
It also allows LAFC to maintain the bragging rights in Hollywood — for now.
— Paul Tenorio
End of an era for Philadelphia
Over the last five years, the Philadelphia Union has been among MLS’ most dominant sides, making the playoffs every season and winning a Supporters’ Shield. They have been MLS Cup finalists, regulars in CONCACAF Champions Cup play and have often been entertaining to watch. They’ve done all of this in the shrewdest of ways, relying on the club’s veterans, supplemented by products from their academy and a few very smart international signings. Compared to the league’s bigger fish, they’ve achieved this for pennies.
But all good things come to an end, and Saturday’s defeat at home against FC Cincinnati very much had a sense of finality to it.
Some of the Union’s failures are obvious. Philadelphia is among the league’s better teams when goalkeeper Andre Blake is on the field and is among its worst when he’s out injured, and he was sidelined for a long stretch of 2023. Other players have remained healthy but badly underperformed, and the club has struggled to manage games, dropping a league-leading 27 points from a winning position. The club has also felt tactically stale at times. Nobody who comes to their Subaru Park is surprised by the Union at this point.
Ernst Tanner, the club’s sporting director, deserves his share of the blame. Tanner was rightly praised during the early half of the Union’s run and he should be rightly criticized for missing with signing after signing in the last three years. The effects of those misses can sometimes take years to be felt. The Union’s roster has felt like a house of cards.
“We have a lot of work to do,” head coach Jim Curtin told media after the match. “The trajectory of the league is going up. The talent is going to continue to increase and make things hard and, obviously, we know our margins are tight. We’ve had success over the last several years and been really consistent and, this year, we weren’t. I wouldn’t say our luck ran out but we paid for a lot of decisions on the field and off the field as well.”
Philadelphia made waves earlier this year for the debut of a then-14-year-old Cavan Sullivan, at the time the youngest ever player in MLS. They gave him the richest homegrown contract in league history and when he departs for Manchester City at age 18, he’ll become the latest high-profile export from the Union academy. The club, though, has not reinvested those funds in the roster. Veteran mainstays seem to be worried the commitment to development is costing the Union a chance at present-day competitiveness.
“I love all our homegrowns, but you don’t win games in this league just with homegrowns,” defender Kai Wagner said after the game. “I saw too many players today in the locker room who probably don’t care that we (missed) the playoffs. That’s something that really p***es me off, when you see players who don’t care, and just go home now and think, ‘OK nice, I have a vacation in front of me.’
“I’m not a player like this. This will stay a lot with me. The 2022 MLS Cup (LAFC equalised in the eighth added minute during extra time, then won on penalties) stayed a lot with me, for a couple of weeks. So I think that’s even worse today, probably — to not make the playoffs.”
This is broken record material at this point. Club owner Jay Sugarman needs to spend more or seek outside investment.
I won’t hold my breath.
—Pablo Maurer
The final spots in the East
The night’s most dramatic action in the Eastern Conference occurred near the bottom of the table, with Montreal, Atlanta, Philadelphia and D.C. United battling for two conference play-in spots.
Philadelphia, who needed a win and a boatload of help, made it clear pretty quickly they’d be heading off on vacation, never looking competitive against Cincinnati. Montreal did its part to secure its postseason fate, putting together a solid performance against NYCFC in a 2-0 victory.
That left Atlanta and D.C. to scrap for the nine spot.
The latter’s way in was simple enough: win or draw at home against Charlotte, or lose and get some help from surrounding teams in the table. Charlotte, already eliminated from playoff contention, felt like a beatable opponent. But D.C. struggled in front of a packed house at Audi Field and were roundly played off the field in a 3-0 loss. Christian Benteke, who had a pair of goals waved off, became the league’s Golden Boot winner with 23, the sixth time in the 29 seasons of MLS that a player has finished as its top scorer on a team that missed the postseason.
Meanwhile, Atlanta put together an impressive performance at rival Orlando to secure the final spot with a bit of help. A late Orlando equalizer was controversially disallowed after Duncan McGuire’s effort was ruled to have deflected off a teammate’s arm. The goal was allowed but overturned after review. The disallowed goal meant a 2-1 win that put Atlanta through and knocked D.C. out for good.
It was a gutting blow to United’s players and coaches, who were assembled on the pitch at Audi Field. In the moments after their match drew to a close, they grabbed tablets and smartphones and watched the later stages of the Orlando-Atlanta game, the concern on their faces growing with each passing minute.
D.C. were by no means world-beaters in 2024 and few pegged them to make the playoffs in any way whatsoever. But their long-suffering fans did get a few bright spots, from Benteke’s performances to a thoroughly overhauled mentality throughout the roster. D.C. has been poor in recent years and also been unforgivingly fine with that. This was not the case in 2024.
Much of that credit has to go to head coach Troy Lesesne, in the first full year of his MLS head coaching career. Players look bought in, and many fans do too.
Credit, however, to CF Montreal for providing at least one team in the play-in games which rose to that standing rather than entering in mixed form. Under first-year coach Laurent Courtois, Montreal has been the hottest team in the East with 2.3 points per game since mid-September. A midseason trade for Caden Clark helped unlock the attack, while Josef Martinez has put in some vintage shifts up top.
Now, the Venezuelan will have a chance to make up for a few underwhelming seasons with a revenge tour of sorts. If he can get past his beloved Atlanta in the play-in game, he’ll face Miami — another former club of his, and the current employer of Tata Martino, the coach who helped him become an MLS icon in Atlanta.
— Maurer and Rueter
The Timbers celebrate winning the Cascadia Cup at Lumen Field. (Joe Nicholson, Imagn Images)
A vintage Cascadian performance
While still among MLS’ best rivalries, matchups between the Seattle Sounders and Portland Timbers have felt a bit more stale than usual in recent years.
Although the Timbers donned their new crimson-colored alternate kits, Saturday’s season-ending matchup felt like a vintage affair: some moments of inspired play surrounded by flare-ups between two teams who really don’t like one another.
Players shared shoves as rain showered in Seattle. Sounders defender Yeimar Gomez opened the scoring by nodding home an Albert Rusnak corner kick, adding to the Slovakia international’s tally of 16 assists in a sensational season. Tackles carried that extra bit of intentionality compared to most games of the day. Every second-half decision from center official Ismir Pekmic was met with a thunderous verdict from the crowd at Lumen Field.
After the Timbers scored an equalizer with just their second shot, Pekmic made his biggest decision of the day. Seattle midfielder Obed Vargas tried collecting a 50/50 ball in the box, ultimately losing out before being called for a shove. A demonstrative and vocal reaction caused greater pause, with the center official showing the 19-year-old a second yellow. Considering the magnitude of the match, it was a bold decision.
Neither the short-handed Sounders nor the full-strength Timbers seemed content to leave with just one point. Each enjoyed sustained sequences of threatening the opposing defense, with each team managing a fast break to the box in the game’s final minute. Portland out-fouled the hosts 16-14, but Pekmic showed Seattle five yellow cards while no Timbers player was cautioned.
Although the home faithful and their players gave the officials an earful after the final whistle blew, it all resulted in a 1-1 draw that had neutrals on the edge of their seats. It also opened the door for a late charge from Real Salt Lake, whose comeback win against Vancouver vaulted them to third in the West. Portland, meanwhile, fell to 9th.
— Rueter
How the West settled
Going into the final day, the Western Conference knew which nine teams would advance from the regular season. The question was where each would finish in the overall table.
Houston entered the day clinging to 5th, hoping to ensure the most favorable matchup possible in the best-of-three first round. It wasn’t easy, and their resolve was tested by Pec’s late penalty, but former Galaxy defender Daniel Steres towered over Maya Yoshida to earn the Dynamo all three points. They’ll take on a Seattle side that will play its first game without Vargas, hoping to avenge a 1-0 defeat at Lumen Field in late September.
Minnesota United had it all to play for, with any place from 5th through 9th a realistic possibility based on other results. They wasted little time taking care of their business, with comeback player of the year front-runner Robin Lod opening the scoring in the 21st minute of a 4-1 win over St. Louis City. It was enough to leap into 6th place, giving them a matchup against Real Salt Lake. Both of their matchups this year ended in a draw, and this could be a challenging clash that may require all three games.
The Colorado Rapids enjoyed a bounceback 2024, with signings Djordje Mihailovic and Cole Bassett’s breakouts. Unfortunately, those good vibes ended after the 30th game, as the Rapids lost their final four matches including a 3-2 defeat against Austin that saw the Rapids bleed two goals in second-half stoppage time. The tailspin leaves Colorado in 7th, where they’ll face a Galaxy side that may be similarly rattled from their Decision Day downfall.
Vancouver enters the playoffs in an equivalent downspell, with a 2-1 defeat against RSL. It was the Whitecaps’ fourth consecutive loss heading into the playoffs. Although they should be hosting the one-off play-in match as the 8th seed, a Supercross event at BC Place will force them to head to Portland, where their regional rival will hardly give them a home away from home.
Then again, as anyone who follows this league can validate: trying to predict how any one game will finish is a fool’s errand.
— Rueter
(Top photos: Thomas Shea, Rich Storry / Imagn Images)
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