Major League Soccer, Playoffs Preview: Galaxy Will Face 36,000 Fans At Qwest

Home-field advantage is a very real thing in MLS. Only two teams won fewer games than they lost at home and just one was outscored in its own park this season.

Among playoff teams, that is even more pronounced. The San Jose Earthquakes were the only team to lose as many as five home matches and only two teams outscored their opponents by fewer than eight goals at home.

Over the next few days, we’ll be taking a closer look at the four first-round playoff matchups.

We’ll give lineup projections, take a look at the various key matchups, look at the head-to-head records and even give you a little history lesson. Each match will also have something we are calling Match Reference Cards, something we started doing at Sounder at Heart and are bringing to the soccer hub.

Things have surely changed for both clubs.

At their best, Los Angeles is as good as MLS has to offer, but it has been awhile since anyone has seen their best. Meanwhile, Seattle has been churning out strong performance after strong performance for nearly three months now. As unthinkable as it may have seemed in June, Seattle is the proven commodity and Los Angeles is the question mark. The Galaxy have moments of brilliance at their disposal with their star power, but is that enough to overcome where their weakness and Seattle’s strength, foot speed, converge?

A third of the way through the season, a Rapids-Crew MLS Cup final would not have been that hard to imagine. The Crew were the top team in the Eastern Conference at 21 points and the Rapids were tied for the second most points in the Western Conference at 19 points. They also had the third and fourth best respective goal-differences.

Their seasons went in divergent directions for each of the next two-thirds of the season. While the Crew continued their strong start, the Rapids hit a lull in games 11-20. In the season’s final third, it was the Rapids who found their form, while the Crew went into a serious tailspin.