Forget the World Series, it’s the MLS Playoffs!

The countdown now begins to November 20, when the world of soccer stands still to marvel at the Champions-to-be.

The MLS Cup will be handed to the winner in the Home Depot Centre Stadium in Los Angeles. But this isn’t like a normal playoff scenario like we’re used to in the UK, so for your information, here’s how it will work.

The best losers fill the Wild Card matches. These come from both the Eastern and Western conferences. From the East, we have FC Dallas against the NY Red Bulls on Oct 26 and from the West we have the Colorado Rapids against Columbus Crew on Oct 27.  The winners of those games will go forward into a two-legged conference semi final. The winners of the East will face Sporting Kansas City and the Western winners will face the LA Galaxy.

Still with me? Good, because there’s another semi final going on in both conferences. The West will see a matchup between the Seattle Sounders and Real Salt Lake and the East will see the Houston Dynamo face the Philadelphia Union. The winners of both will go into a Conference Championship game (just one leg this time) and the winners of the those games have the chance to play for the glory of the MLS Cup.

When is this all happening I hear you ask? Well it all starts on Wednesday with NY Red Bulls at FC Dallas, The MLS website will have the highlights as always (no word yet if any games are being shown on ESPN here). But it could get confusing to know when everything is on. So, thanks to MLSSOCCER.com, here is a link to a handy chart you can print off and keep score with. It’s just like a World Cup one, except there’s more chance of someone you like winning it.

I’ll be back later in the week to tell you what happened in the Wild Card matches.