Last week I mentioned how soccer journalists tend to pillory the MLS playoff structure, then pick all the higher seeds to win anyway. After finding as many articles as I could, I ended up with a sample universe is 16 writers (I'm combining the ESPN.com guys since they only previewed one conference each) as follows:
Ives Galaracep/Jeff Carlisle (ESPN.com)
Glenn Davis (Houston Chronicle)
Jamie Trecker (Fox Soccer Channel)
Stephen Goff (Washington Post)
Johnnie Whitehead (USA Today)
Adam Hirschfield (USA Today)
Steve Davis (USA Today)
Marc Connolly (USA Today)
Beau Dure (USA Today)
Grant Wahl (SI.com)
Ridge Mahoney (Soccer America)
Brant Parsons (Orlando Sentinel)
Pat Walsh (Goal.com)
Luis Arroyave (Chicago Tribune)
Jeff Bradley (USA Today)
Robert Burns (FoxSports.com)
Below I've listed how many of these writers picked the lower seed in each race:
NY Red Bulls: 2 (Arroyave, Bradley)
Chicago Fire: 4 (Steve Davis, Dure, Bradley, Parsons)
Colorado Rapids: 1 (Bradley)
Chivas USA: 2 (Connolly, Wahl)
Now that we're halfway through each series, everything seems have played out exactly as you would expect given the seedings. Both number one seeds won on the road. Both number three seeds won at home. Every game was decided by one goal, which gives the number one seeds a prohbitive advantage going into the home leg, and gives the number two seeds a very good chance of coming back.
So empirically, the system seems to work, doesn't it?
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