Chicago Fire FC

And so they're the challenger for sure.

Now listen, can Chicago or New England make a little bit of a run? Maybe, but it's Miami or Nashville in the

East.

They've proven that they can draw Miami at the very least.

New England's third at 58.

Chicago's fourth at 55.

Charlotte is fifth at 53 points.

Technically speaking, if we beat Miami and Chicago drops points, we could jump to fourth

and

still be playing Chicago.

Chicago, if they steal points and say like New England drops points, whatever it is, it could get a little bit more convoluted, et cetera.

But I think it pretty much,

New England Revolution wins.

Philadelphia Union, and then the four versus five with Chicago Fire and Charlotte.

FCC could go as high as sixth seed and as low as the ninth seed, just depending on the results from this coming last game, 34th game of the regular season.

So that does mean that, and I saw this, Chicago Fire and Charlotte will play each other.

It's just a matter of home or away because they could flip.

So it just depends on what happens there.

LA Galaxy were off to the races against Austin, winning 4-1, while San Jose built the early lead versus Real Salt Lake and was victorious 2-1.

And Chicago beat Colorado 4-2, thanks to a brace from Jonathan Bamba.

On Sunday, Brian White scored twice for Vancouver as they made a statement with a 5-1 win over Seattle.

Atlanta United defeated Toronto 3-1 and eliminated their playoff hopes.

We've been talking about how they've gotten themselves all the way up to that three spot for a little bit.

They're now tied with Chicago fourth in goal differential for a podcast that cares a lot about the goal differential.

Yeah, but

the goal differential might end up saving them on decision day, depending on, again, how results go.

How do you assess where they're at? Obviously,

the last five games aren't a great run of form.

You have the win against Chicago, right? We have the tie against Charlotte.

Then the Rebs lost Nashville tie.

So Cincinnati could worry about potentially dropping into the play-in match.

columbus are right behind them they have to go to chicago on decision day which is going to be a really really tough match for them so i mean i think a draw for cincinnati probably keeps them out of the play-in match um

chicago can't move out of that four or five spot

um they know they can if they lose and if charlotte win they're they're two points ahead of charlotte in fifth place um

It would flip the order of the games, but they're in that.

We can do no better than fourth place.

Because of that, we know our first round playoff matchup will be against the Chicago Fire and Robert Lewandowski and Philip Zinkernagel.

The only thing we don't know is if we will host the majority of this three-game series or if we will be the fifth-place team and Chicago will host.

It'll come down to decision day for that, where Charlotte FC this coming weekend will go down to the new stadium in Miami to face Leo Messi, Inter-Miami CF, and the officials.

Awesome.

Let's move on and talk about the playoff for Charlotte FC is set against Chicago Fire.

There's multiple scenarios.

Brian, I'm going to let you go into it a little bit.