Dayne St. Clair of Minnesota United was the hero in penalties again after a 3-3 draw against the Seattle Sounders on Saturday.
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From the moment Major League Soccer announced its current playoff format, it was clear that sooner or later, a team would come along and expose its obvious flaw: That it was possible to win a best-of-three opening round series with what was technically a losing record.
After close calls in the first two seasons, the third has seen Minnesota United finally do it. They opened the series against Seattle with a win on penalties following a 0-0 draw. Then on Saturday, they triumphed at home on penalties again following a 3-3 draw. In between, they lost the middle game in Seattle, 4-2.
Of all the possible teams to earn a series victory this way, Minnesota deserves more love than most. While they still finished the series with a record of 0W-2D-1L, manager Eric Ramsay’s men rallied from a goal down while a man down to force the dramatic tiebreaker.
But three years into a playoff format that still has precious few supporters, the Loons’ victory stands as yet another piece of evidence that the league’s apparent insistence on amplifying the existence of penalty shootouts is not having the desired outcome.
The Round One Format
In case you’re unfamiliar, the format of the first round of the playoffs is as follows: The teams play a best-of-three series, with the higher seed hosting the first and (if necessary) third match. The first team to earn two “wins” is credited with the series victory, while total aggregate goals – used in many knockout competitions around the globe – don’t factor in at all. And we put “wins” in quotation marks, because for the sake of the series, if the game isn’t resolved in 90 minutes plus stoppage time, the “winner” of an individual game is crowned by a penalty kick tiebreak.
The format borrows from other American sports. But what separates those other American sports – baseball, basketball and ice hockey – is that ties are a far less frequent outcome, and can generally be broken rather easily by playing additional minutes or innings.
Making the MLS format even more peculiar is the refusal to play 30 minutes of extra time to try and find a winner before moving on to penalties.
Yes, other knockout competitions that have done away with extra time, but usually because of a congested schedule. It’s hard to make that argument about the opening round of the MLS Cup Playoffs, which have spanned a total of 16 days. In the regular season, teams will sometimes play five matches over that span.
The Usual Suspects
The only conclusion is that MLS actually wants more games to be decided in penalties. And maybe that makes sense when your hardcore fanbase – the ones most emotionally impacted by the inevitable cruelty of penalties sooner or later – is relatively small relative to the legions of potential casual viewers across the world.
But the actual outcome is less high stakes drama and more numbing repetition. Because generally speaking, most of the shootouts have been bunched into a few series and among a few clubs.
Minnesota’s 2025 squad is already the third series winner to advance from a best-of-three without having earned a regulation victory. The Loons also accomplished the feat in 2024, as did Seattle, but in those cases both series were two match “sweeps.”
MLS Cup Playoff Round One Shootout Stats, 2023-25
Total matches played: 58
Total series contested: 24
Total shootouts contested: 17
Series with one shootout: 7
Series with two shootouts: 5
Series with no shootouts: 12
Series winners without regulation wins: 3
NOTE: Game 3 of San Diego vs. Portland will be played Sunday night. Series has one shootout so far.
And that’s just the start of a emerging history that shows most of the shootout appearances are concentrated among a few clubs who generally haven’t done much damage beyond the opening round anyway.
Of the 34 total times a team has contested a penalty shootout under the format, 19 – or well over 50% – have been contested from a group of just five sides, with all but one of those in the Western Conference. A full 27 – more than three quarters – have come from a group of only nine teams.
Multiple Round One Shootout Appearances, 2023-25
NOTE: Percentage of total Round One matches in parentheses
Real Salt Lake: 4 (80%)
Houston Dynamo: 4 (80%)
Minnesota United: 4 (80%)
Seattle Sounders: 4 (50%)
Charlotte FC: 3 (50%)
New York Red Bulls: 2 (50%)
Orlando City: 2 (40%)
New York City FC: 2 (33%)
FC Cincinnati: 2 (25%)
If you ever wanted to concoct a competitive formula to show exactly why most competitions around the world avoid penalties as often as possible, this might be the one. At least Loons fans feel hopeful when seeing teams go to the spot, given the skill of their goalkeeper Dayne St. Clair at stopping penalties. Think of the poor Dynamo and Real Salt Lake supporters, each of whom have already suffered three different playoff “defeats” on penalties.
Leaning In, For Now
Yet it doesn’t end there. The Leagues Cup – the joint competition between MLS and Liga MX each summer – also has rules that stipulate every match be decided by penalties that is not resolved over 90 minutes plus stoppages, even group stage games that award 2 points to a PK victor compared to 3 points for a regulation winner.
The same points scheme is also applied to every regular season match in the MLS reserve league, MLS Next Pro.
If there is any charm to penalty tiebreaks, it is because they are unusual and generally mean a game is of extreme importance. They’re a necessary evil, a cruelty of last resort. That the decision makers who guide MLS competitive structures want to artificially manufacture such a thing in matches of far lesser leverage is troubling.
Fortunately, from here onward games will be played in single-elimination format with 120 minutes played if they don’t have a winner after 90. And the league is expected to re-evaluate its postseason format for 2026 and beyond.