Lionel Messi soars, Portland craters on MLS Decision Day

But how did we get here? Here's the story of MLS's fateful Decision Day, as told through the lens of each conference.

Eastern Conference

The East entered Decision Day with more clarity than usual: it knew exactly which nine teams would make the playoffs, but it didn't know where each would be seeded. 2025 was a historically competitive year for the East and just five points separated ninth-place Columbus from fourth-place Charlotte as the conference entered the final match of the season.

Columbus, celebrating club legend Darlington Nagbe's final regular-season game in MLS, had a big night. Its injury-ravaged roster beat the New York Red Bulls 2-1 — a result strong enough to lift the club out of the wild-card game and directly into the seventh seed.

Orlando, one of Columbus's closest competitors, wasn't quite as successful. It faced Toronto FC in Canada and fell, 4-2, in dramatic fashion. Orlando entered Decision Day in the seventh seed; by the time the final whistle blew, it had dropped all the way down to ninth and doomed itself to the wild-card game.

Along the way, Miami's Lionel Messi sealed his spot in the MLS history books by earning the 2025 Golden Boot. His Decision Day hat trick against Nashville brought him to 29 goals and 19 assists over the course of the regular season. Messi remains the favorite to win the MLS MVP award for the second season in a row.

East playoff matchups: Philadelphia (1) vs Chicago (8) / Orlando (9), Cincinnati (2) vs Columbus (7), Miami (3) vs Nashville (6), Charlotte (4) vs NYCFC (5)

Western Conference

The West lacked the East's certainty: it entered Decision Day with eleven clubs fighting for nine playoff spots. While most of the nation's attention was on the competition for the final few seeds, a major change occurred at the top of the table.

The Vancouver Whitecaps, after cruising through most of the season in first place, fell 2-1 to FC Dallas after a (deserved) first-half red card reduced it to 10 men. That loss opened up an opportunity for second-place San Diego to leapfrog it, and San Diego needed no further encouragement to do just that. It hammered Portland, 4-0, to win the Western Conference on the final day of the season and seal a record for the finest debut season in MLS history.

Dallas' win against Vancouver earned it the seventh seed in the playoffs; Portland's loss against San Diego saw it plummet into the wild-card match. Real Salt Lake held on against St. Louis to earn a 2-2 draw and the final spot in the West bracket, despite a strong challenge from San Jose and Colorado. Both of the clubs finished the year level on points with Salt Lake and missed out on the playoffs on a heartbreaking games-won tiebreaker.

West playoff matchups: San Diego (1) vs Portland (8) / Salt Lake (9), Vancouver (2) vs Dallas (7), LAFC (3) vs Austin (6), Minnesota (4) vs Seattle (5)