Back in the opening weeks of the season I remember reading a columnist opine that teams should look to get a point or three off Dallas now because once they moved into their new stadium they’d be absolutely unstoppable. The comment made tremendous sense at the time. Dallas was on the road and on a tear.

Perhaps they should have stayed on the road.

But the truth is, even before they moved into their new digs, the wheels were fast coming off the FC Dallas bus. In fact, you can pinpoint May 15 as the day it all started to come undone. That’s when they lost Richard Mulrooney for the remainder of the season. The midfield was never the same without him. And then they lost Eddie Johnson to turf toe.

Dallas hung on for several more games against relatively weak opposition, but when they finally played their first game at Pizza Hut Park they were limping quite badly. Ronnie O’Brien and Carlos Ruiz couldn’t provide enough spark to keep the team competitive. Indeed, often times it appeared that Ruiz was more a hindrance than a help.

Some of Dallas’s problems were self-inflicted. To name one, they have a persistently weak defense. But the other problems, the ones that mattered most, were simply bad luck. They lost some crucial players and never got them back.

It was somewhat fitting that a lousy bit of luck dictated the ending of Dallas’s season. The only reason their semifinal match went to a penalty kick shootout at all is because Carlos Ruiz knocked his overtime penalty kick off the post.

A lousy bit of luck can end your season. And bad luck ended FC Dallas’s season in more ways than one.

I was reminded of an article I read last year while reading Mike Wise’s latest column on the rift between Peter Nowak and Freddy Adu. Here’s the pertinent excerpt:

By Steven Goff, The Washington Post, April 16, 2004

Peter Nowak was 9 when his father first took him to a clearing in the woods near their home in central Poland. The choppy ground was their soccer pitch, trees stood as goal posts. The game was one on one, the aspiring son against the accomplished father. “He told me we’re not going to stop until you beat me,” Peter Nowak recalled recently. “I beat him for the first time when I was 22 years old. Every Sunday, every week, year after year, he embarrassed me in front of my friends, in front of my girlfriends, in front of my neighbors. I was upset, I was crying, but it made me stronger. It was frustrating - but that’s why I am so hungry for winning.”

You want some insight into the relationship between Freddy Adu and Peter Nowak? You want to know why Nowak is the way he is? Read that story again. I think you’ll find some of what you’re looking for.

Whenever DC United makes it to the post-season they win the MLS Cup - unless they face the Chicago Fire.

They won the cup in 1996 and 1997. Chicago beat them in the cup final in 1998. They won the cup again in 1999. In 2000, 2001, and 2002 they failed to qualify for the playoffs. In 2003 Chicago knocked them out of the post-season in the semifinals. In 2004 they won the MLS Cup for a fourth time. In 2005, for a second time, Chicago ended United’s season in the first round.

Give credit to Chicago. Give them full credit. The Fire have DC United’s post-season number. They proved that again last night with an astounding offensive performance that left the home team in shambles before the first 45 minutes were over.

A team doesn’t go down 3-0 by halftime without either being utterly outclassed or without having experienced some manner of wholesale meltdown. United suffered the indignity of both melting down and being outclassed all at once. After a terrible first half the shell-shocked team walked into the locker room to a chorus of well-deserved boos. And while the Fire had amply demonstrated their supremacy during that half by punishing every single mistake DC United made, even they must have been astonished at their good fortune.

Whatever hope United had of losing that game with a bit of dignity intact was demolished in the second half, not by the fourth goal, but by a singularly classless act committed by a player whose class had been until then beyond reproach.

Coming as it did in the playoffs, the loss was arguably the most devastating home defeat on record for DC United. Only twice before, both times in 2000, have teams beaten them at home by a four goal margin. Miami beat United by a score of 6-2 to close the team’s season that year. Los Angeles beat them 4-0 to begin it.

Over the weekend I watched Chicago play like a machine for 90 minutes. I also saw a powerful New England rally from a two goal deficit to win their semifinal series in decisive fashion. Last year’s Eastern Conference final was a game of epic proportions. This year’s final may very well rival it. And no matter which team survives that battle, it’s hard to imagine either Colorado or the Galaxy presenting them with much challenge at the MLS Cup.

I was right about the MetroStars. I wrote a couple weeks ago of my great confidence that the MetroStars will choke whenever the choking time comes. I thought that time was back in the final game of the season against CD Chivas USA, but in that I was mistaken. The choking time was last night on a snowy field in New England.

(I don’t know about you, but I can’t get enough soccer in the snow. That’d be the best thing about MLS going winter-league. But my, oh, my it must have been miserable in the stands.)

I knew as soon as the Metros obtained that two goal aggregate lead that the day of the beatdown cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the MetroStars desolate. The wrath of god? No, it’s the Curse of Caricola. (For those unfamiliar, it’s #10. They’ve sucked ever since.) I don’t mean to take anything away from New England. They deserved the win, and they’re a worthy team for the Eastern Conference final. Still, they did have that curse working in their favor.

I can’t believe Colorado made it to the Western Conference final. Colorado? A team that with a little luck either Real Salt Lake or CD Chivas USA could have caught and surpassed in the standings at various points this season? Fernando Clavijo’s team? I’m postive this is all as big a surprise to the Rapids fans as it is to me.

And wasn’t Dallas a team that seemed unstoppable earlier this season? Weren’t they a team that for a time featured the fearsome threesome of Carlos Ruiz, Eddie Johnson and Ronnie O’Brien? Now they’ve been bumped from cup contention. I suppose the guys over at MLS headquarters are delighted about that one. So much for that MLS Cup sellout. I can’t help but think what Dallas really needed last night was a Grown-Ass Man.

By the way, I believe (and correct me if I’m wrong) Colorado is the first team under the league’s current playoff system to advance to the conference final without winning a single playoff game.

Hey, San Jose Earthquakes! How’s that home-field advantage treating you? Sure they came back from an even more dire predicament a couple years ago in a game that many still believe was the best MLS game ever played. But games like that don’t happen very often. This time the deficit was just too much for the Earthquakes to overcome.

Do the Galaxy deserve to move onto the conference final? It’s a moot question. They won the series. That’s all you can really say. But there’s something distasteful about the regular season champion getting bounced in the first round of the playoffs. It reflects badly on the worth of the regular season, and it reflects badly on the merit of the playoffs.

Enough about last night.

Let’s not forget the big event is still to come. Yes, sir, there remains the ESPN2 extravaganza on Sunday afternoon. The media will be there en masse, all with the same question in mind. You know the one. It’s been gnawing at you for over a week: Will Freddy Adu play, or will Nowak keep him on the bench just to spite him?

Oh, right. I suppose the result of that game will be of some consequence also. Sure. That too.

I’ve avoided posting all week because I knew I’d end up writing about the playoffs. And judging from what I see around the internet there seem to be three, and only three, perspectives that one can take on the matter, none of which are particularly seemly.

First, you can be a good MLS soldier, ready and able to rise to the defense of the playoffs as they currently exist. These are the people who use terms like “chess match” to describe the tedious and under-attended 0-0 draws we saw last weekend.

Second, you can strap a single-table cross on your back and walk through the streets of Major League Soccer preaching against playoff heresy and bewailing the reward the Earthquakes and the Revolution received for seasons well-played: playing from behind in a must win game.

Third, you can engage in the MLS equivalent of fan-fiction and concoct all manner of elaborate alternative playoff schemes that are both better than what MLS offers and without any hope of practical realization.

I don’t care to associate myself with any of these perspectives.

The good soldiers blithely discount the fact that problems do exist. To name two, with notable exceptions, many MLS playoff games are lousy and suffer from poor attendance. (Of course, some of the poor attendance is the fault of an MLS marketing strategy that seems to concentrate on the idea that MLS games are “events” to which to take your “group,” at the expense of building a devoted fan base that shows up no matter what. But that’s a discussion for another time.)

The single-table preachers are annoying because they have a point. The current system does not adequately reward teams that do well in the regular season. But the purported universal righteousness of a single table is not gospel truth, and in their preaching (or is it kvetching) they ignore the variety of impracticalities and problems that a single table would pose for MLS.

The fan-fiction folks are simply utopian. They are more interesting than the alternative types, but they suffer from the idealistic notion that every problem MLS faces meets its solution with one or another structural change. If only they’d change the playoff format, if only they’d change the roster rules, if only, if only, if only … then all would be better. It wouldn’t.

As far as I’m concerned the playoffs are what they are and when MLS grows to 18 teams they’ll be more interesting and exciting. When fewer than half the teams in the league make the playoffs the post-season will more readily guarantee high quality games between high quality teams.

But that improvement will come at a price. With 18 teams the bottom of the table affairs in the second half of the regular season won’t be very compelling. If you think today’s single-table preachers are bad, just wait until the promotion and relegation preachers experience those doldrums.