With less than a month to go before First Kick, Major League Soccer has finally confirmed the new playoff structure for 2011. As hinted by commissioner Don Garber at last year’s MLS Cup in Toronto, the playoffs will expand to 10 teams from eight.

With the Red Bull Arena being awarded the MLS All-Star Game, not MLS Cup, there is plenty of food for thought about who is going to host the final game of the season. If MLS is to retain its system of awarding the game to a neutral site — something the league reviewed in 2009 but decided to continue on with after Seattle fans packed the house on a rainy Sunday November night to see Real Salt Lake take the title in penalty kicks over the Los Angeles Galaxy — New York is out for 2011. Commissioner Don Garber said the MLS Cup “could be at some point” awarded to the New York area, but he and the league are concerned about the cold November weather. That means the league may have learned something from holding a night game in Toronto last season, where there were thousands of empty seats. Temperatures near the freezing mark and bitter breezes off Lake Ontario made the game a chilly one. MLS Cup was held in cold-weather venues before, such as Foxboro, Mass. and Columbus, but those were day games. And that’s a massive difference.

According to the CSA, FIFA expects a “minimum of six cities” to be hosts for the 2015 WWC, that’s less than the number we see for a men’s World Cup. When it comes to FieldTurf, the CSA isn’t expecting there to be any issues. The CSA noted that the recent U-17 Women’s World Cup in Trinidad and Tobago had artificial fields that met FIFA specs. And, the U-20 World Cup final was played on the BMO, dammit, National Soccer Stadium FieldTurf in 2007.

As the Colorado Rapids gathered on a platform placed at the centre of BMO Field, jumping up and down, surrounded by sky-blue confetti, holding the MLS Cup aloft, FC Dallas midfielder Dax McCarty stood on the field, staring at the celebration. The rest of his FC Dallas teammates, losers of a 2-1 decision after extra time in Toronto, had left the field. But McCarty stood and stared at the Rapids’ celebration. Wondering what could have been. Wondering what would have happened if a ball off the foot of Colorado sub Macoumba Kandji hadn’t taken a strange deflection off defender FC Dallas George John in the 108th minute and looped past the goal line. What could have happened in penalty kicks had John’s last-gasp effort at redemption, from point blank range, not been stopped by the outstretched hand of Rapids’ keeper Matt Pickens.

FC Dallas coach Schellas Hyndman admitted that the weather is an advantage for the Colorado Rapids, who played in freezing temperatures in Saturday's Eastern Conference Final triumph over San Jose. "I don't really think you can prepare for anything like that [cold temperatures] unless you go two or three weeks early... with the weather, Colorado has a little bit of an advantage."