Start with the classic ESPN Soccernet format: who's who and why they're going to win and then why they're not. Which is kind of a pansy way to go about your predictions. Everyone wins and no one wins. But it will catch you up on the must know of the MLS playoff contenders:
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story?id=689854&sec=mls&root=mls&cc=5901
(LA is favored. The Sounders are the golden boys. Chivas will fold under post season pressure as history illustrates. Etc. Etc.)
Goal.com
A certain Mr. McCarthy over at Goal.com who likes to muse takes a more manly stance with his actual rankings of the playoff hopefuls. He places the Sounders at #2, right after LA (the Yankess of MLS - blech.). And he asks, astutely, "will the pressure of reaching a final on home turf make the task too difficult?"
http://www.goal.com/en-us/news/1110/major-league-soccer/2009/10/28/1588779/mls-playoffs-mccarthys-musings-ranking-the-mls-cup
Then Allen Ramsey, also of Goal.com (fast becoming one of my favorite intelligent soccer websites, after Prost Amerika http://www.prostamerika.com/soundersfc/), really touches Soundersboard existential heart with the following "one's to watch" shortlist of unsung potential heros.
Heros. Intensity. Drama. America. Ramsay's speaking my language (well, up 'till the America part, but thanks to MLS in Seattle, I'm beginning to feel better about that too - and also that 4 part series on NPR "Europe and Us" that was on the other week... solar power, bicycles, high speed trains, a package of steaks that comes with a bovine bio...)
Seattle's rising star? None other than Stevie "Jets" Zakuani:
It's gonna be a great (rainy) night tomorrow night.
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