"I don't really know how the playoffs work," he said after the team completed its day of preparation at Montclair State in Little Falls, N.J., for the opener of the first-round M.L.S. series against the visiting New England Revolution on Saturday.
The Major League Soccer playoffs work on a point system, with teams taking 3 for a victory and 1 for a draw; the first team to accumulate 5 points in the three-game series will advance to the finals Oct. 15 in Washington against the winner of the Los Angeles-Kansas City series.
"We want to buy him the MLS Cup," Sarvas said, which immediately led to two assumptions: Either Sarvas doesn't understand how the MLS playoffs work, since you can't actually buy the championship, or the Galaxy will stop at nothing, including bribery, to send Donovan off a winner.
Qualification into the playoffs works as follows: The 4 division champions from each conference (the team in each division with the best overall record), which are seeded 1 through 4 based on their overall won-lost-tied record.
Truth is, even a 16-team playoff could work in the current time allotted for postseason bowl games with a title game on January 10.
WHILE this is the second year of the FedEx Cup, there is still confusion about how the playoff system works.
The way the playoff structure works, the Heat, as the conference's No. 1 seed, will face the No. 8 seed in the first round; that will almost certainly be the Milwaukee Bucks.
Here's a look at how playoff compensation works for the 2014 league year.
With a third format in three years, golf's FedEx Cup playoffs remain a work in progress.
It took him 11 years in the N.B.A. before he worked playoff games; he is now a postseason fixture.
