KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The idea, Toni Dovale said, took a little getting used to at first.
In his native Europe – in much of the world, really – once a club's regular season is over, that's it. The high-finishing sides celebrate qualifying for regional competitions the following year, the cellar-dwellers mourn their relegation and start making plans to dump payroll. The teams in the middle just wrap things up and head into the offseason looking for ways to get better – and waiting to lose their brightest stars when the big-money clubs come calling.
But on Thursday night, Sporting Kansas City's Spanish winger will get his first taste of the MLS playoff system when his new club – who finished fifth in the Eastern Conference and would have been 10th overall in a single table – meet the New York Red Bulls in the Knockout Round (8 pm ET, ESPN2, ESPN Deportes in US, TSN1 in Canada).
Which team will win in the Knockout Round?
“It's really a different mentality for me,” Dovale told MLSsoccer.com on Tuesday. “I understand that it's good for the show, but it's a little strange to finish maybe 15 points away from the first [spot], and then you can maybe win MLS Cup. But that's what makes this game so unpredictable, and it's very interesting to see how things can change. Some teams can do a step up, and other teams cannot hold on. So it will be interesting to see how things shape up.”
French center back Aurelien Collin, the MVP of the 2013 MLS Cup and a three-time MLS All-Star, said he was able to adjust his mindset fairly quickly when he came to Kansas City in 2011 after bouncing around leagues all over Europe.
“You have your league, leading up to the playoffs, and then it's a new beginning,” he said. “It's like a second chance, especially for us. Our season had a lot of ups and downs, but now we're in the playoffs and it's a new thing and we can still be champions. I like the fact that we still have a chance.”
It's a second chance with little – if any – margin for error.
“The intensity of the games spike up pretty quickly,” manager Peter Vermes told reporters. “You realize pretty quickly that this is not a regular-season game. There's a different level of intensity that goes on when you play a playoff game.”
Sporting have plenty of experience with that intensity – in victory and defeat – after qualifying for the postseason the previous three years running.
“It's like the coach calls it: Every game is a final in the playoffs,” said Collin, who scored a second-half equalizer and then converted the winning spot kick – after an MLS Cup-record 10 rounds of penalties – in last year's title match. “I enjoy it. It's something that, of course, before I came to America I didn't know about it. But I came here, and I like it.”
Steve Brisendine covers Sporting Kansas City for MLSsoccer.com.
