The Los Angeles Galaxy will play a home playoff game for the first time in six years on Saturday afternoon when they host Nashville SC in a Western Conference Round One matchup at Carson, Calif.

The fourth-seeded Galaxy (14-12-8, 50 points) posted a 3-0-3 record over their last six home games and 5-1-5 mark overall in their last 11 contests to earn home-field advantage in the opening playoff round.

After appearing as if they might miss the playoffs altogether, following a 3-0 loss to the Vancouver Whitecaps on Sept. 14, the late-season surge allowed the Galaxy to pull even in points with fifth-seeded Nashville SC (13-10-11, 50 points) but hold the tiebreaker based on win total.

“We’re finishing on a good note, but the next game won’t look anything like the last 34. Now we’ve got to come with higher intensity than what we’ve seen through most of the season,” Galaxy coach Greg Vanney said. “But I think this is the group that, honestly, when I looked in their eyes and when I talked to them over the course of this week, they envy the challenges in front of them.”

Captain Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez scored his 11th goal in his last 12 games to fuel Los Angeles to a 3-1 victory over the Houston Dynamo on Sunday. He finished the season with a team-leading 18 goals and was named a finalist for the 2022 Landon Donovan MLS MVP Award.

Galaxy midfielder Riqui Puig and forward Dejan Joveljic also scored goals against the Dynamo. Puig converted a penalty kick in Los Angeles’ 1-1 draw against Nashville SC on Sept. 10, while Joveljic netted the lone goal in the teams’ initial meeting April 23.

Nashville’s SC Hany Mukhtar, also a finalist for the league’s MVP award, won the 2022 MLS Golden Boot after scoring 23 goals this season. He also converted a penalty kick in last month’s match against Los Angeles.

Nashville SC have made themselves comfortable on the road, a circumstance that was helped when they started the season with eight straight games away from home.

“I remember joining the team in preseason and one of the talking points was this opening road stretch,” Nashville SC midfielder Sean Davis said, per the Tennessean. “We knew we could be even better on the road than we were in years past. And when you look back on this year, it ended up being our road form that helped us get into the playoffs and push for a higher seed.”

–Field Level Media