Doug McIntyre’s weekly MLS column, 23 Thoughts, parses through the latest insights and inside info from around American soccer.

For its entire 23-year existence, Major League Soccer has been based in New York. And for 23 consecutive seasons, MLS Cup has been played somewhere other than in the Big Apple. That will again be the case after Atlanta United finished off the New York Bulls in Thursday night’s Eastern Conference final second leg in Harrison, New Jersey, just a few miles away from the league’s midtown Manhattan headquarters.

The Red Bulls, née MetroStars, have made the final just once, in 2008, when they lost to the Columbus Crew in Los Angeles in one of last championship matches to be held at a neutral site. But as much as the league would no doubt love to have its marquee event played in the largest and most important media market in North America, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that commissioner Don Garber and Co. aren’t too upset that this year’s finale will be staged between Atlanta United and the Portland Timbers in front of a record crowd in Georgia’s capital.

It’s hard to overstate how impressive Atlanta United has been on and off the field during its first two years of existence. Honestly, I can’t think of a single mistake they’ve made. It’s remarkable. Beloved owner Arthur Blank, team prez Darren Eales, technical director Carlos Bocanegra and, most of all, the city of Atlanta deserve this match. With an overflow 70,000-plus expected, it will shatter a 16-year-old attendance mark for MLS Cup. It could be the highest-attended soccer game anywhere in the world that day. (With Borussia Dortmund and Barcelona away next weekend, Manchester United-Fulham at the 74,000-seat Old Trafford is the only match with a chance to draw more.) Mostly, it will be the best possible advertisement for MLS.

1. The Red Bulls deserve a ton of credit for the season they had, which included a third Supporters Shield in six years. Coach Chris Armas took a lot of heat for his decision to abandon New York’s high-press system for a more cautious approach in Game 1, which backfired when they lost 3-0 to effectively end the series then and there. I think that’s a little unfair.

New York Red Bulls coach Chris Armas. (Tim Clayton/Getty)2. You don’t want to give Miguel Almiron and Josef Martinez too many opportunities to get forward at home in the first half of a 180-minute affair. On the other hand, it’s hard to sit deep and absorb pressure for an entire match, especially against a team as dangerous as United, and harder still to dial the pace back up if you go behind. I thought Armas explained his thought-process well when asked about his tactics this week. “The idea of not getting stretched, I think was a good one,” Armas said. “We thought we had to pick our poison,” Armas said.

3. I’m glad Armas also made the point that the playoff format hurt the Red Bulls. The league will move to single elimination matches in the postseason starting next year, with the higher seed hosting each do-or-die match. Based on their regular season record, Red Bull Arena would’ve hosted Atlanta, which has never won there.

4. “In the future, we’re going to host one game at our place,” Armas said, explaining how the current setup doesn’t reward the higher seed at all. “In many ways, it’s a disadvantage,” said Armas. “You have to go on the road. You have to play in their building, where the other team typically gets good results…It’s difficult.”

5. With all due respect to the Red Bulls, who set a regular season record with 71 points, and Toronto FC, which last year won the Supporters Shield, MLS Cup, Canadian Championship and lost the final of the CONCACAF Champions League on penalties, this Atlanta team can make a decent case for Best MLS Team Ever if it beats the Timbers at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Dec. 8.

6. An argument can also be made that Almiron and Martinez, who scored a record 31 regular season goals this year, are the best attacking one-two punch in league history. To me, the only others in contention would be Landon Donovan-Robbie Keane in LA at the beginning of this decade, and D.C. United duo Marco Etcheverry and Jaime Moreno during MLS’s early years.

7. Almiron was everywhere Thursday against the Red Bulls, tracking back all the way to his own goal line to defend on more than one occasion. As fun as he is to watch on television, he’s even more impressive in person. The first time I saw him play live I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. Martinez gets the goals and he’s probably going to be named MLS MVP. But for me, Almiron is the man who makes Atlanta go.

8. There’s been a ton of talk about where Almiron will end up next season. He’s been linked to a . number of English Premier League clubs, most recently Newcastle United. I asked a longtime MLS scout if there was any reason Almiron wouldn’t be a good fit for the rough-and-tumble Prem. “He’ll do just fine there,” the scout said.

9. This is pure speculation, but if I were to bet on which team Almiron will end up with, I’d say Tottenham Hotspur. Eales was Spurs executive director before leaving to build Atlanta’s expansion project from the ground up, so his connections to the London club — including to Argentine manager Mauricio Pochettino — run deep.

10. Almiron would be an ideal replacement for Christian Eriksen at Tottenham if the Dane becomes the latest Spurs attacker (after Luka Modric and Gareth Bale) to move to Real Madrid, as rumored. What’s for sure is that the Paraguayan, who has also reportedly drawn interest from Arsenal (it’s worth noting that Arsenal, Newcastle and Spurs all have Spanish speaking managers at the helm), wont go for cheap. The latest whispered transfer figure is north of $30 million, which would easily surpass the potential $20 million-plus that Bayern Munich could end up playing the Vancouver Whitecaps for Alphonso Davies, depending on how the Canadian teenager does in the Bundesliga. Would Arsenal or Newcastle spend that much? Would Spurs, which was the only team in Europe’s top five leagues not to add a single player over the summer? If they were to sell Eriksen for a kings ransom, maybe.

11. The Timbers also deserve a ton of love for reaching their second final in four years. By the way, how good was Thursday’s Timbers-Sporting Kansas City match? Atlanta United and the Red Bulls have earned all the accolades they’re getting. That series was worthy of a final. But on the other side of the bracket, the second leg of the Western Conference final was epic. Hats off to Portland for going into perhaps the most intimidating venue in the league in Sporting Park and coming out with a win. Giovani Savarese’s team is damn good. They’re built for the playoffs, and they deserved to go through to their second final in four years on the strength of goals by Sebastian Blanco and Diego Valeri.

12. For Kansas City, the aim was simple after Sunday’s scoreless opener. Win at home, advance to MLS Cup. They knew what was required and couldn’t get it done. Saying that, the format didn’t help them either. With one audacious swing of Blanco’s leg, SKC instantly went from being positioned to advance to facing elimination. That’s harsh. Sporting even managed to tie the game late after going down another goal, but gave up a breakaway to Valeri as they desperately searched for the winner in the final moments. Personally, I would’ve loved to see another 30 minutes of that match, then penalties if necessary. The away goals tiebreaker hurts the higher seeds, and it should never have been implemented in MLS back in 2014. Thank goodness it’s now a thing of the past.

13. Thursday was not a good night when it came to the behavior of some fans. The KC-Portland game had to be halted at one point because projectiles were raining down from the stands, prompting Sporting coach Peter Vermes to stalk across the field to chastise his own supporters. You don’t see that every game. And early in the New York-Atlanta contest, a Red Bulls fans threw an object (word is it was a glove) at Almiron. That fan, a minor, was ejected.

14. Got some details on how next season, which will be about month shorter than this one despite the arrival of expansion side FC Cincinnati, will look. Essentially, every team will play two more midweek tilts per season: one home, one away. That seems reasonable, even for the teams who struggle, for a variety of reasons, to sell tickets to those games.

15. Others are already sold on the new schedule. “Broadcasters love midweek games,” a league employee told me. The idea is to have two matches a week. I’m also told it’s possible that future seasons, perhaps even next season, could start slightly earlier, in late February, with most of the opening weekend of matches played in southern markets where it’s not so cold.

16. There was a ton of player news this week. David Villa leaving NYCFC. Bastian Schweinsteiger reupping for another year with the Chicago Fire. Columbus Crew and U.S. national team keeper Zack Steffen potentially heading to Manchester City. Let’s look at that last one. My understanding is that the parties involved are operating under the assumption that Steffen won’t get a U.K. work permit on appeal. (He doesn’t currently meet the requirements to be granted one automatically, and wont for another year at the earliest.)

17. That means that Steffen, if he’s sold to City, would have to be loaned out immediately. One possible destination is La Liga side Girona, which City’s owners purchased last year. And if Girona were to take Steffen on loan from its parent club, it would be required to use one of its three roster spots for non-Europeans. That would seem to guarantee that Steffen would actually play. Facing the likes of Lionel Messi or Antoine Griezmann in real games would be an invaluable experience for the 23-year-old backstop and he should jump at the chance, even if he never ends up taking the field for the defending English champs.

18. How crazy is the end of that last sentence? As others have pointed out, the reported (by The Athletic‘s Paul Tenorio) $7-10 million City would pay for Steffen is chump change to Abu Dhabi-based City Football Group. And CFG has made a habit of buying MLS players (MIx Diskerud, Jack Harrison) that manager Pep Guardiola has zero intention of ever promoting to City’s first team. It’s a disturbing trend. I can understand how a young MLS player like Matt Miazga would find it hard to say no when Chelsea comes calling. Same when Seattle’s DeAndre Yedlin signed with Spurs. But loan deals can go bad real quick, as Miazga’s current situation with Nantes illustrates. Hopefully Steffen will have a better experience, but one can understand why FIFA is apparently mulling a new rule that would limit the amount of players a club can loan out.

19. Too bad that there’s no truth the rumors that had Italian striker Mario Balotelli potentially signing for the Philadelphia Union:

20. I happen to think Balotelli could be a huge hit here, partly because he would relish the relative anonymity of living in the United States or Canada as opposed to Europe. And he’s still just 28.

21. I reported Thursday that Evan Bush and the Montreal Impact were closing in on a deal that would more than double Bush’s 2018 salary, to an average of more than $333,000 (U.S.) per year for three years. I believe that some of that money will be paid in the form of bonuses. Therefore, when the MLS Players Union releases salary info for all its members next spring, Bush’s numbers (both base salary and guaranteed compensation) will be lower.

22. This is the problem with those union figures. Always has been. Does anyone really believe, to give just one example, that the Impact paid World Cup winner Alessandro Nesta just $225,000 in guaranteed money when they signed the defender from AC Milan in 2012? No way. I was told at the time by a source who would know that Nesta was raking in four times times that amount, at least.

23. Couldn’t help thinking about that reading Pablo Maurer’s deep dive into Wayne Rooney’s contract with D.C. United, which revealed that Rooney might end up making double the $2,776,730 listed by the union. He even has a separate marketing contract with the club that will extends beyond his playing days. If the Union figures aren’t accurate, why continue to put them out there at all?

Doug McIntyre covers soccer for Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter @ByDougMcIntyre.

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