Union opens playoffs against Houston

THE GUESSING GAME is over.

The Union will host the Houston Dynamo on Sunday in its first-ever Major League Soccer playoff appearance.

All week, the fate of the club was in flux. It took a 3-1 Houston win over Los Angeles last night for the seeds to be finalized. Now the two-leg conference semifinals await and the Union, the No. 3 seed in the East, will host the Dynamo, the No. 2 seed, at PPL Park, at 4 p.m. (ESPN2).

The Union will then travel to Robertson Stadium in Houston for the return leg on Thursday, Nov. 3 at 8:30 p.m. The winner will advance to the conference finals via aggregate goal count.

Sporting Kansas City defeated D.C. United, 1-0, on Saturday to finish the regular season with 51 points (the Union had 48, Houston 49), en route to collecting the top seed in the East, and now awaits the higher of two seeds to emerge from this week's wild-card round.

Four teams qualified for the one-game wild-card matches. FC Dallas, the No. 1 seed, will host Red Bull New York (No. 4) on Wednesday night, while Colorado (No. 2) meets Columbus (No. 3) on Thursday, with the lowest-remaining seed advancing to face top-seeded Los Angeles. The other two conference semifinal clubs out of the West are Seattle (No. 2) and Real Salt Lake (No. 3), which will face each other on Saturday.