ahead of its debut in the 1999 season. Road to the final The MLS Cup is the post-season championship of Major League Soccer (MLS), a professional club soccer league based in the United States that began play in 1996. The league's third season was contested by 12 teams organized into two conferences, each playing 32 matches during the regular season from April to September. Teams faced opponents from the same conference four times during the regular season and from outside their conference twice. The season was the first to be played during a FIFA World Cup, necessitating a lighter schedule for two weeks in June. MLS continued to use the modified version of the sport's rules that it adopted for the 1996 season, including a penalty shootout from to decide tied matches (for which the winners earned one point) and a countdown clock that stopped during dead plays. The top four teams from each conference qualified for the playoffs, which were organized into three rounds and played primarily in October. The first two rounds, named the Conference Semifinals and Conference Finals, were home-and-away series organized into a best-of-three format with a hosting advantage for the higher seed. The winners of the Conference Finals advanced to the single-match MLS Cup final, which would be held at a predetermined neutral venue. MLS Cup 1998 was contested by two-time defending champions D.C. United of the Eastern Conference and the Chicago Fire, an expansion team that finished second in the Western Conference. Chicago was led by Bob Bradley, former assistant to D.C. United head coach Bruce Arena. The two teams met twice during the regular season, resulting in 3–1 and 4–1 victories for D.C. United. Chicago Fire The Chicago Fire and Miami Fusion were the first expansion teams in MLS history, entering during the 1998 season and split between the Western and Eastern conferences, respectively. The two teams participated in the expansion draft, where Chicago selected two players from the Los Angeles Galaxy who were later traded back in exchange for goalkeeper Jorge Campos and midfielder Chris Armas. The league allocated several international players to the Fire, including the Polish trio of midfielder Peter Nowak, striker Jerzy Podbrożny, and forward Roman Kosecki, who formed the "Eastern Bloc" alongside Czech midfielder Luboš Kubík. The team won their first two games, against the Miami Fusion and Tampa Bay Mutiny, but fell into a five-match losing streak