Rafa Marquez will look to slow down the New England Revolution tonight. (Getty Images)

Tonight we could crown one conference champion as the New York Red Bulls host the New England Revolution. In the season finale for each club the Red Bulls are looking to claim their first Eastern Conference crown since 2000.

The Revolution hope to play spoiler yet again this week as they helped knock out the Kansas City Wizards from playoff contention. Oddly enough New England has a bit of an edge against the Red Bulls in recent meetings too. The Red Bulls have failed to get three points against the Revs dating back to 2005.

The midfield battle in this one will be fun to watch as you’ll have Shalrie Joseph going against Rafa Marquez. No doubt to of the best central midfielders in the league going head-to-head will be fun to watch.

I think the Red Bulls get by in this one even without Thierry Henry. With this being Juan Pablo Angel’s last regular season game in front of the Red Bull crowd you have to expect something special out of him tonight. Though I do think the Revs will put up a good fight I just don’t see enough offense in this one from them to see them get three points.

WVH Prediction: New York 2, New England 1

LA and New York battle in a high profile game tonight. (Getty Images)

Call me one of the skeptics on this but really this dubbed “Game of the season” doesn’t quite do it for me. Sure having the LA Galaxy and the New York Red Bulls face off in a late season battle on national TV is good for the league, there’s no debating that even though the time-slot for the game isn’t very good (11pm on the east coast is a stinker).

For me this game doesn’t do a whole lot. Both teams are playoff squads and we could very well be getting a preview of this year’s MLS Cup if all things go right for these two the rest of the way out.

But I look at this game with the glass half empty. Its late in the year, neither have any extra games on the slate like Real Salt Lake or Columbus do, and both aren’t fighting for the final playoff spot. One could argue that its a battle for the Supporter’s Shield but with a nine point advantage over New York it seems like the Galaxy have little to worry about New York getting in their way of winning that award, RSL is the more likely challenger at this point in the year.

I love the effort by the league to hype this game, but its getting a bit old hearing “game of the year” or things like that when teams with one or two designated players square off against one another. First it was the Chicago-New York clash, then the Chicago-LA game, then the Seattle-Chicago game, then New York-Toronto and now LA-New York. I get it, DPs are high profile and the league has to hype them but dubbing games as the best game of the year is a bit much.

Normally I’m an optimist at things but even this is a bit much for me. Plus the loss of Thierry Henry to this game really hurt its chances of being what the league hoped it could be. David Beckham and Henry against one another on a MLS field would be great to see but looks like we’ll have to wait for a possible MLS Cup meeting to see it happen this year.

I could be wrong about this game but I feel it won’t be the 5-4 blockbuster from a couple years ago when Beckham first joined league. It seems like the league is throwing all it’s eggs in the basket for this game because of that game a couple seasons ago when really it will likely be a defensive battle this time around. A 1-1 draw or a 1-0 win by one of the two seems more likely.

Now this could be the best game of the year by the end of the night but I honestly won’t be counting on it. But then again I’ve been proven wrong before.

I’ll say this though, at least we’re talking about this game. And by we I mean most of the soccer blogging world is talking about this one well before the game has kicked off. So in that regards the hype is good and has done its job.

I’ve sat through the behind the scenes with college football before with ESPN, so soccer isn’t too different. Still, worth a look. Enjoy!