Pinzone: Time to Revamp the MLS Schedule

The arrival of San Diego FC in 2025 gives MLS an opportunity to put forth an entirely new schedule...

Photo By J. Alexander Dolan

The 2025 MLS season will feature a record 30 teams playing across two conferences with 15 teams each. This numerical symmetry presents the possibility of unleashing an entirely new and unique schedule constituting three phases: league, group, and knockout (playoffs).

The current regular season of 34 games, coupled with 18 teams making the playoffs makes for a relatively low consequence grind of games from February to October. The consistent ability of low-seeded teams to knockout higher-seeded and heavily favored teams further dilutes the importance of the MLS regular season. We just saw the top three teams in the Eastern Conference all go out in the first round, an exciting occurrence to be sure but one that diminishes the importance of the first nine months of the season.

Let’s walk through a suggested remedy to make every MLS game more important while making sure to protect the team owner’s never-ending desire to make more money. The latter being the principal reason MLS has a best-of-three playoff format.

League Season

The MLS league portion of the schedule would consist of in-conference-only play. Each team would play their respective fourteen conference competitors two times each, once at home and once away. These twenty-eight games would be played from February up until the Leagues Cup break, assuming the tournament no one wants continues into 2025 and beyond.

Instead of competing for one of nine playoff positions, however, teams would be competing for seeding positions in the subsequent Group Phase of the MLS season.

The top three finishers in each conference, six teams in total, would all be placed in separate groups. The same would take place for each conference’s fourth, fifth, and sixth-placed finishers. This would ensure competition to finish as high up in the league table as possible as a top-three finish would safeguard having to play any of the other top teams in the next phase.

Group Phase

This portion of the season would see the 30 teams divided into six groups of five teams each. Each team would play every team in their group twice, home and away, for a total of 8 games. This would ensure every MLS team plays at least 36 games per season, an increase over the current 34. Leagues Cup, Concacaf Champions Cup, and the U.S. Open Cup would provide additional games for each team.

Groups would be set up before the season begins with finishing positions in the league table determining group placement. The groups would all feature teams from both conferences.

The top two teams in each group plus the two best third-place finishers would move into the knockout phase. The remaining four third-place finishers would be paired up for knockout round play-in games. The fourth and fifth-place finishers in each group would see their seasons come to a close.

The overall points leader between the league and group phase would be awarded the Supporters Shield.

Knockout Phase(MLS Cup Playoffs)

Once the field of sixteen is set the knockout phase would follow a traditional World Cup-style bracket wherein matchups are predetermined before the knockout phase by group and group finish. For example, the Group A winner would face the Group B runner-up and so on.

All games would be hosted by the team with a higher points total from the combined league and group phases, even including a group runner-up facing a group winner wherein the runner-up has the higher points total. All games would be single elimination with golden goal extra time lasting up to 30 minutes, followed by a traditional penalty shootout if needed.

The MLS Cup semi-finals and final would be hosted at a neutral site location, most likely in a city starting with an L and ending with as Vegas.

Why?

Because it would be awesome.

This competitive format would give everyone everything they could want, a meaningful league season that doesn’t drag on forever, critical group phase games, a high stakes single elimination tournament, the return of golden goals, and plenty of games for the owners to make money.

MLS has always struggled to decide how much to appeal to American sports norms and European football elitists’ narrow view of how a league should be formatted, they should just be bold and do their own thing. Take a group/knockout phase tournament like the World Cup and tack a 28-game league season onto the front of it and see what happens.

At the very least, it’s an infinitely better idea than adopting a fall/spring schedule with a winter break and an off-season in the summer, when MLS has its best attendance.