Is this MLS 4.0?: Changes afoot with the calendar and divisions, plus a fanciful look at expanded playoffs
Perhaps you've heard that MLS is going through some changes. Perhaps the most intriguing ones are the ones we don't entirely know.
Who knew that a random Thursday in November would bring so much news?
On Thursday, the MLS Board of Governors, meeting in Palm Beach, Fla., ratified a move to the “European” calendar beginning in 2027. What we know for certain is that, following a 14-game “sprint” season between February and May of 2027 (more on this in a bit), MLS will thereafter have its kickoff each July, take a winter break in December and January, celebrate Decision Day in April rather than October, with playoffs in May (without the interruption of an international break!) and then take June entirely off before starting the cycle over again.
The MLS Players Association (the players' Union) has not finalized an agreement with the League yet, which is why MLS' press release states this clearly at the end of the opening paragraph:
MLS is continuing to work with the MLSPA to finalize agreement on a transition plan.
One would hope that MLS sees this as an opportunity to repair what sources have indicated is a fraught (to say the least) relationship with the players they can't really play the games without ... time will tell.
Phil's note: Or, the 14-game mini-season could be interrupted and even erased by a players' strike; just before COVID-19 derailed the 2020 season, players were on the verge of a strike before the current collective bargaining agreeement was struck just before the start of the season.
Should this proposal hold, MLS is growing up in a big way that is more than “just” a calendar move to improve transfer windows. April and May will now find football fans following their European teams in the morning and afternoon and then heading to their local stadium for the same end-of-season excitement for MLS as in the EPL, UCL, and more.
The Athletic's Tom Bogert is also reporting today that MLS has gotten approval to finally count Canadian teams as "domestic!" Move aside, MLS Roster Christmas, we have a new favorite holiday.
Read on for the few details we know for certain, info others have reported that we think we can take to the bank, and some early speculation on how MLS could plan to overhaul their playoff structure.
Full league play and divisions are your new best friends
What we also know for certain (though only alluded to in the MLS release), based on Bogert and Paul Tenorio’s reporting in The Athletic, is that instead of West and East Conferences, MLS will become one unified table. The 30 teams will be divided into five divisions of six teams each. MLS has declined further official comment, but informed speculation has bubbled around the pre-vote rumors, with those in the know assuming the following divisions:
Northwest: Seattle, Vancouver, Portland, San Jose, Salt Lake, Colorado
Southwest: LA Galaxy, LAFC, San Diego, Austin, Dallas, Houston
Midwest: SKC, St. Louis, Chicago, Minnesota, Columbus, Cincinnati
South: Charlotte, Nashville, Atlanta, Orlando, Miami, DC
Northeast: NYC, Red Bulls New York, New England, Philadelphia, Toronto, Montreal
Teams in a given division would all play one another, both home and away every season, and then every team would play one game (home or away) against all of the other 24 MLS teams, for a total of 34 League matches per year. You are reading that right …f or the first time in a very long time … every MLS team will play every other MLS team in League play at least once … every year.
The likelihood of the best teams in the league meeting will no longer have anything to do with chance or luck or beating every other team in your conference to maybe face the mega-team of the year from the other conference at all, it’ll be a certainty. Austin has been around for half a decade, and has still not played every team in a 30-team league in regular-season play.
Austin will finally play Chicago in league play. Austin will definitely play Messi’s Miami prior to the end of his contract. Mega-teams will meet before playoffs for absolute certain every year, regardless of conference, because, again … there will no longer be an East/West divide anymore!
Provided the above-speculated divisions are how they end up, this organization of things also crucially maintains regional rivalry cups (Copa Tejas, Cascadia, Hell is Real, Hudson River and so on) and further underlines the importance of non-local/local-ish regional rivalries.
I don’t know that Austin fans desperately needed or wanted to see Verde play Vancouver, Portland, San Jose, St. Louis, or Minnesota twice a year nearly as much as the Southern California trio of LAFC, Galacticos de Carson, and San Diego feel like solid regional rivalries. The blessing of only having to play on San Jose’s worst pitch in the West every other year … is this Christmas?
The big thing we don’t know for certain is whether this means a reliable cadence. For example, if Austin plays Columbus in Columbus in 2027 … does that mean Austin goes to Columbus in 2028 and keep alternating like that? The Athletic does not spell it out in black and white, but we’d hope that the league does sooner than later. That would allow for folks to save up and plan for “oh hey, next year is an away day in Miami/Seattle/Montreal/Chicago.”
The transition mini-season in 2027 and … what about Playoffs?
Much more vague is confirmation of the 2027 playoff format, which Tenorio and Bogert confirm are still very much up in the air.
Regarding what they referred to as a “sprint” season in their reporting, from MLS officially:
MLS will stage a transition season from February to May 2027, featuring a 14-game regular season, playoffs, and MLS Cup. The results will determine 2027 qualification for the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup, Canadian Championship, Leagues Cup, and Concacaf Champions Cup.
Squeezing “just” 14 games and playoffs (and...Open Cup?) into four months is still a lot, with midweek fixtures almost certain in part of it. It’ll be interesting to see how that works out, especially if these other competitions are happening concurrently too. Will each team get a unique one-off Transition Season jersey? For that matter…will MLS teams start retiring all of a given year’s jerseys year after year like Europe does?
Will that transition season playoff structure be the test run for the new full season playoff structure? Will it finally do away with the “best of three” first round? Will it possibly, as Tenorio and Bogert hear it could, work like Australian Rules Football, or was that just one particular vote among 30 or so being loud while stage whispering in Paul and Tom’s ears?
Listen to Emergency Podcast (recording on Friday) to hear more abou all this
Who makes the playoffs? What does "playoffs" mean in 4.0?
In the absence of specifics that MLS themselves don’t even know at this point, let’s take what we can bank on and do some speculation on what “evolutionary” form the MLS Cup Playoffs could take, based on how they currently do (and don’t) work and what League leadership has indicated they have wanted out of them in recent years.
Let’s use 2025’s final table results and try looking at three versions of what I’m calling an “evolutionary” new version of the existing MLS playoffs, which currently includes two play-in games and 18 total teams, with 16 teams in ending up in the “actual” first round and 2 dismissed from losing a pair of play-in games most casual MLS viewers forget are happening unless they involve their team.
As it stands in these waning Old Days of the Old Ways, 8th and 9th place in each Conference compete in a pair of play-in games with quick turnarounds prior to the proper first round of the MLS Playoffs. Table placement ties are broken on wins and then goal differential. You may already know all of this, but it will all come into play later.
The following is going to hang onto some given assumptions based on what The Athletic has reported and how we have been accustomed to MLS working:
The winners of the five divisions will be guaranteed “actual playoffs;”
Don Garber and MLS leadership want at least as many teams as are currently ”involved in” playoffs (including the play-in games) to be so going forward; and
There will still be “wild card” play-in games.
Forget about seeding structure of the first round and beyond for the purpose of this exercise, that’s its own ball of wax we will probably get into on this week’s Emergency Podcast. Let’s just start with “who makes playoffs” for now. What makes a team deserve it, according to a realistic structure run by this League’s current Board of Governors?
The still-18-teams “evolutionary” model
For 18 of 30 teams to still make playoffs (including play-ins), the way it makes the most sense to me is thus:
Five division champions;
Nine with next-most points in the league table; and
Four teams seeded into two play-in games
In 2025, using the above-mentioned division lineups, it just so happens that the top five teams in the Supporters Shield/combined table would also have each won their respective divisions. How tidy!
Philadelphia (NE)
FCC (Midwest)
Miami (South)
San Diego (SW)
Vancouver (NW)
The next 9 would have been: LAFC, Charlotte, Minnesota, NYC, Seattle, Nashville, Columbus, Chicago, and Orlando.
The four play-in teams would have been (matching current seeding dynamics):
Austin hosting Red Bulls; and
Dallas hosting Portland.
The biggest “parallel reality” difference in terms of who made it in would be that RSL did not get their play-in shot, but RBNY would have, and Austin would have been a play-in team rather than going into Round 1. The narrative of Austin having to play-in against RBNY and potentially be directly responsible for ending the then-longest-standing playoff streak in North American pro sports? Sure would have been interesting! Dallas vs Portland, though … we have seen those teams play so much … and the same (though slightly less so) goes for Austin vs New Jersey-brand energy drink soccer.
Whether they keep or trash a “best of three” first round or go straight to knockouts, this is … not too much more interesting than the status quo. So what if just one more team is factored into the overall Playoffs Zone?
The 19-team “evolutionary” middle ground
Maybe you hate the play-in games. Maybe you hate just how many teams make Playoffs or Technically Playoffs, however you want to think of it. Bad news, this is still MLS. Don Garber and other league leadership have repeatedly emphasized that this non-Pro/Rel “closed” league needs to keep more fans/markets “engaged,” and that’s tough when so many teams in such a big league aren’t part of the big exciting US sports league-styled postseason.
I’ll meet you in the middle. How could adding only one team make the playoffs marginally more interesting?
Five division champions;
Eight with next-most points in the league table (instead of nine); and
Six teams seeded into 3 play-in games (instead of 4 and 2, respectively)
That’s right, I’m adding a play-in game! I’m a monster, but (inextremely “I learned it from you, Dad!” voice) I learned it from you, Don!
Same top five: Philly (NE), FCC (Midwest), Miami (South), San Diego (SW), Vancouver (NW). Cool, good.
The next eight would have been: LAFC, Charlotte, Minnesota, NYC, Seattle, Nashville, Columbus, and Chicago.
Here’s where I think this is … actually interesting, despite my expectations.
Imagine play-in night as having at least a couple of start time windows such that you can watch all three games back to back in May. You aren’t dying from MLS May Fixture Congestion Insanity combined with school years ending and graduations and weddings making you get ready to “check out” for the summer a bit while watching your favorite players suffer the Summer Onslaught.
After watching EPL, UCL, Serie A, whatever else earlier in the day … you can really just live and breathe the top performance period in global soccer all day.
The 6 play-in teams would have been (matching current seeding dynamics):
EST kick: Orlando hosting RSL;
CST kick: Austin hosting Red Bulls NY; and
CST kick: Dallas hosting Portland
So the collection of teams is still not … super exciting for Austin-centric (or any) eyes, but more than two wild card games makes the entire concept of paying attention to these more of an “event night.” It also makes speculating on the dynamics of the first round matchups a bit more exciting or interesting as well. The time zones of the hosting teams also works against driving more-fun timing stratification, but we’ll see how divisional structure changes the sorting of the table.
Do we need one more?
I think we need one more.
Behold!PPhil PhPp
The 20-team “evolutionary” play-in double burger
Five division champions;
Seven next-most points in the league table; and
Eight teams split into four play-in games.
I know, I should not even commit these words to digital ink, lest Don Garber be awakened in the night like Count Dracula smelling fresh blood arriving off of the train.
Of course, the same top 5: Philly (Northeast), FCC (Midwest), Miami (South), San Diego (Southwest), Vancouver (Northwest).
The next seven would have been: LAFC, Charlotte, Minnesota, NYC, Seattle, Nashville, and Columbus. And then:
CST: Chicago vs. San Jose
EST: Orlando vs. RSL
CST: Austin vs. RBNY (well, at least RBNY's playoff string wasn't broken in this alternate universe)
CST: Dallas vs. Portland (they deserve each other)
Forget the narrative “meh”-ness of the above matchups for the most part, aside from what would have been a fascinating “Gregg Berhalter v Bruce Arena: Dawn of (In)Justice” at the top.
Look at those eight teams as a pool of “wild cards” with something to prove, and as unlikely as any of them would have been to take MLS Cup, think about MLS Cup itself through the US Open Cup lens of being a different and separate competition, and how every team can have a weird run of League games in the hardest-traveling “domestic” league in the world.
In the constant conversation of “do the play-in games count as playoffs?”... a lot of people insist that they don’t. Phil and I disagree with this, but let’s say we are wrong for the moment.
Phil's note: I'll temporarily go along with this.
Look at those eight teams and try to objectively argue that any of them had a season that meant they “deserved” playoffs. Arguments were made against all of them by pundits, fans, and everyone in between. The four who lose … lose, and the four that make it in? With their last chance for that given roster of that club to prove they deserve it? They get to prove that they were underestimated, that they, an underdog, can hang with the best? Maybe it would feel more earned with more of the playoff field determined by this sort of win-or-go-home micro-tournament setup.
The last thing I expected to make a compelling case for when I started this latest exercise of Doctor Strange-ing MLS was that yes, involving two-thirds of the teams in the league might be a better way to go. In this new definition of things, we are left with 16 actual playoff teams, and it erases the dotted lines around “technically the playoffs."
Looking at the full table stats, this overall field of 20 cuts off just above Colorado Rapids, who had the same 41 points and 11 wins as San Jose…but a -12 goal differential as compared to the Quakes’ -3. Missed it by … 9 goals. Chris Armas and the Rapids would have still moved on from one another, and nobody could reasonably argue their exclusion was “unfair.”
San Jose’s most ardent fans would have trouble feeling great about how they made that wildcard play-in, but it’d be better than missing it waiting on other Decision Day results.. Under 40 points should not get you into the playoffs, and this lines up with all that.
If you want to get rid of the failed experiment of “Best of 3” and create more exciting moments and stories without reducing how many teams/markets are in the mix … I think this is how.
While you’re wondering about it, doing 22 teams would add Colorado and Houston with a 37-point floor, and 24 would add the Revs and St. Louis to them and lower the threshold to … 32 points.
Absolutely not. No way. Roughly 40 points has to be the line.
Unless ...
The 30-team “evolutionary” and “everybody could be a winner” model
I’ll play with some far-fetched possibilities, but even I have my limits.
A 30-team model just does not exist, as much as we want to joke about it. MLS would be fully leaning into the Participation Trophy League allegations.
Look, it’s not that I’m not against there being some sort of Bottom 10 Teams micro-tournament to jockey for … I dunno, next-season home opener right for the five winners? I just think it’s a bad idea. Want more games and for entire fanbases to get one more game? There could be something there, but I can’t think of a good version of it. Let their seasons end, and let them get on with declining options and rebuilding.
Wait a minute though … what if MLS could do the “everyone makes playoffs” thing exactly one time, for a special transitional reason?
I wrote a radically reorganized version of this article prior to the official news dropping, before we knew any firm details about the “mini” season to be played February through May 2027, and now that we do … here is the only way I could ever endorse allowing every single team a shot at the playoffs, and it admittedly sucks in a couple of big, obvious ways.
Start with 14 top teams after 14 games (or pare that down even further), as part of a field of 16 actual playoff teams.
The final two spots are filled by the remaining “bottom 16” seeded teams completing a single knockout series of three match windows: Eight games that produce four games that produce two games whose winners are bottom seeds 15 and 16. (And a final to determine who is the 15th seed, perhaps?)
Using the 2025 table, this horrible, terrible, no-good idea would have resulted in ...
Top 14: Philly, Cincy, Miami, San Diego, Vancouver, LAFC, Charlotte, Minnesota, NYC, Seattle, Nashville, Columbus, Chicago, and Orlando. One could argue against Chicago and Orlando having earned it, but I need a bottom 16 for any of this to work.
The R16 play-in knockout is where it looks maybe fun for a neutral!
Austin vs. DC
Dallas vs. Atlanta
Portland vs. Montreal
RBNY vs. SKC
RSL vs. LA Galaxy
San Jose vs. Toronto
Colorado vs. St. Louis
Houston vs. New England
But ... wait a minute, matchups that “weird and fun” will just be…normal regular-season games every year anyway. And...this whole thing adds three (or four) matches to the front of whatever actual playoff structure exists for whichever two of these 16 end up alive at the end of it.
What happens if Wooden Spoon winner DC United miraculously beats Austin and somehow makes it all the way into an all-road quarterfinal? Set your bias aside or pretend Austin somehow had the Spoon in 2025, and it could be an amazing ultimate underdog story. Regardless, doesn't that playing out make the regular season mean even less than people already think it does?
Ok, so maybe there really is zero reason to ever put all 30 teams into a playoff structure.
But I mean ... if it only happens the one time ... no, no, what am I saying? Absolutely not.
Unless ...
Verde All Day is a reader-supported online publication covering Austin FC. Additional support is provided by Austin Telco Federal Credit Union. For more coverage, check out Emergency Podcast! (an Austin FC Podcast) wherever you get your podcasts.
We're down to eight teams, who will kick off their playoff series a full month after the playoffs commenced. (We should probably do something about this format.)
Just looking at raw numbers, Myrto Uzuni's already contributed more in one season than Emiliano Rigoni did in a season and a half worth of matches. But that doesn't tell the whole story.
It's not that Austin FC didn't show a desire to win on Sunday. It's just that they left themselves vulnerable to counterattacks against a team that excels at them.
Who knew that a random Thursday in November would bring so much news?
On Thursday, the MLS Board of Governors, meeting in Palm Beach, Fla., ratified a move to the “European” calendar beginning in 2027. What we know for certain is that, following a 14-game “sprint” season between February and May of 2027 (more on this in a bit), MLS will thereafter have its kickoff each July, take a winter break in December and January, celebrate Decision Day in April rather than October, with playoffs in May (without the interruption of an international break!) and then take June entirely off before starting the cycle over again.
The MLS Players Association (the players' Union) has not finalized an agreement with the League yet, which is why MLS' press release states this clearly at the end of the opening paragraph:
One would hope that MLS sees this as an opportunity to repair what sources have indicated is a fraught (to say the least) relationship with the players they can't really play the games without ... time will tell.
Phil's note: Or, the 14-game mini-season could be interrupted and even erased by a players' strike; just before COVID-19 derailed the 2020 season, players were on the verge of a strike before the current collective bargaining agreeement was struck just before the start of the season.
Should this proposal hold, MLS is growing up in a big way that is more than “just” a calendar move to improve transfer windows. April and May will now find football fans following their European teams in the morning and afternoon and then heading to their local stadium for the same end-of-season excitement for MLS as in the EPL, UCL, and more.
The Athletic's Tom Bogert is also reporting today that MLS has gotten approval to finally count Canadian teams as "domestic!" Move aside, MLS Roster Christmas, we have a new favorite holiday.
Read on for the few details we know for certain, info others have reported that we think we can take to the bank, and some early speculation on how MLS could plan to overhaul their playoff structure.
Full league play and divisions are your new best friends
What we also know for certain (though only alluded to in the MLS release), based on Bogert and Paul Tenorio’s reporting in The Athletic, is that instead of West and East Conferences, MLS will become one unified table. The 30 teams will be divided into five divisions of six teams each. MLS has declined further official comment, but informed speculation has bubbled around the pre-vote rumors, with those in the know assuming the following divisions:
Northwest: Seattle, Vancouver, Portland, San Jose, Salt Lake, Colorado
Southwest: LA Galaxy, LAFC, San Diego, Austin, Dallas, Houston
Midwest: SKC, St. Louis, Chicago, Minnesota, Columbus, Cincinnati
South: Charlotte, Nashville, Atlanta, Orlando, Miami, DC
Northeast: NYC, Red Bulls New York, New England, Philadelphia, Toronto, Montreal
Teams in a given division would all play one another, both home and away every season, and then every team would play one game (home or away) against all of the other 24 MLS teams, for a total of 34 League matches per year. You are reading that right …f or the first time in a very long time … every MLS team will play every other MLS team in League play at least once … every year.
The likelihood of the best teams in the league meeting will no longer have anything to do with chance or luck or beating every other team in your conference to maybe face the mega-team of the year from the other conference at all, it’ll be a certainty. Austin has been around for half a decade, and has still not played every team in a 30-team league in regular-season play.
Austin will finally play Chicago in league play. Austin will definitely play Messi’s Miami prior to the end of his contract. Mega-teams will meet before playoffs for absolute certain every year, regardless of conference, because, again … there will no longer be an East/West divide anymore!
Provided the above-speculated divisions are how they end up, this organization of things also crucially maintains regional rivalry cups (Copa Tejas, Cascadia, Hell is Real, Hudson River and so on) and further underlines the importance of non-local/local-ish regional rivalries.
I don’t know that Austin fans desperately needed or wanted to see Verde play Vancouver, Portland, San Jose, St. Louis, or Minnesota twice a year nearly as much as the Southern California trio of LAFC, Galacticos de Carson, and San Diego feel like solid regional rivalries. The blessing of only having to play on San Jose’s worst pitch in the West every other year … is this Christmas?
The big thing we don’t know for certain is whether this means a reliable cadence. For example, if Austin plays Columbus in Columbus in 2027 … does that mean Austin goes to Columbus in 2028 and keep alternating like that? The Athletic does not spell it out in black and white, but we’d hope that the league does sooner than later. That would allow for folks to save up and plan for “oh hey, next year is an away day in Miami/Seattle/Montreal/Chicago.”
The transition mini-season in 2027 and … what about Playoffs?
Much more vague is confirmation of the 2027 playoff format, which Tenorio and Bogert confirm are still very much up in the air.
Regarding what they referred to as a “sprint” season in their reporting, from MLS officially:
Squeezing “just” 14 games and playoffs (and...Open Cup?) into four months is still a lot, with midweek fixtures almost certain in part of it. It’ll be interesting to see how that works out, especially if these other competitions are happening concurrently too. Will each team get a unique one-off Transition Season jersey? For that matter…will MLS teams start retiring all of a given year’s jerseys year after year like Europe does?
Will that transition season playoff structure be the test run for the new full season playoff structure? Will it finally do away with the “best of three” first round? Will it possibly, as Tenorio and Bogert hear it could, work like Australian Rules Football, or was that just one particular vote among 30 or so being loud while stage whispering in Paul and Tom’s ears?
Listen to Emergency Podcast (recording on Friday) to hear more abou all this
Who makes the playoffs? What does "playoffs" mean in 4.0?
In the absence of specifics that MLS themselves don’t even know at this point, let’s take what we can bank on and do some speculation on what “evolutionary” form the MLS Cup Playoffs could take, based on how they currently do (and don’t) work and what League leadership has indicated they have wanted out of them in recent years.
Let’s use 2025’s final table results and try looking at three versions of what I’m calling an “evolutionary” new version of the existing MLS playoffs, which currently includes two play-in games and 18 total teams, with 16 teams in ending up in the “actual” first round and 2 dismissed from losing a pair of play-in games most casual MLS viewers forget are happening unless they involve their team.
As it stands in these waning Old Days of the Old Ways, 8th and 9th place in each Conference compete in a pair of play-in games with quick turnarounds prior to the proper first round of the MLS Playoffs. Table placement ties are broken on wins and then goal differential. You may already know all of this, but it will all come into play later.
The following is going to hang onto some given assumptions based on what The Athletic has reported and how we have been accustomed to MLS working:
Forget about seeding structure of the first round and beyond for the purpose of this exercise, that’s its own ball of wax we will probably get into on this week’s Emergency Podcast. Let’s just start with “who makes playoffs” for now. What makes a team deserve it, according to a realistic structure run by this League’s current Board of Governors?
The still-18-teams “evolutionary” model
For 18 of 30 teams to still make playoffs (including play-ins), the way it makes the most sense to me is thus:
In 2025, using the above-mentioned division lineups, it just so happens that the top five teams in the Supporters Shield/combined table would also have each won their respective divisions. How tidy!
The next 9 would have been: LAFC, Charlotte, Minnesota, NYC, Seattle, Nashville, Columbus, Chicago, and Orlando.
The four play-in teams would have been (matching current seeding dynamics):
The biggest “parallel reality” difference in terms of who made it in would be that RSL did not get their play-in shot, but RBNY would have, and Austin would have been a play-in team rather than going into Round 1. The narrative of Austin having to play-in against RBNY and potentially be directly responsible for ending the then-longest-standing playoff streak in North American pro sports? Sure would have been interesting! Dallas vs Portland, though … we have seen those teams play so much … and the same (though slightly less so) goes for Austin vs New Jersey-brand energy drink soccer.
Whether they keep or trash a “best of three” first round or go straight to knockouts, this is … not too much more interesting than the status quo. So what if just one more team is factored into the overall Playoffs Zone?
The 19-team “evolutionary” middle ground
Maybe you hate the play-in games. Maybe you hate just how many teams make Playoffs or Technically Playoffs, however you want to think of it. Bad news, this is still MLS. Don Garber and other league leadership have repeatedly emphasized that this non-Pro/Rel “closed” league needs to keep more fans/markets “engaged,” and that’s tough when so many teams in such a big league aren’t part of the big exciting US sports league-styled postseason.
I’ll meet you in the middle. How could adding only one team make the playoffs marginally more interesting?
That’s right, I’m adding a play-in game! I’m a monster, but (in extremely “I learned it from you, Dad!” voice) I learned it from you, Don!
Same top five: Philly (NE), FCC (Midwest), Miami (South), San Diego (SW), Vancouver (NW). Cool, good.
The next eight would have been: LAFC, Charlotte, Minnesota, NYC, Seattle, Nashville, Columbus, and Chicago.
Here’s where I think this is … actually interesting, despite my expectations.
Imagine play-in night as having at least a couple of start time windows such that you can watch all three games back to back in May. You aren’t dying from MLS May Fixture Congestion Insanity combined with school years ending and graduations and weddings making you get ready to “check out” for the summer a bit while watching your favorite players suffer the Summer Onslaught.
After watching EPL, UCL, Serie A, whatever else earlier in the day … you can really just live and breathe the top performance period in global soccer all day.
The 6 play-in teams would have been (matching current seeding dynamics):
So the collection of teams is still not … super exciting for Austin-centric (or any) eyes, but more than two wild card games makes the entire concept of paying attention to these more of an “event night.” It also makes speculating on the dynamics of the first round matchups a bit more exciting or interesting as well. The time zones of the hosting teams also works against driving more-fun timing stratification, but we’ll see how divisional structure changes the sorting of the table.
Do we need one more?
I think we need one more.
The 20-team “evolutionary” play-in double burger
I know, I should not even commit these words to digital ink, lest Don Garber be awakened in the night like Count Dracula smelling fresh blood arriving off of the train.
Of course, the same top 5: Philly (Northeast), FCC (Midwest), Miami (South), San Diego (Southwest), Vancouver (Northwest).
The next seven would have been: LAFC, Charlotte, Minnesota, NYC, Seattle, Nashville, and Columbus. And then:
Forget the narrative “meh”-ness of the above matchups for the most part, aside from what would have been a fascinating “Gregg Berhalter v Bruce Arena: Dawn of (In)Justice” at the top.
Look at those eight teams as a pool of “wild cards” with something to prove, and as unlikely as any of them would have been to take MLS Cup, think about MLS Cup itself through the US Open Cup lens of being a different and separate competition, and how every team can have a weird run of League games in the hardest-traveling “domestic” league in the world.
In the constant conversation of “do the play-in games count as playoffs?”... a lot of people insist that they don’t. Phil and I disagree with this, but let’s say we are wrong for the moment.
Phil's note: I'll temporarily go along with this.
Look at those eight teams and try to objectively argue that any of them had a season that meant they “deserved” playoffs. Arguments were made against all of them by pundits, fans, and everyone in between. The four who lose … lose, and the four that make it in? With their last chance for that given roster of that club to prove they deserve it? They get to prove that they were underestimated, that they, an underdog, can hang with the best? Maybe it would feel more earned with more of the playoff field determined by this sort of win-or-go-home micro-tournament setup.
The last thing I expected to make a compelling case for when I started this latest exercise of Doctor Strange-ing MLS was that yes, involving two-thirds of the teams in the league might be a better way to go. In this new definition of things, we are left with 16 actual playoff teams, and it erases the dotted lines around “technically the playoffs."
Looking at the full table stats, this overall field of 20 cuts off just above Colorado Rapids, who had the same 41 points and 11 wins as San Jose…but a -12 goal differential as compared to the Quakes’ -3. Missed it by … 9 goals. Chris Armas and the Rapids would have still moved on from one another, and nobody could reasonably argue their exclusion was “unfair.”
San Jose’s most ardent fans would have trouble feeling great about how they made that wildcard play-in, but it’d be better than missing it waiting on other Decision Day results.. Under 40 points should not get you into the playoffs, and this lines up with all that.
If you want to get rid of the failed experiment of “Best of 3” and create more exciting moments and stories without reducing how many teams/markets are in the mix … I think this is how.
While you’re wondering about it, doing 22 teams would add Colorado and Houston with a 37-point floor, and 24 would add the Revs and St. Louis to them and lower the threshold to … 32 points.
Absolutely not. No way. Roughly 40 points has to be the line.
Unless ...
The 30-team “evolutionary” and “everybody could be a winner” model
I’ll play with some far-fetched possibilities, but even I have my limits.
A 30-team model just does not exist, as much as we want to joke about it. MLS would be fully leaning into the Participation Trophy League allegations.
Look, it’s not that I’m not against there being some sort of Bottom 10 Teams micro-tournament to jockey for … I dunno, next-season home opener right for the five winners? I just think it’s a bad idea. Want more games and for entire fanbases to get one more game? There could be something there, but I can’t think of a good version of it. Let their seasons end, and let them get on with declining options and rebuilding.
Wait a minute though … what if MLS could do the “everyone makes playoffs” thing exactly one time, for a special transitional reason?
I wrote a radically reorganized version of this article prior to the official news dropping, before we knew any firm details about the “mini” season to be played February through May 2027, and now that we do … here is the only way I could ever endorse allowing every single team a shot at the playoffs, and it admittedly sucks in a couple of big, obvious ways.
Start with 14 top teams after 14 games (or pare that down even further), as part of a field of 16 actual playoff teams.
The final two spots are filled by the remaining “bottom 16” seeded teams completing a single knockout series of three match windows: Eight games that produce four games that produce two games whose winners are bottom seeds 15 and 16. (And a final to determine who is the 15th seed, perhaps?)
Using the 2025 table, this horrible, terrible, no-good idea would have resulted in ...
Top 14: Philly, Cincy, Miami, San Diego, Vancouver, LAFC, Charlotte, Minnesota, NYC, Seattle, Nashville, Columbus, Chicago, and Orlando. One could argue against Chicago and Orlando having earned it, but I need a bottom 16 for any of this to work.
The R16 play-in knockout is where it looks maybe fun for a neutral!
But ... wait a minute, matchups that “weird and fun” will just be…normal regular-season games every year anyway. And...this whole thing adds three (or four) matches to the front of whatever actual playoff structure exists for whichever two of these 16 end up alive at the end of it.
What happens if Wooden Spoon winner DC United miraculously beats Austin and somehow makes it all the way into an all-road quarterfinal? Set your bias aside or pretend Austin somehow had the Spoon in 2025, and it could be an amazing ultimate underdog story. Regardless, doesn't that playing out make the regular season mean even less than people already think it does?
Ok, so maybe there really is zero reason to ever put all 30 teams into a playoff structure.
But I mean ... if it only happens the one time ... no, no, what am I saying? Absolutely not.
Unless ...
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