The new season begins on Saturday, Feb. 25 and yet again there will be a new playoff format, the league has announced. The road to MLS Cup will now include a play-in round between the eighth and ninth-place teams in each conference. This round will only be one game with the winner facing the top seed in the conference. The addition of this game means a total of 18 teams make the playoffs out of the 29 teams in the league as a whole.
Another change is that the first round would now be a best-of-three series, which allows each team to get a home game. Those games can’t end in ties and the first team to win two games will advance to the conference semifinal which goes back to a one-and-done format. The higher seed will host those matches and in the best-of-three series the higher seed will host the first and third game (if needed) with the lower seed hosting the second game.
The league and their product strategy committee started a review of the playoff format in 2021 landing on the new format as the best way forward while maintaining elements from a single elimination format. There was consultation with fan research as well as a third party expert in the sports industry to support the process.
Qualification:
- Seeds 1-7 qualify directly to round one and the best of three series
- Seeds 8-9 qualify for the one off wild card matches.
Wild card (two games)
- There will be two single-elimination matches hosted by the eight seed. These won’t have extra time and if tied at the end of regulation, they will go directly to penalties. These will determine who faces the number one seed in each conference.
Round one (16-24 games)
- The first match will be hosted by the higher seed, the second by the lower seed and the third by the higher seed if needed.
- Each match will have no extra time with penalty kicks deciding the winner and the first team to win two games advances.
There are no changes to the conference semifinals (four games) which will have extra time and penalty kicks if needed or the conference final (two games). MLS Cup will also keep the same rules as the conference semifinals.
Shifting to a three-game format with each match needing to produce a winner means that a team losing the first match has more opportunity to stage a comeback. Last season, the new format would’ve seen the Columbus Crew, Charlotte FC, Portland Timbers, and Vancouver Whitecaps make the playoffs. In the case of the Crew and Whitecaps, it would have rewarded active summer transfer windows as Cucho Hernandez and Andreas Cubas were both revolutionary in turning their respective team’s fortunes around.
This format, with its home-field advantage, still gives the top seed a good chance at advancing even with losing the first-round bye week that they used to have. And, thinking ahead, if an in-demand, megawatt free agent were to happen to join a team like Inter Miami during the summer with them below the playoff line, that could be enough to propel them to MLS Cup when in years past, it wouldn’t have gotten the job done. This is, of course, an entirely hypothetical situation which in no way actually relates to the future of Lionel Messi.
The new format will kick off with Wild Card matches on Oct. 25-26 before the best of three series takes place from Oct. 28- Nov. 12. That will mean that the Wild Card winners could kick off an away match on three days rest to give the top seeds in each conference an added advantage. The best of three round will be followed by the Conference Semifinals and Finals between Nov. 25-Dec 2. That will all culminate with MLS Cup on Dec. 9.
The playoff change does add in-season excitement due to teams lower in the table having meaningful games and the concerns about the best of three series being flat can be alleviated by them not being based on goal differential. It does add more games to an already taxing MLS season, but with the depth in the league growing by the day, teams are now able to cope with these matches better than they ever have in years past.