MLS is Back Tournament Will Kick Off On July 8th

The Major League Soccer will start the post-COVID lockdown season with an all-new tournament called the MLS is Back. It will start on July 8th and will be played until August 11th, the date of the finals game. It will consist of all 26 teams playing the tournament with 56 matches to be held throughout 33 days. This all-new tournament is not just to ease the teams back into the season - it offers a spot in the Concacaf Champions League 2021 and with regular-season points. 

The Schedule of the matches is as follows - July 8th will mark the beginning of the group stage. July 25th to 28th will see the knockout stage being played, that is the Round of 16. The quarter-finals will be played over a three-day period from July 30th to August 1st. Semi-finals will be on the 5th and 6th of August, and August 11th will be the day of the finals. 

Safety Protocols.

The tournament will be played with the strictest health protocols in place, given that the coronavirus is still going around. The tournament will be played in ESPN’s Wide World of Sports Complex in Disneyland, Orlando. Individual training sessions for teams began in May, from when these protocols and testing methods have been implemented. All the 26 MLS teams will arrive in Orlando by charter plane and will arrive at least seven days before their first game to be played in the tournament. 

Before they board their flights to Orlando, all the members of the club delegation need to undergo two PCR (i.e. Polymerase Chain Reaction) tests 24 hours apart from each test. After they arrive in Florida, all the traveling persons will immediately receive an additional PCR test. Only after their tests in Orlando come back as negative can they start training and playing their matches. 

Tournament Format.

The game will be very similar in its format to the FIFA World Cup. There will be matches played almost every day, and there will be both morning and evening matches played. Up to 3 games, a day can be expected in the initial stage of the tournament. The 26 teams will be split into six groups. There will be a demarcation of Eastern and Western Conferences. Both have 3 groups each. In the Eastern Conference, one group will have six teams, and the other two will have four teams each. The Western Conference will have three groups which will consist of four teams each.

Each of these teams will play three group stage matches. This stage will go on for 16 days, consecutively. The top three teams of Group A and the top two teams from Groups B, C, D, E, and F each will advance to the next round. The Round of 16 is completed with the next three top-ranking teams from all the groups combined. If there is a tie at any stage including the group stage, the regular tie-breaking procedures, as used during the season normally, will be used. The tie-breakers to be used, in the order of preference of use, is points, goal differentials, number of goals scored, and least number of disciplinary points. 

With respect to placements and seeds, Nashville SC will be put in the Eastern Conference and will play under the same until the end of the 2020 season. Orlando City SC gets to be the top seed in its six-team group by virtue of its host status. The 2019 MLS Cup Playoffs’ semi-finalists will all be placed as their respective group seeds - Atlanta United, Los Angeles Football Club, Seattle Sounders FC, and Toronto FC. The last seed for the group stage is the Real Salt Lake team, which gets to be top seed because it has the next highest points total in the Western Conference from the 2019 season. 

What are the teams playing for?

This tournament counts for regular-season points, which means it counts for their regular-season standings. The season will continue after the tournament. The biggest change this year is the winner of the tournament will earn a spot in the 2021 Scotiabank Concacaf Champions League, irrespective of the club originating from the US or Canada. It is usually offered to the regular-season conference winner that did not win the Supporters’ Shield. This tournament also ups the prize pool by $1.1 million and will allow players to earn additional bonuses.