Dynamo feeling good about MLS’ restart on July 8.

Healthier team to take field for tournament starting July 8

With Major League Soccer’s announcement Wednesday that it will reassemble in Florida for a 26-team, World Cup-style tournament next month, Dynamo coach Tab Ramos hopes his international experience and his team’s path toward health will give Houston a leg up as games resume.

Plans for the tournament, which begins July 8 at Disney’s ESPN Wide World of Sports complex near Orlando, were unveiled as MLS teams prepare to resume full team practices for the first time since the COVID-19 sports shutdown in mid-March.

The Dynamo’s first practice will be Thursday, so Houston and other MLS teams will have about a month to prepare for the MLS is Back tournament.

For the Dynamo, who went 01-1 in the brief, interrupted beginning to the MLS season in March, the sports shutdown will enable the return of five players who would not have been physically able to perform had the season proceeded on schedule.

That group includes defender Kiki Struna, who underwent arthroscopic knee surgery in

mid-March; right back Jose Bizama, who had right ankle surgery in early March; forwards Alberth Elis and Darwin Quintero, both recovering from thigh injuries; and defender Victor Cabrera, who missed the two pre-shutdown games with an injury to his right hip.

“Kiki as we start will be doing some of the exercises with us. He is close to being 100 percent,” Ramos said. “Jose is likely one or two weeks away.”

Ramos, who is in his first year with the Dynamo, also hopes to capitalize on his experience as an assistant coach for the 2014 U.S. World Cup team and four Under-20 World Cup appearances

as head coach of the American squad.

“It’s the type of tournament I’m used to,” he said. “Hopefully, it helps a lot. I know how to manage those kind of tournaments. You never know, but I’m hoping that we have a little bit of an advantage with that.”

National team duties, Ramos said, also helped him adjust to being apart from players from mid-March until MLS resumed individual and small group workouts last month.

“With the national team, you only get to see your players so often, so you rely some of the time on Zoom calls, and not just with the players but with our staff,” he said. “I was used to working this way, and it helped get me started with this group.”

MLS commissioner Don

Garber said on a leaguesponsored podcast Wednesday that plans for the single-site tournament grew out of uncertainty surrounding if and when teams could resume play at their home stadiums.

“It gave us an opportunity, once we knew Disney had interest, to get our players together to create a compelling tournament, to get something in front of our fans, and to have meaningful games that would count toward the regular season and create something that could be unique and compelling,” Garber said.

MLS will allow teams to dress 23 players for each game with 18 active players and will allow five substitutes per game for the JulyAugust tournament. Ramos said that will benefit

players as they work toward regaining game shape and particularly will help the Houston roster, which includes four players in their 30s.

“The players will still be getting their fitness as the tournament is going on, so depth on the roster becomes important, and us being able to have some rotation (in lineups) will be key,” Ramos said. “We have a little bit of an older team, so we need to be able to give them time to recover as well.”

MLS said the tournament will be conducted without fans at the Disney complex. Each team will play three group stage matches that will count in the MLS regular-season standings, and 16 teams will move into single-elimination rounds culminating in a championship match Aug. 11.

Players also can compete for bonuses as part of a $2.2 million prize pool, and the tournament champion will earn a spot in the CONCACAF Champions League.

As in the World Cup, games will be played throughout the day at 8 a.m., 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. (all times CDT). The Eastern Conference, which will include Nashville SC as a 14th team, and the 12-team Western Conference each will be divided into three groups, with group configurations and seeds to be determined Thursday.

Teams will arrive in Orlando as early as June 24 and must be on hand seven days before their opening game.

“I think everybody is anxious to get started,” Ramos

said. “We obviously understand that this is still not a perfect situation, but we’re very excited that we can finally start training as a team and players can get into a little bit of contact and that we can see light at the end of the tunnel. We have a tournament that has been scheduled.”

MLS said it hopes to resume its regular-season schedule after the July-August tournament, leading up to the playoffs and MLS Cup championship game.