MLS shortens season by month, shifts to all-knockout playoffs

Rebuilding Orlando City will face a new path as it pushes to clinch the first playoff bid in franchise history.

Major League Soccer is shortening its season by a month, going to single-elimination playoffs and scheduling the 2019 MLS Cup final for Nov. 10 in its earliest finish since 2002.

The league announced the change Monday and will have an all-knockout postseason in place of a two-leg format for the conference semifinals and finals. MLS had started using a two-leg, totalgoals format in 2003.

After then-U.S. coach Jurgen Klinsmann criticized the league’s season as being too short, MLS stretched its schedule into December each year starting in 2012. Klinsmann was fired in November 2016.

“The big challenge is for MLS overall, how can they stretch that season into a format that is kind of competitive with the rest of the world?” Klinsmann said in 2011. “Right now it’s not competitive. If you have a seven-, eight-month season, that’s not competitive with the rest of the world.”

MLS says the new format will reward teams with top regular seasons with greater home-field advantage.

The league expands to 24 teams with the addition of Cincinnati next year, and 14 teams will make the playoffs. Each of the two conference winners will get firstround byes and be joined in the conference semifinals by the winners of the three first-round series.