I have long been an advocate of MLS switching to 4 conferences. I favor conferences instead of divisions within conferences since I think that it makes scheduling easier and makes more sense for the playoffs. 4 conferences means that teams can play almost the entire league every year. MLS will have 28 teams in 2022 so this would be a great time to implement it. There are some geographic issues to work out especially with continued expansion on the horizon but why not start now? 28 teams - Four conferences of 7 teams Schedule: play every opponent in your conference twice for 12 games, play one non-conference opponent twice, and the other 20 teams once to get to 34 games. 29 teams - Three conferences of 7 teams, one with 8 Schedule: 12 or 14 conference games, 7 team conferences play all other 22 teams once, 8 team conference plays 20 of the other 21 teams once. 30 teams - two conferences of 7 teams, two with 8 Schedule: 12 or 14 conference games, 7 teams conferences play 22 of the 23 other teams once, 8 team conferences play 20 of the other 22 teams once. 32 teams - four conferences of 8 teams Schedule: 14 conference games, play 20 of the other 24 league teams once. Rotate that so you play every team in the league at least once every two years, at home every four. This means that teams play almost every team in the league every year while still playing the ones closest to you twice. Even at 32 teams you face 27 different opponents. For the playoffs there are other options but I would give the regular season conference winners byes into the quarterfinals, make the rest of the tournament wild-cards and seed them across conference lines. That works for 12 to 20 teams total.
Possible 4 conference line-up for 2022: Northeast (7 teams) Montreal Toronto New England NY Red Bulls NY City Philadelphia DC United Southeast (7 teams) Columbus Cincinnati Nashville Charlotte Atlanta Orlando Miami Central (7 teams) Minnesota Chicago Kansas City Dallas Austin Houston Colorado West (7 teams) Vancouver Seattle Portland San Jose LA Galaxy LAFC Salt Lake This splits up Colorado and Salt Lake but only for one year. The schedule still allows them to play twice.
4 conference line-up for 2023, 29 teams: Northeast (7 teams) Montreal Toronto New England NY Red Bulls NY City Philadelphia DC United Southeast (7 teams) Columbus Cincinnati Nashville Charlotte Atlanta Orlando Miami Central (7 teams) Minnesota Chicago Kansas City Dallas Austin Houston St. Louis West (8 teams) Vancouver Seattle Portland San Jose LA Galaxy LAFC Salt Lake Colorado Colorado moves to the West when St. Louis joins. Expansion to 30-32 would probably require some shifting depending on where teams are located but not a lot.
2022 four conference hypothetical standings with playoff slots for 14 teams. I used the 2019 standings just as an example of what it might look like. I gave the recent expansion teams adjusted standings from last year and this year. Charlotte got the average. I don't know if MLS would go for a cross-country tournament like this but I think this is a good compromise with 4 teams in the quarterfinals that are guaranteed to cover the country. It means that you are much more likely to get the best two teams in the final. NORTHEAST 1. NYC 34 g.p. 64 pts 2. PHI 34 g.p. 55 pts (WC2) 3. TOR 34 g.p. 50 pts (WC5) 4. DCU 34 g.p. 50 pts (WC6) 5. NYR 34 g.p. 48 pts (WC8) ------------------------------------------ 6. NER 34 g.p. 45 pts 7. MTL 34 g.p. 41 pts SOUTHEAST 1. ATL 34 g.p. 58 pts 2. NSH 34 g.p. 47 pts (WC10) -------------------------------------------- 3. CLB 34 g.p. 38 pts 4. ORL 34 g.p. 37 pts 5. CHA 34 g.p. 37 pts 6. MIA 34 g.p. 35 pts 7. CIN 34 g.p. 24 pts CENTRAL 1. MIN 34 g.p. 53 pts 2. FCD 34 g.p. 48 pts (WC9) ------------------------------------------- 3. COR 34 g.p. 42 pts 4. CHI 34 g.p. 42 pts 5. HOU 34 g.p. 40 pts 6. SKC 34 g.p. 38 pts 7. AUS 34 g.p. 34 pts WEST 1. LAX 34 g.p. 72 pts 2. SEA 34 g.p. 56 pts (WC1) 3. RSL 34 g.p. 53 pts (WC3) 4. LAG 34 g.p. 51 pts (WC4) 5. POR 34 g.p. 49 pts (WC7) ------------------------------------------- 6. SJE 34 g.p. 44 pts 7. VAN 34 g.p. 34 pts Playoffs with a fixed bracket until the semifinals: Play-In Round P1. (WC7) POR v. (WC10) NSH P2. (WC8) NYR v. (WC9) FCD Round 1 P3. (WC1) SEA v. P2 winner P4. (WC2) PHI v. P1 winner P5. (WC3) RSL v. (WC6)DCU P6. (WC4) LAG v. (WC5) TOR Quarterfinals P7. (W1) LAX v. P6 winner P8. (NE1) NYC v. P5 winner P9. (SE1) ATL v. P4 winner P10. (C1) MIN v. P3 winner The Semifinals and MLS Cup would at the higher seeded winners.
Good job, newtex! Your 28 and 29-team breakdown into 4 divisions make sense and is what I was thinking about recently. It wouldn't take a lot of effort for the league office to come up with an appealing schedule based on this alignment.
The league showed it's hand with the schedule for this year, didn't they? Math isn't my strongest suit, but I did some fiddling around and came up with the theory that 28 teams is one more team than 27 teams. If MLS were heading in the direction of four conferences wouldn't they have implimented that, at least a bit, this season? Instead, they set fans up to expect very few inter-East-West games for their club this season. They may do the US thing and go with four divisions of 7, within two conferences, but the focus will be the conference play, and it looks as if it will grow each year. I admit, this is the system I've been advocating for years now, but I'm not advocating here, just saying we're already seeing MLS move in this direction. The East-West interplay was minimized this season and the statements make it sound as if that means something. back to my advocation: It makes the most sense if MLS eventually reaches 36 clubs, when 18 teams per conference means no interleague play, and you get both intensified playoffs plus single table style regular season compeitions (The Supporters Shield would be awarded twice a season, to each conference champ).
We shall see. You are probably correct but this year might be an outlier due to COVID concerns when the schedule was drawn up. Teams are allowed to travel the day of the game this year, for example. That is surely a temporary situation and we shouldn't expect that going forward. Other parts of this schedule may not be indicative of future direction.
I believe the league specifically said that they were focusing on another year of regionalized schedules to allow for shorter travel to improve COVID safety. While I do think the league is going to move that way I wouldn't use this year (or last year) as any proof of that.
While quite true, there was nothing stopping them from going to three seven team conferences and a 6 team conference this season. It wouldn't have had to affect the scheduling (the scheduling could have looked exactly as it does) but would have prepared fans for the setup. MLS likes to mess things around, so maybe they like the lack of consistency (hobgoblin of little minds and all that)
This thread was not so much of a prediction as wish-casting. I like the idea of teams playing as many of the teams in the entire league as possible, at least once. I think small conferences would allow that along with other advantages. I prefer that to divisions in the conferences which would consign teams to playing pretty much the same opponents year after year without many games against the other conference. Do I think the league is going to go to 4 conferences? Probably not. But 28 teams would be a great place to start so I can hold out hope.
IMO, your's in one of two options that make sense. If the pirmary goal is for everyone to play everyone, it works with your system at 28 (though begins to fail after that). The downside is that playing at home and away in MLS are huge differences, and this means a less "fair" playoff seeding. If the desire is to as closely as possible balance the season to prepare for playoffs, they go the other way, with 26 matches being home and away series and 8 being inter divisional rivalries. this works better as the league goes to 30, 32 and up to 36 (when there are no inter division matches before the cup final). the other downside could be for clubs like SKC, Chicago and St. Louis. If they are split between east and west, their most natural rivalries will be less frequent.