The United Soccer League has announced that its game schedule for the 2018 will expand by one week to 31 and will see each club play 34 games, an increase of 2, for a total of over 500 games in its regular season.

Speculative expectation is that the season would open one week earlier than this year, on the weekend of March 16 and would conclude equivalent to this year, maintaining this year’s postseason sequence.  We will know only after the schedulers’ magic wands have stirred their special cauldron.

The announcement referenced three new expansion sides for 2018.  Two have been officially announced, Nashville and Fresno, and many expect the third will be Las Vegas, whose city government recently facilitated a stadium arrangement aimed at soccer.

The announcement did not mention possible promotions of current USL sides to Major League Soccer.  While several USL sides submitted applications this past January for MLS team slots 25 and 26 of the planned 28, Wikipedia indicates the successful candidates  would begin play in 2020.

The announcement made no reference to any discussion of the division two status of the 11 “MLS2” wholly-owned-affiliate player-development sides.  The statement that there will be over 500 games might be construed as suggesting those clubs will retain division 2 status for 2018. But no definitive conclusion on the point can be drawn from the available information.

There was no comment concerning the provisional status of the league’s division two classification thought possibly to be under evaluation this month by U. S. Soccer.