Photo: Paul Rudderow

MLS NEXT Pro will play its second season in 2023, but still has not announced a start date, an end date, or a game schedule. Last Friday  it did indirectly confirm its predicted 2023 conference structure.

The league’s parent, Major League Soccer, announced its own schedule December 20. But the fully professional player development league lags nine weeks behind.

Teams are building rosters, practicing, and scrimmaging other teams. But practice sequences cannot precisely bring squads to full 90-minute match fitness without a target start date. And roster builds do not know how much depth to create because they can only guess the total games and the numbers of weeks with extra games on short rest.

Earlier, an obstacle had been that four of the 28 teams were being created from scratch, literally “brand new.” That mattered because the graphics of officially releasing a schedule require logos that have been created, finalized and distributed. But the last one was made public Monday, January 30 when Crown Legacy – Charlotte FC’s professional youth development side – was presented to the world.

Another may be that Austin FC II has not yet announced a stadium deal, although there is no shortage of stadiums in Texas’s capital. Without a confirmed home venue precise details for individual game contracts cannot crystalize from the slurry of uncertainty.

In any sport complexity characterizes constructing, verifying, and adjusting any league’s game schedule. But 2023 is not MLSNP’s founding year. It is not the year when building materials were hurled unassembled into a fast-flowing Niagara of a river to be assembled into a ship while floating towards a world famous waterfall, i. e., the 2022 season’s start date.

MLS Next Pro now lists a full slate of executives. The ship on this year’s Niagara River is already built. Ali Curtis, one of the ship’s pilots and the league’s Senior Vice President for competition and operations, has always shown himself highly competent. Prima facie, incompetence can be excluded as an explanation.

So, why the delay?

From its earliest formation MLS NEXT Pro has described itself as experimental, a laboratory crucible to test new ideas. Might the delay be that the league is creating a major innovation?

Late last October The Athletic’s Sam Stejskal and Pablo Mauer speculated that MLS was considering a major overhaul to its playoffs. Given the detail they published, the information was probably a league-leaked trial balloon. Under this plan, MLS’s playoffs would become a World-Cup-style, two-stage tournament. Playoff teams would play a group stage before the survivors entered a single elimination knockout bracket. This would provide several more games for Apple to stream in what is reportedly described as a more continuous narrative in which more teams qualify.

Ultimately, the league went with a slightly different vision for its playoff overhaul, announced Tuesday. But that doesn’t mean that the group-style concept is off the table for future years.

For 2023 MLS has 29 teams and MLS NEXT Pro has 28. The laboratory crucible does not mirror the parent league perfectly. But it is closely similar.

MLS itself is already adding a World-Cup-wtyle tournament for the 2023 season from July 21 to August 19, the greatly expanded Leagues Cup.  All 47 teams of MLS and Liga MX will participate giving Apple 77 more games to sell.  Expanding the playoffs the same way might create too much for 30-man rosters to survive. MLS NEXT Pro could dress rehearse the concept without stressing their parent clubs’ rosters.

Is MLS NEXT Pro the proscenium and stage on which a new playoff system’s dress rehearsal will play out? How better can an ancient retiree spend a cold, rainy February morning than to guess?

A imaginary MLS NEXT Pro world-cup-style playoff structure

Last year only eight of 21 MLSNP teams made the playoffs. Only 38 % of those development  programs could teach their players further. Serious development philosophies should desire playoff pressure. Expanding participation and adding two or three more games per participant expands teaching opportunities.

Here is what a 2023 MLS NEXT Pro world-cup-style playoff structure might look like.

There are 28 teams. Logic, precedent, and unofficial but recently changed evidence from a Wikipedia article assert there will be two conferences of 14 teams each, divided by the Mississippi River. Each conference will have two divisions of seven teams each.

If “world cup-style” means 3-team groups (as it will in 2026 and already does for the Leagues Cup this year), then three, six, nine, or 12 are the number of teams from each conference that could make our imaginary playoffs.

Three is too few because it shrinks down last year’s four. Twelve is too many because it devalues regular season competition. If only the last two are eliminated what is the  point of competing seriously during a long regular season?

From either six or nine per conference, nine provides greater development opportunity. And Apple wants more games.

Nine teams from two conferences creates three groups of three per conference, totaling six groups. Two games per group yields 18 group stage games. If — following 2026 World Cup and 2023 Leagues Cup practices — the top two in each group move on, four third place finishers would be needed to create the 16 teams required for each conference’s set of quarterfinals.

So the knockout bracket would total four rounds: two conference quarters (eight total games), two conference semis (four games), two conference finals (two) and MLS NEXT Pro Cup. That totals to 15 matches in the knockout round. Add the 18 from the group stage and the entire playoff would total 33. Last season it totaled 13. Both player development and commercial streaming are happy.

Individually the championship finalists would each play five games. Last year they played three.

Appendix

The group scheme and schedules that follow below are for illustrative purposes only. They are entirely imaginary. Home field in each match would be determined by which team had the higher position in the combined  league-wide regular season table using that table’s tiebreakers.

Groups would be composed as seeded below.

Group A           Group B           Group C           Group D           Group E           Group F

East 1              East 2              East 3              West 1             West 2             West 3

East 6              East 5              East 4              West 6             West 5             West 4

East 9              East 8              East 7              West 9             West 8             West 7

On the first group match day the group’s highest seed would play its lowest. On the second match day: the middle seed would play the lowest. On the third the highest would play the middle. The group’s highest seed gets both games at home. The lowest gets both on the road.

Group stage points would be awarded as during the regular season. Draws would move immediately to a penalty kick shootout. They would not use extra time because the tournament’s pace of play will be demanding enough without adding extra minutes. Points for shootouts would be awarded following regular season procedures.

The two worst third-place group members would be eliminated. The four best would advance.

Here is an imaginary schedule. It always plays games on three days’ rest. It also provides Apple with a nearly continuous narrative lasting 22 days.

Group Stage

Knockout stage

Before the knockout rounds re-seed within each conferences using group stage results with regular season tiebreakers. Higher seeded teams host.

Knockout round schedule. Rest is always three days except before the conference quarterfinals when the higher seeds – assuming they have won – get one or two days more.