Fewer than four weeks remain until the start of the Major League Soccer season, but the league has still not finalized its playoff format for 2023.

As reported by The Athletic early last month, all signs point to the league introducing a best-of-three series for the first round and transitioning to a single-elimination format for the conference semifinals and beyond.

Sources said that the motivations behind the likely change are to increase the overall number of matches to provide more inventory for MLS Season Pass on Apple TV and to create more game-related revenue for owners. The league, sources said, also wants the format change because it would ensure that every playoff participant hosts at least one postseason match.

MLS used a single-elimination format from 2019-2022, in which the top seven teams from each conference qualified for the playoffs. That setup provided plenty of drama, but involved just 13 total postseason matches and didn’t guarantee that every participant would host a game.

Sources provided The Athletic with an additional update this week, saying that, as part of the proposed shift to a best-of-three first-round, MLS is also considering expanding the field to include nine teams from each conference. If adopted, the eighth and ninth seeds would contest a play-in match, with the winner advancing to face the first seed from their respective conference in the best-of-three conference quarterfinals. This format would include a minimum of 25 playoff matches.

Beyond increasing inventory for Apple and generating additional revenue for owners, the thrust of the idea, the sources said, is to keep more teams in contention for playoff places later in the regular season. Allowing 18 total teams into the field would also mean that 62 percent of the league’s 29 teams would qualify for the postseason, which would certainly mean more teams in the running. But it could also dilute the overall quality of the playoff tournament and further decrease the stakes around regular season matches in the early and middle portions of the year, a long-standing problem for MLS.

The sources said that the MLS product strategy committee, a powerful group of owners and executives that drives most of the competitive and roster-related decisions made by the league, is set to meet in the Palm Springs, Calif. area next week, wherethe group is expected to discuss and finalize the potential playoff changes.

The MLS regular season kicks off on Feb. 25.

U.S. Soccer considering building national training center

Late in 2022, U.S. Soccer sent an email to select individuals letting them know that the federation was considering a capital campaign looking to raise up to $300 million to help build a new training center, headquarters and diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) innovation lab.

Sources familiar with the federation’s plans told The Athletic last week that Atlanta and Cary, N.C. are among the cities being considered for the training center and headquarters. The Atlanta-area site would be an entirely new development, while the site in Cary would leverage some of the existing infrastructure and facilities at WakeMed Soccer Park. In addition to being home of the NWSL team North Carolina Courage and USL League One side North Carolina FC, WakeMed Soccer Park has hosted numerous senior and youth national team matches and camps since it opened in 2002. It was also the setting for perhaps the most infamous photo shoot in team history.

According to the email, if completed, the national training center would include “14+ groomed fields” for the U.S. senior, youth and extended national teams as well as “cutting-edge training facilities, collaborative workspaces, high-tech sporting equipment (and) medical resources for injury prevention and recovery.” The site would also be a new headquarters for USSF staff, which is now housed in an office building in downtown Chicago after the federation left its longtime home in the city’s South Loop neighborhood last summer.

If constructed, the DEIB lab would serve, according to the federation’s email, “as an incubator and funder for the best and most effective diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging projects to impact lives and fuel change across the soccer landscape.”

The federation wrote that it would allocate $250 million of the potential $300 million it was considering trying to raise to the national training center; the remaining $50 million would go to the DEIB lab.

The federation laid out its rationale for wanting to construct a national training center in its email, writing that “uniting U.S. Soccer resources into one high-impact space will ensure consistent world-class environments for our athletes while streamlining operations, eliminating logistical and travel challenges and saving costs for our staff — creating greater opportunity to focus on collaboration, success and growing the game.”

Atlanta is a major international travel hub and would be a relatively straightforward destination for players, coaches and administrators traveling to a new training facility and headquarters regardless of where they’re based. Cary, which is located just outside Raleigh, would be a more difficult city to travel to, particularly from overseas. Both offer relatively mild climates mostly suitable for year-round training.

The idea of a national training center has been entertained for years by U.S. Soccer. The federation partnered with LA Galaxy and AEG in the early-2000s to create a training center at what is now Dignity Health Sports Park, but USSF doesn’t control that site. U.S. Soccer entered into a similar arrangement with Sporting Kansas City to open the $75 million Compass Minerals Performance Center in 2018. That facility is the home of the federation’s coaching education programs, but it hasn’t been used particularly often by either the men’s or women’s senior national teams.

A source with knowledge of the plans warned that while Cary and Atlanta are both being considered as sites, the federation still needs to shore up financing and clear other hurdles before finalizing plans for a national training center in any market. That source, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the project, also said it’s possible other sites could emerge as candidates for the training center.

U.S. Soccer aiming for friendlies against Argentina, Brazil in fall

U.S. Soccer has had discussions with the federations of Argentina and Brazil about hosting the South American powers for friendlies during international windows in the fall, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the team’s scheduling.

The U.S. men’s team has international windows in September, October and November to close out 2023. One source warned that any discussions with opponents are in early stages and, as always, have several check marks that must be ticked in order for the game to be finalized, including appearance fees, venue decisions and potential other friendlies those nations may be scheduling for the fall windows.

Both opponents would be top-level games for the U.S. as they ramp up preparation ahead of the 2024 Copa América and 2026 World Cup. Argentina is the defending World Cup champion and Brazil went into the 2022 World Cup as the favorite before eventually losing to Croatia in penalties in the quarterfinals.

The U.S. men last played Argentina in the Copa América Centenario semifinals in 2016, a 4-0 loss. Its last match against Brazil was a 2-0 loss in a friendly in 2018 at MetLife Stadium.

(Photo: Kiyoshi Mio-USA TODAY Sports)