Major League Soccer has voted to change its competition schedule to align with other top leagues from the summer of 2027.<\/p>\n
The MLS season currently operates from February to December and the switch to a summer-to-spring format marks one of the most significant developments since the North American competition’s formation in 1995.<\/p>\n
The decision follows a two-year review process and the MLS believes the shift in calendar will help its clubs operate more effectively across global transfer windows.<\/p>\n
“The calendar shift is one of the most important decisions in our history,” said MLS commissioner Don Garber. <\/p>\n
“Aligning our schedule with the world’s top leagues will strengthen our clubs’ global competitiveness, create better opportunities in the transfer market, and ensure our Audi MLS Cup Playoffs take centre stage without interruption. <\/p>\n
“It marks the start of a new era for our league and for soccer in North America.”<\/p>\n
Mauricio Pochettino, the head coach of the United States, added: “This is a great step forward for MLS to be on par with the top leagues in the world.<\/p>\n
“The ability to align with the international calendar will have a huge positive impact for the players, coaches and clubs.”<\/p>\n
The alteration is also designed to reduce clashes with international fixtures and summer tournaments, with the end-of-season play-offs moving to May when the US domestic sports calendar is less crowded and the weather is milder.<\/p>\n
In addition to a new calendar, league owners also voted to update the regular season format to a single-table competition and said research showed that 92% of fans were in favour of the move. <\/p>\n
Historically clubs have been geographically divided into the Eastern and Western Conferences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Major League Soccer has voted to change its competition schedule to align with other top leagues from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261760,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-261759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}