How do MLS playoffs work? Format, game dates for 2025 postseason soccer tournament as Lionel Messi bids for glory

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MLS trophies: Past winners, explaining Supporters’ Shield and MLS Cup

While many soccer leagues around the world determine their domestic champion by a league table,

The U.S. domestic league, like many other American sports, features a playoff system to determine its league champion.

The regular season determines which teams qualify for the playoffs and at what position, and then the postseason is contested to decide the ultimate champion.

The Sporting News details how Major League Soccer playoffs work, having reshuffled the format not long ago to create more drama and build excitement both before and during the postseason.

. Nine teams from each conference progress to the postseason. The teams seeded one to seven in each conference progress to the first-round proper, while those placed eighth and ninth compete in one-off wild card matches.

Previously, teams play a single-elimination knockout bracket to decide the champion. In the new format, the Round of 16 is a best-of-three series, with all draws decided by a penalty shootout. The first team to claim two victories advances to the more traditional single-elimination format used for conference semifinals, conference finals, and MLS Cup final.

The last team standing at the end of the knockout bracket wins the MLS Cup and is considered the MLS champion. In 2022 LAFC won both the MLS Cup and the Supporters’ Shield, although this double is relatively rare and it was only the eighth time since the league’s formation in 1996 that it had been completed.

Read the full article at: Sporting News