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Main League Soccer will resume its coronavirus-impacted 2020 season July 8 with a World Cup-style match in Orlando, Florida, MLS introduced on Wednesday.
The “MLS is Again Event” will characteristic all 26 of the league’s golf equipment housed at Walt Disney World’s ESPN Huge World of Sports activities advanced, with as much as three matches per day performed with out followers in attendance due to the continuing heath disaster that shut down most international sports activities leagues in mid-March.
Celebrating its twenty fifth season this 12 months, MLS would grow to be the highest-profile North American circuit to return to motion barring any change in its timeline. The NBA this week revealed its plans to return again on July 31, additionally in Orlando. The NHL is concentrating on late summer time, too. The Nationwide Girls’s Soccer League would be the first United States-based league to restart when its personal match kicks off in Utah later this month.
Every MLS staff will play a minimum of three group stage matches. First spherical contests could be performed at 9 a.m., 8 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. ET in the course of the first 16 days of the competitors. There’s a prize pool of $1.1 million, and winner of the match will declare a 2021 CONCACAF Champions League berth.
Group stage video games will depend within the standings of the common season, which the league stated would resume in dwelling markets following the occasion in Florida. A number of sources instructed Yahoo Sports activities that the league is eyeing an abbreviated 18-match schedule for its groups, down from the same old 34.
Golf equipment will arrive in Orlando for preseason coaching starting June 24. Together with gamers and staff workers, MLS will ship greater than 2,000 staff to the occasion. The league’s press launch stated that testing for COVID-19 — the sickness brought on by the coronavirus — could be strong. “The MLS medical division and the league’s infectious illness specialists have developed a complete COVID-19 testing plan which might be carried out for all the MLS is Again Event,” it learn.
“Something we do has to make sure that we’re going to guard the well being and security of our gamers and workers,” stated MLS commissioner Don Garber. “There might be testing for individuals who are touring right down to Orlando earlier than they depart and after they arrive. There might be testing often in the course of the competitors [and] within the coaching that can precede it.”
The MLS Gamers Affiliation signed off on the plan final week as a part of a brand new collective bargaining settlement that can run by means of 2025. The complete schedule for the match might be introduced following a draw that can happen on Thursday.
The 26 groups might be unfold throughout six teams. As hosts, Orlando Metropolis will get the highest seed in Group A. The 4 semifinalists from the 2019 MLS Cup playoffs — Atlanta United, Los Angeles FC, Seattle Sounders, Toronto FC — plus Actual Salt Lake, which had the very best factors complete within the Western Convention after Supporters’ Protect winners LAFC final season, will obtain the 5 remaining seeds.
To make sure each side of the bracket characteristic 13 groups, enlargement aspect Nashville SC will quickly transfer from the West to the East in the course of the match.
Extra from Yahoo Sports activities:
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