With this in mind, I thought I would knock up a mini guide to the MLS structure.
MLS = Major League Soccer: the top professional football league in the USA.
There are 15 teams in MLS (14 from USA, 1 from Canada).
1996 was its first season (with 10 teams, this number has gradually expanded since).
The season runs from March to November each year.
Rather than follow what many would view as the traditional model for organisation of a football league seen in Europe, of just having the 15 teams in a straight league, MLS follows a similar model to many American sports leagues. MLS is split into an Eastern Conference and a Western Conference. 7 teams in the East, 8 in the West.
There is then a Regular Season followed by Playoffs.
In the Regular Season, every team plays 30 games: 28 home and away games against the 14 other teams in MLS, plus 2 intra-conference games based on local rivalries (grudge matches, if you will). At the end of the Regular Season, the top 2 teams in each Conference plus the next 4 teams with the most points overall (from either Conference) progress to the PlayOffs (8 teams in total, from the original 15).
Those teams which have progressed to the PlayOffs are then seeded and drawn against eachother. The playoffs are then played on two-legged home-and-away basis. If there is a tie, then naturally there is extra time followed by a penalty-shoot-out (or PKs as Americans like to call them). The final is just played over one leg.
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