Hello, hello everyone and welcome to MLS Assist, a podcast created to give insight into the tactical side

of major league soccer. I'm your host, Joe Lowry, and I'm joined by my co-host, Jordan,

another week, hopefully closer to the start of the MLS's back tournament. How are you doing?

I'm good, yeah. I think just that, right? The anticipation continues to grow.

We're getting more and more ready. And it's nice that there's other soccer games happening on TV right now.

But, man, I'm ready for MLS to be back.

And that's why, Jordan, today's show, I'm going to go ahead and call the MLS assist.

MLS is back extravagance because we're going deep into this tournament, how it's going to look, what teams are going to do, some new players coming into the league, answering some listener questions. We've got it all going today. Yeah, we're doing it all because this is an extravaganza, Joe. That's right. That's right. I love, we didn't talk about that beforehand, and I love just how immediately you jumped

on board the extravaganza train.

So thank you for that.

Oh, I'm into it. I really like it. We've got a lot to get to today, as I mentioned there. Why don't we go ahead and get into the basic format and structure? This stuff you can find online, but sort of set the scene for a conversation. Jordan, do you want to kind of walk us through the basics of this tournament?

Yeah, I'll try to kind of walk us through the basics of this tournament?

Yeah, I'll try to do it as briefly and concisely as I can. To start off, there's going to be

54 games in the tournament in total. Fifty-four games, Jordan. There's three games a day for the

first 16 days, Joe. Yeah, we'll be busy. Continue, Jordan.

Continue.

So it starts in group stages with all 26 MLS teams, then it goes down to 16 teams and

quarter final semifinals and then the championship game.

So a typical tournament there.

The teams can start arriving in Florida on June 24th and the group stage starts on July 8th. The tournament will

end with the final on August 11th. But what's interesting here is teams can start arriving a

couple weeks before the start of the tournament. And that's so they can quarantine with enough time

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