Major League Soccer announced sweeping changes to the league’s playoff format and schedule on Monday. In addition to adding two more teams to the playoffs, every round will now be single-elimination instead of having two rounds of two-legged playoffs.
All changes will go into effect for the 2019 season and the goal of them is put more of an importance on the regular season by giving a bigger advantage to higher seeds.
Another smaller change that has been implemented is that of a fixed bracket. No more re-seeding after the initial round. Here’s how the bracket will look:
As you can see, only the top team in each conference will have the benefit of a first round bye.