USL Pro Announces 2015 Alignment and Playoff Format

The United Soccer Leagues and USL Pro announced the format and alignment for the upcoming 2015 season in a press release on Wednesday afternoon. The league finds itself with 24 teams after the recent announcements from Toronto FC and New York Red Bulls regarding their USL Pro expansion franchises.

Taking a page from Major League Soccer above them, USL Pro will split into two conferences with 12 clubs in each of them. The conferences will be based geographically in an effort to save on travel costs for the clubs as well as “promote regional rivalries, allowing fans greater opportunity to support their clubs home and away as the league continues to bring its brand of professional soccer to enthusiastic markets through the United States and Canada,” according to USL Pro Executive Vice President Jake Edwards.

Each club will play in 28 regular season matches. They will play everyone in their conference as least twice which accounts for 22 of the 28 matches. The other six games will be against geographic rivals as stated in the quote above. The full 2015 USL Pro Schedule will be announced later this month.

The playoff format will also look similar to that of Major League Soccer. The top six clubs in each conference will make the postseason with the top two seeds earning first round byes. They will not reseed after each round so the winner of the game between the third and sixth seeds will face the second seed while the winner of the game between the fourth and fifth seeds will face the top overall seed in the Conference Semi-Finals. The winners of each conference will square off for the 2015 USL Pro Championship which will be hosted by the highest seeded club remaining.