USL Championship format yields early group standings

USL soccer will make its triumphant return, hopefully, beginning July 11 with a regionalized group system and a reduced schedule. Each team has been divided among eight groups, four for each conference, and will primarily be playing against teams in its own group. Each team will play up to 12 games against members of its group, with up to an additional four games against teams from outside the group but geographically related.

So, with that out of the way, let’s look at the groups.

Western Conference

Group A

Portland Timbers 2
Reno 1868 FC
Sacramento Republic FC
Tacoma Defiance

Group B

LA Galaxy II
Las Vegas Lights FC
Orange County SC
Phoenix Rising FC
San Diego Loyal SC

Group C

Colorado Springs Switchbacks FC
El Paso Locomotive FC
New Mexico United
Real Monarchs SLC

Group D

Austin Bold FC
OKC Energy FC
Rio Grande Valley FC
San Antonio FC
FC Tulsa

Eastern Conference

Group E

Indy Eleven
Louisville City FC
Saint Louis FC
Sporting Kansas City II

Group F

Hartford Athletic
Loudoun United FC
New York Red Bulls II
Philadelphia Union II
Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC

Group G

Birmingham Legion FC
Charlotte Independence
Memphis 901 FC
North Carolina FC

Group H

Atlanta United 2
Charleston Battery
The Miami FC
Tampa Bay Rowdies

Group standings

In the intro segment, you’ll notice the use of “up to” for the number of games. That’s because every team but Birmingham and Hartford have already played once, with San Diego and Tacoma playing twice before the season was postponed. As a result, those matches will either count as an in-group or out-of-group result for the new schedule. That means we actually already have some group standings.

I’m not going to flood this already lengthy article with embedded spreadsheets of every single group’s standings. I will, however, make a nice little table that includes the relevant information.

group standings — Games played against group and non-group opponents

This table shows which games played were against teams in the group (OPP) and other teams outside the group (OTH). Games highlighted in green were wins, yellow draws and red losses. From this, we can see that Groups A, B, F and H have already played one group game. Meanwhile, the majority of teams will only have three additional games against other opponents.

After the completion of the group stage, the top two teams in each group will then advance to a single-elimination bracket, reducing the playoffs from their originally scheduled 10 teams with a play-in round to eight per conference, essentially reverting to the playoff format last used in 2008.

The USL Championship format helps to reduce travel, but interestingly, they’re not going for the same single-site bubbles that MLS and the NWSL are planning, and given the recent spike in COVID-19 cases, could prove to be a more ambitious and potentially problematic system.

Regardless, the season is set to resume on the 11th, with announcements of group schedules expected this week. Stay tuned for more details as they arrive.

Follow John on Twitter: @JohnMLTX.

Support Soc Takes on Patreon for access to exclusive content and supporter benefits. Click here to become a patron today.

John Lenard

John Lenard is a vector artist, armchair vexillologist, statistics nerd, writer, and podcaster. By day, they work in government IT, and by night, they blog about sports online. They once made flags for every single team in American professional soccer, a project that continues to grow as soccer does. They also make things for the Dallas Beer Guardians.