Blue Links: More Details on a Potential MLS Return, Women’s World Cup, Winston Reid and More

Soccer news is really picking up. Here are a few things you may have missed on the league and Sporting KC.

More Details on Orlando

It was previously reported that Major League Soccer (MLS) was looking at starting things up by July 1st via some sort of event in Orlando, Florida. Earlier in the week Matt Besler advised the players sent back the proposal to the league and as of now, there has been no update.

Now The Athletic has new reporting from several of their writers with lots of new details. The 26 teams would be divided up into four groups, two for each conference. Nashville SC would temporarily move to the Eastern Conference for any games in 2020, including those beyond this competition. And there will be no inter-conference games so SKC would potentially face four new teams next year (Nashville, Inter Miami, Charlotte and Austin FC). Outside of Atlanta United, Los Angeles Football Club, Seattle Sounders and ‘hosts’ Orlando City, everyone else would be randomly drawn into groups.

The teams would then play five games then advance “to an eight-team, knockout-style competition.” The results would count towards the regular season standings (assuming there was eventually a season). Additionally if there is a season, the eventual playoffs would allow nine teams in per conference. That would be 18 of 26 teams making the playoffs.

They’ve also updated the potential start to July 3rd. All of this is of course tentative and needs to be agreed to by the players. There is a lot more detail in the story including rules about being quarantined for both players and potentially staff and others involved as well as detail on the proposed pay cut which was first reported on by ESPN.

The Blue Testament will bring you more as details are made available.

Update 12:45 AM CST: After publishing this story The Athletic put out another, even more detailed story including all the procedures for testing, match day rosters and a clarification that Toronto FC or Atlanta could head a group with the other being paired with Orlando.

Blue Links

• Matt Doyle as Gianluca Busio as Sporting Kansas City’s best 22 under 22 contender.
• Busio may have some competition from 15-year-old’s Nati Clarke and Gage Akalu though.
• One writer thinks Winston Reid’s time with West Ham United will be coming to an end. Another source seems to believe that Reid will see out his loan with Sporting.
• Sporting Oklahoma and Sporting Michigan have joined the SKC Academy Affiliate program.
• FIFA will choose 2023 Women’s World Cup host on June 25th

Game Night

And finally, Sporting Kansas City put out their fourth installment of Game Night hosted by Benny Feilhaber. This time it was coaches as he had on Peter Vermes, Kerry Zavagnin, Zoran Savic and Alec Dufty to see who would go to the championship. It’s possibly the best one yet.