In an interview with the athletes Pablo Maurer and Felipe Cardenas on Saturday, Inter Miami manager Phil Neville stated that one of the reasons MLS is not viewed as a “top league” is the lack of knowledge on a potential new playoff structure a week before opening day.
All indications point to the league adopting a best-of-three first-round series and switching to a single-elimination structure for the conference semifinals and beyond this season, as reported by the Daily Early last month.
The format has not been formally revealed, but the regular season will start on February 25. This is the first year of the league’s 10-year partnership with Apple, which paid $2.5 billion for the right to broadcast every MLS match. The agreement is said to be the driving force behind the league’s decision to expand the playoffs.
“We’re six days, seven days away from the first game of the season, we don’t know the playoff format. I think that’s bad,” Neville said. “When you talk about professionalism and ‘elite’ I think when you’re out seven days before the season starts – we’ve had conversations here and one of our players asked one of the MLS guys the other day ‘what’s the playoff -System’ and they said, ‘We don’t know.’ And I say: ‘This is not elite.’ Are you talking about differences between the UK and the US? We talked about the intensity of the fans. (That’s another) big difference.”
“If we want to be the best and be compared to the top leagues, that should have been decided two months ago. It annoys me a bit,” said Neville, a third-year MLS coach. He added that things like contracts, sponsorships and season tickets also depended on knowing the schedule.
“We’ve been planning the whole season and we actually don’t know when the season ends and how many games we have after the regular season. So with seven days to go before the regular season starts, that’s a nuisance for me – we need to get better at that… My question is, who finds out? is it apple Who’s wagging the dog?’
Neville also said: “First of all, I think the Apple deal will change the whole league. I think that’s revolutionary. I think the product, the quality of the product that viewers see, the content will be awesome. I think that’s groundbreaking and I think it shows the growth.”
