MNUFC Schedule for the Remainder of September released

This morning Major League Soccer announced the schedule for the remainder of September for the league along with the 2020 MLS Cup Playoffs format. This of course includes Minnesota United’s schedule for the rest of the month. The Loons schedule looks like this for the rest of September:

Sunday September 13th - @ Sporting Kansas City at 7:30PM (part of Phase One)
Saturday September 19th - @ Houston Dynamo at 7:00 PM
Wednesday September 23rd - @ Columbus Crew at 6:30 PM
Sunday September 27th - vs Real Salt Lake at 7:00 PM

Just like during Phase One of the resumed season all the games will be played behind closed doors, with no fans. However all games will televised via FOX Sports North and MLS Live on ESPN+ (US) and MLS Live on DAZN (Canada) for fans to watch.

In addition to the these matches MLS announced all three Canadian clubs (Montreal Impact, Toronto FC, and Vancouver Whitecaps) will resume play with the rest of the league. All three clubs will play games against three US based teams, including at least one home match a piece. Here are where the three sides will play there home matches.

Montreal Impact - Red Bull Arena (Harrison, NJ)
Toronto FC - Rentschler Field (East Hartford, CT)
Vancouver Whitecaps - Providence Park (Portland, OR)

This actually creates a very odd situation in both New York and Portland. Both the Red Bull Arena and Providence Park will, at least temporarily, be hosting three different clubs at the same time. Red Bull Arena in Harrison, NJ will of course be hosting the aforementioned Toronto FC, regular home side New York Red Bulls, and New York City FC. NYCFC is playing at RBA due to the requirements of Major League Baseball to have no other events in MLB stadiums during the season. Once the 2020 MLB season ends NYCFC could, quite possibly, return to Yankee Stadium.

Providence Park in Portland, OR actually hosting four teams. Those being Vancouver Whitecaps temporarily, regular hosts Portland Timbers, and their reserve side Portland Timbers 2 of the USL Championship, and Portland Thorns of the National Women’s Soccer League.

Along with this news was the official announcement of the 2020 Audi MLS Cup Playoffs format. With a shortened season the league did state before that 18 teams will make the playoffs. This will consist of the top 8 teams in the now 12 team Western Conference and the top 10 teams in the now 14 team Eastern Conference.

Major League Soccer/mlssoccer.com

The Western Conference playoffs will be fairly standard and follow the revamped format introduced in 2019. This will be a straight 8, single elimination playoff bracket with the Western Conference winner qualifying for the MLS Cup Final. Prior to 2019 the bracket was a two-game aggregate series rather than single elimination.

The Eastern Conference will be a little more complicated, but not much more. The bottom four teams in the East (seeds 7-10) will play a preliminary round to qualify for the Conference Quarter-Finals. The 7 seed will host the 10 seed and the 8 seed will host the 9 seed. Following that the lowest seed remaining will travel the #1 seed in the East while the higher of the two will travel to the #2 seed in the East for the Conference Quarter-Finals. At this point the playoffs in the East resume the same format in the West.

At this point the Loons now have 9 remaining games that have been unannounced by the league. Per Major League Soccer:

“Additional regular season matches will be announced at a later date, pending further developments regarding travel protocols.”