2. CLUB LEVEL SCHEDULE
This was the most confusing thing to learn at first when it comes to soccer. The US soccer structure fits pretty well with every other American sport in how it does its schedule; MLS season goes from March to October/November.
International soccer is an entirely different animal. Their schedule is extremely confusing due to the packed schedule that international soccer created for itself. If we take the English Premier League for example, their league schedule runs from August to May. However, the league level of play is actually much closer to how college sports are structured than it is like American professional leagues.
The EPL is a conference that is grouped with other country’s leagues under the banner of UEFA, the Union of European Football Associations. After those results have finished, the winners of each professional league play in the UEFA Champions League, which usually plays during the next year and also typically coincides with the next year’s EPL season. After the EPL plays through and finds it’s competitors for the UEFA Champions League, then the UEFA Champion moves on to the FIFA Club World Cup. The FIFA Club World Cup is much like the Final Four in status.
In grand summary (because of course that was confusing, it is soccer scheduling after all), in a given year, a soccer season takes the format of college basketball. There are the pre-season and non-conference games (friendly tournaments and country wide tournaments for soccer), the conference season (The EPL season or MLS Season), the NCAA Tournament (The UEFA Champions League or region specific league), and finally the Final Four to pick the champion of champions for club level soccer (The FIFA Club World Cup). That’s kind of the whole point of soccer, the “conference level” championships generally matter the most unless you are a top-tier club like Barcelona, Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea, or Real Madrid.
