It’s official: Nashville Soccer Club will compete in the Western Conference for its inaugural Major League Soccer season in 2020, the league announced Monday morning. Fellow expansion side Inter Miami CF will be placed in the Eastern Conference to ensure both conferences have an equal 13 clubs.
Each club will play a 34-game regular season with 17 home matches and 17 away matches. Every team will play their 12 intra-conference opponents twice – once home and once away for a total of 24 matches – with the other 10 regular-season matches coming against the opposite conference. Those inter-conference opponents will be revealed with the full 2020 schedule release.
Three more expansion clubs are set to join the league in the coming years: Austin FC (2021), Sacramento Republic (2022) and St. Louis (2022).
As a Western Conference side for its inaugural season, Nashville SC is guaranteed to host some of the top clubs in MLS at Nissan Stadium, including defending MLS Cup champion Seattle Sounders and defending Supporters’ Shield winners LAFC. Here is the official 2020 MLS conference alignment:
Eastern Conference (13 clubs)
Atlanta United
Chicago Fire FC
Columbus Crew SC
D.C. United
FC Cincinnati
Inter Miami CF
Montreal Impact
New England Revolution
New York City FC
New York Red Bulls
Orlando City
Philadelphia Union
Toronto FC
Western Conference (13 clubs)
Colorado Rapids
FC Dallas
Houston Dynamo
LAFC
LA Galaxy
Minnesota United
Nashville SC
Portland Timbers
Real Salt Lake
San Jose Earthquakes
Seattle Sounders
Sporting Kansas City
Vancouver Whitecaps
