USL releases 2020 season format; Locomotive preparing for return
EL PASO, Texas -- When the 2020 USL Championship season was suspended back in March, there was a lot of uncertainty whether soccer would be able to return.
Fast forward three months later, the USL is now preparing for a return to play.
Wednesday, the league released its revised 2020 season format.
The plan is for teams to be drawn into eight regionalized groups to play a 16-game schedule.
Five groups will be comprised of four teams and three groups will have five teams to account for geography and to also limit the amount of travel.
The USL will also take into account games that have already been played prior to when the season was suspended.
The El Paso Locomotive for example will play 15 games since they did end up playing a road game back in March.
That game will count towards the team record, which ended up being 0-0 draw to Orange County.
The El Paso Locomotive will enter the restart of the season with one point.
The Locomotive will then play 8 homes games and 7 away games.
The season is set to resume on July 11 with the regular season taking place across 13 weeks, and will conclude on the weekend of Oct. 2-4.
Each team will play 12 games from their group, with the remaining four against teams from a similar geographic region.
The Locomotive are hoping fans will be able to attend games at Southwest University Park with a 25% capacity.
However, nothing is official yet as everything remains fluid due to covid-19.
The Locomotive will be televising some of their games on the El Paso Las Cruces CW.
Details on which games will be televised will be ironed out at a later time once the USL releases its complete schedule.
