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***Canadice*** · 2025-03-23, 07:30 AM - Word count:

Expansion Update

The expansion organizations have been announced and protection lists have been submitted! Welcome to our four new teams in Shanghai Dragons FC (major), Rapid Magyar SC (minor), CD Tenochtitlan (major) and Krung Thep FC (minor).

The SSL World Map now looks as follows with some new areas seeing the introduction of an SSL team to watch!
[Image: XglZPdx.png]

As the protection lists have been submitted, the expansion managers are now given one week to reach out to the players that weren't protected and get a feel for the players available. The Expansion Draft will happen on the 30th and a summary of the draft will be posted as a reply to this post with each player tagged after which the expansion managers will reach out and invite the chosen players to their new locker rooms.

The draft will consist of 12 rounds following a snake format with CD Tenochtitlan making the first selection. In the first 8 rounds each expansion organization will select one player each from each of the available organizations after which follows 4 rounds where only one additional player from each organization may be selected. In total, three picks will be made from each current organization.

With CD Tenochtitlan getting the first pick in the Expansion Draft, Shanghai Dragons FC will acquire the first pick in the S20 Prospect Draft that will start the week after with a live presentation of the results on Youtube on April 6th, the last day of the S19 season.

Changes to the league structure

With the addition of the two expansion organizations, there are going to be some changes to the league structure. One such change is the Cup structure as continuing on with the current setup would cause heavy match congestion and essentially put the simmers on a daily schedule to keep up with the calendar. The league matchdays will increase from 14 to 18 for both the Major and Minor league. In order to limit the increase of matchdays even further, the SSL Cup will now go back to what it once was, a pure knockout tournament.

The bottom eight teams in the Minor League (using the previous season's standings) will enter the competition in a two-leg qualifying round where the winners advance to the Round of 16. The remaining 12 teams will join the four winners in this round and play another two legs split into two matchdays of four games each in order to reduce the length of sims. The winners advance to the quarter finals and so on and so forth with the final being played with only one leg to determine the Cup Winner.

In total these changes means that each team will guaranteed play minimum 20 games (18 league + 2 cup) compared to the current 17 games (14 league + 3 cup), so more games to see your player on the pitch!

We will see some more announcements in the coming week(s) as we near the end of S19.

The Commissioner and BoD

**roquefort** · 2025-03-23, 08:27 AM - Word count:

Awesome! Exciting times are ahead

**RashfordU** · 2025-03-23, 08:35 AM - Word count:

OG Cup let’s go!

**omniscius** · 2025-03-23, 08:41 AM - Word count:

I prefer this cup format. Looking forward to the new expanded season as well and what that will entail. Think we had 10 and 12 team (18 and 20 game) seasons before and they were a lot of fun.