MLS NEXT · Homegrown Division · 2026–27 season

Pro Player Pathway

Standings & projected finish

The league table from games played so far, plus where the model expects each team to finish after simulating the rest of the season 10,000 times. Click a column heading to sort.
MP matches playedGoals scored–concededGD goal differencePts/G points per game: the table is ranked by this, as MLS NEXT does, because teams play different numbers of gamesLast 5 oldest → newest; hover for the scoreLeague games only, like MLS NEXT's official table; MLS NEXT Flex games are listed under Results and Upcoming games (what's Flex?)Proj. pts expected points at season end

Who beat who

Find a team on the left and read across. Each box is one game against the team at the top of the column, with the left-hand team's score first.
Hover or tap a box for the date, home/away and details. Click a team name to highlight all of its games. The team you follow is highlighted in yellow.

Power rankings

How strong each team looks to the model: goals it would expect to score and concede per game against an average team in this conference, on a neutral field. With only a few games played, these will move a lot.

Results

Completed league and MLS NEXT Flex games, newest first. Winners in bold. Flex games are marked; they don't count in the league table (what's Flex?).

Upcoming games

The model's chances for each remaining league and MLS NEXT Flex game. The bar shows home win, draw and away win; the team in bold is the model's pick. Kickoff times are in your time zone.
Home winDrawAway winStrong60%+Lean45–60%Toss-upunder 45%

How accurate are the predictions?

Each weekend is re-predicted using only the games played before it (plus last season's ratings), then compared with what actually happened, so the model never gets to peek at the result. "Too close to call" counts as a draw pick. With only a few weekends played, these numbers will be rough.

League games vs MLS NEXT Flex games

League

The regular season inside each conference, for every age group (U13–U19). Only league games count in the standings, which MLS NEXT ranks by points per game (3 for a win, 1 for a draw).

MLS NEXT Flex

A second competition for U15–U19; U13 and U14 don't play Flex this season. Teams play in Flex groups, mostly against clubs from their own conference, and pro academies from the Pro Player Pathway join those groups too. Drawn Flex games go to a penalty shootout. Flex has its own group tables and doesn't count in the league standings. Last season the winner of each Flex group earned an MLS NEXT Cup place; the 2026–27 format hasn't been announced yet.

On this site

League tables are League-only, like MLS NEXT's. Flex games appear everywhere games are listed, with a purple Flex tag, and Flex group tables are on conference and team pages. The model's ratings use both kinds of game, because both show how strong a team is; a Flex game decided on penalties counts as a draw for the ratings.

How the predictions work

Team ratings

Each team gets an attack and a defense rating, fit to every completed game with a Poisson goals model, the standard approach for predicting soccer scores. Expected goals for the home side = league average × home edge × home attack × away defense weakness, and likewise for the away side. Home teams currently get more goals in the model. Each team starts the season from last season's rating (the average of the same players a year younger and the club's same age group, at three-quarters strength), and its games this season gradually take over. In a backtest over all of 2025–26 this made early-season predictions noticeably better.

From ratings to odds

From the two expected-goal numbers the model works out the chance of every scoreline (0–0, 1–0, 2–1, …), which gives the win, draw and loss chances and the most likely score. A small Dixon-Coles adjustment makes 0–0 and 1–1 a bit more likely (and 1–0 and 0–1 a bit less), because plain Poisson models under-predict draws; its strength is estimated from the results so far (currently ). The pick is the more likely winner, or "too close to call" when the two are within 5 points; the margin is the expected goal difference, rounded. The projected finish plays out every remaining game 10,000 times using those chances.

The standings

Tables follow MLS NEXT's 2026–27 rules: 3 points for a win, 1 for a tie, ranked by points per game, then head-to-head (two-team ties only), wins, goal difference, goals scored, and away and home results. After every update the U15–U19 tables are checked against MLS's official standings. MLS doesn't publish official U13/U14 tables, so those are worked out from the results with the same rules.

What it leaves out

For U15–U19 the ratings also use MLS NEXT Flex games (the same teams, extra games inside the conference); they never count in the standings. Not included: roster changes, injuries, travel, weather, out-of-conference events, and the fact that youth results are noisy. Treat these numbers as a guide, not a guarantee.