TAMPA, Fla. – Putting together a regular-season schedule that includes 36 clubs and 612 games is no small task, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Wednesday’s announcement of the 2019 USL Championship regular-season schedule concluded a process that began more than four months ago.

In fact, when the league first requested dates from its clubs to begin the process of building out the biggest season in the league’s history on August 3, there were still more than 200 regular-season games in the 2018 campaign left to be played.

The group led by USL Senior Vice President of League Operations Brett Luy, however, believes that the combination of the expansion of the regular season to 33 weeks and the work put in by both league officials and the USL Championship’s clubs has resulted in the best schedule in the league’s history.

“We’ve been able to get a lot of those premier matches that the teams want to have on weekends, so the supporters can travel, we’ve been able to accommodate a lot more of those requests than we’ve ever been able to do,” said Luy. “As we look to make the league as sustainable as possible for the clubs, their owners and obviously the fans as well, it goes a long way toward increasing the professionalism of the league and driving those efforts if we can get them on the exact dates that they want them to be on, and I think by adding a few weeks to the season we’ve been able to accommodate that more than we ever have.”