The 2017 Major League Soccer season will get underway on March 3rd, so to celebrate the beginning of its 22nd season, MLS and EA SPORTS have partnered up to kick off the festivities with the MLS March To Soccer Challenge.

The MLS March To Soccer Challenge is a FIFA 17 invitational tournament to be played on Xbox One consoles on March 2nd at 7:00 pm EST in New York City.

Twelve MLS teams have chosen an ambassador player that will represent them throughout the tournament. 

Those teams and their respective players are:

The tournament is being played in two stages, online and live. The online stage took place on February 23rd where the competitors were divided into two groups of six, the East and West. They played a best of one round robin and the top four players of each group advanced to the grand final in New York.

After a heated contest online, the remaining eight players who will be battling in New York are:  l Marsbars11 l, Hallucination, Castro4DaKidz, MrESTRINO, DonnaBeast, FIFAkillers xII, Ghost Buster664 and SEBAS21193. These 8 team ambassadors will play in the Big Apple in a best of 3 single elimination bracket format.

There is more on the line than bragging rights. The winner in New York will book his ticket to Vancouver to compete in the Americas Season 2 Regional Final of the FIFA Ultimate Team Championship Series on April 8th. The best players from North, Central and South America will go to to toe to crown the Regional Champion and continue their journey to Berlin where a prize pool USD $400,000 will be split among the best players in the world.

Catch all the action of the MLS Match to Soccer Challenge live from New York this Thursday, March 2nd at 7:00 PM EST / March 3rd at 1:00 am CET  on our FIFA Twitch Channel.