In the draw for the knockout round play-offs, the eight group runners-up were seeded, soccer clothes and the eight Champions League group third-placed teams were unseeded. The knockout phase involved 24 teams: the 16 teams which qualified as winners and runners-up of each of the eight groups in the group stage, and the eight third-placed teams from the Champions League group stage. On September 27, 2018, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that a group was trying to bring a team to St. Louis. The top twenty-eight CONCACAF teams in the FIFA rankings of December 2023 will enter in the second round, to be joined by the two winners of the first round.
