Hey @jared9999 , I got a stat for you: while Cruz Azul may be snakebit in two-leg finals since 1997, Toluca have never eliminated a fellow Mexican team in the CCL. AZUL! AZUL! AZUL!
The first leg is sold out. Hopefully Corona got himself a ticket...because CONCACAF upheld his one-game suspension.
Also, Perea isn't playing. The deck is stacked against yall. All these negative occurrences feel Bartmanesque. Hmm Cruz Azul pide a seguidores que acudan a la final vestidos de celestes http://espndeportes.espn.go.com/new...ada&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed
Solid player, but also something of a loose cannon with his tackles. At the very least, he can be relied upon if/when Toluca bring the heat in the second leg.
CONCACAF dropped the hammer on Corona: 3 games for inciting the opponent. Not sure if the MLS article is correct, though: wouldn't he serve the third game if/when Cruz Azul next qualify for the CCL?
Man Velasquez had the win for Toluca. Dude missed at least 2 easy opportunities. For punishment Toluca should loan him to the Chicago Fire.
Hi @jared9999. CRUZ AZUL CAMPEÓN!!! Off to Morocco we go, and wish us luck - la Máquina cementera will go to the Club World Cup to do what we do best: finish as subcampeón...i.e. the best run ever by a CONCACAF team.
Pretty cool that they had the president of the Costa Rican federation in the award ceremony. Who were the other people?
I want to know who was the dude that thought he was getting the golden globe award and had to be told it was not for him. lol.
I have to admit, I'm glad that Brian Straus gathered up all the half-brained ideas of how to improve the CCL and consolidated them in one article. A brief rebuttal: Outside of the UEFA Champions League, which has done a tremendous job marketing itself worldwide as the biggest teams hoard the best talent available, most Champions League tournaments only retain interest in a given country as long as its teams are involved. For instance, here in Peru, the Copa Libertadores has disappeared entirely from the sporting conversation, other than among the diehards - the sporting press is now focused on the UCL and the local Copa Inca. "Is it CONCACAF’s fault that MLS and Central American teams can’t match Mexico?" No, so what do expect CONCACAF to do about it? The biggest reason that Mexican teams have utterly dominated the CCL is that there are more of them. In the Champions Cup era, all CONCACAF needed was for one of them to get knocked out and bam - one non-Mexican club guaranteed to make the final. Now, Liga MX has four shots at the title; and with only three exceptions in six years, the only thing stopping one Mexican club from CCL glory is another one. The only alternative here would be to reduce the number of Mexican teams participating - an unjustifiable move unless the entire field is contracted proportionally. "Both MLS and CONCACAF have incentive to cooperate and build a tournament whose outcome interests fans regardless of their own particular affiliation." We've established that that already happens so long as a given country still has a team in contention (see: MLS4RSL). In that case, Straus is either arguing for a) fans across the region to get more educated on each others' teams, so that a Toluca-Cruz Azul final featuring two of the most successful clubs in the entire continent can get the attention it deserves, or b) MLS to be more competitive, which (scheduling aside; see below) is solely on MLS. Why would MLS lobby CONCACAF to alter the schedule from the fall-spring format? If you want to talk about starting the knockout round a couple of weeks later, I'm all ears (although MLS teams could do themselves a favor by getting higher seeds --> easier quarterfinal match ups --> big games against Mexican teams later on, when they are further into the season). But I don't see why MLS teams would prefer burning up their squad for CCL knockout games in September and October (leaving them dead for the league playoffs) to doing so in April with little risk to their remaining campaigns. "With eight months separating CCL success and the CWC quarterfinals, Mexican teams have fallen at the first hurdle in three of the past four years. Meanwhile, two African sides advanced to the final. Asian squads have finished third on three occasions since Mexico’s CONCACAF streak started in 2006." Never mind that the CWC has only been held in Africa and Asia. And determining their champion early doesn't seem to hurt the European qualifiers.