Santos hope to give that team a win and give them a sample of good football. Let saints, to show the differences between MLS and Mexican league!
The Plata and Gomez show! Right now Toronto is in the final, but 45 minutes left for Santos to show what they are made of. The game will not go to overtime!
So It looks like it was a lead of 3 points before they took out their starters. So now it looks like it's going to be Primera de Mexico Clausura and Primera de Mexico Concacaf. Technically, the Concacaf Cup should be given to Santos because they are ahead in the Clausura. It's called redundancy.
FT 6 - 2 Santos wins. 7 - 3 Global. Very good crowd, I know they gave lots of tickets away, but shit, it was great from the Torreon people.
Good game everyone. Santos was just too much for TFC. Hopefully we learn from this and try to improve down the road. Good luck against either Monterey or PUMAS. I'll be cheering for you over both.
LOL. The last team to win The CONCACAF Double was Pachuca in 2007. An amazing feat to win the CONCACup, then the Mex League just weeks later. Good luck to your team on equaling that. That team went on to win 2 more titles that year, before getting thumped by Sahel. And now the Mex League holds the record for most consecutive confederational club championships. This is a record that may never be broken (good luck NZFC).
I have a feeling the Mexican league will be adding to that record for a LOOONG time BTW... we should publicize the record & pressure the press / FMF to grow the record.... I don't see why the Mexican league couldn't win the next 10 CCLs as well.
The main threat to the record at this point is FMF teams getting bored & sending the U-20 scrubs to the knock out phases etc.,
I don't think that will ever happen again. That is precisely what the creation of the FIFA Club World Cup corrected. Given that winning the CCL championship means qualifying for the WC, most Mexican teams will always take it seriously, no matter what. That said, I don't think this is the only reason why Mexican teams will continue to consider CCL to be an important tournament. Despite what the aggregate score of Santos vs Seattle and Santos vs Toronto may lead us to believe, I think the gap between FMF and MLS is closing (note for the few Mexican talifans who will want to lynch me after reading this: I said it is closing, not that it is closed already.) The true difference between the two leagues lies, IMO, somewhere between what RSL was able to do last year and what we saw Toronto and Seattle do in this cycle.
Honestly we have NO way of knowing if the gap is closing or getting worse. People just assume that the MLS must be getting better but there are factors to indicate that may not be the case: 1) They are adding a team to the league every year which just dilutes an already thin talent base 2) Central America & Andean Countries (the main source for solid foreign talent in the early years of MLS) is successfully exporting more & more of their promising stars to Europe 3) Based on youth results over the last 10 years.. the U.S. has actually gotten worst at the Youth NT level... and their few players who are decent & move up the pro ranks are getting bought up on the cheap by lower tiered Euro clubs 4) They are losing decent Mexican-American prospects to Northern Mexican clubs that will ALWAYS for the forseeable future be able to provide a better developmental opportunity & greater financial incentives. MLS squads haven't even been good enough to force the FMF to really compete intensely... this year was suppossed to be the best MLS participation ever.. and what do we have? Bigger blowouts than last year.
I disagree with most of your points: 1) They are adding a team to the league every year which just dilutes an already thin talent base. Given how careful MLS has been with expansion efforts (after what happened to NASL), I would say this is a sign that the league is getting stronger, not weaker. 2) Central America & Andean Countries (the main source for solid foreign talent in the early years of MLS) is successfully exporting more & more of their promising stars to Europe. This has always been the case (that is, European leagues more succesfully recruiting players from these regions than MLS). 3) Based on youth results over the last 10 years.. the U.S. has actually gotten worst at the Youth NT level... and their few players who are decent & move up the pro ranks are getting bought up on the cheap by lower tiered Euro clubs. Unclear how this is a sign of MLS getting weaker. Mexico had its own spell of very, very bad results at the youth level quite recently. I didn't see anybody claiming that it was somehow a sign of the Mexican league demise. 4) They are losing decent Mexican-American prospects to Northern Mexican clubs that will ALWAYS for the forseeable future be able to provide a better developmental opportunity & greater financial incentives. You can count them with the fingers of your hands. Hardly a sign of MLS weakness. Granted, nobody expected either Seattle or Toronto to lose like that against Santos. But two games are just too little evidence to say that the gap is widening. Again, not saying that it has closed, but I do think it is smaller than it used to be. You now rarely see Mexican teams fielding reserves in these games, yet they struggle to get results on the road and sometimes (sometimes) even at home. Probably there will always be a difference between the leagues (as in an asymptotic relationship), but I have no doubt in my mind that the gap is narrowing, even if it's hard to know how far apart they still are.
H. Gomez is just as much mexican as he is a yank, so if he finishes top goalscorer.....the streak continues
I've got to say; his runs were so perfectly timed. I was blown away. Both of his goals were onside. Poor Aceval though. He should have had himself between Gomez and the net. I think he tried to play the trap a little too late.
Santos is mean man. They actually let Seattle and Toronto think they had a chance.....before Santos ripped their heart out.
1/2 continues. Right now is Peralta 6 Gomez 6 Suazo 5 Suarez 5 Carreno 5 One or more of them will win the golden boot. 2 Mexicans 2 South Americans 1 American-Mexican All play for Mexican teams (Plata and Barbosa also have 6 goals so they could also get the golden boot if the finals are low scoring).
1) You are not getting it... when you have 10 teams with 25 man rosters... that is 250 decent players to come up with... when you have 20 teams with 25 man rosters that is 500 decent players to come up... in a place like the U.S. which has very little talent depth it is very hard to do... so they resort to hiring no name South American scrubs... a few of them pan out but most of them couldn't shine Mexican 2nd division player's boots. Don't confuse the growing market with on field competitiveness... when you expand 1 team a year it is hard to maintain the quality... when your football doesn't produce much & you don't have much money to buy quality talent. 2) When MLS started guys like Mauricio Cienfuegos did not have much opportunity in Europe.. hell in Mexico he couldn't even make it on a 2nd division team... nowadays that level of player gets swapped up by secondary European leagues like Sweden etc., 3) Again you are not getting my point... I am saying there is less quality talent available at a time of expanding demand for more players. 4) Read the previous points...
1) I get this, I just don't agree. I don't think the league is just expanding because of a growing market, but also by a better supply of talent. 2) Cienfuegos was an ok player who had an ok career. In fact he went to Europe and tried his luck with several teams and just didn't have the quality to play at the top level. Central American players going to Europe now are much better than he EVER was. 3) Again, I do not agree. Just as I don't think that Mexico missing the U-20 and the olympics a few years ago meant that the Mexican league was going through a crisis because of a problem of talent unavailability, I do not think MLS is going through a crisis because of what just happened to the USMNT youth program. 4) Did so. I still disagree.