This is why Leagues Cup is unique. How does 12 groups of 4 create a round of 32? This is why I believe MLS won't expand for a while of at all and games will be played in Mexico. The synergy of the tournament is 48 teams and you can have carry over from last season to tournament by how they do seating. Maybe sometime after the World Cup would make sense. Playing in Mexico eventually seems like a no brainer as you get more familiarity with MLS teams and Liga MX fans. . Last year they had 10 main sponsors and this year it's 15. I'm not sure what anyone else thinks but for me its been entertaining. The Miami/Tigres game was quite chippy and I believe in a few more years you'll start to see some rivalries develop between the two leagues.
Was just at the Tigres v Inter Miami game. My guess as to why Miami lost is that Miami is doing all the traveling lol. On a serious note, turn out was good but that stadium was just too big.
He took the Berhalter shot square in the face. I switched to the Olympics after that so I missed the two additional Caps' goals.
Someone forgot to tell Pumas that Liga MX teams don't care as they pull the Leagues Cupset and celebrate. One of the favorites, Monterrey crashes out in the first round.
You either do winners advance along with the 4 best 2nd placed teams and go straight to the R16 round, or the top 2 in each group plus the top 8 3rd placed teams for a R32 (which, IIRC, is exactly the plan for WC '26).
Last year Rayados travelled by far the most of any team. Well over 12,000 km. They were so exhausted for the third place match against Philly (who got to play seven consecutive home games) that they played the scrubs, indirectly screwing Leon out of defending their CCC title. This year (like last year) Monterrey are already CCC qualified. Don’t think they will dwell on this early exit for too long. If at all.
I wouldn't change anything. You don't have games in group play where one team is already eliminated playing it out. You don't need a lot of math to figure out the 8 of 12. I don't see them giving up games by going straight to 16 and losing a round. That's eight games of gate money, can't see that happening. Besides you want to create a little tradition going forward, so this would be unique.
Leagues Cup games will never be played in Mexico. Ever. It doesn’t make commercial sense and that is all that matters for the organisational committee. This has been repeated ad nauseam. The best we can hope for is more “Tigres host Miami in Houston” type of matches.
A soccer specific stadium would have been too small. We don't have many stadiums between 25,000 and 60,000 that can host soccer. It looked fine but I watch a team that's averaged about 6,000 over the last 40 years in a stadium that holds 20,000.
I think they might want to change it so each team has 3 group games, and yeah keeping the round of 32 bracket afterwards. Right now there are 45 total group games, if you switch to 12 groups of 4 that would be 72 matches. I don't mind the scheduling quirks of 3 team groups either though, it's nice to have a different take on "group stage"
Maybe Tigres need to build a stadium in Houston than holds 46,080. I think next season just let teams play where they want. Mexico, USA, Abu Dhabi, let the home team choose.