For the American audience, it's one of the reasons soccer has a hard time attracting the casual fan. Even today this is trending and I wonder will there be a fine for this behavior? Career ending injury. Pray for the Mexican Messi 🙏🏽 pic.twitter.com/tpx60PhL0O— Tactical Manager (@ManagerTactical) April 16, 2026
Why? 1. It adds strategy. 2. It adds excitement…with it, one goal can be the difference between winning and losing. Without it, one goal can only mean losing or winning vs a shootout. 3. It encourages attacking play by visitors.
As an active fan of the game (and fan enough to be a regular on BigSoccer), I find it's difficult to keep track--in game--of what the aggregate is and who needs what to "win". It's been many years and many competitions, and it's still something I have to actively think about, repeatedly, during a return match in an away-goals rule competition. If I, as one of the top 1% of American soccer fans, struggle to keep up with it, then it means that the rest of the soccer fans (and, god forbid, non-soccer fans who are watching a game) have even more trouble than I do understanding what needs to happen for x, y or z result. It's just way too complicated, and after a lengthy experiment, doesn't seem to have accomplished what was originally intended. But maybe 5 years of going back to the old way will swing the pendulum back around to the away-goals rule. Personally, I prefer extra time and penalties in the event of an aggregate tie.
So let me get this straight. We were one Sounders goal from three of the four semifinalists being MLS teams? So much for the 'sky is falling' MLS will never match up to Liga MX types. Clearly the top of Liga MX is still better than MLS but the gap isn't as wide as some want you to believe and I think the Leagues Cup shows that once you get off the top tier the leagues are pretty equal.
2026 CCC Quarter-finals 24,965 @ Cruz Azul 28,995 @ America 15,473 @ Galaxy 20,036 @ Seattle Quater-finals Total 201,087 average = 25,136 So far after 48 Matches TOTAL. = 630,734 Average. = 13,712
I agree with @superdave's comment that, in tournaments where home field advantage is inappropriate (I was very opposed to away goals in the MLS playoffs, because it's precisely what you'd do if you wanted the regular season to be irrelevant), it adds similar tension to PKs without the scapegoat factor. But I think your point is fair. It could probably be mitigated by a better score bug, so that you don't have to try to keep track of who's 'ahead' on the tiebreak.
Somebody posted finalists and semifinalists by era, and in the most recent years finalists were 6-4 LMX and semis were 11-9. Meaning you could flip a single result in each case and they'd be dead even.
I don’t like some goals being worth more than others. I don’t find it exciting when one team “wins” an aggregate draw without penalties. A visitor taking less risks on offense and/or aiming for penalties is a strategy as well so some strategies will always be added or de-emphasized depending on the rule tweak.
Actually with Tigres leading 2-0 their emphasis was to score, which would leave Seattle needing 4. Seattle's priority was to prevent Tigres from scoring and catch them at least twice on the break. Once Tigres scored the roles were flipped.
It makes goals unequal and the strategy completely different than a normal game. Truthfully I don't care one way or the other but it's definitely not the same as a regular game.
MLS is MUCH better once you get outside the top 6-8 MEX teams of the year (Monterrey, Cruz Azul, America, Pachuca, Tigres, Toluca, Chivas, PUMAS). And the gap withing those top 6-8 is closing. LIGA MX often times inly has a real advantage in the top 2 or 3 nowdays. Amd maybe not that for much longer.
The announces generally suck at it. But it should not be THAT hard..The tricky part now is which competitions usecit and which do not.
The gap looks like this: MLS is probably better in the USA/Canada even against top teams BUT Liga MX is MUCH better in Mexico than MLS is better at home. Because of this, its super important to have the second game at home. Nashville proved that you can do it another way, but stats say its so much harder. It doesn't look good for LAFC and Nashville.
What's a normal game. home/away with away goals rule is standard for cup competitions. Or at least it was.
It's still a pretty big gap. Since 2021, MLS is 12-24 against Liga MX and has been outscored 120-77. That's trending in the right direction - they're winning a third of the time rather than the quarter they were winning between 2009 and 2020, but it's still not close to even. And again with Leagues Cup, it's just not a useful tool of comparison because it's so heavily weighted in MLS's favor. From 2009 through the end of 2025 CCL, MLS teams outscored Liga MX 74-64 at home in the knockouts. They were outscored 52-150 away. Leagues Cup is basically throwing those away numbers out, so of course MLS looks good against the bulk of Liga MX - they would against the top sides in CCL if that was (almost) exclusively hosted in the US, too.
Indeed even in the ancient days when MLS was mostly pretty terrible, the Galaxy won the CCC that was hosted entirely in the USA.
Then a 2 legged inter American cup all in the USA as well (still the biggest MLS achievement internationally, on paper)
If you factor it in properly then an MLS team should win literally 100 percent of the time. How many away games in a row must a liga mx team win? It literally shouldn't ever happen if we played for 100 years.
That's a series not a normal game. The hint is game, singular. Like I said, I don't care but if you're being objective, you described the difference. Lucky for you I was able to decode normal game for you.