The MLS-Liga MX partnership could alter soccer's North American trajectory

You know it’s a remarkable day in North American club soccer when the New York Red Bulls earning a 5-1 aggregate victory over a Mexican club team in Concacaf Champions League knockout play, is not the best result by an MLS team.

As the Red Bulls were still celebrating on the field on Tuesday night, Toronto FC were about to kick off the second leg of their series against Mexican champions Tigres, defending a 2-1 lead from the first leg in Toronto. And despite conceding a late penalty that saw them go down 3-2 on the night, the Reds duly advanced on away goals, for what’s certainly the most impressive result by an MLS side over a Mexican team in competition history.

The fact that that benchmark exists at all says a lot about the structure and particular neuroses of North American soccer. MLS repeatedly states its ambition to be a top 10 league in the world, yet every time it has ventured beyond its own ecosystem into the Champions League, Liga MX teams have had a habit of dishing out some harsh lessons.

A couple of good results, no matter how striking (Tigres are probably the best team in Mexico right now, and Tijuana had conceded only seven goals in their opening 10 Liga MX games) is too small a sample size to declare that a trend has been reversed, and by the following evening normal service had been resumed with Seattle’s capitulation against Chivas. In many ways, the more significant shift in the long-term trajectory of the North American club game that took place this week, may have come far from the field.

On Tuesday morning, MLS commissioner Don Garber and his Liga MX counterpart Enrique Bonilla convened a small group of journalists at MLS HQ to announce a new partnership between the leagues, that will see new inter-league competitions and also sharing “best practices”.

It’s inevitable that games are the initial hook of the partnership of course – the first edition of the announced Campeones Cup will see this year’s Liga MX champions playing their MLS counterparts in Toronto in September, while there are also plans afoot to arrange an MLS-Liga MX all-star game. Other competitions are being considered. But it’s the strategic thinking behind the partnership that stands out, particularly when it comes to the ongoing turf war for the lucrative US soccer market, and the battle for the hearts, minds and attention spans of millennials and Latinos.

In perhaps the most telling quote of the event Garber opened up on just that fact:

“The elephant in the room is the value of the US market ... we’re the ones investing in it, as opposed to others who are coming in and taking more than they’re putting back.”

The last remark in particular should raise eyebrows among anyone who has watched Major League Soccer’s sometimes sluggish attempts to build US TV figures, compared to the success the Premier League and the US national teams have found. In fact a cornerstone of the current anti-trust legal case being pursued against the league and US Soccer has been a TV deal bundling MLS rights with national team rights – detractors claim that that deal favored the league with lucrative income it would probably not command on its own.

Yet there’s also truth to Garber’s comments about investment in infrastructure and development. Even as expansion fees have gone up there’s been appetite for owners to buy-in to a sport with huge potential in the US, along with some spectacular investment in stadiums, training facilities and academies by those new owners.

Yet if those owners see potential, they’re not the only ones. Most self-respecting elite European clubs and leagues at the very least have a New York office exploring everything from TV rights to summer tours to academy franchising. City Football Group’s significant investment in NYC FC is the exception among those groups for not having the feel of speculative ventures meant to extract wealth for minimal investment.

And yes, there have been border skirmishes with Mexico too. Attention is focused on dual nationals who choose Mexico over the US, but at club level teams like LA Galaxy, for example, have long understood that the recruitment restrictions they face under league rules, within southern California’s fertile breeding ground for players, put them at a disadvantage when facing Mexican competitors who face no such restrictions. Liga MX, for its part, has also made inroads into the US market with English and Spanish language TV coverage.

In many ways, the current MLS reaction appears to be, “If you can’t beat them, join them.” But just like the joint World Cup bid between Mexico, the USA and Canada, it’s hard to parse exactly what concrete measures will be put in place.

US soccer is in a difficult position in regard to that World Cup. The US Department of Justice won plaudits around the world for its pursuit and arrest of corrupt Fifa officials. But that enthusiasm is hardly mirrored among the Fifa delegates who will vote for the 2026 World Cup hosts this June. This partly informs the public emphasis on the joint bid with less problematic partners, Mexico and Canada – even if most of the games will be played in the US.

And at club level, while Garber tried to steer clear of political controversy in his comments at the roundtable, there’s an undeniable symbolism in soccer, for decades the suspicious “sport of immigrants” in the US, being the driving force for a cross-border partnership with Mexico in Donald Trump’s America.

What now for CCL?

Yet there’s also a question of where this leaves the Concacaf Champions League itself. It’s a competition that has struggled with scheduling: the knockout stages of the CCL have traditionally pitted MLS teams in pre-season against Liga MX teams in mid-season.

There are other wrinkles too – Mexican teams tend to value their participation in the Copa Libertadores over the CCL, so even their historical dominance over MLS sides has not always captured the imagination back home. And with teams from poorer federations and leagues padding out the group stages of the competition before a winter break, it’s been hard for the competition to gain traction. Garber and Bonilla believe that the new championship game between the Mexican and MLS champions will help boost awareness. At the very least they’ll get one annual showpiece game guaranteed.

So whether it’s fortunate, or unfortunate timing for MLS to announce this partnership in the week it finally seemed to be shaking some of its inferiority complex against Mexican club teams in CCL competition, depends on your perspective. MLS teams have gone deep in this competition before – with Real Salt Lake and Montreal Impact reaching the final in 2011 and 2015, but even the best US or Canadian campaigns have always had a vertiginous quality to them. There’ve been memorable results against Mexican sides along the way, but more often they’ve been down to stubborn rear-guard performances rather than convincingly going toe-to-toe. And just as often, a decent first-leg result in the US or Canada has been followed by a comprehensive MLS unravelling in the away leg.

But on Tuesday night it was Tijuana’s turn to unravel at Red Bull Arena, and for Toronto to wobble, but hold out, against Tigres.

In both cases, the shifting complexion of the games was arguably less down to individual players and more down to a narrowing of aggregate talent between Mexican and MLS teams made possible by changes in MLS rules. To non-aficionados the MLS mechanisms of Targeted Allocation Money (TAM) or General Allocation Money (GAM) can seem impossible arcane, but in a strictly salary-capped league they have essentially allowed technical directors much more discretion in building the middle orders of their teams. If the early days of the Designated Player era made for lopsided teams whose flaws would become exposed by more uniformly balanced Mexican sides in regional competition, the current state-of-the-art MLS side, Toronto, is defined as much by its strength in depth as by its notional stars, Sebastion Giovinco, Michael Bradley and Jozy Altidore.

Asked about whether the new Campeones Cup will capture the imagination Bonilla suggested that “good football” would be what sells it, and that’s true as far as it goes. But first the conditions for good football have to exist. It’s why what happened off the field this week may be as significant for the trajectory of North American professional soccer as what happened on it.