More stories

  • in

    M.L.S. Preview: St. Louis S.C., Apple TV+ and More

    St. Louis City S.C. will hit the field as the league’s 29th franchise, but to watch it, and every other team, fans will have to get to know Apple TV+.St. Louis, a city with a rich soccer history dating back more than a century, will finally get its Major League Soccer team this year. But to watch it, and the league’s other 28 teams, armchair supporters will have to make the transition from television to streaming, whether they like it or not.Here’s what is happening with M.L.S. in 2023.What’s new?For the seventh straight season, M.L.S. is expanding. St. Louis City S.C. will be the league’s 29th team — a total that may grow in the next few months — and play in a new stadium downtown, Citypark.St. Louis had long been a target for expansion; the city had a pioneering professional soccer league in the early 1900s and N.A.S.L., indoor and minor league teams more recently. But previous efforts all failed, torpedoed either by inadequate financing or, in 2017, a public referendum in which voters rejected a plan to finance a stadium for an expansion franchise.Even when St. Louis did finally get a team, its debut was put on hold for a year because of delays brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. Now, though, the team that M.L.S. and St. Louis fans have long coveted is here.St. Louis City will christen its new stadium, Citypark, with its home opener against Charlotte on March 4.Jeff Roberson/Associated PressThe new team includes Roman Burki, a 32-year-old Swiss goalkeeper with seven years at Borussia Dortmund under his belt, and Klauss, a Brazilian striker. But if recent M.L.S. history is any indication (not you, Atlanta United), St. Louis City is likely to suffer typical expansion woes as it tries to build a winner.It may not be the lowest team on the M.L.S. totem pole for long, however: Commissioner Don Garber has made clear that the league’s expansion will not stop at 29. “We do need more teams,” Garber said this week in New York. A 30th franchise will be announced by the end of the year, he said, with San Diego and Las Vegas currently leading the contenders. Garber also cited Phoenix, Sacramento, Detroit and Tampa, Fla., as possibilities for further expansion in the near future.What will Week 1 bring?Thirteen games will be played on Saturday, starting with New York City F.C.’s visit to Nashville on Saturday afternoon. The big game comes later in the day: M.L.S. is expecting a crowd of more than 70,000 in the Rose Bowl on Saturday to watch the Los Angeles Galaxy, now playing second fiddle in the city they once ruled, take on the defending league champion, L.A.F.C.The Philadelphia Union, which lost last season’s M.L.S. Cup championship game in an excruciating manner, will kick off against Columbus at home. And Atlanta United, which led the league in attendance again last season, expects another big crowd inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium for its opener against San Jose.Cory Burke and the Red Bulls will be hoping their 28th season delivers the elusive title their first 27 did not.Matthew Ashton/AMA, via Getty ImagesNew York City F.C. is expecting a breakout year from its 20-year-old Brazilian striker Talles Magno.Matthew Ashton/AMA, via Getty ImagesHow can I watch?M.L.S. is banking on its younger fan base’s familiarity with technology (and its aversion to traditional TV) as it moves the bulk of its games to Apple TV+ as part of a 10-year, $2.5 billion broadcast contract.For hard-core M.L.S. fans, that will mean a deluge of content: every game, including the playoffs and the Leagues Cup tournament with the Mexican league; English and Spanish broadcasts; a Red Zone-style whip-around show hitting the highlights of games as they happen; and no blackouts for out-of-market games.The cost is $79 a year with an Apple TV+ subscription and $99 without, but several games each week will be broadcast free throughout the season.As for traditional television, ESPN is out of the mix, as are all local broadcasts around the country. Fox and FS1 will broadcast roughly one game a week, part of a conscious effort to keep one foot in the traditional broadcasting world as the league dives headlong into something new. “We didn’t want to go cold turkey and shut it all down,” said Gary Stevenson, the league’s deputy commissioner.Who is going to win the M.L.S. Cup?The list of favorites has to start with L.A.F.C., which won the Supporters’ Shield with the best regular-season record last season and then added the M.L.S. Cup title, becoming the first team to pull off that double since Toronto F.C. in 2017. The Welsh star Gareth Bale, whose tenure was known for limited minutes and stunning goals, has retired, and the team’s top scorer, Cristian Arango, has moved to the Mexican league, so expect more of the load to fall on the club legend Carlos Vela, now 33.Philadelphia had the same number of points as L.A.F.C. last season and a much better goal difference (plus-46 to plus-28), but it lost the Shield because it had fewer wins and then the final in the most agonizing way possible.The Union are well equipped to find their way back. Andre Blake is the reigning goalkeeper of the year, Jakob Glesnes was last season’s defender of the year and Dániel Gazdag will again provide the goals.Nashville should rely on last season’s league most valuable player, Hany Mukhtar, who led M.L.S. with 23 goals. After a shaky first season, Austin took a huge step forward by reaching the Cup semifinal last season and now will look to improve even more. Inter Miami was a .500 team last season, but it has added Josef Martínez, who had 98 goals in six years with Atlanta United. If he can regain his past scoring form, he makes any team a title contender.Josef Martínez, who ran circles around defenders in six years at Atlanta United, now will try to do the same for Inter Miami.Matias J. Ocner/Miami Herald, via Associated PressThe playoffs changed again. How will they work?Expansion and playoff tinkering are two time-honored M.L.S. traditions, and this week the league announced yet another new postseason format. This season, 18 teams will make the playoffs, up from 14, and there will be a new play-in round for the lowest-ranked two in each conference. After four years of strictly one-and-done games, M.L.S. will introduce a best-of-three format for the round of 16. But the quarterfinals and beyond will revert to single-game eliminations. Confused? Here’s some supplemental reading with all the rules.What about side competitions?The Concacaf Champions League, the regional championship that was won by an M.L.S. team, the Seattle Sounders, for the first time in 22 years last season, begins in March with L.A.F.C., Philadelphia, Vancouver, Orlando and Austin participating. The two-legged final ends on June 4.League games will be halted from mid-July to mid-August for an expanded 77-game Leagues Cup that will include every team from M.L.S. and Mexico’s Liga MX. Those games all will be held in the United States and Canada.And the American M.L.S. teams will join the venerable U.S. Open Cup, which dates back to 1914, in April, with the final scheduled for Sept. 27. The defending champion is Orlando City F.C., but the safest of bets is that an M.L.S. team will win it again. The last non-M.L.S. team to win the Open Cup was the Rochester Raging Rhinos in 1999. More

  • in

    Sounders’ Concacaf Champions League Title Boosts Seattle’s Soccer Stature

    Sounders F.C. captured M.L.S.’s first CONCACAF Champions League title with a win over Pumas U.N.A.M. Our columnist remembers the day soccer took root in Seattle.SEATTLE — Everything broke right for the Sounders, who were prodded for nearly two hours of grinding action by a sea of Seattle fans in blue and green who pushed their trademark electric energy to the pitch.This was history — and it felt like a joint effort between a team and its supporters.For over 20 years, no Major League Soccer team had ever won the CONCACAF Champions League tournament, which includes the best teams from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. But the Sounders ended the drought with a Pacific Northwest downpour: a 3-0 win over the Pumas of Mexico on Wednesday.How important was the win?Sounders goalkeeper Stefan Frei, the tournament’s most valuable player, raised the championship cup after Seattle’s win. Jovelle Tamayo for The New York TimesDuring this week’s run-up to the match, Sounders General Manager Garth Lagerwey called it a chance at soccer immortality.In a promotional hype video, none other than the retired Seahawks icon Marshawn Lynch called it a “big (expletive) game.” At halftime on Wednesday, with the Sounders ahead 1-0, M.L.S. Commissioner Don Garber stood in his suite at Lumen Field, looked me steadily in the eye, and called this match the “biggest game in the history of the league.”Since its inception in 1996, M.L.S. has sought to become an American league of such quality that it could stand toe-to-toe with world powers. But until now, failure was a regular rite of passage for M.L.S. in this annual tournament, with teams from the rival Mexican league having won the last 13 Concacaf tournaments.Well, the Sounders buried those failures on Wednesday.Initially the match was choppy and bogged down by physical play that forced a pair of key Sounders, João Paulo and Nouhou Tolo, to leave with injuries. But Seattle flashed its trademark resilience. Goalie Stefan Frei, named the tournament’s most valuable player, backed up a stout defense, and Sounders kept up the attack until forward Raul Ruidiaz scored on a deflected shot late in the half. In the 80th minute, Ruidiaz added another goal off a smooth counterattack.Nicolás Lodeiro sealed the victory with a goal in the 88th minute and ran toward the stands to celebrate among a frenzy of fans.Winning qualifies the team for the FIFA Club World Cup, a tournament stacked with soccer royalty. The Premier League’s Chelsea won it last. Either Liverpool or Real Madrid will represent Europe next. Just being in the same draw as teams of that pedigree is entirely new for M.L.S.It’s fitting, then, that the Sounders will lead the league to this new precipice. Since entering M.L.S. during a wave of expansion in 2009, they have enchanted this soccer-rich city by winning two M.L.S. Cup championships in four runs to the finals. Seattle has led the league in attendance in all but two seasons, with area fans bringing the same fervor to Lumen as Seahawks fans have come to be known for. Maybe more. A tournament-record 68,741 fans showed up to watch the home team play the Pumas. On a Wednesday night.How did Seattle become an American soccer behemoth?Fans cheered a Sounders goal during Wednesday’s match.Jovelle Tamayo for The New York TimesThere is no single answer. Part of it is the city’s history of embracing the unconventional and outré — which still describes professional soccer in the American sports context. Seattle birthed Boeing and Microsoft, Starbucks and Amazon. It gave the world grunge rock and Quincy Jones. Jimi Hendrix went to high school three miles from Lumen Field. Bruce Lee sharpened his martial arts skills just a short walk away.One of its great works of art is a troll sculpture that sits underneath a bridge. It’s become customary to drape it in a mammoth blue and green Sounders scarf before big games.The love felt by this city for soccer in all its forms — from the Sounders to O.L. Reign of the N.W.S.L., to colleges and junior leagues — is also the product of a specific past and a specific team: the original Seattle Sounders of the long-defunct North American Soccer League.From 1974 to 1983, those Sounders teams were part of the first bona fide effort to bring big-stakes, U.S.-based competition to professional soccer within this hemisphere.If you ask me, a Seattle native who grew up in that era, I say the love began, specifically, with a single game.Since I was 9 years old I’ve called it the Pelé Game. That’s when I took a city bus downtown to watch that original iteration of the Sounders. The date was April 9, 1976, the first sporting event ever held at the now-demolished Kingdome.A crowd of nearly 60,000, then the largest in North American soccer history, watched Seattle host the star-studded New York Cosmos and its leader, the greatest player the game of soccer has ever seen: Pelé. The Black Pearl, as he was known, had come to the N.A.S.L. to celebrate a last stanza of his career — and as an ambassador to spark the game in North America. I don’t remember details of that match as much as I remember being in awe of the lithe and powerful Brazilian.Pelé didn’t disappoint. He scored two goals in a 3-1 win.The game was a harbinger. Those first Sounders players quickly became local legends, deeply woven into the city’s fabric. In those days, it seemed to me that a Sounder visited every classroom in every public school. In 1977, the Sounders made it to the league’s Soccer Bowl title match. Played in front of a full house in Portland, Ore., a three-hour drive south, they lost to the Cosmos, 2-1, in the last non-exhibition game Pelé ever played.Pele, center, looked on as his New York Cosmos teammate Giorgio Chinaglia, left, ran at the Seattle Sounders defense in 1977.Peter Robinson/EMPICS, via Getty Images“I still have his jersey,” Jimmy McCalister said in a phone interview. I could almost see the smile in his voice. A defender on that Seattle team and the N.A.S.L. rookie of the year in 1977, McCalister told me how he’d somehow summoned the nerve to ask Pelé for his fabled No. 10 jersey. The legend obliged. The jersey now sits in McCalister’s lockbox.“People call me from time to time, wanting to buy it,” he said. It’s not for sale. Some things are worth more than money. The jersey contains memory and soul.McCalister loves the modern day Sounders. He hailed their cohesiveness, blue collar work ethic, and their growing talent. Raised in Seattle, he is one of many Sounders who remained in the city after their playing days were over. These days he runs one of the top junior development clubs. Many others stayed to teach the game, coaching in clinics and at high schools and colleges. Some helped guide a now-defunct minor league team — also called the Sounders.They kept soccer alive in the fallow pair of decades between the N.A.S.L.’s demise and the birth of M.L.S.Fredy Montero met fans who stayed nearly an hour after Sounders’ win.Jovelle Tamayo for The New York TimesOn Wednesday night, nearly an hour after the game, fans remained in Lumen Field. Vast swaths of them. Joyful chants rumbled down to the confetti-covered field. Players responded by lifting the gold Champions League trophy high. Unlike that Kingdome game of 1976 — the original Sounders versus the glitzy, star-studded Cosmos — this matchup wasn’t memorable because of the opponent. It was memorable because of the home team, which just put itself on the international map. And that would surely make Pelé, long soccer’s proudest ambassador, more than a little proud. More

  • in

    M.L.S. Preview: New Team, New Faces and a New York Champion

    Major League Soccer returns to the field on Saturday for a season that will end early because of the World Cup in Qatar.Major League Soccer begins its season on Saturday, with an earlier start and an accelerated finish to accommodate the World Cup, another expansion team (and plans for more) and — for the first time — a New York-area club as the league’s reigning champion.Why the rush?The regular season will start in February so that it can wrap up with the M.L.S. Cup final on Nov. 5, the earliest date for the championship game in 20 years, and more than a month earlier than last season’s final. The shift has been made to keep the season out of the way of the World Cup, which kicks off on Nov. 21 in Qatar.A disruption-free season is the goal after the pandemic led to a significant revamp of the 2020 campaign and a delay and stadium restrictions in 2021. The league reports that its players are 97 percent vaccinated, which should help a lot.What’s new?Charlotte was awarded an M.L.S. team in 2019, but its arrival in the league was delayed a year by the pandemic.Nr/Associated PressFor the sixth straight year a season opens with a new expansion team: This year the newcomer is Charlotte F.C., growing the number of Major League Soccer teams with Football Club in their names to a dozen.There are more to come: St. Louis City S.C. (Soccer Club) joins next year, bringing the league to a city with a robust soccer heritage. St. Louis will be the league’s 29th team when it takes the field, and Las Vegas is expected to follow for an even 30. This week, Commissioner Don Garber said the league was already looking beyond that. “We’re beginning the process of deciding if it should expand to 32,” he said. “There are other North American leagues with that many teams, and I think our league could handle that.” No final determination has been made, though, he said.With Charlotte playing in the 75,000-capacity Bank of America Stadium, home of the N.F.L.’s Carolina Panthers, there is an expectation that its home opener against Los Angeles F.C. on March 5 will break the M.L.S. attendance record of 73,000, which was set at the 2018 final in Atlanta.Who are the title contenders?Carles Gil, right, won most valuable player honors last season after leading the New England Revolution to the top of the standings.Jeff Dean/Associated PressNew York City F.C., which won its first league championship last season by defeating the Portland Timbers on penalties, is returning most of its key players, notably Valentin Castellanos, who led the league with 22 goals. It has since added the 26-year-old Brazilian Thiago Martins to bolster its defense. But despite its playoff heroics, N.Y.C.F.C. had only the eighth best record in the regular season, and Cup repeats are rare: No team has done it since the Los Angeles Galaxy in 2011 and ’12.“That’s the goal, of course, to win again,” Coach Ronny Deila said this week. He said that while his team’s season ended where it wanted to be last season, not everything was perfect, and that, he hoped, would drive his team to improve.“We’re a champion,” he said. “It’s always hard to replicate that. At the same time, we were 20 points behind New England last year.”The New England Revolution posted the league’s best record in 2021, a stunning 22-5-7 mark that was 12 points clear of the next best team, but it will look a bit different. New England sold Tajon Buchanan, the 22-year-old Canadian midfielder, to Belgium’s Club Brugge; traded forward Teal Bunbury to Nashville; and will soon lose its rock, goalkeeper Matt Turner, to Arsenal. (Turner, now the United States national team’s No. 1, is expected to stay in New England through midseason.) The good news for the Revolution is that the reigning league M.V.P., Carles Gil, is back, and the veteran Jozy Altidore has been added for some more scoring punch.The Seattle Sounders nearly won the Western Conference last year despite playing all year without forward Jordan Morris, who sustained a second major knee injury while on loan at Swansea City in the English Championship, and the Philadelphia Union will have plenty of motivation after losing to New York in the playoffs when missing 11 players because of Covid.And L.A.F.C. is always going to be a contender as long as it has attacker Carlos Vela. “Having Carlos is incredible,” Coach Steve Cherundolo said. “He’s a goal scorer. He can set up goals. He’s an offensive threat, no matter what particular position he’s in. It’s great to have him.”Who are the new faces?The 20-year-old attacking midfielder Thiago Almada, left, joined Atlanta United from Argentina’s Vélez Sarsfield.Alejandro Pagni/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesM.L.S. officials sometimes bridle at the lingering perception that the league is a destination for stars in the twilight of their careers, and this year’s newcomers include a few members of the 30-and-over set: Italy’s former national captain, Lorenzo Insigne, 30, who will join Toronto F.C. in July; the Swiss wing Xherdan Shaqiri, 30, who signed with Chicago; and the Brazilian Douglas Costa, 31, who was acquired on loan by the Galaxy.But the new faces also include younger players, like the 20-year-old Argentine midfielder Thiago Almada, who joined Atlanta United for the highest transfer fee ever paid by the league: $16 million.“We are recently part of the global soccer ecosystem,” Garber said. “That was not the case several years ago. This is the first year the league has been in the top five in both incoming and outgoing player sales. That’s not by luck and happenstances. It’s a focused strategy to invest in youth development, to take advantage of a ripe and fertile market, and ensure we continue to have an attract product with international players.”Did I hear that Lionel Messi might be coming to M.L.S.?A recent comment from Lionel Messi had U.S. fans buzzing.Gonzalo Fuentes/ReutersMessi recently told a Spanish television channel, La Sexta, “I always had the dream of being able to enjoy and have the experience of living in the United States,” setting off an expected frenzy among stateside soccer fans. Of course, there is no evidence that he actually plans to come. More

  • in

    MLS and Liga MX Announce New Leagues Cup Tournament

    The Leagues Cup, part of an effort to capitalize on global interest in the game, will likely raise new concerns about soccer players’ exhausting schedules.In a major reordering of soccer competition in North America, the top men’s leagues in the United States and Mexico announced Tuesday the creation of an annual World Cup-style tournament in which every team from both leagues will compete. The monthlong tournament will take place in July and August, beginning in 2023, expanding the collaboration between Major League Soccer and Liga MX and adding more matches to an already crowded world soccer calendar.“We need more global interest,” Don Garber, the M.L.S. commissioner, said in an interview. “This is a global sport. We are doing a good job of growing interest in M.L.S. in our league here domestically. The next step is how do we grow interest outside of our region?”A 47-team tournament (it will have 48 whenever M.L.S. expands to 30 teams) with group and knockout stages during the only relatively quiet period of the soccer calendar — between the end of summer international tournaments and the beginning of club play in the fall — is a linchpin of the strategy.The tournament will replace the much smaller Leagues Cup tournament and take its name. In order to grant it legitimacy and ensure teams take it seriously, organizers promised a large prize pool (but didn’t say how large). The top three teams will also earn berths into the CONCACAF Champions League, the region’s top club competition.The new Leagues Cup will require a substantial reorganization of the M.L.S. and Liga MX schedules. Rather than holding the event alongside league competition, both leagues will take a break for the duration of the tournament. For M.L.S., that means a pause of a month in the middle of its season, which typically starts in March, while for Liga MX that likely means a delay to the beginning of its season.The entire soccer world, from clubs to leagues, confederations and FIFA itself, are in a constant pitched battle over the schedule, over new leagues and navigating national coronavirus laws. Promoters seem to often view soccer as a lucrative zero sum game, using increasingly exhausted players to wring as many dollars as possible out of the sport, with little cooperation among organizations.Aware of this tension, M.L.S. and Liga MX say they created the new tournament with the involvement of CONCACAF, which oversees soccer in North America, Central America and the Caribbean. And the Leagues Cup announcement coincided with another on Tuesday, from CONCACAF, which said that starting in 2024 the CONCACAF Champions League would expand to 27 clubs, from 16 in 2021.The expanded Champions League will begin with three regional tournaments, one each for North America, Central America and the Caribbean, before 16 teams qualify for knockout stages.The Leagues Cup will see Mexican players spend even more time in the United States, as the tournament will be held here. In 2023, the best Mexican players will compete for their national team in the Gold Cup, the regional championship for national teams that has always been held primarily in the United States, in June and July. Many will then return to their Mexican clubs, which will already be in the United States preparing for the Leagues Cup.Mikel Arriola, the Liga MX president, is not worried that Mexican soccer fans will dislike seeing their players spend nearly the entire summer playing north of the border, able to watch only on television without significant travel. This tournament is additive, he said, and does not take away from Liga MX.“This will be a mixed model because we will continue with our traditional way in our local league,” Arriola said. “However, we both are innovating in this kind of summer extravaganza.”The organizers hope the tournament, beyond selling millions of tickets, will create a bonanza of television dollars, especially outside of North America. The rights to show M.L.S. and Liga MX games outside of their home countries are currently not particularly valuable. While M.L.S. is shown in, say, England, television and streaming companies there pay far more to show the Premier League or the Champions League than they do for M.L.S. But an easy-to-understand tournament during a lull in the calendar could prove popular.M.L.S. will control television rights to the tournament in the United States and Canada, Liga MX will control the rights for Mexico, and the two will partner to sell them in the rest of the world. M.L.S. is also speaking with media companies about both local and national rights to show its league games, which are currently held by ESPN, Fox and a number of local media companies but expire next year.Media rights to the Leagues Cup could be sold in conjunction with those rights to the same company or companies, or could be sold separately.The success of the tournament will also be judged on whether it improves North American clubs and players. Arriola said the tournament will provide vital competition to teams in the middle and the bottom of Liga MX, who do not qualify for the CONCACAF Champions League.“Sometimes big teams grow alone,” he said. But if the Leagues Cup generates the proper incentives, there will be more of what Arriola called “horizontal growth” across the entire league.Ultimately the Leagues Cup, and everything else between the two leagues, is pointed toward 2026, when the United States will host the World Cup, alongside Mexico and Canada. “Now we have the rocket fuel of the World Cup that could help propel us to a higher level,” said Garber, “and ultimately be viewed as we have aspired to be, one of the top leagues in the world.” More

  • in

    An M.L.S.-Liga MX Alliance: What's the End Game?

    Wednesday’s M.L.S. All-Star Game was the latest collaboration between the top leagues in the U.S. and Mexico. Owners and executives see profit in their partnership, and say both sides can win.One could forgive the top soccer players in Mexico and the United States if they feel as if they have seen quite a lot of each other recently.When some of the best players from Mexico’s Liga MX lined up against some of the biggest stars from Major League Soccer in the M.L.S. All-Star Game on Wednesday night in Los Angeles, it was not — for a handful of them — the first time they had played an important match north of the border this summer. Whether in a series of new cross-border club competitions or in two important national team tournaments, the Nations League and Gold Cup, U.S.-Mexico matchups — in a variety of jersey colors — are now more frequent than ever.But whatever Wednesday’s exhibition lacked in stakes — the M.L.S. all-stars prevailed in a penalty shootout, 3-2, after the team played a 1-1 tie — that the game happened at all was perhaps the best demonstration yet of where the two leagues, and therefore their two countries, believe their futures lie: together.Alejandro Irarragorri, who controls the Liga MX clubs Santos Laguna and Atlas, this week described the leagues as having arrived at an inflection point at which they could continue to go their separate ways, or choose to work together.“I am sure on a stand-alone basis we will do well if we don’t do a thing together,” Irarragorri said Monday in a Zoom interview from the well-appointed home of the Seattle Sounders owner Adrian Hanauer. “I also understand if we do something together, we will be better.”But can two rivals really win at the same game, and at the same time?M.L.S. Commissioner Don Garber, right, and Liga MX President Mikel Arriola are bullish on their leagues’ collaborations.Kelvin Kuo/USA Today Sports, via ReutersCollaboration between leagues in different countries is rare in world soccer. While teams from different countries often square off in various continental competitions, rarely do the leagues themselves interact unless there is a problem that needs fixing. The collaboration between Liga MX and M.L.S., then, represents how soccer economics are being upended globally, as well as a close relationship between the U.S. and Mexico that extends well beyond soccer.“If you remember what happened in 1994, we had a soccer championship here,” said Mikel Arriola, the new president of Liga MX. “We had the World Cup here in the U.S. And also another thing happened that year, which was the execution of NAFTA,” he said, referring to the free trade agreement between the United States, Mexico and Canada.For Arriola, whose career was mostly spent in a series of Mexican government positions, NAFTA best represents what soccer is now trying to replicate: It jump-started economic growth in Mexico, and he contends collaborations with M.L.S. will do the same for his league.Clubs from the United States and Mexico have faced each other for decades, of course, in the CONCACAF Champions League, the region’s top club competition. But in 2019 the two leagues created a new tournament, the Leagues Cup, to be contested by the best teams not to qualify for the Champions League and the Campeones Cup, another new one-off match between the winners of each league. Wednesday’s All-Star showcase in Los Angeles represented yet another increase in the rapid expansion of opportunities for players, and their two leagues, to compete against one another.Kai Wagner, left, of the Philadelphia Union and the M.L.S. all-stars, who beat a Liga MX team in a penalty shootout.Orlando Ramirez/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThat kind of close collaboration will almost inevitably bring the leagues into conflict with the region’s top soccer authorities, mirroring the fights playing out around the world over breakaway ideas like Europe’s short-lived Super League and this week’s potentially explosive club-vs.-country battle over the release of top European pros for World Cup qualifiers.For now, CONCACAF, which governs soccer in North and Central America and the Caribbean, has blessed both the Leagues Cup and the Campeones Cup. But it does not control either event in the same way it does the Champions League, and Arriola and Don Garber, the M.L.S. commissioner, were not shy about declaring how important their leagues are to the region’s soccer credibility.“Mexico, the U.S. and Canada represent 99 percent of the total value of CONCACAF,” Arriola said. But the confederation operates on a one-country, one-vote system, and power in the region has traditionally been held by Caribbean countries, the largest group of members, and one that often votes as a bloc.A Concacaf spokesman did not respond to a request for an interview with Victor Montagliani, the Canadian president of the organization.Asked what he believed Concacaf thought about the increased collaboration, Garber chose his words carefully. “The sport here has these long-established institutions going about governing the game the same way for generations, and I don’t necessarily think that that has to be the way the sport moves forward,” he said.For Liga MX, an increased presence in the United States means spurring revenue growth by tapping into a larger fan base. Mexico’s national team, through its own partnership with the M.L.S.-affiliated Soccer United Marketing, already plays more games in the United States than it does in Mexico, and Liga MX matches regularly draw higher television ratings than M.L.S. games. Arriola acknowledged that, like Mexico’s soccer federation, the Mexican clubs he represents see valuable revenue streams waiting on the northern side of the border.“We are a net exporter of football as a country because we have 60 million consumers in the U.S., and those 60 million people have a G.D.P. per capita 700 percent above ours, and they consume televised games two times compared to the Mexican consumer,” Arriola said.Garber’s bet is that aligning with Liga MX will help M.L.S. make inroads with those fans too, as well as with soccer fans in Mexico. But the most immediate benefit may be a competitive one.In continental competitions, Mexican clubs have traditionally overpowered teams from the U.S., and while that disparity has narrowed in recent years, an M.L.S. team has not lifted the Champions League trophy since 2000. Playing more games, and more consistently, against Mexican opposition may further close the gap between the leagues. And if and when M.L.S. clubs can consistently win those matchups, its credibility and global profile can only grow.Raúl Ruidiaz, a Peruvian striker signed from a Mexican club, helped Seattle become the only M.L.S. team to advance to the Leagues Cup semifinals.Stephen Brashear/Getty ImagesReorienting how the world looks at M.L.S. is Garber’s ultimate goal. The league’s last 15 all-star games have seen a team of M.L.S. stars take on top club teams from Europe, generally squads in the middle of preseason tours. But that format no longer suits the league’s purposes, or its focus, which years ago shifted to the acquisition of rising talents from Central and South America instead of aging players from Europe.In its current iteration, M.L.S. would like to be seen as the leader of a region that is quickly catching up to South America and Europe. But to do that, it first must prove it is a worthy rival to Mexican soccer. Garber said this week that he was willing to try any innovation that might make that happen.“I have always been tasked with having to answer questions about why do the Americans want to do things differently in the sport of soccer,” Garber said. But that might also mean he can get a look at where the sport should be — or is — going faster than his tradition-bound peers in South America and Europe.The obvious question is if M.L.S. and Liga MX will eventually merge. After all, they are hosting the World Cup together with Canada — which already has teams in M.L.S. — in 2026.Wouldn’t a single league made up of the best clubs across North America improve the level of play? Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, stoked such speculation earlier this year when he said such a league could be “the best league in the world.”Hanauer, the Sounders owner, was happy to entertain the question, but he also urged caution. The first time anybody can remember multiple owners from M.L.S. and Liga MX convening together, he said, was in February 2020. That meeting took place at Hanauer’s house in Cabo San Lucas, just before the pandemic shut things down.“It is a ‘walk before we run’ answer,” he said, adding, “We are at the very early stages of beginning to understand each other and get to know each other.” More

  • in

    Columbus Beats Seattle to Win M.L.S. Cup

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Latest Vaccine InformationVaccine TrackerFAQAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyM.L.S. Cup: Crew 3, Sounders 0Columbus Wins M.L.S. Cup, the Final Stop on a Journey to Stay PutLucas Zelarayán’s two goals carried the Crew over the Sounders in the stadium the team had almost abandoned three years ago.Lucas Zelarayán, center, scored two of the Crew’s goals and set up the third.Credit…Emilee Chinn/Getty ImagesDec. 12, 2020The celebration was the catharsis Columbus Crew fans had dreamed of since 2017, when the team’s former owner had threatened to move their team to Texas. It was the party they had pined for since 2018, when their campaign to stop him had yielded new owners and new hope. It was the dream that sustained them this year when the coronavirus played havoc with the schedule and locked them out of their stadium.So once the party finally began, once the final whistle had blown on the Crew’s 3-0 victory over the Seattle Sounders at Columbus’s Mapfre Stadium and Columbus had won its second league title, the only sadness, it seemed, was that more Crew fans were not there to see it in person.“When I took the job, I had a dream to take M.L.S. Cup to those fans over there,” said Crew Coach Caleb Porter, who circled the field thanking the roughly 1,500 socially distanced supporters in attendance even before his team had been handed its silver trophy. “That’s why I was so emotional.”Porter had denied those fans just such a celebration five years ago when, as coach of the Portland Timbers, he beat the Crew at Mapfre Stadium to win his own M.L.S. Cup. When he was hired by the Crew in January 2019, only months after the city’s successful campaign to save the team, he pledged to give Columbus fans something to cheer again.On Saturday, those who had been allowed inside — where they were instructed by health officials and stadium signs to stay masked and safely distant for all 90 minutes — showered Porter with thanks. The hugs will come later, when that sort of thing is safe again.That the final of M.L.S.’s 25th season took place at all was, in many respects, a triumph in itself. The season had begun on Feb. 29, the earliest start in league history, and concluded with the latest M.L.S. Cup ever played. In between was a year like no other: two weeks of matches and then a four-month hiatus because of the pandemic; a five-week summer tournament; and then weeks of wary returns to empty — or near-empty — stadiums.Along the way, the league conducted more than more than 130,000 virus tests, with about 20 percent of its players recording positive results, according to a players’ union official. Dozens of games were postponed, rescheduled or simply not played at all. To get to the end of the season, the league repeatedly tweaked its health protocols, adjusted its rules and crossed its collective fingers.Not even the final was immune, though. Columbus’s title hopes were dealt a significant blow on Friday when the team’s most important player, midfielder Darlington Nagbe, and a key member of its attack, Pedro Santos, were ruled out of the final for medical reasons. Both Nagbe and Santos later confirmed the league’s worst fear: that they, too, had tested positive for the coronavirus.“It’s a big loss; it’s a big blow,” Porter had said Friday. But he expressed confidence that his players could adjust, and his team took the game to the Sounders from the opening whistle.The first goal came in the 25th minute: a driven cross from the right by Gyasi Zardes, and a powerful one-timed finish at the back post by Lucas Zelarayán, an Argentine midfielder signed out of Mexico’s top league last winter, and — despite his diminutive size — a menacing presence throughout the first half.Six minutes later, it was 2-0, after Zelarayán fed an open Derrick Etienne Jr. — Santos’s replacement in the starting lineup — on the left side of the penalty area. Slipping behind his defender, Etienne coolly curled a right-footed shot around Seattle goalkeeper Stefan Frei.Health regulations limited attendance at the final to about 1,500 fans. They were ordered to sit only with their own parties and to wear masks at all times.Credit…Kyle Robertson/USA Today Sports, via ReutersSeattle tried to adjust, making two substitutions at halftime, but by then the momentum — or was it fate? — was too much to overcome. Zelarayán’s second goal, Columbus’s third, in the 82nd minute removed all doubt. The Sounders, finalists for the fourth time in five years, and seeking their second title in a row, never stood a chance.“This was going to be our day,” Porter said. “Our time, our day and our trophy.”Next season is scheduled to start in March. But, in a halftime interview on Saturday night, Commissioner Don Garber said the ongoing pandemic meant that he could not guarantee it.The Crew, for now at least, are fine with waiting. The title is theirs again at last, and they are more than happy to hold on to it as long as they can.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More