Is there a future for Leagues Cup?
This year's tournament has been squeezed by big events - and it is only going to get tougher in the next two years. What should they do with it?
The Leagues Cup semi-finals are tonight with MLS champions Columbus Crew facing the Philadelphia Union and LAFC hosting the Colorado Rapids with a place in Sunday’s final on the line.
For a competition which is a joint venture between MLS and Liga MX, the lack of a Mexican team in the final four is unfortunate. But it has been that kind of Cup - it just hasn’t quite worked in the way that the organisers would have hoped.
Regardless of how good, bad or indifferent actual attendances have been it is hard to imagine that the games have been breaking records on Apple TV. The audience for those games broadcast on Fox have been woeful. Media interest has been low and there has just been a lack of buzz around the whole thing.
Last season, the debut year for the expanded tournament format with all MLS and Liga MX clubs involved in the ‘World Cup style’ format, caught the imagination of the soccer public due to it being the debut competition for Lionel Messi and Friends at Inter Miami.
But this year, not only was there no Messi, due to his injury, but the Cup was played right after the US-hosted Copa America and during the Summer Olympics. By the time we got to the quarter-finals stage, the Premier League clubs had finished their friendlies in the States and were in Week One.
The problem is - next summer is going to be even busier from a soccer point of view.
FIFA’s expanded 32-team Club World Cup is being held in the USA and there is also the CONCACAF Gold Cup running almost simultaneously. The following year there is the 2026 World Cup in the US, Canada and Mexico. The idea that MLS would stop for the entire month of the World Cup and then have another month with no regular season action due to the Leagues Cup, seems unlikely.
So is there space in the calendar for Leagues Cup? Stopping the competition for two years and coming back in 2027, when hunger for a summer tournament, 12 months after a World Cup, should be higher, would make sense. (Although even then there is competition for eyeballs with the Women’s World Cup, with the USWNT among the favourites.)
The reality is that the summer is by far the busiest time for soccer in the USA and Leagues Cup is always going to be squeezed by other events (don’t be surprised if the USA and Mexico feature in the 2028 Copa America in Ecuador).
It would be a pity to lose Leagues Cup though. There is a lot of sense to the competition. Fans of Mexican clubs in the USA get a chance to see their club in competitive action. Playing against Liga MX clubs brings something different for American fans.
Here then are four ideas for Leagues Cup. None are perfect and you may have better ideas yourself:
Move the tournament from the busiest time of the year for soccer to the quietest time - winter. Of course, you can’t play games in the coldest parts of the North but that would allow for the correcting of one of the comps biggest weaknesses - not playing games in Mexico. Play the games in the warm parts of the USA and in Mexico as a pre-season tournament in Jan/Feb.
Stick with August, but shorten the tournament by going straight knock-out.
Reduce the size of the tournament to 16 or even eight teams. Knockout games and then a ‘Final Four’ with semi-finals and the final in the same city, creating a soccer festival in a host city.
Forget about it.
Let us know what you’d do in the comments…
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