Leagues Cup 2024 officially begins on Friday. That process will bring us about two weeks of games fueled by a solid dose of unpleasantries almost every time out – the LIGA MX vs. MLS rivalry is very real, as we saw first-hand last year – as the wheat is separated from the chaff.
That means this is a good time to look at all 47 teams and break them into tiers. As always these teams are roughly in order of how good I think they are, but what really matters is the tier designation.
And remember: Everyone's chasing that shiny trophy, one of three 2025 Concacaf Champions Cup spots, some hefty prize money and bragging rights.
These are the teams that are clearly, I think, the best bet to win this thing. They don’t need lucky breaks or new signings; they just need their typical amounts of luck to blend in with the level of talent already on their rosters.
Give me this group vs. the field and I’m taking the winners to come out of this group.
The defending champs are deeper and better than this time last year. That team won because Lionel Messi got on an all-time heater – even by his impossible standards he was scorching – and carried the Herons to their first-ever bit of silverware. This team has more goalscoring, more creativity all over the field, and obviously the experience of winning from last summer.
Just as obviously, they’ll miss Messi if he doesn’t play, but I don’t think that’s the most important personnel variable for this team this summer. I think it’s actually center back David Martínez, who’s expected to arrive on loan from River Plate and is more important in terms of raising Miami’s floor. Their one weak spot this year has been center back, and if Martínez can fix that, we’re talking multiple trophies in Fort Lauderdale.
The reigning MLS Cup champs enter Leagues Cup playing some of the best ball in club history and with very realistic hopes of adding to their trophy cabinet.
It would serve as a measure of revenge after a teamwide case of food poisoning killed their chances in the Concacaf Champions Cup final, which turned into a 3-0 Pachuca rout. That loss is one of just four the Crew have suffered in the past four months, with the others coming against East titans FC Cincinnati and Inter Miami before a surprising stumble in Atlanta this past weekend.
I think that was an aberration. I picked Columbus to win my bracket.
Top of the Apertura table with 10 points from four games, Cruz Azul absolutely loaded up this summer, spending more than $20 million to bring in two new starting midfielders, a new right back, and old friend Giorgos Giakoumakis up top.
They have looked like the best team in Mexico this summer, including and especially during a massive 4-0 win over Monterrey. Though I will admit I am in no way a fan of all the tinkering manager Martin Anselmi is prone to.
Los Aguilas have had a middling start to their season with just two wins and two losses from four games, but they’re the reigning Bicampeones, just the fourth team ever to manage that. And they followed it up by beating Tigres in the Campeón de Campeones. So… pretty good résumé!
Add on top of it the fact they almost certainly have one of the two most talented overall rosters (along with Inter Miami), one that was reinforced with the addition of Érick Sánchez from Pachuca. More help is expected to arrive this window – Club América are never done shopping, and while that means early-season chemistry can sometimes be a problem, this club knows how to build a title team.
And they’ll have the home crowd basically everywhere they go, to boot.
They’re the oldest team in the tournament and they are managed by one Veljko Paunovic, who has underachieved at virtually every stop over the past 10 years.
And yet they’re still one of the most talented teams in the region, and in André Pierre-Gignac they have the region’s best forward of the past decade, along with plenty of support around him.
Tigres have a long history of playing ugly, but doing just enough to win. Seems like tournament ball, right?
Getting wrecked by Cruz Azul is the one blemish on Monterrey’s résumé right now, though I want to note two things:
- Their LIGA MX schedule thus far has been soft.
- They’ve actually been a selling club this window (so far) for just the second time in the past 10 years.
Overall they don’t look as deep or imposing as some of the great Monterrey teams of the past 15 years, but they’ve earned a ton of equity when it comes to winning continental titles. So I’ve got them here.
By the underlying numbers, LAFC are having one of the best seasons in recent MLS history. By the boxscore numbers and the standings they haven’t been quite so good, and as a surprising 5-1 loss earlier this month to Columbus showed, they can be vulnerable if they’re out of rhythm. Still, that result is very much an outlier for a team that’s blended more patient possession into their overall transition ethos. They had become too one-note last season – transition first, last and always – and are better this year because they have other clubs in the bag.
Expect Olivier Giroud to arrive mid-tournament and get into the XI. They already look like a Giroud team at times with Kei Kamara out there playing as the No. 9.
Each of these teams is either more flawed or less proven than the groups in the tier above. In the case of, say, Cincinnati, it’s because they’ve been devastated by injuries. In the case of Toluca or Houston, it’s because we just don’t have enough data with the current group on the field to know how good they actually are.
For any of them, it would be a surprise (but not an outright shock) if they win.
If Cincy hadn’t lost two starting CBs in the past month they might be the clear favorites in this tournament, full stop. As it is, they hardly missed a beat since Matt Miazga and Nick Hagglund went down, even with Miles Robinson on international duty at the time as well.
Then, following a 6-1 win over Inter Miami, the bottom almost completely fell out, and they’re now limping into Leagues Cup with three straight losses (including a home loss to the Fire; yuck!) in tow. The roster’s depth has been tested past its breaking point and Pat Noonan’s inventiveness as a manager can only do so much. They need to integrate a veteran CB, stat.
Even if they don’t, they still have enormous match-winning ability in Luca Orellano, Kevin Kelsy and, especially, the reigning Landon Donovan MLS MVP, Lucho Acosta.
EDIT: Cincy have their guy, acquiring Nigerian defender Chidozie Awaziem from Boavista.
The Red Devils have been dormant for about 15 years, but it feels like they’re back. They had the second-best goal differential in the Clausura at +15, just behind América (+18), and so when their dreams were dashed in the quarterfinals against Chivas (agg. 1-0), they went HAM, spending more than $20 million total on reinforcements from the backline to the front. Included in that is $4 million spent on RBNY d-mid Frankie Amaya.
They’ve been rewarded with another strong start as they’re fifth in the Apertura table with a 2W-0L-2D record, including a very impressive 1-1 draw at Cruz Azul on the weekend.
It was around this time last year when everything clicked into place for the Dynamo, who tiki-taka’d their way to a US Open Cup title and a place in the Western Conference Final. That midfield is still in place, and the backline is even better than last year.
What’s been missing is an elite center forward and a goalscoring winger. We’ve all said for a year if Houston add those kinds of pieces, they could maaaaaybe push into the very top tier, or at least come very close.
Well, they’ve added those guys, making center forward Ezequiel Ponce the club’s record signing and bringing in left winger Lawrence Ennali on a U22 deal. The rebirth of Sebas Ferreira means Ben Olsen’s suddenly spoiled for choice up top.
So, in theory, the time is now: This front line should give them the punch they need to compete for the crown in every competition they play in, including this one.
Pumas are second in the Apertura table with an impressive 3W-0L-1D start, getting balanced scoring from an impressively balanced team. There really don’t appear to be any scabs to pick at in this side under manager Gustavo Lema, who’s got them playing out of a pretty standard low-ish block 4-2-3-1 that highlights the ability of the wingers in space.
The most pleasant surprise thus far is the play of attacker Jorge Ruvalcaba, a Mexican-American who returned to the team after a year on loan at Standard Liege. He’s got 2g/1a so far and looks like a match-winner.
The knock, then, is he’s not a proven match-winner, especially when you compare him to the other teams in the top two tiers. That means more of the special moments fall on the shoulders of veteran No. 9 Rogelio Funes Mori, who is approaching his mid-30s (and mostly looks it).
RSL again entered a season with low expectations – outside of the club, anyway – and again they’ve blown preseason predictions out of the water.
They looked like a team headed for trouble after most of Pablo Mastroeni’s staff was dismissed this past winter, but with the new staff has come a new game model tilted toward pitch control. That game model, mixed with the maximum effort Mastroeni always coaxes out of his players, breakthroughs from Emeka Eneli, Diego Luna, Andrés Gómez and an MVP-caliber campaign from Chicho Arango has had this team at or near the top of the West all season long.
I’m sure they’re thinking about winning this thing as they kick off. Surviving the group stage without the suspended Arango makes things very, very tricky.
The Galaxy are having their best season in forever, sitting atop the Western Conference coming into the tournament thanks to new acquisitions and a newfound squad balance that has allowed those new guys (primarily Gabriel Pec and Joseph Paintsil) and the holdovers (primarily Dejan Joveljic and Riqui Puig) to blend rather seamlessly into a collective that’s as good as the sum of its parts.
It’s a Greg Vanney team, so you know they love to get on the ball a ton and attack, but they’ve also shown a willingness to sit deep, absorb and hit on the break. The defense comes and goes, but overall this is probably the best Galaxy team in a decade.
The big question: Can Riqui keep his positional discipline? If the answer’s yes, the Galaxy might be a tier too low.
I have too much respect for Pachuca as an organization to put them any lower than this despite the fact they sold the best player from this year’s Concacaf Champions Cup winners (central midfielder Érick Sánchez) and how they have been pretty punchless to start the Apertura. On top of that, I will add the fact Pachuca win CCC (née CCL) titles because of their home-field advantage, which they will not have for a single second in Leagues Cup.
Still, I said what I said: Too much respect for Pachuca to put them any lower than this.
Injuries and a weird propensity for red cards hamstrung (literally, in the case of Pedro de la Vega) Seattle to start the year – the first in the post-Nico Lodeiro era.
But as they’ve gotten their core pieces healthy, and as Jordan Morris has grabbed the No. 9 role with both hands, the Sounders have steadily climbed the table. Their experience, quality and stability make them a high-floor team that's unlikely to beat themselves in a tournament setting. A healthy, dynamic and productive de la Vega, playing inverted on the left wing, is what they’re counting on to raise their ceiling.
This is basically the first time all year we’re going to get to see what a full-strength Sounders side looks like. It’s exciting.
They’re not really giants anymore, with just four league titles in the past 55 years, but they’re still popular as hell and have a lot of talent. That was good enough for them to finish sixth overall in the Clausura before losing in the semifinals against their biggest rival, Club América (agg. 1-0).
Chivas had one of the best defenses in the league, but goalscoring remains an issue. Thus far in the Apertura that’s been solved by Quakes export Cade Cowell, though it should be noted two of his three goals (and both of Chivas’s wins so far) came against Mazatlán and Querétaro, who are waaaay down the bottom of the standings.
Still, this midfield’s got talent, and both the defense and goalkeeper are solid. If Chicharito finds one last month of glory in his boots, a title’s not entirely out of the question.
The Crown began turning things around – defensively anyway – around this time last year, when Andrew Privett and Adilson Malanda became the starting center back pairing in front of Kristijan Kahlina. The defensive foundation that trio provides was only strengthened with the arrival of manager Dean Smith, who has instituted a low-risk, no-frills, counter-attacking 4-2-3-1 scheme based almost entirely around his team’s ability to absorb punishment and then hit on the break.
I think they are a playmaker short. But I am putting them here in the hopes they get one signed in the next week, which would then make them an extremely fun dark horse pick to win this thing.
Good teams for the most part, but ones where you’ve really got to stretch the imagination to see them winning a title next month.
Orlando were floundering badly until about mid-June, when manager Oscar Pareja finally had his come-to-Jesus moment and began playing Martín Ojeda – by far the team’s best chance creator – as the No. 10 in a 4-2-3-1 formation. Things almost immediately clicked into place and the Lions suddenly look much more like the group that took 63 points in the regular-season last year.
Along with Ojeda, Facu Torres has been on an absolute heater, and Ramiro Enrique has settled in nicely as the No. 9 with Duncan McGuire on international duty.
The defense isn’t totally solved and Pedro Gallese might be cooked, though. So I can’t see them surviving a whole month, but nobody will want to face this version of Orlando.
The Red Bulls have famously made the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs a record 14-straight seasons, and look a good bet to make it 15-straight this season. They have even more famously played their entire existence without winning a cup of any sort, and that is the team’s full story: they have defensive talent and team-wide buy-in, but have always been one match-winner short in knockout tournaments. It is, and always has been, a skill issue.
It sure looks like that’ll be the case this year as well, though they do have a DP slot open and are expected to make a move. Make the right signing and they could jump a tier real quick.
Portland won just two of their first 12 games and looked like a team destined for a midseason overhaul. Instead, they’ve gone 8W-3L-2D since then, and are playing some of the most fun, open, attacking soccer in the league. Their front four fits together perfectly, with Evander pulling the strings and Santi Moreno doing the secondary playmaking, while Felipe Mora does most of the goalscoring and Jonathan Rodríguez is the secondary goalscorer.
Because of that balance, they’ve asked less in attack from their fullbacks, and because of that, they’ve become a more stable defensive team. Eryk Williamson’s recent return has helped a ton, as well.
I still think they’re too easy to build against, as we saw last weekend in Carson. But there’s a chance I’ve got this team a tier too low.
The Pigeons have been something of a mystery box team this year, as manager Nick Cushing has tried to find the right mix of players. When he hits, it’s very good – as we saw in April and May when NYCFC took eight wins from nine.
Since then, though, it’s been up and down as key players have missed games and the team’s depth has been tested (and largely found wanting).
Here is the thing: If Talles Magno gets out of Cushing’s doghouse and onto the field, which means Santi Rodríguez is the No. 10, then I could see this team making a deep, deep run. And hell, if not Talles, then how about Julián Fernández or Agustín Ojeda?
Getting that extra attacker out there is the main variable for this team, and has been all year.
The ‘Caps are once again a very good team, and once again part of that good-ness is due to the incessant tinkering of head coach Vanni Sartini. He has his team line up in a 3-4-3 off the ball that turns into a 3-3-3-1 with the ball, with Ryan Gauld dropping in to become a No. 10 and Fafà Picault offering penetration from the left wing.
It’s a lot of moving parts, and it may not serve this team any better than last year’s more standard 3-5-2. But it mostly works.
And it mostly doesn’t matter because the real issue is the ‘Caps are a good, fun team that is still an elite piece short when they face the best in the region. We’ve seen it repeatedly over the past few years in Leagues Cup, CCL play and the playoffs.
They need more firepower to win the biggest games.
The Rapids front office cooked this past winter, bringing Djordje Mihailovic, Sam Vines and Zack Steffen back from Europe, making moves within the league for depth pieces and – maybe most importantly – hiring the right guy in Chris Armas. He’s got them playing high-paced soccer that gets them into the box a ton and has developed young players like Cole Bassett and Moise Bombito into the best versions of themselves.
The season to this point has been a resounding success for a club in need of exactly that. But this also feels like a team that’s one elite attacking piece (a goalscoring winger, to put a finger on it) away from true contention, especially given Steffen’s up-and-down form when it comes to keeping the ball out of his net.
Atlas have spent a lot of their existence being dogmeat, but they were great two years ago. Then they were dogmeat again after selling everyone from their Bicampeon side.
Now they’re… pretty good, I think? They’ve got eight points from four games to start the season – which is a huge relief after they were 17th in the Clausura. They’ve just looked better in basically every conceivable way, with center forward Eduardo “El Mudo” Aguirre the key man so far.
They’ll play a bog-standard 4-2-3-1, and they’ll likely be pretty good. But I have a hard time imagining this group winning five straight knockout round games.
Welcome to the Tijuana home for wayward MLS boys, featuring Joe Corona, Efraín Álvarez and the star of the show, Emanuel Reynoso. You remember him from last year’s tournament, right?
Seven points from four games so far, and since their manager is Juan Carlos Osorio they’ve played three different formations in those four games.
They’ll probably be pretty good. Reynoso could win them a couple of games all by himself. But they’re not winning five straight in the knockout rounds.
Remember former NYCFC manager Dome Torrent? Somehow he’s the man in charge of Atleti, a very new club born in the maelstrom of bankruptcies and shifting ownership groups that defined LIGA MX in the middle of the 2010s.
They are officially half-owned by Spanish giants Atlético Madrid, and at some point, there’s supposed to be some level of player development pipeline that funnels directly from one team to the other. But that hasn’t really happened so far, save for the presence of left back Juan Manuel Sanabria.
What has happened is they’ve put together a pretty decent start to the season, including an opening-day win over Club América. And under Torrent you know they will be structured and methodical in how they approach literally every single game.
That – and a boatload of veterans – will make them tough to beat.
Things had gotten pretty bleak by the time ownership cut the cord with previous manager Nico Estévez and installed Peter Luccin, who’s done well enough to now be considered the favorite to win the job outright. The big change under the new manager is that Dallas are playing more quickly, with a stronger emphasis on attack and less on pure pitch control. That’s made for some pretty open games, but open games can be fun – especially when you’ve spent a club record on a No. 9 who’s delivering.
How that No. 9, Petar Musa, fits in with Jesús Ferreira and Alan Velasco remains to be seen. I think we could see a 4-2-3-1 with Ferreira as a No. 10 underneath and Velasco playmaking as a left winger, but it’s all theoretical at this point.
Look, it’s not you. It’s them.
Necaxa juuuust missed out on the Liguilla last season (they lost 2-1 to Pachuca in the play-in) and responded by… not really doing much except doubling and tripling down on their youth movement, I guess? They are pretty easily the youngest Liga MX side at the tournament, and are one of the youngest sides overall.
So far that youthful energy has been their calling card in the Apertura: they ran Puebla off the field in Week 2. They’ve also been pretty comfortably outclassed by both Tigres and Monterrey, which gives us a feel for how they’ll stack up against the favorites in this thing.
The Union clearly expected to be competing for titles like this, which is why they brought back 98% of last year’s minutes this season. Instead, they’ve fallen apart with an embarrassing Concacaf Champions Cup exit followed by a prolonged regular-season winless skid that mostly came down to proven, high-level veterans making catastrophic errors on a weekly basis. They’ve looked nothing like the team that’s come so close to so many titles over the past half-decade, and nothing like a team that could finally break through and win one this summer.
Still, they come in on a little bit of a roll after de-pantsing Nashville and New England last week. So it’s not all bad.
TFC got off to a hot start thanks to some fantastic play from both Lorenzo Insigne and Sean Johnson, but it was never sustainable. And club president Bill Manning – who bears most of the responsibility for this Frankenstein’s monster of a roster – eventually paid with his job.
Everyone else left over is probably fighting for their own, with only Federico Bernardeschi distinguishing himself. The Italian veteran hasn’t just been the most productive attacker on the team, but he’s also shown a willingness to work and suffer as a two-way player, logging most of his minutes as an inverted wingback.
The Five Stripes are very much a team in flux, having parted ways with longtime head coach Gonzalo Pineda in June, followed by the sale of two stars – DP No. 9 Giorgos Giakoumakis (now banging in goals for Cruz Azul) and No. 10 Thiago Almada – along with homegrown left back Caleb Wiley. In total, Atlanta will reportedly receive something between $40 to $50 million, which is the kind of money you need when embarking upon what’s clearly going to be a complete, multi-window teardown and rebuild.
The first part of that rebuild: find a playmaker. And they’ve done it, reportedly agreeing to a $13 million deal for Atalanta’s Russian No. 10 Aleksey Miranchuk.
Watching this roster come together is probably going to be the most interesting part of Atlanta’s summer.
Minnesota were always destined to have a weird 2024 – their first season without long-time manager Adrian Heath steering the ship.
But really, it’s been extra weird, as they got off to a hot start despite injuries to Teemu Pukki and the eventual departure of Emanuel Reynoso, and the late arrival of new head coach Eric Ramsay, and the evolution into a 5-4-1 shape where the center backs step into central midfield, and the wingbacks play deeper than most, and former winger/false 9/No. 8 Robin Lod has turned into an All-Star caliber No. 10. And and and and.
It’s been a journey, one in which they’re still finding themselves. Recently, that’s meant significant struggles as they’ve not coped without center forward Tani Oluwaseyi and goalkeeper Dayne St. Clair, who missed significant time on international duty with Canada at Copa América.
With those two guys back, they’re a much better team. But probably not good enough to get very far.
They’re stumblin’ out the gates, with just one point, one goal and a -5 goal differential through their first four games of the Apertura. They clearly miss d-mid Alan Cervantes – sold to Club América this month – while new guys Choco Lozano and Fran Villalba have been…. Woof. Not great. And JJ Macías is still hurt, of course.
They were fourth from bottom in the Clausura, and it’s been a while since they were good.
La Franja were real, real bad in the Clausura with just one win and five points, and they’ve only been moderately bad to start the Apertura – though still not particularly good, either, given their soft schedule.
They are traditionally a low-spending club, and are still exactly that. Old friend Lucas Cavallini leads the line after arriving on a free from Tijuana, and he has been by far their best player to start the season.
They’ve won one trophy in the past 33 years. It would be a shock if they added another this summer.
The 2023 Concacaf Champions League winners are a shadow of what they were, having seen many of that group leave – some for money, some for free (including maybe their best-ever player, Ángel Mena).
And so it’s a rebuilding process for this pretty historic club, which is not one of the grandes, but who have been around forever and whose eight Liga MX titles put them just one behind Cruz Azul, and one ahead of Pumas. Four weeks into the Apertura and they’ve yet to win a game.
Former Nashville DP Jhonder Cádiz leads the line while Mexican legend Andrés Guardado wears the armband and runs the midfield.
After two years of success under Wilfried Nancy, Montréal hired a coach with a completely different game model in Hernán Losada last year. When that didn’t work they went back to the well and hired Laurent Courtois, Nancy’s disciple, in the hopes that he’d bring a return to the free-flowing, attractive (and winning!) play that won hearts in 2021 and 2022.
It hasn’t quite taken root yet – by every reasonable metric Montréal have been a low-possession, low-block, counter-attacking team this year – but the hope is they’ll continue to evolve.
As for what that looks like in this tournament, “prohibitive underdogs” is a fair descriptor.
Francisco Calvo!!!
Yes, the Costa Rican center back – a Minnesota United MLS original – is now making his home just south of the border for los Bravos. So too are former MLSers Jairo Torres and Bofo Saucedo.
And, well, things aren’t going great. After finishing 12th in the Clausura they’ve somehow looked worse to start the Apertura, with just one point through four games (against, to be fair, a very tough schedule).
Avilés Hurtado! Remember him? The Monterrey legend is now Juarez’s starting right winger. How’s that for a trip down memory lane?
After months of treading water above the playoff line, Austin began to sink in late May. Since then, it’s been one setback after another as they desperately waited for the window to open and reinforcements to arrive. With the addition of three new presumed starters in Osman Bukari, Mikkel Desler and Oleksandr Svatok, the hope is they’ll find some balance and a bit of the magic that defined their 2022 season.
Note that star No. 10 Sebastián Driussi’s MLS goal totals have dropped from 22 in 2022, to 11 last year, to just five entering Leagues Cup play. To make any kind of noise, Austin need Driussi to wear his goalscoring boots.
Last year’s beaten finalists have been struggling massively ever since, and it eventually cost long-time head coach Gary Smith his job. Rumba Munthali took over on an interim basis, and while the results got better for a minute, they still weren’t great. And then they got much, much worse as the 'Yotes enter Leagues Cup on a six-game losing streak, by far the longest in club history.
And so in comes former Philly and US men’s national team assistant B.J. Callaghan just in time for this tournament. His toughest test will be getting a team whose lack of any midfield ball progression has been glaring – man, do they miss Dax McCarty – to actually create danger with the ball. Given that need, a repeat of last year’s excellent showing would be a shock.
After a promising start, D.C.’s regular season entered a nosedive around mid-April. By late May it was officially a nosedive, and come summer it’s sure looking like a death spiral.
Christian Benteke has been excellent, and a few other veterans – Mateusz Klich, Aaron Herrera, Jared Stroud – have been good. But overall, this is a team that’s short on match-winning quality and chance creation.
They try hard and still look bought in on Troy Lesesne’s vision, but with four wins in four months, it’s fair to question how long they’ll be able to stick around this summer.
The Fire are in their customary spot outside of the playoffs despite getting solid play all season long from record-signing Hugo Cuypers, as well as from guys like Brian Gutiérrez, Maren Haile-Selassie and Chris Brady. The problem is the rest of the team has been poor, with high-priced players (none more obvious than Xherdan Shaqiri) who contribute little and other pieces who don’t really fit.
They have missed the playoffs for six years running, and the way things look right now, seven seems a pretty good bet. It’s hard to imagine them flipping a switch for this tournament.
It’s been a season from hell for the Revs, who’ve battled injuries and underperformance from Day One under new manager Caleb Porter. They won just two of their first 13 games. Then they won five of six. But then injuries struck – most importantly to Carles Gil – and they were back to their losing ways in the run-up to Leagues Cup. Because of all of the above, there’s been no consistency and little player development.
Still, if Gil’s back healthy, and with Giacomo Vrioni having a good season, and Aljaž Ivačič having been one of the best goalkeepers in the league since his arrival… I could see this team winning a few games. They definitely have talent.
There was a lot of hope for Sporting this year. They’d spent the final two-thirds of last season playing at a 60-point pace, then ripped St. Louis apart in the playoffs, and they were returning basically their whole squad.
But, man, have things gone wrong. Virtually everyone except for Willy Agada has underperformed, which, when mixed in with some injuries, has made this feel like a lost season. Manager Peter Vermes and ownership have both said they’re now embarking upon a three-window rebuild, which tells you all you need to know about what they think of their chances this summer.
St. Louis used up all their luck by this time last year. The 2023 Leagues Cup is when the cracks in the armor started appearing, which then continued down the stretch and into the playoffs as the cracks turned into chasms. Now, with 2024 two-thirds over, those chasms have become an abyss.
It cost Bradley Carnell his job, and things haven’t gotten better under interim John Hackworth. Three new arrivals will hopefully boost the overall talent level, but “overall talent level” is where the concern really is, as St. Louis are punching up basically every single game. Some unsustainable finishing across the board and superhero-level goalkeeping from Roman Bürki masked that in 2023, but it was never going to last.
And now it feels like this team is redefining itself on the fly, as new players arrive and the game model seems to be undergoing a significant change as well.
It’s a lot to piece together in one summer.
The newest team in LIGA MX, Mazatlán were established in 2020 after the relocation of Monarcas Morelia. Their manager is Víctor Manuel Vucetich, who won a trio of CCL titles with Monterrey about 12-15 years ago.
They have one point through four games. They have never won a trophy. They should maybe be in the tier below this one, but that would ruin the bit.
Bad year for the letter Q.
Ooof. Ok, poor San Jose.
- Daniel was their best player last year; they lost him to a long-term hamstring injury before the season was four weeks old.
- JT Marcinkowski would’ve then been the starter, but he had already done his knee. So goalkeeper has been an open wound all year long.
- The backline has largely been poor.
- The midfield’s been anonymous.
- Jeremy Ebobisse’s been snake-bitten in front of goal.
Hernán López and Cristian Espinoza are fun, but overall, there’s a reason this team’s in last place. And it hasn’t gotten better with interim manager Ian Russell in charge.
Aké Loba! Rubio Rubín!! Ronaldo Cisneros!!!
Zero points through four games, including ghastly home losses to Tijuana and Chivas.
Remember Pablo Barrera? God, he absolutely tormented the USMNT during the 2011 Gold Cup. He’s still playing!
