Twenty-two matches have already transpired in the 2024 Concacaf Champions Cup, after an opening round in which 11 clubs from across the region were eliminated (condolences, St. Louis CITY SC and Vancouver Whitecaps FC).
Yet, in many ways, the business end of North America’s continental championship begins in earnest this week as the Columbus Crew, Inter Miami CF and three other top-seeded sides enter the fray.
The impending Round of 16 will show us a great deal about who are contenders and pretenders, while also serving up some delectably intriguing narratives. So, let's explore MLS teams that remain in the hunt and analyze their prospects for a deep run – factoring in roster strength, tournament experience, current form, upcoming opponents and the shape of their path through the bracket.
Remember what's at stake: A spot in both the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup and the 2024 FIFA Intercontinental Cup, plus regional bragging rights and prize money.
- Leg 1: March 7 at Nashville SC - 9 pm ET
- Leg 2: March 13 vs. Nashville SC - 8:15 pm ET
“Our biggest dream is coming!” reads one tagline in Inter Miami's promotional materials for their inaugural Champions Cup campaign, one of several signs the Herons are all in on another cup capture. Storming to the Leagues Cup title last August after the sensational arrivals of Lionel Messi, Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba is what earned them this place in CCC, and they sail into Thursday’s first leg vs. Nashville SC – the team they beat on PKs in last year's dramatic Leagues Cup final – on a 2W-0L-1D start to league play.
As you’ve probably already noticed, Messi and friends haven’t been shy about proclaiming their intent to win every piece of hardware within reach this year. Granted, some of us still harbor doubts about their capacity to dominate the domestic scene week after week over a regular-season marathon in which their veteran stars will inevitably miss matches. Given the talent and big-game bonafides of their leading lights, though, who’s really ready to bet against them in a knockout scenario?
Here, Liga MX powers like Club América and Tigres UANL might well raise their hands. And an equally difficult test will await Miami if they advance to the quarterfinals, where they’d meet the winner of the CF Monterrey vs. FC Cincinnati series. For now, though, Miami are marked favorites against listless Nashville.
Something to watch: Gerardo “Tata” Martino has hinted at a need to rotate his squad imminently. With so many veteran legs to manage, do the Herons take a cagey approach to Leg 1 in the Music City before a weekend visit from CF Montréal?
Winner faces: FC Cincinnati or CF Monterrey (Mexico)
- Leg 1: March 6 at Houston Dynamo FC - 8 pm ET
- Leg 2: March 12 vs. Houston Dynamo FC - 6 pm ET
One of the toughest hurdles for any MLS team in CCC is finding peak form so early into their season. Tournament play usually begins between Matchdays 1 and 3 in MLS, when Liga MX teams are typically halfway through their Clausura. That puts a premium on team chemistry for American and Canadian sides, which benefits the Crew relative to the field.
Head coach Wilfried Nancy installed his possession-heavy system quickly enough for Columbus to win MLS Cup last year – his first with the club – and has retained all 11 starters from that final. More importantly, star striker Cucho Hernández is still in blistering form, notching a goal in each of his first two games this season to make it 10 straight with a goal or assist dating back to 2023.
A favorable Round-of-16 matchup against a depleted Houston Dynamo awaits, with a potential quarterfinal against Tigres or Orlando City after that. Tigres aren’t dominant at the moment – though a 4-1 aggregate Round One victory over Vancouver showed they’re still formidable – while Orlando were most recently eviscerated by Miami in a derby match, calling their big-game bonafides into question.
It all lines up well for a deep Crew run.
Winner faces: Orlando City SC or Tigres UANL (Mexico)
- Leg 1: March 5 vs. Pachuca - 7 pm ET
- Leg 2: March 12 at Pachuca - 8:15 pm ET
Yes, Philly haven’t exactly been blowing doors off this winter, on or off the pitch. Rather than shuffle the offseason deck, the Union largely kept together the squad that’s been MLS’s most consistently competitive for the past half-decade, then did just enough in their opening weeks, holding off a spirited Saprissa side in their first CCC series and gutting out two draws in league play.
Perhaps counter-intuitively, all that could be cited as positive signs for their CCC prospects. Jim Curtin’s side has been here before. They mounted CCC semifinal runs in 2021 and 2023, and will thus know what to expect from their daunting matchup with Mexican mainstays Pachuca, which kicks off at Subaru Park on Tuesday night.
A low-scoring home win in Leg 1 would give them something to stake themselves to next week when the series shifts to lung-bursting Estadio Hidalgo, which sits at a mountainous altitude of nearly 8,000 feet above sea level. The health of chief goal threat Julián Carranza is also uncertain, but vital.
“We have a group that knows each other well,” Curtin told MLSsoccer.com during preseason. “And I think is battle-tested in elimination tournaments.”
Winner faces: Herediano (Costa Rica) or Robinhood (Suriname)
- Leg 1: March 7 vs. CF Monterrey - 7 pm ET
- Leg 2: March 14 at CF Monterrey - 10:15 pm ET
Cincinnati felt the pain of success in the winter transfer window, losing key players like Brandon Vazquez, Yerson Mosquera and Santiago Arias, among others, to clubs abroad. But general manager Chris Albright didn’t waste time locking down replacements, bringing in USMNTers Miles Robinson and DeAndre Yedlin to replace Mosquera and Arias, respectively, and signing Corey Baird after a successful season with Houston to be a stopgap for the Vazquez-sized hole up top.
Still led by 2023 Landon Donovan MLS MVP Luciano Acosta, there’s enough talent in this team to compete with the best on the continent, but the catch lies in whether their rearranged pieces (five new starters from last year) can find cohesion quickly enough to make a run.
It won't help Cincy face Monterrey, the most successful CCC team of the last 15 years (five titles), in the Round of 16. Nor will it help that Rayados are undefeated in the 2024 Clausura (6W-0L-4D). And it really, really doesn’t help that the aforementioned Vazquez, who joined Monterrey from Cincinnati in January, is already in top form with his new club, scoring six goals in nearly 600 minutes across all competitions.
The good news is Pat Noonan’s side can win gritty just as easily as pretty, as evidenced by last year’s slew of one-goal decisions that went their way. That bodes well for slowing down top-level opponents.
Winner faces: Nashville SC or Inter Miami CF
- Leg 1: March 6 vs. Alajuelense - 6 pm ET
- Leg 2: March 14 at Alajuelense - 8 pm ET
Sometimes a cup run can become its own season-within-a-season, summoning a different vibe and performances from the league action on weekends. So far that’s been the case for the Revs, who comfortably handled Panamanian upstarts CA Independiente in Round One while losing the first two MLS matches of the Caleb Porter era.
Now it gets a lot trickier for Carles Gil & Co. Costa Rican adversaries Alajuelense are the reigning champs of both Central America and their domestic cup, and boast talents like Joel Campbell, Celso Borges and former MLSer Johan Venegas. New England need a positive result at Gillette Stadium on Wednesday, then must maintain control of the tempo when the decisive second leg unfolds some 2,300 miles to the south in Alajuela next week. In between: A visit to mighty Mercedes-Benz Stadium to face Atlanta United on Saturday.
The Revs’ prospects may hinge on the capacity of wingers Tomás Chancalay and Esmir Bajraktarevic to step up in the clutch. Survive this test, and an even bigger one awaits in the CCC quarters: the winner of the Chivas Guadalajara-Club América series.
Winner faces: Chivas (Mexico) or Club América (Mexico)
- Leg 1: March 5 vs. Tigres UANL - 9 pm ET
- Leg 2: March 12 at Tigres UANL - 10:30 pm ET
Had these rankings come out last week, Orlando may have found themselves in the top four, riding high on last year’s second-place Supporters’ Shield finish and a productive offseason that saw DP striker Luis Muriel and Seattle Sounders icon Nicolás Lodeiro enter, all while holding onto last year’s top scorer, Duncan McGuire. Club stalwart Mauricio Pereyra left, but their acquisitions/departures ledger still came out looking positive on the whole.
But Saturday’s 5-0 drubbing at rival Miami raised questions about whether this team is ready to compete at a top level. Finding final-third chemistry with a retooled roster featuring two starting-caliber No. 9s in a one-forward system, plus no more Pereyra to pull the strings, was always going to be a work in progress. The bigger concern is the defensive solidity that so often defines Oscar Pareja-coached teams seemed to evaporate last weekend, too.
A similarly flat performance won’t cut it against Tigres in the Round of 16.
Winner faces: Houston Dynamo FC or Columbus Crew
- Leg 1: March 6 vs. Columbus Crew - 8 pm ET
- Leg 2: March 12 at Columbus Crew - 6 pm ET
Perhaps no one in this MLS CCC octet is as far from full strength as La Naranja, hobbled by the absences of midfield linchpin Héctor Herrera, livewire winger Nelson Quiñones and DP striker Sebas Ferreira to injuries, as well as smaller maladies inhibiting defenders Griffin Dorsey and Franco Escobar. This week GM Pat Onstad told Soccer Matters with Glenn Davis that Ferreira will miss another month with a “pretty serious” hamstring issue, and that it will be “a couple of months” before HH is back in the mix.
“We're going to need everybody, as we've done already. We're a little bit banged up, but so are a lot of teams,” head coach Ben Olsen said last week. “Some guys are playing themselves back into fitness. It's really been kind of a puzzle week to week to find out what the right group is from a health standpoint and also tactically how we can get results.”
The resulting shorthandedness played a part in dropped points at home vs. Sporting KC and the New York Red Bulls on the domestic front, and complicated the CCC defeat of St. Louis, via the away goals tiebreaker, in Round One. It’s a shame because Houston played some of the prettiest soccer on the continent en route to the US Open Cup trophy last year and could serve up delightful aesthetics against MLS Cup holders Columbus in their Round-of-16 clash.
Olsen says the Dynamo will keep playing their possession-centric style. Doing so at a level that can vanquish the Crew would be an impressive upset, let alone the winner of Tigres-Orlando in the quarters.
Winner faces: Orlando City SC or Tigres UANL (Mexico)
- Leg 1: March 7 vs. Inter Miami CF - 9 pm ET
- Leg 2: March 13 at Inter Miami CF - 8:15 pm ET
Nashville have had a hard enough time scoring even when their two DP forwards, Hany Mukhtar and Sam Surridge, are healthy. In the eight regular season and Audi MLS Cup Playoffs games the two started last year, Nashville scored four goals. They were also shut out six times. Six!
Now it’s unclear if either player will be available for their Round-of-16 fixtures against Inter Miami, who not so long ago beat Nashville on penalties in a dramatic Leagues Cup final. Both Mukhtar and Surridge are dealing with injuries, and neither made the matchday squad in Saturday’s 1-1 draw at Colorado.
Missing Mukhtar, in particular, could prove worrisome. The German DP scored or assisted on more than 60% of Nashville’s goals in the last three seasons. If he’s out, Nashville will be massive underdogs against Miami, and pretty much the rest of the field, too.
Winner faces: FC Cincinnati or CF Monterrey (Mexico)
