FEATURE: The Unique 'Leagues Cup' of the MLS & Liga MX

Jon Bonfiglio looks at the annual tournament which pits the MLS and the Liga MX against each other in a unique competition. 

Transcript

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Hi everyone, welcome back to World Football, etc., where today we're going to be taking a look at the unusual Leagues Cup between the MLS in the United States and the Liga MX in Mexico. But before we do, just a reminder of the name change of the podcast. No more World Cup here. We are now World Football, etc. And the email address is also now changed to WorldFootballetc. at gmail.com, the et cetera being the full spelling of the word, not the ETC. Also, as we enter into this next chapter with more news on everything we have planned to be shared in the next few days, we'd appreciate it. If maybe you could rate the podcast on whatever podcast provider you download the recordings, you should see a rate button somewhere on the provider. And if you can click on it, hopefully, uh and rate us with you know whatever uh rating you feel is appropriate. Of course, we'd appreciate a top star rating, but that's entirely up to you. We would um definitely be very grateful. As I say, plenty more to come in the next few days on what is coming up, but it involves new structures and stories, live events in different territories, and an array of special guests on the pod. It also involves, um, of course, because it is everybody's favorite uh uh inclusion and um and uh events in the podcast. It also involves guarantees of Declan Link mispronunciating, mispronunciating that serves me right, mispronouncing names. Uh, we'll be sharing information on all of that soon. That is karma, and I deserve it. But onto the Leagues Cup, this curious annual CongoCAF-sanctioned club competition that brings together clubs from uh Major League Soccer, MLS in the United States and Canada, and Liga MX in Mexico in a fully interleague format. It was played primarily across venues in the United States, but then since the 2026 edition, started to include official matches hosted on Mexican soil for the first time at the stadiums of the top-ranked Liga MX clubs. The tournament is played in late summer, so round about now, typically running from early August into early September, during a pause in the regular MLS and Liga MX uh league calendars. Of course, for the Liga MX, it's not a pause, it's the end of one and the beginning of another. First launched in 2019 as a modest, as a limited sort of invitational tournament, it's since evolved and grown into a full interleague tournament with uh CONGACAF Champions Cup qualification on the line. As of the 2026 edition, uh the tournament totals 36 clubs, split evenly 18 from each league. Phase one is a group-style stage, a little bit like the Champions League, in which every club plays three matches against other clubs from the opposite league. This is important because a unique aspect of the Leagues Cup is that it focuses on matches between the two leagues wherever possible until the final stages, making it in effect a battle for primacy between the two leagues more than a battle between individual clubs themselves. So no MLS versus MLS or Liga MX versus Liga MX matches occur in that phase or even in the quarterfinals. Results across all three of those matches, which is a very small sample size, but um they they want to get to the business end of things pretty quickly. So those are then built, uh used to build separate standings for tables for MLS and for Liga MX. So unlike in the Champions League, there is no single table for all the clubs. Rather, there are two: one for the MLS and one for the Liga MX. So that even if one league does especially well against the other in the opening stages, ultimately there is an even split going into the knockout phases. So the top four clubs from the MLS table and the top four from the Liga MX table advanced to the knockout rounds. In much the same way, the quarterfinals pair MLS and Liga MX sides directly, guaranteeing interleague matches at the quarterfinal stage. Top-ranked MLS sides face the fourth ranked Liga MX side and vice versa in a crisscross bracket. The champion runner-up and the third place finisher all earn qualification to the following year's CONCACAF Champions Cup, with a champion receiving a direct birth into the round of 16 of that competition as an incentive basically to maintain quality and seriousness for the competition. Uh ConcaCaf do not want the quality to be diluted here. Uh interestingly, Messi's arrival uh into Miami turned the 2023 edition into uh, I mean, undoubtedly a global spectacle. Suddenly, interest grew significantly with Miami winning the title in Messi's first tournament for the club. The um has also grown dramatically from just eight teams in its 2019 debut to a full 36 competition now, uh including every Liga MX club. What's especially interesting, as we mentioned in the last podcast, the discussion between Paul and myself on the Inter-Miami versus Chicago fire discussion, is that although the League's Cup effectively functions as a bridge tournament between North America's two biggest domestic leagues, its existence and its ongoing expansion is a thinly veiled experiment designed to test potential for a future merger between the MLS and the Liga MX. Both leagues are successful in their own right, but the feeling is that that um both have reached a ceiling which they can't necessarily shatter alone. They're kind of trapped in into their own uh in their own net. For the MLS, a merger would bring a huge new and passionate audience in in Mexico and in Latin America with attendant commercial opportunities. And for the League MX, it would mean a global audience which it doesn't uh currently access. At the moment, outside of Mexico, the League MX is definitely very niche uh uh following. In essence, although the leagues and neighbors, they have very different strengths and weaknesses, and the belief is that a merger would allow them to allow them both to push into entirely new territory. Well, that's it from me today here at World Uh Football, etc. And uh look forward to to talking again soon. And don't forget, if you can, to rate the podcast on whatever download provider you listen to us on. Thanks so much.