Introducing Liga Campeones de CONCACAF / CONCACAF Champion's League

Hello and welcome to our new readers, and last but not least, to our old ones too.

In this edition, we will introduce you the regular annual football club tournament of the CONCACAF region.

The region, which consists three parts, namely North-America, Central-America and the Caribbean, has its own tournament since the 60’s, held each year.

The format changed a lot during the years, and we don’t want to get into details in this article.

As the tournament gained more and more popularity, more and more teams started to participate in it. The much needed money however didn’t start flowing.

The CONCACAF executive committee started to plan an extension of the league, and implement a new format, which would replace the knock out stage with a European-style champion’s league with knock out qualification round, and a group stage.

The new system was introduced this year for the first time. There is a two-leg preliminary round for 16 clubs, with the 8 winners advancing to a group stage. The other 8 teams will be seeded and begin the competition directly in the group stage. The winners of the preliminary round and the seeded clubs play in the group stage in four groups of four, with each team playing the others in its group twice, both home and away. The top two teams from each group will qualify for the knock-out stages, which will consist of home-and-away elimination. The finals, in late April, will also be two-legged, home-and-away.

The tournament got a new name too: Liga Campeónes de CONCACAF/CONCACAF Champion’s League. Notable, that a nickname also came into existence (Concachampions), whuch shows the popularity of it.

Although we passed only the qualification round and the 1st round of the group stage, we witnessed the change of the old status quo.

Mexican teams generally ruled the competition from the early stages, along with the Costa Ricans, which league is considered the most competitive in the Central-American region. As MLS was founded in 1996, the US teams became the 3rd important factor, with some rare Honduran and Guatemalan contribution.

This order of strength seems to has changed.

There were shocking surprises during the preliminary round already. New England Revolution and Chivas USA were humiliated by Panaman and Trinidadian teams, who were considered underdogs with no chance at all. Costa Rican Alajuelense, which has a big tradition in the region, also fell short to Puerto Rican Islanders by a kitten’s whisker, while other highly rated teams like Marathón and Montreal had to put up a big fight to reach the next stage.

Surprises continued in the first round of the group stage. Olimpia, Municipal fell after brave fights on Mexican soil, both of them deserving a point at least judged by the games they played. Saprissa executed DC United on US soil with a commanding presence. Same happened in San Pedro Sula, where Marathón overcame Cruz Azul. Completing the bad week for Mexicans, UNAm Pumas could only mange a draw in Panama vs San Francisco, who played well, and dominated most of the game.

What caused these surprises? We intended to think at first, that a mixture of underestimation, lack of interest (especially in case of MLS teams), and some bad luck caused the strange results.

We had to realise, that the main cause was the improvement of the emerging football nations. The latest example is Panama. Their NT achieved great successes in recent years, however pulled out from the race for South Africa early. Now it was their club’s turn.

First Gods "created” Mexican football, then there was nothing behind it for numerous decades. Now we have a series of countries, who can compete vs even the best teams of the region. These years are gone for a long time.

The creation of Concachampions will generate an even faster improvement. More money will be expected to invest not only in MLS or Mexican League, but in lesser known leagues like Honduras, Costa Rica, Guatemala, resulting more tight encounters. The income of TV rights will also rise, meaning more income for Central-American clubs, where every cent is a must, and means survival.

We just only hope, that it will not end like the European champion’s league, which became the privilege of the big teams, who want more and more money, left only bits and pieces of the big cake for the minnows.