Leagues Cup: History, Format, and St. Louis CITY SC Rivals

Written by Santiago Beltrán

🇲🇽 Para leer en español, ver aquí.

After their victory against Inter Miami, the city’s red team are getting ready for a new competition, the Leagues Cup. There will be no MLS soccer for a month during this tournament. It will be St. Louis CITY SC’s third tournament this year (MLS and US Open Cup) and their first international tournament.

What is the Leagues Cup? The Leagues Cup is an international tournament that includes MLS and Liga MX. It has been played in different formats since 2019 and previous editions included only a few teams from each league. So far, Liga MX has dominated the tournament where Cruz Azul won in 2019 and Tigres in 2021. In 2022, there was no official tournament and the Leagues Cup Showcase was played with teams from both leagues playing 5 friendly matches. For the 2023 edition, Leagues Cup will include all 29 MLS teams and all 18 Liga MX teams for a total of 47 teams and the games will run from July 21 to August 19.  It will be played in World Cup format with group phases followed by single-eliminations in the second round. The Leagues Cup will award 2024 Concacaf Champions Cup slots (formerly Concacaf Champions League) to the top teams. The winners will automatically qualify for the Round of 16 while the runner-up and third-place winning teams will qualify for preliminary rounds.

The top two teams in each league, the MLS 2022 champion, LAFC, and the Apertura 2022 tournament champion, Pachuca, the team with the most points in the season, will automatically qualify for the second round. The remaining 45 teams were divided into 15 groups of 3 teams located in four regions: West, Central, South and East. Each team will play two matches in the group phase. During this phase, there will be no draws. Tied matches at 90 minutes will pass into penalty shootouts where the winner gets two points and the loser gets one point. The top two in each group will join LAFC and Pachuca in the second round in a single-elimination format until the final match.

CITY SC was assigned to the central region and will share group C1 with Club América of the Liga MX and Columbus Crew of the MLS. A group that seemed unlikely for the city’s red team when their rivals were announced and CITY had not yet started competing in the MLS. The new league team against Mexico’s team with the most wins and Columbus Crew, that has been stirring up the league in recent years, winning it in 2020, and becoming the team that scored the most goals in the league in 2023. With CITY at the top of the Western Conference, this group promises to be one of the most competitive groups in the tournament.

The other groups in the Central region are as follows:

Central 2: Puebla, Minnesota United FC, Chicago Fire FC

Central 3: Chivas, FC Cincinnati, Sporting Kansas

Central 4: Nashville SC, Toluca, Colorado Rapids

If they qualify for the second round, CITY’s rival would come from group C2. If they are first in their group, CITY would play locally in the second round, or if they are second and group C2 is won by Puebla. Starting in the third round, CITY can only be the host if their opponent is from Liga MX, since by tournament rules, games between MLS teams will be hosted by the team with the best performance in the 2022 season and CITY is last in this department because it entered the league in 2023.

The Leagues Cup will begin with Columbus Crew on Sunday, July 23 at the Lower.com Field in Columbus. Columbus is sixth in the Eastern Conference with 36 points from 10 wins, 7 losses and 6 draws. As host they were very strong and have only conceded one loss and tied 3 times in 12 games. In their last match they lost 3-2 as the visiting team to the Portland Timbers. Crew is the league's top scoring team scoring 45 goals. It has important players like the Argentinian Lucas Zelarayan and the Colombian Cucho Hernandez. They also have a player trained in St. Louis, goalkeeper Patrick Schulte, who many remember for his heroic performance with Saint Louis FC in the 2019 US Open Cup while still in high school.

CITY’s second rival in the Leagues Cup will be Club América. The Mexican team will play at CITYPARK on Thursday, July 27. The first official match against an international team at CITYPARK. A historic Mexican soccer team against an MLS expansion team, playing their first international competition. Club América is the most winning team in Mexico and in its more than 100 years of history has won 13 league titles, 7 Cups, 6 Champion of Champions, 7 Concachampions, 1 Concacaf Giants and 2 Inter-American Cups. Founded on October 12, 1916, by a group of students from Mexico City (which is why it is named after the continent we live in), it has had several nicknames over the years… “Los Cremas”, “Los Millonetas”, “Los Azul Cremas”, among others. But the most significant has undoubtedly been “Las Aguilas del America”

Their season with the most wins was the 80s when they won the Liga MX 5 times. Their last Liga MX title was in 2018. Among its historical players are Carlos Reinoso, Enrique Borja, Luis Roberto Alves Zague, Cuauhtémoc Blanco, Ivan Zamorano, Salvador Cabanas, and Guillermo Ochoa, among others. El America has the distinction of being the most beloved team in Mexico, but also the one that has the most detractors in its own country. Their home is the mythical Azteca Stadium, the same one that has hosted two World Cup finals, the same one that has seen Pele and Maradona crowned as world champions, and the one that will host the World Cup for the third time, when the 2026 World Cup is played.

In the 2023 Clausura Tournament, which ended in May, they ranked second during the regular season, only to fall in the league semifinals against the Chivas of Guadalajara. Their coach, Fernando Ortiz, left the club after that defeat.

They are currently led by the Brazilian Andre Jardine, the same one who led the Brazilian team when they won the Gold Medal at the Tokyo Olympic Games. Among its outstanding players are Richard Sanchez, Brian Rodriguez, Cabecita Rodriguez, Diego Valdes, Henry Martin, the United States national Alejandro Zendejas and their most recent acquisition, the Colombian Julian Quinones who scored his first goal wearing the Aguilas’ colors on Saturday, July 15.

In the Apertura tournament that began three weeks ago, they added a win in two games. Their offensive is one of their strengths, by the names they have listed. Speaking of their game-style, we can say that they play like our own CITY… high pressure, rival court ball recovery, and direct offensive. That is why the July 27 match promises to be very exciting, with two teams that always have winning in their minds, and spare no effort.

The Leagues Cup arrives and a great one from Mexico will visit CITYPARK. A chance for Bradley Carnell and his boys to add one more feat to this historic season. Go CITY!