Latest news with #2024LeaguesCup
USA Today
30-07-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Club America vs. Real Salt Lake: How to watch Leagues Cup, TV channel, live stream
The 2025 Leagues Cup is here, with Club América facing Real Salt Lake on Wednesday in both teams' tournament opener. The competition has a new format this year, which is designed to feature more matchups between MLS and Liga MX teams. Phase One of the competition will exclusively feature matchups with one team from each league, as will the quarterfinals. 18 MLS teams and 18 teams from Liga MX will be involved this year, in contrast to the previous two years when every team from each league was involved. The teams will be split into two league-specific tables. The top four MLS teams and top four Liga MX teams will advance to the quarterfinal. Games won't end in ties. If matches are level after 90 minutes, the teams will go to a penalty shootout. América is aiming to get past the disappointment of last year, when it received an automatic bye to the round of 32 but fell to the Colorado Rapids in a penalty shootout in the quarterfinal. Real Salt Lake also had a frustrating 2024 Leagues Cup, falling short of the knockout phase after finishing bottom of its three-team group. Pablo Mastroeni's side enters this match with some momentum, having posted a 5W-1D-1L record in its past seven league matches. América has started the Liga MX season with one win and two draws in three games. Here is everything you need to know ahead of the match. Club America vs. Real Salt Lake (Leagues Cup) We recommend interesting sports viewing/streaming and betting opportunities. If you sign up for a service by clicking one of the links, we may earn a referral fee. Newsrooms are independent of this relationship and there is no influence on news coverage
Forbes
29-07-2025
- Sport
- Forbes
2025 Leagues Cup: Your Cheat Sheet For The MLS And Liga MX Showcase
Atlanta United midfielder Pedro Amador, left, battles with Club Santos Laguna forward Antony Lozano ... More during a 2024 Leagues Cup match. The 2025 Leagues Cup gets underway on Tuesday night. Like its name suggests, the competition involves multiple leagues. The format is slightly tweaked in its third year, with 18 teams from MLS competing against all 18 Liga MX teams. Here's everything you need to know about the event. The format The competition has been adjusted from a World Cup-style event to a new format that somewhat mirrors the new UEFA Champions League competitive structure. There are two phases, with 36 teams playing in the intial league phase (similar to the UCL's League Phase) followed by eight teams contesting the knockout phase. Each MLS team will play three matches against a Liga MX team and vice versa After all 36 teams have played three intraleague fixtures, the top four teams from each league on total points earned will advance to the quarterfinals. All matches that finish level after 90 minutes will go straight to penalties. Each team will earn three points for a win in normal time, two for win in a shootout win, one for a shootout loss and none for a regulation loss. Both the 18 MLS teams and 18 Liga MX teams have been divided into six, six-team groups, with three from each league in each group. Every match contested will feature an MLS and Liga MX teams from the same group, at the MLS team's home venue. Advancement to the knockout phase will be determined by a single 18-team table each for MLS and Liga MX clubs, without accounting for group alignment. The top four MLS teams and top four Liga MX sides will advance to the quarterfinal fixtures arranged as follows: MLS teams will host all four quarterfinals. Semifinals, the finals and the third-place match will also be played in MLS markets, with the higher seeded MLS team having host priority if the game is between two MLS foes, and a neutral venue announced if the game is between two Liga MX sides. All games not decided after 90 minutes will go straight to penalties, rather than playing 30 minutes of extra time seen in other knockout competitions. The Schedule The group phase will be played in its entirety between Tuesday, July 29 and Thursday, Aug. 7 while both Liga MX and MLS halt domestic play. Both leagues will resume their domestic schedules on the weekend of Aug. 9-10, with the knockout phase to be played on midweek dates as follows: What's at stake There are both financial and competitive motivations for teams participating in Leagues Cup, in addition to the intracontinental bragging rights of lifting a major trophy. Three berths in the 2026 Concacaf Champions Cup will be awarded to the competition's top three finishers. The winner will be placed automatically in the round of 16. The second- and third-place finishers will be placed as two of 22 teams competing in the first round. This makes the event similar to two other club events in Concacaf, the Caribbean Cup and the Central American Cup, which each also place three teams in the Champions Cup each year. The amount of prize money at stake for the 2025 competitors isn't available, but we can make some guesses based on previous figures. In 2023, reports suggested the overall purse was around $40 million spread across 47 competing teams, including around $2 million for eventual winners Inter Miami. How to watch Every match of the 2025 Leagues Cup is available with a subscription to Apple TV's MLS Season Pass service, but if you're not a subscriber there are other ways to keep pace with some of the action. According to World Soccer Talk, 12 games will be shown in English on FS1 during the league phase, and seven more will be shown in Spanish on UniMas and TUDN. Additional knockout phase matches will be shown on both platforms.
Forbes
05-05-2025
- Sport
- Forbes
Messi Has Stiff Competition In MLS Eastern Conference, But No Rival
On paper, the fight shaping up atop the MLS Eastern Conference should be exactly what the league front office has hoped for. After Matchday 11, the Eastern Conference has four teams that have averaged 2.0 points or more per match so far this season. It's the first time there have ever been so many clubs in one conference maintaining that pace this far along in the MLS regular season. And generally speaking, the clubs are the usual suspects. There's the 2023 MLS Cup and 2024 Leagues Cup Champions Columbus Crew, managed by reigning MLS manager of the year Wilfried Nancy. There's 2023 Supporters' Shield winners FC Cincinnati. There's the 2022 Supporters' Shield and MLS Cup runners-up Philadelphia Union. And then, of course, there is Lionel Messi and Inter Miami, winners of the 2023 Leagues Cup and 2024 Supporters' Shield. Why then, do the consequences of Miami's league games of late feel so muted? There's the fact that Messi and Miami already won the 'regular season title" last year before collapsing in the MLS Cup Playoffs. That certainly makes the Shield less of a primary focus this year for the Herons, although they're still clearly in contention. (Miami sits fourth in the East because they have a match in hand on the top three.) There's also some hangover from Miami's stunning and decisive exit from the Concacaf Champions Cup in the semifinals to a thoroughly impressive Vancouver Whitecaps side. Messi finally put some of that frustration to bed by scoring the final goal in a 4-1 league win over the New York Red Bulls over the weekend. Still, his gait suggested a frustrated figure as he left the field on Saturday night. But what's also clearly missing from the Messi MLS era is what made the majority of his time at FC Bacelona so mesmerizing: The presence of a worthy adversary in Cristiano Ronaldo at Barca's top rival for trophies, Real Madrid. Messi's influence to bring former Barcelona teammates Luis Suarez, Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba to Miami may be the most lasting development of his time in MLS, introducing a star-clustering dynamic also more regularly seen in the NBA. But for MLS, the next step of replicating that NBA model is to foster a climate where there's actually several teams with big stars to breed rivalries between personalities. At the moment, MLS is facing a far more difficult task than the NBA in that aim because those stars typically arrive late in their careers, and it takes time to forge a feud. Yet we did see one example for two seasons in Southern California, when Zlatan Ibrahimovic played for the LA Galaxy while Carlos Vela played for LAFC. Of course, it helped that Ibrahimovic had no problems making his feelings on Vela widely known. Of course, it's harder to find a reasonable rival for Messi because his accomplishments are so otherworldly that he is regularly considered the greatest living player without so much as a debate. But a rival needn't be capable of posing a real threat to an in-his-prime Messi, only the somewhat more athletically challenged version that will turn 38 in June. There were some decent candidates in last year's Eastern Conference, but they've all moved on. Fellow Argentine Luciano Acosta won the 2023 MLS MVP for FC Cincinnati the year that Messi arrived in Miami, but moved on to FC Dallas in a preseason transfer before the 2025 season began. Cucho Hernandez may have also proven a worthy foil at Columbus, but no one could blame he or the Crew for enabling a big-money move to Real Betis in La Liga. And virtually all the personalities from the height of Philadelphia's previous title challenges have moved on, including fiery defensive midfielder Jose Andres Martinez and creative playmaker Daniel Gazdag. Perhaps Evander, Cincinnati's replacement for Acosta who previously played for the Portland Timbers, could evolve into a rival. His Brazilian nationality certainly helps, as does his more outspoken personality that could clash with Messi's introversion. Or maybe there's another import – Kevin DeBruyne, for example – who lands at another Eastern Conference foe this summer. But at this point, it's unclear how much time is left to foster any sort of rivalry while Messi remains in MLS. Miami and Messi are thought to be nearing a contract extension, but Messi will turn 38 in June, so we could be talking an additional year or two at most.
