Friday Newsletter: An MLS Team Is Finally Going to Win the CONCACAF Champions League
This Time I'm Not Kidding
I really don’t want to jinx anything, but I feel like I have to say it: An MLS team is finally going to win the CONCACAF Champions League this year. I mean it. Seriously. And I’m not going to let anyone tell me otherwise.
The Seattle Sounders are in the driver’s seat of their CCL semifinal against New York City, up 3-1 heading into Wednesday’s return leg in New Jersey. And if Seattle can keep performing at the level it did in Leg 1—with Jordan Morris rampant, the Roldán brothers owning the right side, Albert Rusnák excelling as a No. 8, Nico Lodeiro and Raúl Ruidíaz showing their quality and João Paulo being the best player on the field—they’ll beat not only City but either of Mexico’s Cruz Azul or Pumas in the final.
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Yes, I realize we’ve been down this road before with MLS teams in CCL. Yes, I realize no MLS team has won the CONCACAF title since a league format was adopted in 2008. And yes, I realize I have been hard on MLS and its teams over the years for a remarkable run of failure in the one genuine competition that could show MLS has closed the gap with Liga MX.
If you’re MLS, you can’t be credible saying you want to become one of the world’s best leagues if you’re never producing the best team on your own continent.
It’s true that two MLS teams, D.C. United in 1998 and the LA Galaxy in 2000, won the CONCACAF title, and those were cool moments for the young league. D.C. even went on to beat Copa Libertadores champion Vasco da Gama over two legs in the Copa Interamericana, and I remember then MLS commissioner Doug Logan visiting our offices at Sports Illustrated and telling the soccer editor that he had “dropped the ball” by not covering such an illustrious accomplishment.
The Copa Interamericana was so illustrious that it was never contested again.
In 2000, FIFA was organizing a Club World Cup in Spain, and I was psyched to cover the Galaxy in the tournament there. But then FIFA canceled it out of nowhere, and we missed out on seeing an MLS team at a Club World Cup.
The fact is that those CONCACAF titles by MLS teams are real, but they came in a single-site tournament, not the league format that came online in ‘08. And MLS’s woes in the CCL have been epic.
Oh, MLS teams have come close. In 2011, I followed the run of Real Salt Lake to the CCL final, where it fell to Monterrey. In 2015, Montreal got to the final, only to lose to América. In 2018, the best MLS team of all time, Toronto, went to penalties in the final with Chivas and came away empty. And in 2020, LAFC looked like it was going to beat Tigres in the final, only to see it slip away in the second half.
It’s time for an MLS team to win this thing. It’s time to see an MLS team at the FIFA Club World Cup. And Seattle looks like the team to do it, a team that can deservedly call itself the best side in CONCACAF and one of the premier teams in the Americas. Garth Lagerwey has done a tremendous job putting the Sounders together, and Brian Schmetzer has established himself as a top-level coach.
This year’s team is the one that can do something historic for MLS and start a new run in which MLS teams regularly win the CCL. We’ve been waiting a long time for this. We’ve seen Lucy pull the football away from Charlie Brown too many times to count.
That ends now.
OPENING THE MAILBAG
Big thanks to reader David Hirning, a Sounders fan, for his question on whether I see an MLS team winning the CCL this year. Here’s some of the other correspondence that came in:
Any insight or predictions for the final 2026 World Cup USA venues?
Chris Stowell
In mid-May we’re expecting to hear the formal announcement of the U.S. cities, at least 10 of them, that will host games during World Cup 2026. I would argue that the guaranteed host cities that are bidding include New York (New Jersey), Los Angeles, Dallas, Miami, Seattle and Baltimore. If I had to take a guess on the next four, they’d be Boston (Foxboro), Kansas City, Atlanta and Denver. But FIFA may select more than 10 U.S. cities, and the others I’d rank in order would be: Houston, Philadelphia, Nashville, San Jose, Cincinnati, Orlando.
The front-runner to host the final is MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.
Can Mexico learn from how the USMNT handled the Weston McKennie incident vis-à-vis Chicharito?
Juan Guillermo Ruiz
Of course! You can’t just write off a player completely in a disciplinary situation, much less one like Chicharito who is Mexico’s all-time leading goal scorer. McKennie’s punishment was extremely firm—he missed two big World Cup qualifiers and was sent home from camp—but Gregg Berhalter always said there was a path back for McKennie, and he took it. To hear the way the Mexican federation is talking about Chicharito, and saying that he doesn’t have a path back, is wild.
Does the U.S. national team need an enforcer for Qatar? Do they have an enforcer, in your estimation? Weston McKennie, maybe?
Mark Riley
This question came up during the Panama game when Christian Pulisic got into it with Panamanian players. Your star shouldn’t be having to do that, and you need to have a tough guy who strikes some fear into opponents so that they won’t want to do that stuff again. Jermaine Jones used to be that guy for the USMNT. McKennie is probably that man for this U.S. team, but when he’s not there, I don’t really see anyone to take the spot. And that’s actually not a small concern.
If I become a Founding Member of GrantWahl.com, will you do another daily World Cup podcast from Qatar with Brian Straus?
Bryan Rosenbaum
Ha! I’d love that. It was great traveling with my old partner Brian during the World Cup qualifiers, and I told him it would be great to have him on the pod again—the term space borscht did come up—but he really isn’t fan of doing podcasts and prefers to stick to his (excellent) writing. I’ll keep working on him!
Do you have any intel on what November 14-21 will look like for USMNT? Will the European players head straight to Qatar on the 14th? Will the MLS players have an earlier camp?
Joe Figueroa
FIFA won’t require that clubs release their players to national teams until Monday, November 14. That’s one week before the start of the World Cup on November 21, and the U.S. plays on that first day. Berhalter told us last week that U.S. Soccer was planning a short camp in Dubai until they learned they’d be playing on Matchday 1, so that plan was out the window. Berhalter didn’t say anything about MLS players, but I would expect they will gather ahead of time so they can be fit for the start of the tournament—a little bit like they did before the January qualifiers.
Have a good weekend!
I submit a correction: We don't know whether the Sounders/Pumas winner will go to the Club World Cup. No date nor venue has been announced for the next edition of the Club World Cup; on top of that, we don't know what format will be used. It's not impossible that FIFA will set it for 2025, when there will be four more years of UCL and UEL winners to stock the eight berths UEFA gets; and since CONCACAF only gets three, the 2022 CCL winners may be out in the cold.
Unless you have some inside information from FIFA, Grant! In which case please share, because I'm dying to know.
I liked the USMNT enforcer question. I think Kellyn Acosta might be a bit of an enforcer due to his penchant for the dark arts. I was surprised to see LdlT pop up to both protect Pulisic and Ferreira at the penalty spot. He was not who I expected but I guess he’s known Christian since their youth MNT days. Weston is the best, since he both comes in hot but is so disarming with the smiles and goofiness that refs don’t often book him.