Everything you need to know about Leagues Cup

For the next month, there are no MLS or Liga MX regular-season matches while both leagues take a break for the Leagues Cup. This was designed to allow all 47 teams to put their entire focus on this relatively new tournament, meaning there’s no obvious need to balance other responsibilities. Love it or hate it, this is what we have until late August.

Here’s everything you need to know to be prepared:

What is this and why is it happening?

Way back in 2018, MLS and Liga MX created a “strategic partnership” ostensibly designed to allow MLS to gain more of a foothold with Latino fans and for Liga MX to get more direct access to the U.S. market. That started with the creation of the Campeones Cup — which pitted the MLS Cup winner against the Liga MX champion — and eventually to the founding of the Leagues Cup the following year. The Leagues Cup got off to a rocky start with teams picked effectively at random in the first year, and most treating it more like a distraction. In 2021, they created more of a formalized qualification process, but still limited the size of the field to just four teams from each league. Notably, the Sounders made it the final that year, where they lost to Club Léon. After taking another year off in 2022, they went all in, entered every team and created the format we have now.

How popular is it?

Thanks in large part to Lionel Messi making his Inter Miami debut in the tournament, the 2023 Leagues Cup got a lot of attention. Various reports claimed that Apple saw a massive spike in MLS Season Pass subscriptions and Univision reported some pretty impressive ratings, especially whenever Messi played.

But there were a lot of games that Messi didn’t participate in and those paint a very different picture. The average attendance of all the games was 17,292, which is around 5,000 fewer fans than attended the average MLS regular-season game. Admittedly, that’s not an entirely fair comparison as the league-wide numbers are aided by a handful of stadiums with much larger capacities and none of those teams advanced very far in Leagues Cup, but you get the idea.

My very strong suspicion is that the Sounders’ attendance in these games will be well below their average, which is already trending toward the lowest it has been in a non-Covid year since 2009. Only the Minnesota game is included in season-ticket packages and anecdotally it seems like a lot of people are planning to return those tickets. In 2021, those games weren’t included in the season-ticket package and about 17,000 showed up to see Tigres and just 12,000 came for the Santos Laguna match, which was technically a semifinal.

When does it start?

The tournament kicks off on Friday with a slate of five games. Included in that is the Sounders’ Leagues Cup opener against Minnesota United. Unlike virtually every other game this year, kickoffs are not entirely uniform. The Sounders, for instance, are scheduled to start at 7 PM.

Who are the Sounders playing?

As the top seed in their group, the Sounders play both group stage games at home. After facing fellow Western Conference opponent Minnesota United on Friday, the Sounders will host Liga MX’s Club Necaxa on Sunday, Aug. 4. If the Sounders finish in the top two and advance, in the Round of 32 they are matched up with a group that includes the San Jose Earthquakes, LA Galaxy and Liga MX’s Chivas. Here’s the full bracket if you really want to dig in:

What do we know about Sounders’ opponents?

Minnesota United should be a familiar opponent, as the Sounders just hosted them on June 15. The Sounders won that game 2-0, the first of what would become an eight-game unbeaten run in which they went 7-0-1 across all competitions before falling 3-0 to LAFC on Saturday. Minnesota started the season strong, but has recently hit a rough patch in which they’ve gone 1-7-2 over their past 10 games. That includes stretches of six straight losses and nine straight without a win, which only ended on Saturday when they beat the lowly Earthquakes.

Since regaining promotion to Liga MX in 2016, Necaxa have been something close to the model of mediocrity. The highest they’ve finished in the combined Apertura-Clausura table since then is seventh and the lowest they’ve finished is 15th. During the current campaign, they are 1-2-1. In the most recent Clausura, they finished ninth.

Especially with these two games being at home, the Sounders should expect to advance.

How did the Sounders do last year?

As you may remember, the Leagues Cup came during the absolute nadir of the Sounders’ 2023 campaign. Although the Sounders had a nearly identical record to the one they have now, they had gone just 4-6-5 in the 15 games following a 6-2-1 start. The Sounders then got smoked in their two Leagues Cup matches, falling 3-0 to Real Salt Lake on the road and 4-2 to Monterrey at home. They then lost their first game after Leagues Cup before going on a eight-game unbeaten run to finish out the regular season.

What’s this about $10,000 fines?

There was, indeed, a report from a Mexican journalist that claimed that players, coaches and team officials were being threatened with a $10,000 fine for bad-mouthing Leagues Cup.

I can’t verify the exact amount of any potential fines — and this certainly seems very extreme — but my understanding is that there’s at least some truth to the idea that both leagues are trying to limit public criticism of the tournament. There was a lot of complaining last year, mostly about the refs and how Liga MX teams didn’t like that the whole tournament was played in the U.S. and Canada. This seems designed to snuff that out.

Aren’t a bunch of supporters’ groups boycotting it?

They are. Last I saw, various supporters groups affiliated with FC Dallas, Austin FC, St. Louis City, the Chicago Fire and Minnesota United all said they were boycotting Leagues Cup. The main source of their ire is that the league office seems to be sacrificing the U.S. Open Cup in order to focus on this tournament.

Any weird rules I should be aware of?

The big thing is that there are no ties, but also no overtime. Games that are tied at the end of regulation will go straight to a shootout. Regulation winners will claim three points, while each team will get one point if they go to penalties, with the winning team getting one bonus point.

There’s another new wrinkle this year — in response to some of those Liga MX complaints — that gives several top Mexican teams the ability to stay in one geographic region. Chivas, who the Sounders could play in the Round of 32, are apparently guaranteed to play that game in California. Monterrey, a potential Round of 16 opponent, would be guaranteed to have that game in Texas.

What’s on the line?

Aside from that wonderfully silly trophy, there are also three Concacaf Champions Cup berths on the line. Those go to the winner, the runner-up and the third-place team.

I haven’t seen any reports about how much the prize money is this year, but last year it was widely reported that there was a $40 million prize pool, with the winner claiming $2 million. The MLS CBA guarantees that each team will receive at least $100,000 for each game they play and another $50,000 for any win. Just going off that calculus, the players from the winning team will share more than $1 million in bonuses. If that’s shared equally among the entire roster, that’s about $35,000 each.

Where can I watch?

Every game is available through MLS Season Pass and there will also be select matches on the various Univision and Fox Sports channels. About half of the group stage matches are also available for free. You can see the whole broadcast schedule here.

How seriously are Sounders going to take this?

Everyone involved in the team is swearing that they will treat it like a real competition. I suspect that’s true. They seem to be genuinely frustrated with last year’s performance and want to improve on that. I definitely expect them to use first-choice players, at the very least, and the only two Tacoma Defiance players to make the roster are Snyder Brunell and Travian Sousa.

But are they treating this like something they have to win? I don’t think so. I’m sure they’d be very frustrated not to get out of the group stage, but beyond that I think they’d probably be fine if they bowed out in the first two rounds of the knockout phase. As long as they feel good about how they’re playing, I don’t think anyone would be too upset about getting a couple of weeks off before league play resumes on Aug. 24.

The real worst-case scenario is probably losing in the semifinals and then losing again in the third-place game. In that case, you’d have all the drawbacks of playing the maximum seven games but not even have a berth in Concacaf Champions Cup to show for it. They’d also need to reschedule their league match against Minnesota, adding even more congestion to what promises to be a very busy final two months of the regular season.

How seriously will fans take it?

If past is prescient, most fans will treat the early-stage games like glorified friendlies. But once we get to the quarterfinals or so, I suspect fans will start getting a lot more interested. Chasing trophies is fun and so is watching your team play new opponents. I still don’t know quite how I feel about this tournament, but I’m open-minded.

Not really related but are we going to sign anyone?

Man, I wish I knew.