Leagues Cup is not the U.S. Open Cup. And for some fans, that’s the problem.
Leagues Cup as a tournament, entering its second year on Friday in its current iteration, puts all 29 MLS teams and 18 teams into a month-long competition that starts with 15 different group stages (we’ll show you how the math works on this in a moment) and shifts into a 32-team knockout tournament.
It’s also, as evinced by last year’s competition, a whole lot of fun. If Concacaf Champions Cup is a cup of strong black coffee to get you going, Leagues Cup is an espresso shot providing a distilled jolt of pure Concacaf. The final ended up a draw then settled by a goalie v. goalie PK, won by Inter Miami, after its fifth and could have been final taker didn’t convert to give runner-ups Nashville a lifeline.
It had Tigres goalkeeper Nahuel Guzmán doing magic in goal before a PK he saved, FC Dallas going up 3-1 on Miami with a chance to put them away before Lionel Messi led the 4-4 comeback (before Miami won on PKs), a raccoon falling through the ceiling of the RSL press box, and one of the top seeds in the tournament (based on its 2022 appearance) getting bounced in the group stages by two of the worst teams in Liga MX in their own stadium.
(Oh, wait, that last one’s Austin, and that’s only part of the “wild and fun” Leagues Cup narrative if you’re not an Austin FC fan who already had enough tournament trauma for one season by the time that happened.)
If you’re going to put on a 47-team tournament that pauses the MLS season for a month just as the season’s horse race is beginning to get to the really compelling, rounding-the-final-turn part, something that turns the continent’s weirdest goalkeeper into Criss Angel and brings big chaos is a good choice.
The problem is that it’s doing so in a way that does not coexist well with existing soccer tournaments, most notably the venerable U.S. Open Cup, so it’s gathering some fan enmity not for what it is but for what it’s supplanting.
Let’s take a deeper look at the Leagues Cup, starting with its weird origins.
