CONCACAF Champions League

This is some­thing I’ve been mean­ing to write about for a while. Beyond the UEFA sanc­tioned Cham­pi­ons League, there are other ‘Cham­pi­ons League’ com­pe­ti­tions in the var­i­ous FIFA regions. Africa and Asia have a Cham­pi­ons League and South Amer­ica has its Copa Lib­er­ta­dores. The CONCACAF region (com­prised of North Amer­ica, Cen­tral Amer­ica, and the Caribbean) has had its own club com­pe­ti­tion, called the Cham­pi­ons’ Cup, which ran from 1962 to 2008. CF Pachuca were the most recent, and final, win­ners of the Cham­pi­ons Cup.

I feel that the rebrand­ing the com­pe­ti­tion as a Cham­pi­ons League and expand­ing of the ini­tial field to 24 teams will bring the com­pe­ti­tion a lit­tle more recog­ni­tion and added prestige.

To get things under way, six­teen teams were drawn into eight home-and-away match-ups in the Pre­lim­i­nary Stage which will take place on August 26–28 and Sep­tem­ber 2–4 of 2008. Those matchups are as follows:

GUA2: CD Munic­i­pal or Deportivo Jalapa – PAN1: San Fran­cisco FC
CFU2: Joe Pub­lic FC of Trinidad & Tobago – USA3: New Eng­land Rev­o­lu­tion
CRC2: LD Ala­jue­lense – CFU3: Puerto Rico Islanders
MEX4: CD SC Cruz Azul – BLZ1: Han­kook Verdes
CFU1: Har­bour View FC of Jamaica – MEX3: Pumas UNAM
PAN2: Tauro FC – USA4: Chivas USA
CAN1: Cana­dian Cham­pion – NCA1: Nicaraguan Cham­pion
SLV2: CD Isidro Meta­pan – HON2: CD Olimpia or CD Marathon

The Cana­dian Cham­pion is being deter­mined by a round-robin tour­na­ment between Toronto FC, Impact de Mon­treal and the Van­cou­ver Whitecaps.

Eight clubs (domes­tic league win­ners) are already entered in the group stage (4 groups of 4):

Eight seeded teams – Group Stage
MEX1: Atlante FC
MEX2: Club San­tos Laguna

USA1: Hous­ton Dynamo
USA2: D.C. United

CRC1: Deportivo Saprissa

SLV1: CD Luis Angel Firpo

GUA1: CSD Munic­i­pal or Deportivo Jalapa
Play­off will deter­mine GUA1, GUA2

HON1: CD Olimpia or CD Marathon
Play­off will deter­mine HON1, HON2

I’ll be fol­low­ing this com­pe­ti­tion and will out­line the group stages once the pre­lim­i­nary rounds com­plete in Sep­tem­ber. At that point things will be much sim­pler to sort out

I will admit in advance that I will be biased (i.e. root­ing for) the Cana­dian champ, most likely to be Toronto FC.

Tagged as: CONCACAF Champions League, mls, toronto fc