Earlier this year, I was watching a soccer game on TV and during halftime saw an ad for the CONCACAF Champions League – our region of the world’s largest club tournament. It’s a tournament I honestly knew almost nothing about, who qualified and how. At the time, the Portland Timbers’ season was flying high, and I wondered if we’d be seeing them in the competition next year. This year’s vintage kicked off last month; the tournament is still in the group stage, and the quarterfinals aren’t until March of next year, so there’s plenty of time to get educated.
A few basic info points for the uninitiated: CONCACAF is the organization that oversees professional and national sides in North and Central America and the Caribbean (the acronym stands for Confederation of North, Central and Caribbean Association Football. Note inside a note: the word soccer is an old shortening of the British phrase “Association Football”). When the US plays its World Cup qualifying games, it’s under the regional aegis of CONCACAF. Its most famous counterparts are UEFA, the European organization, and CONMEBOL, representing South America. Both have very club popular tournaments of their own: the UEFA Champions League and the Copa Libertadores. These tournaments are a kind of gold standard for the leagues and teams involved (and they are both tournaments, not leagues: the names are deceiving). In order to be a truly “big” club and attract the best talent, it’s important for a team to play regularly in their respective tournament. The exact format for qualification varies between the tournaments, and even between countries in CONMEBOL, but generally speaking the tournaments used to include just the champion of each member league, but now incorporate the best few teams from each league. The financial rewards of progressing in the Copa Libertadores and the UEFA Champions League are great: there’s a ton of advertising money thrown around, and the television audiences are gigantic. The combination of money and prestige is hard to overemphasize, so let’s just say our CONCACAF version is a very modest version of these two giants. But here in the US we’re accustomed to a good heaping portion of modesty with our soccer, so let’s not feel too bad about the degree of glamour involved in this corner of our sport.
So how could the Timbers qualify? Well, at this point in the season, the most likely way would be to play in the MLS Cup final in the postseason playoffs: both winner and runner up get spots in next year’s Champions League. The other two spots are reserved for the winner of the MLS Supporters’ Shield (team with the best record in regular season play- this won’t happen with the Timbers) and the winner of the Open Cup (we’ve been eliminated).
How likely is qualification for the Timbers? Pretty unlikely. The playoffs are a crapshoot, though, and with a shot of good form and a serving of excellent luck, it’s entirely possible that the Timbers might find themselves in the final. We can cross our fingers.
Who else is involved? Mexico has four spots like the US, Canada has one (bizarrely, Canadian teams can’t qualify through the MLS, and have a separate qualifying tournament), there are three Caribbean spots, and twelve Central American spots.
Finally, who has won this thing? Usually Mexican sides, with 29 of 50 titles, their most prolific team being Cruz Azul, and the most recently successful being Monterrey, winner of the last three years. US teams have won just twice, with the LA Galaxy in 2000 and DC United in 1998. Trinidad and Tobago have matched this total, as have Suriname, Guatemala, Honduras, and Haiti.
With MLS’s consistent development, I’d say we’re in for more wins in the near future. With a bit of luck, we’ll soon be seeing the Timbers in the international mix.
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