🌎 Introducing the Pele Cup
From the twisted mind of Jon Arnold: A solution to get Liga MX teams back up against South American giants. MLS teams can come too.
Ask a Liga MX fan what’s wrong with the league and they’re sure to mention the league’s absence from the Copa Libertadores.
Despite residing firmly in Concacaf, Mexico was an invited guests to the South American club championship between 1998-2016. Fans are desperate to return.
And why not? The Libertadores is a lot of fun. Just, look at the last two nights. Boca Juniors and River Plate fell out of the competition. Young players set for Europe made their curtain call in front of fans who have watched them grow. Flamengo scored some nice goals in a thrashing.
From the Libertadores side, there are two very obvious benefits from Concacaf teams returning to the tournament.
The primary is USD, American dollars, cash. The Mexican TV market (OK, that one is in pesos), plus the enormous audience in the U.S. that follows those teams brings the potential for a huge boost for the CONMEBOL coffers.
It also provides readymade group of new fans that typically has more purchasing power for things like away tickets, merchandise and other revenue sources.
The other boost Liga MX and potentially MLS could bring? Teams that could compete with the heavyweights of Brazil and Argentina. This year’s quarterfinals will be made up entirely of clubs from those two nations. Last edition saw two clubs from other nations break through to the quarterfinals as did 2020.
Even historic giants in countries like Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay can’t overcome their lack of resources to hang with the big boys. The budgets in Mexico and, yes, MLS, make it far more likely teams like América or the Seattle Sounders could pull a few upsets and add some drama and parity to the tournament than clubs like Peñarol or Cerro Porteño.
For those reasons, Mexican fans are regularly bombarded with news - sometimes legitimate, other times from sites like M3xic0FutFanNews.net - assuring South America’s governing body is on the brink of reaching a deal with Liga MX to run it all back.
In April, chatter picked up when CONMEBOL president Alejandro Dominguez sent birthday greetings to León president Jesus Martinez and suggested in the video message suggested Martinez’s club and Pachuca, which share ownership, should be invited to the Libertadores in the future. It seemed to be a bit of a throwaway line in a message between old acquaintances, but here was the top CONMEBOL official kicking the door open for at least some Mexican teams to return.
The interest in MLS in South America is pretty obvious, and the league would be eager to boost its international credentials in the soccer community. Just like with Leagues Cup, seeing MLS squads paired with iconic clubs in historic stadiums would certainly elevate the perception of the league in Latin America.
So why haven’t Mexican clubs gotten back into the Libertadores already?
First of all, I think Mexican clubs’ participation in the competition very much is viewed through rose-tinted glasses. The games that come to mind are Chivas’ elimination of Boca Juniors in the 2005 tournament, Tigres’ run to the 2015 final or Tijuana coming inches away from getting past Ronaldinho’s eventual champion Atlético Mineiro in the 2013 quarterfinals.
Mexican clubs generally excelled in the tournament, but not always.
We gloss over Pachuca getting bounced in 2009’s preliminary round or Monarcas Morelia failing to get into the group stage in 2014. The stands were not full for Chivas’ group match with Cobreloa. No one reflects fondly upon Cruz Azul’s three road defeats in 2003 or Pumas forgettable 2006 campaign which saw the Mexico City club lose five matches before getting a single point on the last day of the tournament. That run included two losses to UA Maracaibo, a Venezuelan team that no longer exists.
More concerning than a stinker or two, there are too many fixtures on the calendar for players to regularly perform their best. The Concacaf Champions League must remain the priority for the region’s top clubs, and the new format will see most teams playing more games, not fewer.
The advent of the Leagues Cup - even as Mexico steers away from Copa MX - also means more midweek games stuck between league matches.
“I think it’s really complicated because of the scheduling,” FMF President Yon de Luisa said this June. “They have the responsibility of their normal Liga MX tournaments, plus the Concacaf Champions League and the League Cup.
“How many teams and how they could qualify for the Libertadores would be something to review, but if the other obstacles aren’t cleared, there’d be no way to get it rolling.”
That’s before we get into the travel.
The simple geography just doesn’t make sense. My colleague Tim Vickery often cites the fact that sending teams from Mexico City to Buenos Aires and back requires longer flights than going from London to Mumbai. Imagine the Vancouver Whitecaps earning a Libertadores spot and Brazilian teams traveling to BC Place. To play on turf. On a Wednesday.
So, what’s the solution?
It still would be a lot of fun to put some of the top teams together, getting some sort of contact back between Liga MX teams and South American giants.
We need to juice the matchups, making sure they’re something fans actually want to watch and don’t just say they want to watch.
We also need to limit the travel, making it possible for the Whitecaps to play Palmeiras or Xolos to play Colo-Colo without either team spending nearly a day in a pressurized tube flying through the air.
We need a December tournament in a single-site, featuring the Libertadores champion and runner-up1 and the Concacaf Champions League champion and runner-up.
FIFA’s plans for the expanded Club World Cup may land on these matchups, but they won’t capture the Pan-American feel (and absolute chaos) we’re going for in smashing together the Libertadores and the CCL.
The host site would alternate between confederations each year and must not be played in the same country in consecutive years (no bogarting the games, United States).
Stick the first edition in Miami, the second in Buenos Aires, the third in Rio and the fourth in Mexico City. Candidate cities would line up after, eager to host the most anticipated soccer event of the holidays.
Obviously this fusion would be named after the best player to play club soccer in both the Concacaf region and in CONMEBOL. No, no, not Ronaldinho. Not even Santa Tecla legend Loco Abreu.
Former New York Cosmos and Santos legend Pele. Not only does he fit the qualifications, we know he’d probably lend his name to it…
Let’s look at what things would’ve looked like last year. It may not be the best example, with both continental finals pitting teams from the same country against each other, but Rayados against Palmeiras and América vs. Flamengo definitely would be fun to see at the Azteca or the Bombonera.
In 2020, we would’ve gotten MLS into the mix after LAFC’s run to the final in the CCL bubble. LAFC would’ve taken on Palmeiras (winner takes Eduard Atuesta?) while Tigres and Santos (winner takes Yeferson Soteldo?) met.
The year prior would be the Monterrey teams, Tigres and Rayados, looking to get to a Final Regia by beating Flamengo and River Plate.
And the year before that was the infamous Boca Juniors-River Plate final in Madrid (maybe a bit of a proof of concept, though, that fans would show up to neutral-site Clásicos in our Pele Cup) with Matias Almeyda’s Chivas and Toronto FC rounding out the field.
You can keep going for years and years, of course. Let me know if you think of specific edition that would’ve truly been amazing.
In an era in which confederations are beginning to introduce throwbacks to past days of intra-regional competition, the Pele Cup could be the elegant solution needed to allow North American fans to see their clubs against South America’s best more often, inject a little life into the Libertadores, and make a bunch of business people a lot of cash.
At the end of the day, isn’t that what it’s all about? Call me, business people!
If CONMEBOL wants to send the Copa Sudamericana champion, that’s their call.
Not a bad idea, but I’m hoping for an expanded FIFA Club World Cup.
Why do you put Conmebol in all caps but not CONCACAF? It should be the other way around. Every letter in CONCACAF stands for a word; each syllable in ConMeBol stands for a syllable in a different word.