🐯🏆 - Some things never change
Or do they? Tigres win their first-ever CCL, but it didn't come easily.
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In the English-speaking soccer media, the story of the Concacaf Champions League often is set up as one of MLS trying and failing to win it and Mexico dominating. It’s not inaccurate: Tigres’ 2-1 victory over Los Angeles FC on Tuesday night is the 12th edition of the tournament conducted as the Concacaf Champions League and the 12th edition of the tournament won by a Mexican club.
Yet, we often fail to capture what it means to the Mexican teams who are winning it. Tigres is a club that has won everything in the past several years with four league titles and a cup in the last five years. Yet, in three previous attempts, in 2015-16, 2016-16 and last year, they were yet to win the CCL and the ticket to the Club World Cup that comes with it.
“It’s a title we won today and we’d looked for, tried for, three times. We hadn’t gotten it. With that, there were a lot of criticisms, a lot of unpleasant situations but I think today the team did well against, honestly, a great team. I like the way Bradley manages and runs his team,” Tigres manager Tuca Ferretti said. “I think the guys, well, they had the character to even come back and give us the chance to win this title which we’d been denied three times before.”
That changed Tuesday. Hugo Ayala’s header brought the club level in the 72nd minute and Andre-Pierre Gignac applied the dagger in the 84th to give Tigres’ their first-ever international title and send them to Qatar in February.
“We finally won the freaking cup, boys,” Gignac said on TV after the match, using the easy Mexican slang he somehow arrived speaking in Monterrey.
Gignac looked much less comfortable Tuesday than he does in Nuevo Leon, where in addition to the language he quickly latched on to the Libres y Lokos, Tigres’ hardcore supporters, among other cultural touchstones. The French forward missed the last training session before the final because of a hamstring issue but never seemed in danger of missing the match.
That said, he didn’t seem all that dangerous for most of the contest, struggling to show the same edge he typically shows. However, it only took a moment for him to show the caliber of player he is, slotting home his 14th goal of CCL play and third in a CCL final.
Say what you want about ‘the gap’ between Liga MX and MLS, but there is still no question that the best Mexican teams are still deeper than the best MLS teams. When Ferretti goes to his bench, he brings on Nico Lopez, a veteran of multiple runs in the Copa Libertadores and big moments in Serie A. When LAFC manager Bob Bradley goes to his, he’s bringing on a pair of players from the same country as Lopez and in Francisco Ginella and Brian Rodriguez two potential regulars on the international stage. But they haven’t been in these moments yet, and it shows.
LAFC’s depth couldn’t match Tigres’, their legs looking heavier than those of their Liga MX counterparts in the final 20 minutes of the match, though both teams were playing their third match in a week.
“We’re very disappointed. I through for 70 minutes we made the game very hard for them. It’s a choppy game. It’s not always that the football is perfect, but I thought our way of going after them and pushing the game for 70 minutes was quite good,” Bradley said after the match. “The second goal you could tell at that point we got a little more careless, a little slow to close things down.
“Rodriguez gets through. Gignac is a smart player so he’s just waiting for the moment and the ball gets rolled across and it’s an excellent finish.”
Those are the types of moments that a team can’t let happen if they’re going to lift a continental title. LAFC has to know that Luis “Chaka” Rodriguez, coming up the right side, used to play as a winger and loves to cut inside. And of course they have to know what Gignac can do. LAFC is a great team with a great staff around it. The players do know those things, but they failed to act on that knowledge and bring the scouting reports and the film study onto the field of play. Those moments are all a club like Tigres, with all the talent it has, needs to put a team away.
LAFC was a matter of minutes from being the first MLS team to lift the CCL trophy, to get the first-place medals they want to keep on instead of the second-place ones they took off once they were draped over their heads. MLS teams have been in those positions before but this time felt different. Rarely have MLS teams taken the game to their Liga MX counterparts, have they gone at them with an attacking style of soccer and found success like LA did when Diego Rossi looped the opening goal past a beaten Nahuel Guzman.
LAFC won’t be in the CCL next season, but Bradley said he’ll look to continue building on the good soccer they played for the first half.
“When you have a team and establish a way of playing and establish an identity, if all the sudden a game doesn’t go your way … it’s not like you say, ‘Forget that,’” Bradley said. “That’s bullshit. That’s not how you ever become a good team. You become a good team when you have good ideas and everyone’s committed to the work and every time you get better.”
That’s good news for MLS fans who are hoping that one day a team from their league (or their team specifically) will wear the continental crown.
For now, it’s worth remembering that this title means something to Tigres as well.
Finally, they’ve done it. They finally have won esta pinche copa.
Get some rest
Hey, that’s going to do it for Getting CONCACAFed for 2020. I feel like everyone is exhausted as the year comes to a close. It’s a joy to interact with y’all and talk about soccer in the region - both on the biggest stage like tonight and at much more obscure levels like when we talk about the lowest-ranked country in the region.
I’m excited about 2021, not only because it will bring us World Cup qualification matches, more great games and (we pray) matches with fans at stadiums again but also because the community here around the newsletter is very cool. Plus, I think I’ll be able to write some things at a lot of other outlets I like and respect.
This is a newsletter about soccer, but let me say that I am very bad at unplugging, resting, taking time for myself, but am learning to detach from work, from being too online. It is great, and I hope you are able to recharge in this holiday season despite the difficult moment we are in as a society.
I’ll be back in early January and probably still on Twitter now and then @ArnoldcommaJon if you want to send over a question, a stat or a story request.