Best of 2022: 🏆 Sounders break MLS' CCL Hex
What does an MLS team winning CCL mean for the future of club soccer in the region?
This is the second in a five-part series looking back at the best moments of 2022 in the Concacaf region and what those moments mean going forward.
Monday: Canada runs the Octagonal. What does it mean for CanMNT & the region in 2023?
Some said it couldn’t be done, that a Liga MX team would win every single Concacaf Champions League tournament in the current era.
Then, the Seattle Sounders did it.
Other teams from Major League Soccer had made the final and had every fighting chance to lift the continental club championship.
LAFC in 2020. Toronto FC in 2018. Real Salt Lake in 2011.
But the Sounders actually did it.
Brian Schmetzer’s squad drilled Motagua in the second leg of their Round of 16 tie to set up a quarterfinal matchup with León. After Freddy Montero’s first-half double and the cherry on top from Jordan Morris in minute 90 of the first leg, the road was paved to the semifinals.
There, it was once again a great game in Seattle that helped the Sounders past New York City FC and into a final against Pumas.
This time, the first leg couldn’t save them, but the deciding game would take place at Lumen Field.
Nicolas Lodeiro scored a double from the penalty spot to match Juan Ignacio Dinenno in the first leg, and the stage was set for the Sounders to make history. That’s exactly what they did, topping Pumas 3-0 in the second leg for a 5-2 aggregate win. For the first time in history, the Seattle Sounders won an international trophy. For the first time in history, an MLS team won the Concacaf Champions League.
The Sounders ran out of steam in their league season, failing to make the playoffs. In part, that was down to some of the same types of injuries they overcame during their CCL run.
During the tournament, a 16-year-old Obed Vargas stepped in to start against León and put in a shift of more than an hour against Pumas when he replaced Joao Paulo. That was the second injury-mandated change for the Sounders, with Kelyn Rowe playing more than 80 minutes after Nouhou went down early. Even still, Dinneno, Diogo, Fabio Álvarez and the rest of Pumas’ attack was kept off the scoresheet.
What followed were big proclamations from each side of the border. MLS had (or hadn’t) surpassed Liga MX. Pumas had (or hadn’t) brought shame to its league rivals. There were takes of the hot, lukewarm and cold variety.
What can’t be denied is what happened: The Sounders won the CCL title, dispatching two Liga MX teams on the way, and will forever be enshrined in history as the first MLS team to do so.
What it means heading into 2023 (and beyond)
While the CCL is about the participating clubs fighting it out amongst themselves, the familiar feeling of a Liga MX team lifting the trophy every year gave the earlier rounds of the tournament a sense of inevitability.
This year, Liga MX’s representatives will be eager to strike back - though not directly against the Sounders who didn’t qualify. (The Sounders will head off to Morocco and look to take down teams like Real Madrid and Flamengo at the Club World Cup in February).
That’s one of the questions heading into this tournament: Can a number of MLS teams really compete against some of Liga MX’s best or was it just the Sounders, specifically, taking advantage of a relatively week crop of Mexican teams - a group that didn’t include either big-spending Monterrey behemoth?
Tigres returns to the competition this year, and Pachuca seems like it will be a strong squad. The jury is out on rebooting Atlas and León.
But MLS’ teams are in the same position. Without the Sounders, LAFC takes the place as the biggest-spending MLS team in the field, and the Philadelphia Union already have made one good run in the tournament with its strategy of leaning on players developed in its own academy.
We’re still more than two months away from kickoff, with teams from both leagues and Central American clubs hoping to play spoiler, finalizing their rosters, figuring out schemes and gathering steam. Whether or not an MLS club can take advantage of the Sounders’ breaking the glass ceiling or if a Mexican squad helps re-establish Liga MX supremacy will be the biggest story of the tournament.
The format for the competition will change after this edition - changes I think are for the better.
But it will give MLS as a league a fair measure of pride if it’s able to claim the final two champions in this format and say there’s tangible evidence ‘the gap’ CCL results so often exposed is being closed.