🇲🇽 El Tri, Liga MX changes seem positive. Will they happen?
Honey, wake up. They're ending multipropiedad again.
The list of triumphs for Mexican soccer in 2022 was short.
Way too short for fans and for leaders like federation president Yon de Luisa and Liga MX president Mikel Arriola.
The list of failures was much longer:
For the first time in more than a decade, a Liga MX team didn’t lift the Concacaf Champions League trophy.
The Mexico women’s national team hosted the Concacaf W Championship and still missed out on even the World Cup qualification playoff.
The youth teams struggled, missing the U-20 World Cup and the Olympics thanks to a quarterfinals exit at the Concacaf U-20 championship.
The senior men’s squad failed to advance from its group at the World Cup, El Tri’s worst showing at the tournament since the late 1970s.
So, clearly, something has to be done. But what? Too often in the past Mexico has made rash changes, firing managers, directors and administrators because of one bad result. But the pendulum has swung in the other direction in the last five years, perhaps even leading to an over-correction.
Guarding against becoming the next people to lose their jobs, De Luisa and Arriola conducted a news conference yesterday, 60 days after the World Cup elimination as De Luisa promised. They set out their plan for how to change things and make sure 2023 and beyond would leave Mexico with a list of successes to point to rather than a list like the one above.
It simultaneously feels rushed and too late. Leaders have to say something as the search for a men’s national team manager ticks into its third month, with Nations League matches around the corner and huge expectations for 2026.
The changes announced Tuesday are mostly positive. Yet, so many were left in the hypothetical, so it’s hard to know what changes actually will take place.
The return of promotion and relegation? It’ll be discussed at May’s owner meetings.
Yet another effort to make sure multiple teams aren’t owned by the same person or group? There might be rules in place disincentivizing that.
The big push to get young Mexicans sold to European clubs where there development will be spurred along? Well, there’s a strategy for that. What’s it look like? Will it work?
Just like everything else, we’ll see.
Some positive will come into effect soon - pending owner approval, of course. The repechaje playoff format that saw 12 of the league’s 18 teams make the postseason will be abolished starting next tournament, with the league returning to the eight-team Liguilla.
Some of the announcements, though, left plenty or room for interpretation. Arriola claimed the league is investigating a way to play one long season instead of the Apertura and Clausura model currently in use but was careful to underline the fact that two Liguillas still would be played. Left unsaid was what that would look like: A mid-season playoff to award a mid-season champion? Something after Leagues Cup giving Mexican club owners a boost in gate revenue after their teams are abroad for a month? Is it just the current system with an award for the team that wins the combined table? It could be anything. Details weren’t forthcoming.
On the national team side, we know former Pumas director Rodrigo Ares de Parga is the new executive director of national teams, overseeing women’s director Andrea Rodebaugh and men’s director Jaime Ordiales.
But the named Committee of National Teams including the current owner of Chivas, Atlas/Santos, América, Necaxa, Tijuana and, the federation hoped, León before he turned it down, signals more of the same club control of national team decisions.
Commentators in the north have pointed out there’s no representation from Tigres or Monterrey, two of the most successful clubs over the last several years, while I continue to ask why club owners need to be involved with, say, picking a national team manager, in the first place.
The more things change, the more they stay the same, but in Mexico you can’t help but wonder if the more you’re told things will change, the more they stay the same.
A fair amount of the ideas percolating at the Toluca HQ of the federation are good, but the leaders of the sport in Mexico must back their words with action before anyone will truly believe change is coming in 2023 and beyond.
I look at these proposals - pro/rel, one season instead of two - and just think, these are going to have zero (0) impact on El Tri’s success in 2023, 2024 and 2026.