Introducing #MexicoMonday & the Conca-catch-up
Get even more CONCACAFed by going premium
Welcome new subscribers! Whether you found the newsletter via Will Leitch’s kind words in his newsletter this week or another way, I’m glad you’re here.
Typically you’ll find stories like the former USMNT manager taking on a Caribbean challenge, thoughts on a uniform design movement in the Caribbean or how a bunch of Mexico fans ended up playing an official match against Haiti’s Olympic qualification squad. Today, something a little different.
After writing this newsletter for a year, I took everyone’s temperature to see how you’re liking this thing that arrives in your inbox. I heard from a lot of you, and nearly everyone said really nice things. Many of you said you’d pay for the newsletter.
I also heard from some of you who said, ‘Listen, man. I’d love to pay for this but I also am paying for ESPN+, Paramount+, Fanatiz, Fubo, other great newsletters, The Athletic, etc.” or simply “Hey, it’s a pandemic and I’m focused on paying my bills.” So, I labored to find a way that would both allow me to devote more time to the newsletter (which, as a freelancer, I can do by getting paid) without putting up a hard paywall that would keep out those of you who love the content but can’t pay.
Here’s the solution I’ve come up with:
Every Monday, paying subscribers get the #MexicoMonday+Conca-catch-up newsletter
Despite the enormous audience eating up Mexico national team and Liga MX coverage in English, editors and legacy media outlets still seem hesitant to pay writers to cover the league. That includes even writers like me with experience covering the league, connections from living in Mexico and the language skills to effectively write about Mexico in English. I’m going to bring it in house and each week the newsletter will have a piece on the national team, the league or both. It will be available for just $5 a month.
In that same newsletter, I also will have updates on the rest of the region in the ‘Conca-catch-up’. Plenty of times I see, say, a cool goal from El Salvador or see a weird story from Trinidad and Tobago but don’t have anywhere to put it. Whether it’s scouting info your favorite team’s future Concacaf Champions League opponent or just a golazo you wouldn’t see otherwise, the Conca-catch-up will be packed with news updates and fun highlights from around the region.
Adding premium content will allow me to devote more time to the newsletter, finding and telling more of the stories no one else in the region is uncovering. It also will allow me to be compensated for the time and work I put in to track down interview subjects and put the stories together.
If you don’t pay, all the stuff you’ve been used to getting will still be free. That almost certainly makes me a bad businessman, but I want those stories out there for everyone. Plus, candidly, it’s some of my most interesting writing, and I think the long game still is to get a staff job at a traditional media outlet. If editors see those stories, it can only help achieve that goal.
TL;DR - Mexico in English views/news/interviews + Concacaf news every Monday = $5/month or $50/year
Features = still free
I’m also toying with doing things like subscriber-exclusive videos, Q+As, etc. So, come on! Subscribe! We’ll have some fun, and it’ll be worth it.
Of course today everyone gets the premium edition for free. For the rest of the year, you can get this in your inbox every Monday for $5 or you can buy the whole year for $50 a year. You also can ‘slip me a brown envelope.’ This option allows you to set the price you pay over the $50/year price point if you’re so inclined.. No questions asked. You set your price, you’re in for the year and are helping support my work.
Happy to take your questions in the comments, on Twitter or in your replies to this email.
#MexicoMonday: Will Liga MX changes help Concacaf’s top league ‘close the gap’?
We know MLS is trying to ‘close the gap’ that exists between it and Liga MX, as it looks to win Concacaf Champions League for the first time and to win the same sort of loyalty Liga MX has as the most watched league by U.S. TV viewers.
But what about the leagues that are above Liga MX?
There exists there a gap as well, in the sporting sense between Liga MX and the mid-tier European leagues (and debatably for the top teams in Brazil and Argentina) and off the field the league’s ‘soft power’ still is eclipsed by many competitions, including MLS.
It wasn’t splashy, but in a Monday news conference, Liga MX President Mikel Arriola announced a number of changes approved by Liga MX owners in hopes of boosting the league’s profile both domestically and abroad and also boosting the on-field product.
Most notably, the league is getting rid of away goals as a tiebreaker in playoff series.
“Taking out the criteria of away goals, we have the goal of seeking sporting justice,” Arriola said Monday. “The position in the table should be the priority.”
With the second tiebreaker already regular-season finish, Liga MX is already a league known for putting the priority on what happened before the postseason, but this serves to reinforce that every match matters. Will it work? Maybe. The league also is starting the fourth weekend of July and will play several weeks with teams missing their national team stars taking part in the Gold Cup.
It also seems like a waste to implement this after the empty stadiums during the worst of the pandemic, which could’ve been ground for experimentation when the ‘away effect’ could’ve been least strongly felt.
The league also is reducing the number of spots for players not formed in Mexico (foreign player slots, essentially) by two. The number of foreign players, especially attackers, regularly has been a source of discussion. At the end of most seasons, there are worried segments on debate shows pointing out the scoring leaders are all imports (often Argentine). This year was no different. Two of the top 10 scorers were Mexican, with the top Mexican scorer, Santiago Ormeño, not currently in the national team picture and potentially suiting up for Peru.
In theory, this incentivizes teams to develop players, but perhaps not as strongly as the young player rule in place requiring a certain number of minutes for Mexican up-and-comers. You don’t want to become a totally foreign league and lose touch with your local communities and stop sending players to the national team, yet one of the issues for El Tri is players staying too long in the domestic league, not a lack of playing time when they are in Liga MX.
Foreign signings like Tigres bringing in Florian Thauvin and, of course, Andre-Pierre Gignac before him give the league more global credibility than a player from Mazatlan getting his debut a tournament sooner than he may have otherwise.
With a U.S.-based investment group getting approval to purchase a portion of Necaxa, it will be fascinating to see whether or not changes like these are rolled back or if teams truly will turn to their academies when they have a vacancy rather than spending to bring in a South American.
Other modifications include the youth system being restructured slightly, changing the U-17 category to U-18 and adding a U-14 category where U-15 previously was the youngest level.
There also were big changes announced for Liga MX Femenil. Teams now will have two foreign player slots, an effort will be made to televise every game (welcome news for fans used to trawling Facebook Live and other weird spots for streams) and a U-17 academy league will begin. They also are adding a Campeon de Campeones match and a Campeones Cup game and seeking stronger alliances with both the NWSL and the English league.
Unlike the changes on the men’s side, there is less ambiguity here. This is a great thing for women’s soccer in Mexico and boosts the chances Liga MX will be a player in the global women’s game.
Will the same be said of the men’s league? Time will tell, but at least Arriola has shown, in one of the first ownership meetings over which he has presided, he’s willing to take some risks with the potential big reward of closing the gap that exists between Liga MX and top leagues outside the region.
Quickly taken:
Santos Laguna is a darn good team and showed it in both legs against Puebla, even in defeat Sunday. Los Guerreros certainly can play spoiler even with Cruz Azul favored to win its first title since the late 90s.
Manager Guillermo Amada has gotten the most out of the squad despite injuries leaving the team short, especially in attack, much of the season. Now that Diego Valdez and Ayrton Preciado are fit and along with Lalo Aguirre are finding their stride, the Santos attack against La Maquina’s league-best defense will be a fascinating battle to watch unfold over 180 minutes.
Also…this should be good:
Conca-catch-up
🇬🇹 - Get a load of this. The first leg of the Guatemalan final between giant Comunicaciones and new boys Santa Lucía Cotzumalguapa, founded 2014, ended 4-0 in favor of host Santa Lucía Cotz.
Comunicaciones ran up a 5-0 lead in the second leg with Junior Lacayo getting a hat trick. Then, in the first minute of seven minutes of stoppage time, Thales, one of Santa Lucía’s Brazilian foreign legion, hit a volley from a floating cross to give the visitors a goal. A few minutes later, Nelson “Kike” Miranda took advantage of a defensive error and then created his own luck sending a pair of defenders past him and smashing in the goal that gave Santa Lucía Cotzumalguapa a 6-5 aggregate victory.
🇸🇻 - Let’s go next to El Salvador, where both semifinals ended up tied on aggregate and went to penalty shootouts to decide the finalists.
Alianza is into the final for the ninth consecutive tournament. While it may seem like a done deal at this point, Firpo put some doubt into things with its 1-0 win in the away leg, but Alianza won it from the spot.
Alianza moves on to meet FAS, with former El Salvador international Zarco Rodriguez on the edge of tears after their series against Santa Tecla. The away team won both legs of the series by a 1-0 margin, with Rodriguez’s crew getting through thanks to a 4-2 advantage in the shootout.
Quickly staying in El Salvador (sort of), La Selecta won the Concacaf Beach Soccer Championship in Costa Rica over the weekend, beating the U.S. 6-4 in the title match. (This is not an unusual beach soccer scoreline). Those two finalists will represent Concacaf at the World Cup this summer in Moscow.
🇨🇷 - The first leg of the final in Costa Rica took place last night, with Saprissa topping Herediano, 3-2.
The deciding match is Wednesday.
Saprissa was a pretty brutal watch for most of the year but now has turned into loads of fun, largely because they still can’t really defend (especially toward the end of matches) but also are scoring all the time and in all sorts of ways.
Last week, we talked about how bonkers the first leg of the semifinal against previously undefeated Alajuelense was, and the second leg delivered as well, with four goals, three red cards (the first to LDA’s goalkeeper) and some pretty horrible officiating!
🇸🇷 🇭🇹 - The championship of the FLOW Caribbean Club Championship takes place Tuesday as Suriname’s Inter Moengotapoe meets Haiti’s Cavaly.
While Concacaf has to be happy this tournament was able to go off at all and had only minor difficulties (Dominican club Delfines del Este fielded more foreign players than would’ve been allowed in a league match, leading to Puerto Rican club Metropolitan being awarded a forfeit win that landed them in the semifinals), the actual results may not be to their liking.
Either a team from Haiti or a team from Suriname will be in the 2022 Concacaf Champions League - interesting logistical challenges for different reasons. The team that doesn’t win goes to the Concacaf League along with Metropolitan and Samaritaine of Guadeloupe. When there isn’t a pandemic forcing the confederation to juggle travel regulations, it’d be quirky and fun to have these (mostly) amateur teams from far-flug parts of the region in the tournament. It still can be for us neutrals, but organizers may not be celebrating.
🇵🇦 - It’s a Universitario vs. Plaza Amador final. Also, I wrote about the surprisingly high number of Panamanian players standing out in the Copa Libertadores for the tournament’s official website.
You’re caught up! I’ll play with the format going forward, but that’s a taste of what you’ll get. Again, $5 per month or $50 for the year. Thanks for your support. It means the world.
Happy to pay a small subscription to get more Mexican football coverage in English. Thanks!
I'm the opposite of MB. I don't care about the Mexican National Team and Liga MX. I care about the unusual things in Concacaf. As an American, it's hard to relate to how few resources there are in poor countries many of which have under a million people, and some are under 100,000.