🇲🇽 Most interesting teams, biggest questions & more: Your Liga MX Clausura mega-preview!
Five questions, five teams, five new additions. It's preview time!
Most years, it feels like the Liga MX previews get written about five minutes after the final whistle blows on the previous season. Such is life in a league which already has a packed calendar and puts as little time as possible between its short seasons, the Apertura and Clausura.
But this is no typical year. This year, with the league breaking for the World Cup, it feels like the offseason has taken place in slow motion. A signing here. A coaching move there. And a preseason tournament that gave us soccer - sort of - but was tough to take too much out of.
That ends this weekend as Liga MX returns. The first matchday kicks off Friday night when Necaxa hosts Atlético San Luis and going into Monday when Pachuca meets Puebla.
As is fast becoming tradition on this newsletter, I’m giving you a five pack in a number of categories: Most interesting team, biggest questions, best additions from abroad and, for the first time, a debut category of best transfers within Mexico.
You’ve got a few days to digest it, and there will be more preview material coming later in the week. But even if it’s not as quick as it has been in past seasons, the ball will be rolling before you know it, with all the golazos, the red cards and all the moments that make Liga MX so much fun back as well.
Five most interesting Liga MX teams going into 2023
Tigres - The marriage between Tigres and Miguel Herrera kinda made sense. Big personalities. Brash mentalities. But ultimately, things just didn’t go as planned. Former defender Diego Cocca is much more in line with legendary boss Tuca Ferretti, who Tigres tired of and are now still trying to replace. Cocca used a solid defensive base to take Atlas to back-to-back titles before stepping away during a disappointing campaign last season.
The offseason has been otherwise quiet, though signing Fernando Gorriarán from Santos Laguna is the biggest move of the offseason (see list below).
But can Cocca engineer a bounce-back for the big-spending northern club? Or are they still a few pieces away as they continue to try to refresh the squad but continue to get the most out of veterans like forward Andre-Pierre Gignac?
Pachuca - The reigning champs have so far lost only Victor Guzmán, an important piece but not an irreplaceable one, from their title run. It’s possible midfielder Luis Chavez or right back Kevin Alvarez also will be scooped up.
And things really could be thrown into chaos if manager Guillermo Almada is offered the Mexico national team job, which he would take.
If none of those things happen, there’s no reason to think Pachuca shouldn’t be right back in the mix to defend its title. It was a balanced team, with the fourth most-productive attack & third-best defense by the numbers and should be again.
The other narrative I’m keeping an eye on? This team is good. The Estadio Hidalgo used to be a fortress. Why is no one going to these games? Tuzos averaged fewer than 8,000 fans per match last season.
Chivas - A new sporting director. A new manager. A few new players. It could be seen as same song, yet another verse at Chivas, but there’s momentum in Guadalajara after a decent campaign last year plus a preseason that saw the team impress against Mexican rivals and even hold their own against La Liga teams in Spain.
The team that fields only Mexicans always will struggle in the transfer market because of its own limitations, but fans are trying to convince themselves there’s a little bit of Matias Almeyda in manager Veljko Paunović - and they might not be crazy to think so.
Toluca - Nacho Ambriz took the club on a shock run to the Liga MX final that ended with the Diablos Rojos getting absolutely blown out by Pachuca. Still, the turnaround was impressive.
Can it continue? It’s largely the same squad with a few additions plus a season under their belt to understand Ambriz’s idea of play. But expectations were raised by that playoff run, and the teams around Toluca in the table generally got better.
Atlético San Luis - Hardly a grande and not typically among the contenders, it’s been a fascinating offseason for San Luis, which finished a point out of the postseason last tournament.
They signed a goalkeeper from MLS (David Ochoa), a forward from England who had been on loan in Switzerland (Léo Bonatini), a midfielder from Germany who had been on loan in…Germany (Mateo Klimowicz), plus a couple Liga MX veterans (Dieter Villalpando and Ángel Zaldívar, among others).
Will it work? I don’t know, but at least they’re trying something different.
Five biggest questions heading into the Liga MX Clausura
How will América get over the hump - and do it without Guillermo Ochoa?