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CONCACAF Champions Cup embarrassment lays bare what MLS's next evolution must be
Updated: 7 May 2026 07:00 CDT |
7 min read
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Major League Soccer clubs have historically struggled in CONCACAF competitions, and this season has been no different, with Nashville SC and LAFC crashing out at the semi-final stage.
Despite unprecedented investment across the league, continental success remains elusive for most MLS clubs. In fact, the Seattle Sounders are the only MLS team to win CONCACAF's elite competition since the major reforms of 2008.
The Sounders, who won the Champions League in 2022, are one of just three MLS teams to get their hands on continental silverware, with DC United and the LA Galaxy winning the original Champions' Cup in 1998 and 2000, respectively.
The biggest hurdle is always Liga MX. It doesn't matter how good your team is, going down to Mexico and getting a result continues to be one of the most difficult challenges an MLS side can face, especially when playing at altitude.
No MLS team had ever gone to the Azteca in Mexico City and come away with a win until Nashville SC achieved it last month. This fact alone illustrates that Liga MX remains MLS's main kryptonite.
MLS teams hamstrung by roster regulations
Nashville were able to go deep in CONCACAF because they had the luxury of resting key starters in MLS. The club's front office has assembled a very good roster with depth players who can hold down the fort in league play while the main guys focus on CONCACAF.
Ultimately, though, it wasn't enough to get over the line. Nashville were knocked out by Tigres in the semi-finals after losing both legs 1-0. The return fixture at El Volcan was over before it started.
Nashville were without star striker Sam Surridge and two of their main midfielders in Edvard Tagseth and Patrick Yazbek, who pulled up injured during the warm-up. Even with how good some of their "B players" have been, the difference in quality was insurmountable.
And this was not a vintage Tigres team by any stretch of the imagination. They, too, were shorthanded, and they haven't been particularly impressive this year. They only scraped past the Sounders on an away goal after having been given a good run for their money.
The key difference between MLS and Liga MX teams is that the latter have deeper rosters with higher floors. This will win ties over two legs, even if some MLS teams may have a higher overall ceiling or higher-end individual talent.
Responding to Yazbek's injury, Michele Giannone made this instructive albeit slightly exaggerated point: "Here is where MLS gets in trouble. If this happens to Tigres, they have 2-3 Yazbeks on the bench ready to go. And another Surridge, and another Tagseth, and another, and another..."
The reason for this is obviously that Liga MX has less stringent roster rules than MLS. It is one of sports history's great ironies that the country where unfettered capitalism reigns has the most restrictive spending regulations to artificially ensure parity in its leagues.
This isn't a coincidence, of course. A league where anyone can beat anyone is more interesting and attractive, and much easier to promote, than one-trick ponies like the Bundesliga or Ligue 1. This, in turn, makes it easier to attract customers and to take their money.
However, the conditions for this have to be right. You can only really get away with this if the American version of the sport is hegemonic, like the NFL and NBA, which don't have global ecosystems where everything works differently. This isn't the case with MLS.
The rest of the world doesn't work like MLS. In fact, the rest of the world is much more of a free market than MLS - and yet, ironically, American owners like John Textor have the gall to complain about regulations in Europe that are meant to save clubs from spending themselves into oblivion.
Liga MX, of course, also has restrictions. A maximum of nine foreign players can be registered, and only seven are allowed to be in a matchday squad. By contrast, MLS's default number of international spots is eight, and clubs can trade them at will with no restriction on how many can be attained per season.
However, Liga MX does not have a salary cap, and this is the crucial difference. Rich Mexican clubs can acquire as many star players as they please and pay them whatever they want, as long as they don't breach the foreigner limit.
MLS franchises, on the other hand, can only sign up to six high-end players that sit outside of the salary cap (three Designated Players and three U22 Initiative players, or two DPs and four U22 players), and these stars still carry a fixed budget charge against the cap.
This is hamstringing clubs in CONCACAF, and the bizarre thing is, there doesn't even have to be radical change for MLS to be more competitive. The league doesn't have to abolish the salary cap and player designations altogether. It can simply increase them.
What does MLS have to lose by raising the limit of available DPs and augmenting the salary cap to accommodate their budget charge? Would this give teams like Inter Miami an edge over more frugal franchises? Sure, but that is happening anyway.
By looking at this Miami team right now (or Atlanta United basically since 2018), you could argue that money spent does not automatically equal higher quality, and this may be correct in the context of MLS and its restrictions.
However, a general rule in the rest of the world is that the teams that spend the most, especially on salaries, tend to do better. The players recognise this too. Last year, Lionel Messi urged MLS to liberalise its roster and spending rules.
"Every team should have the opportunity to bring in players and sign whoever each team wants without limitations or rules for players to bring them in," the Inter Miami captain told NBC.
"I don’t think that today all teams in the United States, all clubs, have the power to do that, and I think that if they were given the freedom, many more important players would come and help the growth of the United States."
Ultimately, then, the question should probably not be "what has MLS got to lose by loosening restrictions" but rather "does MLS actually care enough about CONCACAF competitions to loosen restrictions?"
There is surely a sound business argument to be made in favour of keeping the regulations as they are - MLS is, after all, a business - but looking at it from this perspective, it does seem like the league simply doesn't care enough about Champions Cup.
Analyst Matt Doyle certainly shares this belief. "Marc dos Santos is right that MLS doesn't really care about winning this competition," he said on Soccerwise in response to the LAFC coach complaining about fixture congestion.
"But he's wrong in that not moving games around is the way that MLS shows it. The reason we know that MLS doesn't care about winning this competition is because it's still only three DPs and whatever the salary cap is.
"If MLS really cared about winning this, then at the very least, three or four years ago, they would have bumped it up to five or six DPs per team and an extra $3 million in salary cap.
"If they had done that, I honestly think that the best MLS teams would be easily on par with the likes of Toluca and Tigres already. The fact that they didn't is how we know that they don't actually care."
We recently concluded our article on the league's various eras with this: "MLS has now reached the end of its rapid expansion phase. What the future holds is unclear. It will likely be dictated, at least in part, by the 2026 World Cup on home soil.
"Messi is still around, so there is no MLS 5.0 yet. However, as happened with [David] Beckham, we will probably look at pre-Messi MLS and post-Messi MLS as two very different things in a few years' time."
It is now clear that MLS's next evolution must be giving teams greater leeway to build stronger, more well-rounded rosters. The post-Messi era needs to be one of liberalisation to ensure that MLS teams can consistently challenge Liga MX in CONCACAF.
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