By Ben Nicholson
September 21 – CONCACAF is considering changing the dates of its Champions League competition to a single a year campaign, more in line with the current MLS season schedule.
Currently, the competition runs from August of one year into April of the next.
This current Champions League season is awkward for MLS teams, whose season runs from March to November because the quarterfinals of the Champions League are played around the end of February and early March, before the MLS season has got into its rhythm.
Therefore MLS teams are playing arguably some of their most important games when trying to emerge from the slumber of off-season.
Indicative of these struggles is that the last 10 winners of the CONCACAF Champions league have been Mexican teams, and not since 2000 has an MLS team won.
A benefit to the schedule change for the CONCACAF region as a whole would be that the winner who goes on to the FIFA Club World Cup, which takes place in December, will be carrying the momentum of the tournament victory and likely have the same squad available that won the competition.
At the moment, the winner of the CONCACAF Champions League has to wait six months before heading to the FIFA Club World Cup, which is actually in line with what the European Champions League winner has to do also.
Out of the nine FIFA Club World Cup competitions so far, in only two editions of the competition has a CONCACAF team medalled. The schedule change could be good tactics to improve those figures.
A CONCACAF spokesperson said: “This is a discussion item which has come up along with others. Teams, as well as other stakeholders, are constantly surveyed to get their feedback, and we are always looking for ways to improve the Champions League.”
The change is not anticipated to come into effect until 2017.
As well as a potential date change, CONCACAF is considering returning to the initial tournament structure of pairing 16 teams off in a preliminary round, taking the eight winners to join automatic qualifiers in four groups of four.
This does away with the current three-team groups and makes the format more like the European Champions League model.
The thinking behind this is to create more games between Mexican’s Liga MX clubs and MLS clubs. At the moment, these rivals only can only meet after the group stages are concluded.
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