Bridging The Gap: MLS Soccer is inching closer and closer to Continental Glory
By: Ani
Tags: MLS, Concacaf Champions League, Lafc, Football, Soccer Analytics

While no American teams have done it yet, a simple look back at the last decade paints a very straightforward inevitability: An MLS club can and will win it’s first CONCACAF Champions League Title soon — it’s just a matter of time.

The Pinnacle of North American Football

On a crisp late-December night in Orlando, Andre-Pierre Gignac, Tigres legend and eventual competition top scorer managed to net Tigre’s winning goal and bring what seemed like a cruel curse to it’s grateful end. The ‘Team of the Decade’ as the current Tigres outfit is known in it’s domestic league, finally managed to end a haunting run of three CONCACAF Champions League Final appearance losses in 5 years with the last coming in the previous year: a heartbreaking penalty shootout loss to crosstown rivals Monterrey. Tigres can be proud of what they have achieved — the final jewel in the crown on top of a very successful era of club-level football. For this team, the fourth time really was the charm.

The Tigres win signifies something big — for Mexican club soccer this is another notch in their Champions League-era (2008-Present) dominance period of North American soccer. No other national leagues have produced a winner of the competition in the modern era. In other words, Mexican clubs have managed to win for 13 years in a row. But this period of dominance will come to meet its eventual end sooner rather than later. As seen in the fantastic run put together by LAFC, MLS teams are now knocking on the door of continental glory. It is just a matter of time. In arguably the harder of the two paths to the final, LAFC managed to knock out three Mexican clubs along the way including eventual Liga MX title winners Leon.

Prior to the Tigres — LAFC final, only Alianza of El Salvador manged to score on Tigres back in February of 2020. What followed was an impressive run of clean sheets by the club in order to reach the final. This was snapped by LAFC, with a fabulous fast break and chip by Diego Rossi. In this way, it is evident that even against the best and most experienced sides in North America, MLS sides can show up on the day. The statistics on the day only further this claim: Tigres’ 54% to LAFC’s 46% possession, Tigres’ 119 to LAFC’s 167 successful passes in the opposition’s half, and Tigres’ 12 to LAFC’s 9 chances created paint a very tight game and not one we may expect from a dominant Mexican side versus an MLS side traditionally.

A zoom out and quick search of the internet will also show something surprising: MLS teams have managed to reach the final in three out of the last 6 iterations of the competition. In other words, 50% of the finals in the last 6 years have featured MLS clubs. In the last 10 years, this rate drops to 40%, or four out of the last 10 iterations have featured MLS clubs. It is also interesting to note that for the 2020 season only one Mexican team - Tigres — managed to make it into the list of top 5 teams with the most shots on target per match category. This means that, even when facing powerful opponents, MLS teams on average managed to get shots away that challenged the keeper.

MLS teams do manage to be dangerous in the games. Credit: FotMob

When using CCL performance as a proxy it is evident that the traditional gap between Liga MX and MLS is closing, and it is closing fast. In this way, MLS clubs are starting to establish themselves as formidable opponents in the league and it is just a matter of time before we see an MLS club crowned as continental champions and arguably sooner rather than later.