League Cup has developed, but its relevance is as questionable as ever | MLS

At this point, it feels like a fever dream.

In the summer of 2023, Lionel Messi wore a free kick positioning in Miami pink and white colors of major league football. Messi’s move to the United States has long been harsh, but is often seen as crazy speculation. Compared to many in Europe, the league is still a flow of water, and its clubs simply have no other financial power to compete for Argentinian services.

However MLS He moved the world and the earth to Messi, where he played in front of celebrities, fans and millions of viewers at home and abroad. Messi went deeper in the second half of the game against Liga MX team Cruz Azul, who brought everyone back to his brilliant time in Barcelona with a left foot.

His free kicks drove Miami’s victory, and his talent in the following month Propelled them Finally won the League Cup.

Messi’s free kick remains an iconic goal in league history to this day, among the most expensive targets in MLS (currently, it is the fourth goal in MLS’ YouTube profile, second only to Zlatan Ibrahimović’s YouTube profile First appearance goal For the Milky Wayne Rooney’s Tackle and assistanceDavid Beckham’s Olimpico). At that time, of course it felt like a watershed in the league, and the League Cup was a crucial moment.

Many people watching the Messi Masters have never heard of the League Cup, MLS and LIGA MX now in the mid-season game. The joint venture is the latest attempt by the two alliances in a long-term competition for ingestion between Mexico and the U.S. clubs and takes advantage of the huge market for Hispanic American consumers.

Now entering its third year, I wonder who is actually asking about this stuff.

Its basic flaws became apparent last year when the injured Messi was unable to participate and his presence could not cover them up. The match is held entirely in the United States, which leads to due questions about the balance of competition and sometimes super stadiums. The value of the US-Mexico competition is also felt to the decline, only appearing in the showdown between the largest clubs on the continent and naturally its national teams.

MLS and LIGA MX addressed some other key issues of the game, successfully tweaking the format of the game to require an early showdown between the MLS and Ligamx teams, acknowledging only the competitive aspect of each league and completely eliminating the draw. There are real bonuses at stake (think the winner is about $2 million), and there are also berths joining the CONCACAF Champions League, the region’s mainland club champion and entry point for the FIFA Club World Cup.

MLS is no longer completely stopping the league schedule for the match, which gives knockout teams a chance to soldiers in the regular season and provides fans with fans who don’t care about the game, an opportunity to interact with the club.

But as the competition develops, there are also landscapes around it. The United States has long been regarded as the ATM of global football, a huge country with a huge population and unparalleled spending capacity. For more than a decade, clubs, and sometimes even the entire competition, have moved to the United States in search of increasing capital and brand awareness. With the club World Cup coming, this summer, the practice has reached a new level of ridiculousness. The game is A mixed bag – Undoubtedly, sometimes exciting, but also widely regarded as a purely commercial exercise. When you arrive at Chelseaand US President Donald Trump) Raise the trophy and many viewers have moved on.

Three MLS clubs participated in the match, pausing the already full league schedule to measure their opposition to legal international matches. This is the same value that the Major League Soccer argues is created by the League Cup – the tournament gives its clubs the opportunity to measure their own chances against a Mexican club that has long been regarded as the best in the region.

Beyond that, MLS always faces problems, perhaps unfairly: Almost all new efforts to try will be publicly despised by consumers of the sport at home and abroad, labeled as synthetic or labeled as cash grip. This criticism is impossible to avoid when you keep reinventing yourself and constantly adjusting your product to seek profitability and relevance. The League Cup created out of thin air is sure to fit that bill.

This is the increasingly relevant focus of the U.S. Open Cup, and at this point it is one of the only truly real products in U.S. football. As MLS pushes resources toward a profile of improving its own freshman tournament, the Open Cup continues to fade into the depression of public consciousness, even if it has the potential to compete more in the United States than any other pro-level competition.

It is unfair to post League Cup A to failure before the third edition ends. At the end of this decade, after the match has a chance to mature, the upcoming Men’s and Women’s World Cups are coming, and it’s a better time to accurately judge success. Meanwhile, MLS and LIGA MX will certainly continue to modify it to make its consumers in the United States really care.

After all, this is what MLS is best at. For 30 years, the alliance itself is still in progress, tinkering with its own formulas to eventually integrate itself firmly into the collective consciousness. In some ways, it succeeded. Whether the same thing can be done remains to be seen as to the League Cup.