Spooked By SuperLiga, CONCACAF Launches Its Own Champions League - FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

Last year, a conglomerate of Spanish-language TV stations looked for something interesting to show on their networks during the slow summer months. They launched SuperLiga, a million-dollar competition pitting the top soccer clubs in Mexico against the top teams in Major League Soccer. It turned out to be a pretty big hit.

Meanwhile, the folks at CONCACAF took note of SuperLiga's popularity and said to themselves, "Wait a minute. We hold the Champions Cup every year, which is supposed to be our region's club championship, and we can't get anyone to give a damn. Meanwhile, these guys slap together a big-money summer reality show, and everyone's watching. Whisky Tango Foxtrot, dude."

End result? The CONCACAF Champions League was announced yesterday. Modeled after the UEFA competition of the same name, the CONCACAF Champions League will take 24 top clubs from throughout North and Central America, including four each from MLS and the Mexican League, and put them through an autumn group stage and a spring knockout stage to determine the best club in the region.

Clearly, this tournament was designed to put a stop to SuperLiga and get Americans to stop staring at UEFA's Champions League and start paying attention to their own region. Of course, for MLS clubs, it also has a few issues.

For starters, as WVHooligan notes, this tournament makes the already congested MLS schedule even more hectic. As soon as D.C. United, Chivas USA, the Houston Dynamo and the New England Revolution get done with this summer's SuperLiga, they jump right into the Champions League group stage -- all while competing for position in this year's MLS Cup playoffs. Just ask the L.A. Galaxy what it's like to have a crowded schedule toward season's end.

Also, the MLS offseason takes place in between the group stage in the fall and the knockout stage in February. Lineups will look completely different by then -- Michael Parkhurst may help the Revs get through, but he'll be in Europe by this time next year -- and players may not be comfortable playing together at that point. That's a huge advantage to Mexican clubs, who will be in midseason form in February. For SuperLiga, the Mexican clubs were in preseason form, and only Pachuca got out of the group stage and into the semifinals.

Also, this tournament may have even more minnows in the group stage than the UEFA Champions League. In addition to four each from Mexico and the U.S., CONCACAF says we'll see "three Caribbean sides; two clubs each from Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama; and one representative coming from Canada, Belize, and Nicaragua."

On the one hand, that will boost the level of soccer in those countries and possibly help MLS and Mexican clubs find quality players that they could bring into the fold. On the other hand, it makes this competition a tougher sell among fans than SuperLiga. Slavia Prague v. Steaua Bucharest doesn't interest casual soccer fans in Europe, and CD Motagua v. Harbour View will interest fewer casual fans here.

By the way, how exactly will the Canadian champion be determined? A four-team round-robin with Toronto FC, the Montreal Impact and Vancouver Whitecaps of USL and the semi-pro Canadian Soccer League champion? I suppose we'll find out soon enough.

Finally, this Champions League might end up making the U.S. Open Cup even more irrelevant, as big clubs will pull out of that tournament in favor of bigger competitions. That may be great for supporters of USL clubs like me, who actually care about the America's answer to the FA Cup, but MLS clubs with bigger fish to fry may pull out in droves -- unless the Open Cup winner gets a Champions League bid, and since Michel Platini has no influence over U.S. Soccer, I don't see that happening any time soon.

It's great to see CONCACAF recognize that its regional club championship needed to be bigger and better, but there are a lot of kinks to work out here before everyone takes this Champions League as seriously as its UEFA counterpart.

(H/T: Pitch Invasion)