Major League Soccer has spent 10 months reveling in Lionel Messi-mania. It rolled out red carpets for the GOAT, then watched stadiums fill and business boom. It reveled in soaring revenues, in newfound relevance, in beaming spotlights. But on Wednesday night, those spotlights illuminated a damning, lingering truth that not even Messi could erase.
For all of MLS’ growth, for all its stated global ambition, it still lags on its own continent.
It lags behind the gigantes of Mexico’s Liga MX, just as Inter Miami lagged behind Monterrey in a telling CONCACAF Champions Cup quarterfinal. Messi and Miami lost to Rayados, 3-1 on Wednesday and 5-2 on aggregate. They were the sixth MLS team to fall to a Liga MX foe in the 2024 edition of North and Central America’s preeminent club competition. And they were proof of MLS’ most maddening sin. The league’s penny-pinchers have long hindered ambitious peers. Now, their hesitance has hamstrung Messi’s ability to elevate their league.
MLS, ever since its 1994 inception, has been playing catch-up. It is chasing more established leagues, and for years Mexico’s has been the first key benchmark. Early MLS teams were well below it. Recent ones had seemingly leveled up. The Champions Cup and its predecessor, the CONCACAF Champions League, became the primary proving ground. In 2022, the Seattle Sounders became the first MLS club to win the Champions League, and American soccer collectively hailed the triumph as proof of progress.
But a couple years later, that Sounders run looks far more like a fluke.
From that high, in 2024, despite employing the greatest player ever, MLS has sunk to new CONCACAF depths.
Its teams have now played 14 matches vs. Liga MX in this year’s competition. They have lost nine, drawn five, won zero. They have scored 10 goals and conceded 33 — their worst such goal differential ever.
A revamped format granted them 10 spots in the 27-team tournament. Eight entered in the first knockout round; two received byes to the Round of 16. By the semifinals, only the Columbus Crew remain.
The Crew, bold and brave as ever, gutted out a 1-1 draw in Mexico on Tuesday, then beat Tigres on penalties. But elsewhere across the continent, over the past two months, a tiresome story reemerged. Pachuca pounded the