While the Gold Cup goes on, there is some other news going around regarding CONCACAF. It's not too long ago that CONCACAF invited teams from other conferences to this tournament to lend it prestige, but that age is over. For years, (Thanks, Anonymous) CONCACAF has been sending its clubs to higher-prestige CONMEBOL tournaments like the Copa Libertadores (it's like the CL, even the initials match) and the Copa Sudamericana, which is the Europa Cup equivalent in South America. With the investment they want to put into the CONCACAF Champions League, CONCACAF is dialing that back.CONCACAF will not be renewing its 2005 agreement to send clubs to Copa Sudamericana. In the four years that they have sent teams, CONCACAF clubs have made the finals three times, and Pachuca won in 2006. Mostly they sent Mexican clubs, but teams from Costa Rica and Honduras also saw knockout action, as well as MLS club DC United, who played in the competition twice.
It will still send Mexican clubs to the Copa Libertadores in 2010 (they have a seperate competition called Interliga to qualify Mexican teams for the Copa, currently there is no qualifying path for clubs in other countries), but apparently that practice will be re-examined in November as well.
It's interesting to see how CONCACAF is prepared to stand on its own feet here, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the CONCACAF CL and SuperLiga continue to establish themselves as competitions going forward.
3 comments:
You got your info wrong there. Mexico has been included in the Copa Libertadores since 1998. So in actuality that was the first time a CONCACAF club team was represented in an important CONMEBOL tournament, not 2005.
About time that CONCACAF stopped bootstrapping off of CONEMBOL. MFL, MLS and USL are strong enough to start their own traditions and cups. Sending CONCACAF teams to CONEMBOL tournaments only diminishes our cup competitions.
I'm sorry but our competitions are unlikely to ever reach the heights of the copa libertadores. Copa Sudamericana is a different story. The competition is kinda of a joke considering that boca and river are automatically invited. It is a good idea to try and have the Copa Libertadores as a competitions to represent the best teams in teh americas. It creates for a interesting and exciting competition especially for when MLS has the depth and quality, which is will eventually, make deep runs in international competitions.
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