Liga MX president Mikel Arriola: Leagues Cup has been 'a real success'
Mikel Arriola’s two-car motorcade pulled up to Lower.com Field. It was about an hour before the Columbus Crew hosted Club America as part of the Leagues Cup, and the president of Mexico’s Liga MX was excited to see the final group-stage game for both teams.
Now in his third year as president of Liga MX, the 47-year-old Arriola was in the house for what would become a 4-1 Crew win in a game played hours after the club announced the transfer of star midfielder Lucas Zelarayan. Standing near the sideline as fans filed into the stands, Arriola spoke with The Dispatch to share some of his thoughts on the newly created tournament, what cues Liga MX is taking from MLS and how the facilities in Columbus compare to those he’s experienced in other countries. Then, Arriola spent time taking selfies and shaking hands with Club America supporters before taking in the game.
What follows is a transcript of the conversation with Arriola. Answers have been edited for length and clarity.
Q: We’re all learning about how this Leagues Cup is going. What do you think of it so far?
A: Well, let me tell you this has been a success, a real success supported strongly by evidence. Before the tournament, we knew the size of the tournament, we knew that we were the only tournament in the history of soccer that was going to generate 77 matches in a month in 29 cities along the U.S. and Canada. That was a huge challenge for us. After that, we started playing. You can never guess anything before you start. We have been receiving a great response from the public. We’re about to close the first (group) phase. We are talking about maybe close to one million fans in the stadiums. That’s really strong. We saw the best second-best match for TV in the history of the United States with soccer, which was the Messi game.
Obviously, the most important is that we’ve had this attendance and this viewership due to the fact that the matches have been very interesting because the teams and the players know that these matches are official and they want to win. They want to win the Leagues Cup. They want to win every match. You have seen the intensity. We have had an average of four goals per game. I think this innovation of not having draws has been obviously one of the successful elements in order to deliver to the public what we want to deliver, which is the best soccer in North America.
Q. Why does this make sense for Mexico to play in?
A. We want to compete internationally, and considering the growth of MLS, the growth of the teams, the fact that they have strengthened their teams with foreign players, with national players, that has to be systematized into a competition and we want that competition with the U.S. And secondly, because we have 60 million fans here. It is very important for us and for MLS to generate more interest in our current fans, but we want to generate bi-national fans. If you take out the passport, we have 160 million fans of soccer in this part of the continent. We want to send a message to the world that this will be the strongest region in soccer in the whole world.
Q. It seems like maybe only 10 years ago a tournament like this wouldn’t have made sense for Mexico and it would’ve been very one-sided. Now, there’s a lot to gain from these leagues and countries working together. Can you speak to the growth you’ve seen of MLS to where a tournament like this makes sense for both sides?
A. During my appointment process my main argument was that we had to do something with MLS due to the fact that they have the fastest and strongest rhythm of growth in the world. They have grown, since 2012, 20% a year. If you compare that with the rest of the world, you can not see a league that’s growing in those amounts at that rhythm so obviously we wanted to generate something jointly because we want to accelerate our growth. We want to accelerate our investment in players and in infrastructure. So what I see from MLS is a centralized model of growth, of homogenous growth, and that’s what we want for our teams. This is the first time that every team in Mexico and in the U.S. have an official international window from FIFA. We are now viewed in more than 100 countries, so that’s extreme growth for both leagues.
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Q. You’ve spoken publicly about the growth of MLS and soccer in the United States from an infrastructure and youth standpoint. Where do you feel Liga MX is on those fronts?
A. I think that our growth has also accelerated. We were growing 5% yearly before 2020, and now we are growing around 15% a year. We have generated an additional youth category, which is under-18 of the women’s league (Liga MX Femenil). Now we have six years with our women’s league and now we’re going to mix our under-23 with our second division (Expansión Sub–23), because what we want is to have more opportunities for the under-20, under-21 to go to the first team and we want more time to develop those players with more competition. We’re going to have a 33-team league as of January, and that’s going to grow very fast in terms of investment, in terms of income.
Considering the size of our economies, the main engine of growth is Leagues Cup because we are playing one month in the richest economy in the world which is 18 times bigger than ours. We can do many things, but with this one we will increase our size to a degree of magnitude that we were not thinking of five years ago.
Q. What are your impressions of Lower.com Field and the infrastructure in Columbus and throughout MLS?
A. We went in the morning to the training facility (OhioHealth Performance Center) and that’s fantastic. I went about two months ago to (Spanish club) Athletic Bilbao. They have new facilities, and you compare it and these (facilities) are very comparable with the rest of the world, with Europe. I think one of the main elements to grow is to have the proper infrastructure and that being homogenous. You see the model of a stadium here and you see a model of business and you see a model of growth in terms of the sport because you have almost the same size stadiums, you generate the same business model for every team and then you develop the same level of growth on every team. I think that’s a good example to follow.
If you contrast that with our league, our league has more than 100 years playing and every team has done, individually, great efforts. But you see several models and then you see several brackets of size. What we want to do is we want to generate more homogenous base of growth, generate a more homogenous infrastructure.
Q. If you were selling Lucas Zelarayan, how much would you want to sell him for?
A. Well, considering that he comes from Mexico originally, I would say more than eight figures. (laughs)
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Q&A: Leagues Cup 'a real success' says Liga MX president Mikel Arriola
