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Loons hold high expectations going into new Leagues Cup

andy greder, pioneer press
·5 min read

Minnesota United’s group in Leagues Cup lacks prestige and big, rival headliners, meaning the Loons need to move upward and onward in the new North American club tournament.

MNUFC plays Puebla — the second-to-last-place team in Mexico’s Liga MX — in the opening game of Central Group 2 at 8 p.m. Sunday at Allianz Field. The Loons then face Chicago Fire — a fellow middle-of-the-pack MLS side — on Thursday night, also in St. Paul.

“(Puebla) aren’t the most daunting team in Liga MX and if you were to make a bet in the Leagues Cup, I can’t see them going very far,” Cesar Hernandez, an ESPN reporter who covers Mexican soccer, told the Pioneer Press.

But that’s the most intriguing thing about this newfangled cup: How do the two leagues stack up against each other?

Top MLS sides have advanced to the final of the Concacaf Champions League in four of the past six years, with the Seattle Sounders becoming the first MLS team to win it all in 2022. This will be a chance to see how teams top to bottom square off.

“That is one of the things I’m most curious about with Leagues Cup,” Hernandez said. “It’s easy for me to say a high-spending team like Tigres or Rayados (Monterey) in Liga MX, they are definitely going to do really well, but I’m fascinated by matchups like these.”

Puebla, located 80 miles southeast of Mexico City, was founded in 1944 and has won championships, including Concacaf in 1991. The team had up-and-coming Argentine manager Nicolas Larcamon and improved results in 2021 and ’22, but he left for Club Leon, which won the Concacaf Champions League over Los Angeles FC earlier this year.

“They were a really fantastic side to watch, but the thing was, after he left the team in 2022, since then, it looks like the Puebla of old,” Hernandez said. Puebla finished 10th in the league last season.

MNUFC manager Adrian Heath said he will select a group of his best players to play Puebla.

“I want to win this competition if we can,” Heath said Saturday. “And (Sunday) is the first stage in that. We are treating it seriously.”

Puebla has used different formations across its first three Liga MX matches under manager Eduardo Arce.

“It’s strange in the way they play,” Heath said. “It’s like an organized chaos, if you like. They defend with five and attack with five.”

Regardless of a team’s quality, matchups between clubs on opposite sides of the Rio Grande River have tended to have extra flavor. “A little picante,” Loons fullback Zarek Valentin said.

Cup full of details

All 47 first-division clubs in North America (29 in MLS, 18 in Liga MX) are divided into 15 groups of three teams apiece. LAFC and Pachuca receiving byes to the first knockout rounds.

Each club will play both foes in their pod and the top two teams advance to the round of 32 in early August. If MNUFC advances, the Loons would play Aug. 4. The knockout stages will whittle the field down to the final on Aug. 19.

If a club wins a match in regulation, it earns all three points. But if the match ends in a draw after stoppage time, each team receives one point. In those matches, no extra time will be added on and the match will go straight to a penalty shootout to earn one more point.

The first-place team in the Loons’ Central Group 2 will play the second-place team from Central Group 1 (Club America, Columbus Crew and St. Louis City). The runner-up in Central Group 2 will play the winner in Central Group 1. All Leagues Cup matches will be held at MLS venues.

A MNUFC matchup against Columbus would mean a reunion with former Loons and current Crew striker Christian Ramirez, whom the Loons haven’t played against since he was with Houston in 2020.

If the foe is Club America, the Loons would face one of the most storied clubs in Mexico, while MLS expansion side St. Louis City sits in first place in the Western Conference, but MNUFC beat them in Missouri in April.

The top three finishers in Leagues Cup earn spots in next year’s Concacaf Champions Cup, which was known as the Concacaf Champions League until a name change earlier this year.

Loons fullback D.J. Taylor shared two other motivations for a deep tournament run.

“Players are trying to get a payout for the Leagues Cup, which is really exciting,” he acknowledged. “More money, more games, more wins.”

And if MNUFC gets bounced out in the group stage, the club will have three weeks straight of practices before its next MLS game on Aug. 20.

“We know training would be definitely way harder if we lost, so that is going to be a motivator for me,” Taylor said.

Briefly

Heath on Saturday all but ruled out center back Micky Tapais (ankle) and winger Franco Fragapane (thigh) for the Puebla match. … New fullback Ethan Bristow will go to England next week to receive his visa paperwork in order to be eligible to play for MNUFC. … Chicago Fire is averaging 1.39 points per match across 23 MLS games this season. MNUFC is at 1.27 through 22 league matches, while Puebla is at 0.33 after three games in the new Liga MX season. … Puebla will play Chicago in the final group match July 31 in Bridgeview, Ill. … One sign of the seriousness in which MNUFC is approaching Leagues Cup: None of the MNUFC2 players who have been with the first team for U.S. Open Cup matches earlier this season trained with the MLS side on Saturday. MNUFC2 plays in Houston on Sunday. … MNUFC gave its MLS season-ticket holders the chance to “opt-in” for Leagues Cup matches and is anticipating crowds to be more than 18,000 at Allianz Field for these two tournament matches.

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