Sounders take aim at Champions League title
The CONCACAF Champions League has existed in its current format for 14 seasons. In each of the first 13 editions, the champion has come from Mexico.
On Wednesday night, the Seattle Sounders will have perhaps the best chance of any previous challenger to end Liga MX’s run of dominance.
The Sounders will host Pumas at Lumen Field in Seattle (10 ET, FS1) for the second leg of the competition’s final, having secured a priceless 2-2 draw in the first leg in Mexico City last week.
That result leaves Seattle poised to make history in front of an estimated crowd of nearly 70,000, which would break the single-game attendance record for the CONCACAF Champions League.
“This is going to be ecstasy or heartbreak,” Sounders general manager Garth Lagerwey told the MLS Extratime podcast this week. “It’s immortality or confined to the dustbin of history.”
An MLS side has reached the CONCACAF Champions League final on four previous occasions. Each time, the team fell just short of winning the competition and securing the automatic berth in the FIFA Club World Cup that the champion receives. Most recently, Los Angeles FC fell 2-1 in a one-leg finale against Tigres in 2020.
A win for the Sounders on Wednesday, then, would also be a win for MLS as a whole, as the league continues to fight to prove it can keep up with its historically stronger neighbor to the south.
There may never be a better chance for MLS to slay the Liga MX dragon. The Sounders have one of the league’s strongest rosters, they have already done the hard part by not losing in Mexico, and they will be boosted by a record crowd in a stadium where they’ve outscored opponents 11-1 in the competition this season.