MLS Concacaf Champions Cup participants struggle on opening weekend

The 2024 Major League Soccer season opened in earnest last weekend, with 28 teams in action. However, it wasn’t the first match of the season for 8 teams, who either began their season midweek (Inter Miami) or have already played competitive matches as the 2024 Concacaf Champions Cup began earlier this month.

Nashville SC, the Philadelphia Union, FC Cincinnati, St. Louis City, Orlando City, the New England Revolution, the Houston Dynamo, and the Vancouver Whitecaps are all in the first round of the Concacaf Champions Cup representing MLS, while Inter Miami (Leagues Cup champion) and Columbus (MLS Cup champion) both earned a bye to the Round of 16. For the teams that have already played Champions Cup matches, the opening weekend of the regular season proved to be a frustrating affair.

While the Vancouver Whitecaps were idle on the first weekend, the other teams went 0W-1L-6D, with the Revolution being the only team to lose, as they fell 3-1 on the road to D.C. United. Three teams - Nashville, Cincinnati, and Orlando - failed to score a goal in their matches.

For many of these teams, that midweek Champions Cup match came with a lot of frequent flyer miles, as almost all of the teams had to travel out of the country for their first leg matches. Their destinations were all over Concacaf: the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Canada, Panama, and Costa Rica. St. Louis and Houston were the only teams that didn’t need their passports to play in Champions Cup last week, and that was because they faced each other (St. Louis hosted the first leg).

Major League Soccer tried to minimize the impact of travel on these teams by scheduling most of them to have home games to open up the season. Only the Revolution had to begin the season on the road, and it probably coincides with the fact that they were the only team to lose. And in many of those matches, teams were forced to play most of their stars just days after playing in a continental competition.

The latter, combined with the debate over the league’s participation in the 2024 U.S. Open Cup, has prompted MLS commissioner Don Garber to have further discussions to try and solve the roster issues. After the Inter Miami match against the LA Galaxy, Garber said to reporters that he was going to meet with some of the league’s owners in Miami to discuss roster rules.

That will no doubt also involve the U.S. Open Cup and how to get at least some of the first teams to participate while figuring out how to give the teams competing in international competition the flexibility to field strong lineups in each of their matches.

The Vancouver Whitecaps have already been eliminated from the Champions Cup, but each of the remaining teams in Round One will be playing their second legs at home with the exception of St. Louis, who will travel to Houston. As we dive fully into the regular season as well as determine whether these teams advance in the Champions Cup, the focus will be on how these teams manage their rosters to play in the tournament as well as get into the win column in the league.