Are Liga MX and MLS Actually Talking Merger?

What's being proposed isn't exactly like English and Welsh teams playing in the same Premiership-English Football League pyramid.

First of all, some would wonder who'd be England and who'd be Wales: the MLS or Liga MX?

OK, it's a different dynamic but with the same factors, and the drumbeat's getting louder that they're going to achieve the same result.

The USA's and Mexico's top football tiers are headed for what seems to be an inevitable joining of forces.

 

There's a laundry list of daunting logistics that must be overcome, but this move is so vital, they'll find a way.

After all ...

• Liga MX needs more money, while MLS needs more cred to be taken seriously as a global elite, and
• Liga MX matches have higher ratings in the USA than either the Premiership or MLS.

Ironically, it could well be that the biggest obstacle to a North American super-league will be Concacaf itself. It's been busy creating more events for both financial and relevance with mixed results.

While it's been pushing a Champions Leage of its own, the Mexican and Americans big dogs have been testing the waters of further integration:

• It's why they came up with the Campeones Cup;
• Same thing with their other club creation, the Leagues Cup.

Meanwhile, viewed in the harsh light of cold reality, there are just too many minnows in Concacaf's Nations League to generate interest until the usual USA-Mexico meeting shows up.

 

Liga MX and MLS see a super-league's revenue streams as more substantial than anything Concacaf can conjure, believing their competitions will draw more interest.

That's because they will.

Concacaf holds an imposing down card, though. As its president, Victor Montagliani, put it:

This isn’t like the AFL and the NFL where you know, the AFL just walks over to another building and says, ‘Let’s merge,’ and now you have a [new] NFL. It’s not that easy.

This is not leagues merging. This is countries. So already, it’s a different dynamic.

 

 

Like that's gonna win friends and influence people.

The lucatrive USA market remains highly coveted by FIFA, and the Mexican clubs continue to provide the highest level of competition on the continent. However, Liga MX acknowledges that MLS is closing the gap, mainly because they're signing young Latin stars now instead of aging European names.

So the issue is how they merge. For example:

• MLS has 30 teams now, locked in with no trap door of relegation; while
• Liga MX has 18 teams who must battle against relegation.

That's a hella lotta clubs, and some of them can't guarantee they'll be a super-league fixture unless they shut out the lower divisions like MLS did.

 

Then there's the vastness of North America.

It's one thing for, say, Champions League clubs to travel across Europe every couple of weeks, but a continental super-league in the Western Hemisphere would see given clubs need to span thousands of miles every week.

Comparable cost of living between the USA and Mexico would be a matter for the players' associations to work out. Those negotiations are always sticky, but since when did any league's players be concerned with their salaries as compared to those of the citizens around them?

 

Proposals to resolve such things are propagating, and here's one that looks kinda practical already:

• Create an entirely new top-level league that serves as a Premiership and stock it with 18 teams;
• Designate the remaining MLS and Liga MX teams into a pair of separate second-division feeders; and
• Incorporate a pair of two-team promotion/relegation formats to the Premiership, which would make a second division easier to swallow.

This proposal also suggests throwing a bone to Concacaf by bagging the Leagues Cup and leaving the Champions League to them.

 

Again, it's inevitable.

This may sound crazy now, but with a plan like this and football's growing popularity with the USA's younger demographics -- it's already religion in Mexico, of course -- it wouldn't be a surprise to see it become the continent's top sport in 5-6 years after a super-league happens.

If this coincides with the 2026 World Cup -- hosted by the USA, Mexico, and Canada, so the Americans by definition can't screw up their participation -- count on it.