One can usually tell the quality of a country’s National team by the quality of their professional league, and Mexico has certainly been the leaders in the CONCACAF region when it comes to the club level.

The USA, on the other hand, has been a bit of a contradiction with the success of the US National Team far outweighing the quality of the American domestic league, which the ex-England and Newcastle captain Alan Shearer recently dubbed as being on par with the English 2nd Division.

Don’t be so quick to misread Shearer’s comparison though as he didn’t compare MLS to the Coca Cola Championship (which is the 2nd to the EPL), but to the 2nd Division (equivalent to 4th level English soccer). 

With this being said, it is time for another US-Mexican showdown, but this time on the club level, which will actually be the better standard by which to measure US vs. Mexican football.

So, the Champions’ Cup Semifinal matches are now settled with 2 Mexican clubs going head to head over 2 legs with 2 MLS clubs. With these matches, the truth of the disparity (or lack thereof) between the two countries will be revealed.   

The first Semifinal will be Pachuca vs. Houston Dynamo, who pulled off an impressive (2-0) victory in the return leg at home to turn the tables against the Costa Ricans, and the 2nd Semi will be between DC United and Guadalajara, the most successful outfits of their respective leagues.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 2nd, 2007 at 11:00 pm and is filed under Soccer World, USA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.