This weekend, we will discover four new participants in the upcoming CONCACAF Champions League. The semifinals will wrap up in Mexico, and a pair of Clausura finals will determine the second representatives for Honduras and Panama. The current Salvadoran, Costa Rican and Canadian tournaments are also approaching their dénouement; and the Caribbean Football Union (CFU), true to its current form, has yet to let us know if the Third-Place playoff will be decided through a two-game series, a last-minute one-off or a game of chicken to see which of Portmore United and Caledonia AIA will lose patience first and withdraw.
Unfortunately, I must begin with the following announcement: this will be my last entry in The Regional Review for BigSoccer.
This de facto resignation was not in any way, shape or form provoked by my rapport with fellow Featured Writers or the leadership. I will always be grateful to Huss for having extended the opportunity to post my ramblings on the biggest soccer webpage in the U.S.; collaborating with Bill Archer on the various facets of CONCACAF reform has been a true highlight of my time here; having writers of the stature of John Jagou, Roger Allaway and Martín del Palacio react to your work is simply an honor; and without Dan Loney’s encouragement, I never would have attempted this in the first place. For the remaining writers with whom I interacted on a less frequent basis (due to the smaller overlap in subject material), I have enjoyed reflecting and commenting on their entries as a means of learning about football stories beyond my immediate sphere of interest.
Nor have I lost the desire to cover the major tournaments in our corner of the world. I freely admit to following the national leagues and cups in North America and Costa Rica more closely than others in the region; but the intrigue of seeing clubs from different countries square off (whether from the U.S. and Mexico or from Guatemala and Trinidad and Tobago) appeals to me as strongly as ever, to the extent that CCL weeks are among the first things marked in my yearly calendar. On the national team front, I hold no stronger sporting loyalty than that to the national teams of the US and Haiti; and now that both of them face more exacting competition than ever before (at their respective levels), I have all the more reason to follow the Gold Cup and World Cup qualifying from the very beginning.
Rather, the inability to continue with my writing commitment is a result of recent changes in other areas of life. After passing the Comprehensive Exam and successfully finishing my graduate program, I am now in the process of transitioning to a full-time position at my work. Once that is complete, I will lack the free time to provide articles of the necessary quality (including background research) for this front page. Thus, rather than periodically spitting out a handful of loosely-connected sentences, I will return to regular member status, passing along relevant information on gamethreads (where I am welcome, of course) and watching the matches in question when my schedule permits.
I can think of no more appropriate away to sign off here than by bringing you up to date with qualifying for the last nine berths in the 2013-14 Champions League, since the tournament draw, World Cup qualifying and the Confederations Cup will all have to wait for next month.
Mexico
The second leg of the first semifinal will take place this afternoon at 6:00 p.m. (all times EDT) as Club América host Monterrey at the Estadio Azteca. The 2-2 draw in midweek will allow the águilas to seal their CCL debut with anything other than defeat or a tie of 3-3 or higher. If the visitors manage to escape with a victory, however, the rayado quest for the continental four-peat will be on.
Speaking of that number: the remaining Clausura semifinalists, who will finish up their series on Sunday at 9:00 p.m., have finished runners-up in four of the five CCL tournaments to date. Unless Santos Laguna manage to overturn the 0-3 humbling they suffered at the Territorio Santos Modelo, only Cruz Azul will earn a shot to finally surpass their previous international disappointments…in which case, they will coincidentally pass up the chance to defend their Copa MX title.
Guatemala
Surprisingly, their Clausura regular season is still going on. Unless CONCACAF postpones the CCL draw, it is simply unfeasible that GUA2 will be defined in advance of the event.
El Salvador
The Clausura semifinals are currently underway; and shockingly, Isidro Metapán are nowhere to be found. Nevertheless, the jaguares have plenty of reason to keep an eye on this weekend’s events, since the Salvadoran top seed is already at play. Tonight at 9:00 p.m., FAS will host the upstart Juventud Independiente in Santa Ana, simply needing a win to overturn a 1-2 deficit (a one-goal victory favors the tigrillos on superior regular-season record) and advance to the Final. The second semifinal features a pair of traditional powers, as Luis Ángel Firpo receive Alianza on Sunday at 5:00 p.m. with a similar assignment: come back from 0-1 down in the first leg, and they will find themselves within one game of returning to the continental stage. As for Metapán: a Juventud Independiente-Firpo final will allow them to keep the SLV1 spot, while a FAS-Alianza Clausura championship will definitively condemn Edwin Portillo’s side to SLV2.
Honduras
If América manage to let the CCL berth slip through their fingers this evening, and San Francisco hold serve in Panama, then the next debutant will be determined on Sunday at 6:00 p.m.
Normally, when a club ascends to its national top flight, it requires at least one year to settle in and focuses its energies on securing a second year. Real Sociedad displayed greater ambitions through the acquisition of Honduran national team veteran Julio César Rambo de León last November; and after defeating Olimpia 1-0 in the first leg of the Clausura final, the newcomers simply need to avoid defeat at the Estadio Nacional to become the first team to shoot from the second division to CCL participation in only two years.
If Olimpia successfully defend their Apertura title, however, the precedent from last year holds that the HON2 spot would drop to the runner-up in the full-year table. Assuming some long-overdue consistency in either applying or publicly altering the standard, Victoria will thus be pulling for Olimpia to deliver a similar pummeling to the one the ceibeños received at the end of the last tournament. A two-goal win will maintain Olympia’s dynasty, while a one-goal triumph will force extra time.
Costa Rica
How many grandes are there in the Costa Rican league? Most outside observers (and plenty of ticos) would answer “two”; but with only two games left in the current Torneo de Verano, Deportivo Saprissa and defending champions Alajuelense are nowhere to be found. Instead, Cartaginés will host Herediano on Sunday at 7:00 p.m. in the first leg of the Final, and the florenses will return the favor the following Saturday at 10:00 p.m. I have to admit no small interest in seeing Cartago finally qualify for the Champions League: assuming that it would receive CONCACAF approval for hosting matches, their Estadio Fello Meza provides one of the most raucous and intimidating atmospheres in the entire region…even by Central American standards. A long-awaited return to trophy-winning ways for Cartaginés, though, would hand the CRC1 spot to Alajuelense, while Herediano would keep the top seed for themselves by winning their second championship in as many years (a stunning thought for Herediano fans under 20 years of age, who spent most of their lives under a seemingly interminable domestic drought).
Panama
The one-game Clausura Final will feature a “Battle of the Saints”, as Sporting San Miguelito hunt a first-ever domestic title against San Francisco on Sunday at 5:00 p.m. at the Estadio Rommel Fernández. The qualifying scenarios here are straightforward: either team will grab the PAN2 berth along with the title.
Canada
After the first leg ended goalless, the 2013 Canadian Championship Final will culminate with Vancouver Whitecaps hosting the Montreal Impact on Wednesday, May 29 at 10:00 p.m. With away goals in play, the Québécois require a win or a draw with goals to claim their eighth Voyageurs’ Cup; as for the Whitecaps, their desperate wait to finally clinch the only domestic trophy at play will come to an end if they win in 90 or 120 minutes (a 0-0 tie would force extra time).
Caribbean
And last but not least: the lack of confirmed dates for the Portmore United-Caledonia AIA playoff demonstrates (yet again) that the CFU actually got more incompetent after Jack Warner left.
Read that again.
No, I have nothing more to add to that statement.
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And with that, let me close by thanking you, my readers, for truly making this an interactive endeavor. Whether you wrote to encourage my work, enhance it with information relative to specific championships, challenge my assumptions and arguments or simply read and learn something new, you helped to fortify my belief that the interconnectedness of football is something to be celebrated. In our sport, everyone gets a shot at the world championship; and through the CCL, Gold Cup and qualifying for the World Cup finals, even the most nondescript side from otherwise peripheral countries in our region have the same shot at international glory as everyone else.