No more than five months after the previous regional tournament concluded, a new format kicks off tonight. Yup, the CONCACAF Champions League is getting under way and will not officially put and end to the CONCACAF Champions Cup and many other previous tournaments.

I’ve said before that I love this new format and have really been calling for something similar to this for a few years now in CONCACAF. I know some out there think the MLS clubs should just try to be included in some South American tournaments, and while that would be cool I think the idea of being the regions best club team still has a bit of a meaning to it.

There will be some that think its trying to be too much like UEFA Champions League and to a degree they are right. But at the end of the day this format will work ten or 20 times better than the previous formats. Why? More games, more clubs and more potential rivalries if you will. The little clubs from the small islands will want to step up their game a bit more against the big boys of Mexico and the US.

So this time around we have four clubs going for it all here. The same four that were in the North American SuperLiga a month ago. Yeah, aside from getting into the taxing part of the scheduling, two of these clubs have preliminary games tonight while the other two are safely in group play already.

How will things go for the MLS clubs? Let’s see. Continue Reading…