Top Stories

Tigres tops Toronto FC in inaugural Campeones Cup

1 Shares

Tigres captured the inaugural Campeones Cup over Toronto FC on Wednesday night at BMO Field.

The Liga MX champions defeated the Major League Soccer champions, 3-1, behind a brace from Mexico international Jesus Duenas.

Duenas opened the scoring in the 35th minute, as he broke down the left side of the field with ease to connect with a pass from Juninho.

The midfielder eluded a late rush from Michael Bradley and slotted home the opening goal of the competition past TFC goalkeeper Alex Bono.

In the 65th minute, Duenas added to Tigres’ tally, as he blasted a shot from distance into the left side of the net.

The ball bounced out to Duenas following a cleared corner kick, but no one from the Reds showed urgency to get the ball, as it rolled for a few seconds before landing at Duenas’ feet.

Toronto FC’s night went from bad to worse in the 66th minute, when Eriq Zavaleta’s attempted clearance ricocheted into the top-right part of the net.

The home side pulled back a late goal in the 86th minute by way of a Lucas Janson penalty kick, but it was far from enough to make the contest competitive.

In addition to falling to their continental rival, the Reds lost Sebastian Giovinco to a calf injury in the first half.

Toronto FC returns to league action on Saturday against the New York Red Bulls in a must-win game, as it sits nine points beneath the red line in the Eastern Conference.

Comments

  1. Embarrasing for MLS that Toronto FC could be so outclassed and humiliated at home by a good but not amazing Liga MX team. Yes- Toronto isnt as good as they were last season in MLS, but look at their roster- they still suppossedly have many of the elite MLS players including those legendary US NATS stars Bradley and Altidore. They should be able to get up for one game, compete and play for pride.

    Reply
  2. I’ve said this before but want to mention it again in regards to adding competition between LigaMX and MLS.. I want to see it done with CCL by adding clubs from US, MX, and Canada and reducing direct auto group stage qualification from Central America and Caribbean and making those regions go thru prelims like smaller leagues in Europe have to do.

    CCL is growing but not really on the radar outside of die hard soccer fans. What would make things pick up faster and draw more of the casual fan and media interest for CCL is to basically relegate the Non MLS and Non LigaMX teams to preliminary rounds like UEFA does for UCL in Europe with clubs from countries whose leagues are weak by comparison to top European leagues.

    You only get a handful of weaker teams making the UCL group stage in Europe because from a money and tv rights standpoint no one wants to watch group stage matches between Red Star Belgrade and Malmo FF. Same goes for CCL, I personally won’t watch matches between Tauro and Herediano which will be played on a cow pasture of a field.

    What the region needs more of and could do easily is by increasing the qualification allotments to Mexico, USA, and Canada and reducing the direct auto group stage qualifiers to Central America and Caribbean forcing those clubs to only qualify thru a prelim round thereby narrowing down the clubs qualifying from Central America and Caribbean, currently at 7 compared to US, MX, and Canada’s 9 qualifiers. This ratio should be closer to 2:1 or even 3:1 not 9:7.

    I would go with 12 group stage qualifiers from US, MX, and Canada and only 4 from Central America and Caribbean all 4 of which would have had to go thru prelim matches. 4 groups of 4. This would set up a lot more group stage meaningful matches between clubs like Toronto FC and Tigres or matches like ATL and Monterrey or Club America and Seattle. I’ll tune in for those type of matches at 10pm but Monterrey and Tauro, Sasprissa and Seattle, Atlanta and Herediano forget that.

    If what ATL is doing now is MLS 3.0 then I think setting up meaningful high quality international club competition is going to take MLS to MLS 4.0 then we can start considering ourselves a top ten league internationally.

    Reply
  3. Toronto is almost a year removed from winning the MLS cup. This game is wayyyy too long after the teams won their respective championships.

    Reply
  4. my two cents: in sports, losing games is the spark the ignites change. Toronto is a club that has some problems. be thankful that tigres won. and after toronto crash out of the playoffs, maybe, just maybe, some heads will roll. and that’s a GOOD thing. trust me.

    Reply
  5. I can’t be the only one that thinks, wow the championship between Mexico and the US
    is……
    one game. I think I might miss it next year, especially if the champion is terrible the next year….like Toronto

    Reply

Leave a Comment