NEW YORK, NY–On Friday, Major League Soccer and Liga MX announced the groupings for the inaugural Leagues Cup competition set to begin on July 21st and run through August 18th. The competition consists of all 29 MLS squads and all 18 Liga MX squads.
As the 2022 MLS Cup champion, LAFC qualified directly into the Round of 32 of Leagues Cup 2023. Pachuca earned the bye as the Liga MX champion with the most combined points accumulated across the Clausura and Apertura seasons in the 2022 calendar year.
The groups consisting of the remaining 45 clubs are based on their 2022 performance along with their geographic regions. The 15 groups will be broken up into four regions: West, Central, South and East. Each region will have four groups, except the West, which will have three groups due to LAFC’s entrance in the Knockout Stage. Pachuca will enter the Knockout Stage in the South, opposite side of the bracket from the MLS Cup Champion and opposite quadrant from the top MLS seeded club based on the final 2022 Supporters’ Shield standings. Since LAFC won the 2022 Supporters’ Shield, the club in the opposite quadrant will be the team that finished second – the Philadelphia Union, who will be in Group 1 in the East Region (East 1).
The top 15 MLS clubs – excluding the MLS Cup champion – have been placed in their corresponding geographic region first, and then based on their position in the final 2022 Supporters’ Shield standings. The top 15 Liga MX teams, based on the combined Clausura 2022 and Apertura 2022 standings – excluding Pachuca as described above – have been paired in reverse order with the top 15 MLS clubs (No. 15 Liga MX seeded club has been paired with No. 1 MLS seeded club and so on).
Continuing with the competitive balance criteria, the remaining 13 MLS clubs have been placed in the groups, again based first on their geographic region, and then based on their position in the final 2022 Supporters’ Shield standings.
With the MLS clubs placed into groups, the South and East regions have one remaining slot each. Based on the combined Clausura 2022 and Apertura 2022 standings, the last two remaining Liga MX clubs, FC Juarez and Querétaro, have been placed in the open positions in these two regions to complete the groups. Placed in reverse order from the highest seed in each group, Querétaro (No. 17 Liga MX) and FC Juarez (No. 16 LIGA MX) have been respectively paired with Philadelphia Union (No. 1 MLS) in the East and Austin FC (No. 3 MLS) in the South.
Below are the full groups:
The league bracket and fixture list will be announced in the near future.
The champion, as well as the second and third-place finishers, will qualify for the Concacaf Champions League and have an opportunity to earn a spot in the FIFA Club World Cup. All matches will be streamed live on Apple TV.
In addition, TelevisaUnivision, FOX Sports, TSN and RDS will be the linear broadcast home for select Leagues Cup matches. The Leagues Cup Final will be available on Univision in Spanish.
