MLS sweeps Liga MX in breakthrough night of Concacaf Champions Cup action

The aggregate wins place LAFC and Nashville in the Champions Cup semifinals at Cruz Azul and Club America's expense. And they prove —convincingly — that MLS is finally closing the gap with its southern rivals.

Gamesmanship in Puebla

Regular viewers of Concacaf action know that victories in this region aren't always pretty. Difficult conditions, poorly trained referees and raucous crowds can, and often do, lead to ugly results.

LAFC's away match against Cruz Azul in Puebla looked to be heading in that direction. Furious with the team for losing 3-0 in Los Angeles and desperate to give it a home advantage, the local crowd brayed every single one of LAFC's touches, and the match quickly became hostile. Seven yellow cards came out in the opening 13 minutes. A dubious penalty — one that never would've been called in MLS — gave Cruz Azul an unexpected early lead. For LAFC, it must've felt like the game was slipping away.

Coach Marc Dos Santos didn't panic. He knew the night would be uncomfortable, and he encouraged his team to keep a cool head.

It worked. The game leveled out, the tension diffused and by the time the match ended, LAFC had received a dubious penalty of its own to tie the match at 1-1 and lift it to a 4-1 aggregate victory.

In a tournament that gets as ugly as this one does, beautiful play will only get you so far. This kind of guile — leaning away from an aggressive opponent and letting it tire itself out — is exactly what MLS needs to succeed in the Champions Cup. LAFC didn't need to outplay Cruz Azul to eliminate it at home; it needed to outthink it, and that's exactly what it did.

Nashville's historic win

While LAFC leveraged guile and gamesmanship to seal its spot in the semifinals, Nashville did the opposite. In many ways, it did the unthinkable: It came to Mexico's famed Azteca wanting to play.

It's hard to overstate just how wild that take was from Nashville coach B.J. Callaghan. MLS teams had never — literally not once — pulled off an Azteca victory in nearly three decades of Champions Cup attempts. If Nashville was going to change that, surely the way to do so would be to sit back, defend carefully and score on the break, not to bring the game to home side Club America in a way that made it more vulnerable.

Still, Callaghan's Nashville entered this match with the belief that it could play the expansive, attractive soccer it loved and still compete. It didn't always look like the best decision — Club America dominated the match on several key metrics like possession, expected goals and shots— but Nashville hung in there, and attacker Hany Mukhtar took his chances when they came.

If LAFC won with its head, Nashville won with its feet. Their approaches differed, but together, the two clubs did more to close the gap between MLS and Liga MX in one night than any franchise has done in years.