In a tournament built around play between unfamiliar faces and matches in far-flung locations to test a club’s mettle, City SC learned its first-round opponent for the CONCACAF Champions Cup on Wednesday, and it will be not only at a place the team has played before but against a team it has already played twice. And it won’t even have to leave its time zone.
City SC will make its first venture into international soccer by playing not only a team also in Major League Soccer but one of only two other teams in the 27-team field from the Western Conference, the Houston Dynamo.
The winner of that series will face the MLS Cup champion Columbus Crew. The earliest City SC would have to break out its passports would be the quarterfinals of the tournament, if it got that far.
The first four rounds of the tournament will be two-game, home-and-home total-goal series played in February. It is expected that with MLS teams not opening training camp until the second week of January, they will utilize the final two weeks of February for their games. As the lower-seeded team, City SC will play the first game at CityPark, probably between Feb. 20 and 22, and then play the return game the following week in Houston.
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The round of 16 games will be played in the first two weeks of March.
If City SC can duplicate its results against Houston from the 2023 season in the Champions Cup, it would be advancing. The teams played on June 3 at CityPark, with City SC winning 3-0 with penalty kicks by Eduard Lowen and Niko Gioacchini and a goal from Tomas Ostrak. That was the third game of a three-game winning streak for City SC and completed a run where it outscored opponents 10-1. The teams met again on Sept. 16 in Houston, with Klauss scoring in the 87th minute to get City SC a 1-1 tie.
Houston finished in fourth place in the Western Conference with 51 points, five behind conference-leading City SC, and was ninth overall. Houston qualified by winning the U.S. Open Cup, beating Inter Miami 2-1 in the final, though it would have qualified even if it had lost because Inter Miami was already in as the Leagues Cup champion. Houston was among the best teams in the league at the end of the season, winning six and tying four of its final 11 games.
Coincidentally, had City SC won its first-round playoff series with Sporting Kansas City, it would have faced Houston in the Western Conference semifinals. Instead, Houston beat SKC 1-0 before losing to Los Angeles FC 2-0 in the conference final.
When City SC’s name was pulled from a pot of white balls in the draw, there were six open spots on the bracket in which it could be placed: three in Mexico — Toluca, Chivas or Tigres — and three in the United States — Houston, New England and Orlando City. When the second draw produced B6, City SC was off to face the Dynamo.
It’s the only MLS vs. MLS match in the first round of the tournament. The other MLS team in the pot with lower teams, the Vancouver Whitecaps, will face Tigres of Liga MX in the first round.
Going by the CONCACAF club rankings, it’s the tightest matchup of the first round. City SC is ranked 47th while Houston is ranked 26th. City SC is probably under-ranked in the region. The system uses results going back to 2017 in determining rankings, and City SC has had only one season to try to amass points.
Columbus, as MLS Cup champion, gets a first-round bye.
Other first-round matchups involving MLS teams, with the higher-seeded team listed first, are: Philadelphia vs. Saprissa (Costa Rica); New England vs. Independiente (Panama); Orlando City vs. Cavalry (Canada); Cincinnati vs. Cavalier (Jamaica); and Nashville vs. Moca (Dominican Repulic).
For the dreamers, City SC is in the same half of the bracket as Inter Miami, but the teams would meet only if they reached the semifinals. The first four rounds are home-and-home, which would create the remote possibility of Lionel Messi coming to ºüÀêÊÓƵ.
City SC acquires international spot
On the first day of free agency, City SC didn’t sign anyone, but it laid the foundation for doing that by acquiring an international roster spot from Nashville for $175,000 in general allocation money. Each team gets eight spots for international players each year, which right now is how many international players City SC has. (It also has two international players, Isak Jensen and Selmir Pidro, out on loan until at least the summer transfer window who don’t count against that total.) So if City SC is to acquire an international player by trade, free agency or the winter transfer market, it will need another spot, and now it has one.