The State of the Superliga at the Semifinals

By: Bob | August 14th, 2007

The grand experiment known as the Superliga has reached the semifinals stage, which seems like as good of a time as any to take stock of what we have seen from the competition thus far. The tournament, featuring four teams from Mexico’s top league and four teams from MLS, is new this year, and as one would expect it is still trying to develop an identity and garner a little attention.

The play on the pitch has been all over the map. There was the crazy 11-goal game between the LA Galaxy and FC Dallas, and there have been a few games where both sides seemed like they would rather have been at home catching up on summer reruns. Some fans apparently have chosen to do the same. Attendance has ranged from over 20,000 at the Home Depot Center in LA and under 8,000 at Pizza Hut Park in Dallas (odd how the official site doesn’t list the attendance for all games). In general the numbers haven’t been bad for midweek games, but clearly it isn’t enough for the competition to roll out teams from Mexico and expect full stadiums.

As far as the score sheet goes, there are 3 MLS teams and one Mexican team left in the semifinals. In head-to-head competition with the neighbors to the south, MLS teams won 3 times, lost once and drew four times. In other words, MLS has had a slight edge, which one could expect considering its teams are in the middle of their season and the Mexican teams are just starting their campaigns. Who knows how seriously the Mexican teams took things?

And therein lies the biggest challenge for a new competition. How do you convince teams and fans that it really matters? You can dangle a $1 million prize in front of the winning team, but is that enough to get the Mexican teams to train harder and earlier for the competition? Is it enough to have MLS teams save some of their players during league games so that they are ready to go for the Superliga?

At this point I think it is premature to tout the Superliga’s success or its failure. That will be decided in future years by the quality of play on display and the level of fan interest exhibited.

What are your thoughts on the Superliga thus far? Has it captured your attention or have you ignored it?