Thursday, May 30, 2013

CONCACAF Champions League Draw is Monday

Sporting Kansas City kicked off it's US Open Cup defense on Tuesday, and this coming Monday they'll find out their reward for winning the 2012 Cup.  Monday, June 3rd is the date of the draw for the 2013-2014 CONCACAF Champions League.  The tournament itself will kick off some time August and will see Sporting grouped with 2 other teams.  They'll play a home and away match against each of the two other teams in their group. 

Sporting KC will be placed in Pot B for selection along with 7 other teams.  KC will be draw with a team from Pot A and Pot C.  Pot B and Pot A will both be split into two sub pots.  In one sub pot, will be all US and Mexican teams.  In the other sub pot will be the other regional teams in those pots.  The reason for this is because US teams cannot be draw against teams from their country or Mexican league teams (this part is to attempt to get a quarterfinal of 4 Mexican and 4 US based teams). 

So who can Sporting be grouped with?

From Pot A Sporting could be grouped with Herediano from Costa Rica, Olimpia from Honduras, Communicaciones from Guatemala, or Arabe Unido from Panama.

From Pot C, Sporting can be grouped with any of the 8 teams. Sporting San Miguelito from Panama, Luis Angel Firpo from El Salvador, Real Esteli from Nicaragua, W Connection, or Caledonia AIA both from Trinidad, Valencia from Haiti, Cartagines from Costa Rica (replaces Belize representative because they do not have a stadium that meets CONCACAF's minimum standards), or the 2nd Guatemala team (which will either be the Clausura winner or Heredia if Communicaciones wins).

From a quick glance, and only knowing a little about many of these teams, the best draw for KC would likely be Arabe Unido of Panama and Valencia from Haiti, although Real Esteli wouldn't be a horrible draw either.  Drawing W Connection would see Sporting face off against former teammate, Daneil Cyrus, and the team the Wizards knocked out in the 2002 version of the tournament when it was still the Champions Cup.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Can we follow this on line or on TV?