With Forge FC and Cavalry FC both taking on Liga MX opponents in the Concacaf Champions Cup this week, the rich history between teams from Canada and Mexico will expand even further.
Forge’s match against CF Monterrey and Cavalry’s clash with Pumas UNAM will be the 41st and 42nd matchups between Canadian and Mexican clubs in the history of Concacaf competitions.
In those 40 prior meetings — a catalogue that goes as far back as 1975 — Mexico does have the edge; they’ve won 21 matches, while Canadian sides have taken seven, and they’ve drawn 12.
The history isn’t quite as lopsided as it may seem, however; Canadian teams have a 5-7-6 record against Liga MX in Concacaf games played on Canadian soil. Mexican teams have found themselves knocked out of this tournament by Canadian opponents on five occasions.
And although we’re focused here on the men’s tournament, serious recognition is due to the Vancouver Whitecaps Girls’ Elite team who last year became the first Canadian team to play in the Concacaf W Champions Cup. They qualified for the group stage through the preliminary round and went on to play some of the region’s top women’s sides. Although the Whitecaps were beaten soundly by Mexican side Club América, they nonetheless deserve credit for taking those first Canadian steps in the women’s game.
As Forge and Cavalry prepare to add the next chapter in this history, it’s worth looking back at some of the more memorable moments between Canadian and Mexican clubs on the Concacaf stage.
Rough beginnings: Serbian White Eagles make scrappy first impression
The first ever competitive meeting between a Canadian and Mexican club came in the 1975 Concacaf Champions Cup. National Soccer League champions Serbian White Eagles were the first team from Canada ever to enter the tournament, and they were matched up in the first round of the North American zone with CF Monterrey.
It was… perhaps not a graceful introduction to the continental stage for the Canadian side. That said, they lost the first leg 2-0 down in Monterrey in a fairly close game, keeping it within a goal until after the 90th minute.
The second leg, however, is where things got spicier. In a matchup at Toronto’s old Exhibition Stadium, Monterrey scored in just the sixth minute. The Eagles did equalize before halftime, making it 3-1 on aggregate courtesy of Yugoslavia-born midfielder Miroslav Vardić.
Things got out of hand in the second half, though. According to a report in the Associated Press, Eagles player Dragi Denkovski and Monterrey’s Gustavo Peña began to hack at each other in a confrontation that escalated into a full-on fight. The on-field hostility boiled over into the crowd, as an estimated 100 spectators invaded the pitch, some wielding steel chairs, in what the Canadian Press called a near-riot. With over 50 police officers called to the scene to calm the situation, the referee abandoned the match in the 67th minute, and Monterrey won the tie on aggregate.
The Eagles received a suspension from the NSL for the rest of their season, while Monterrey would lose their next Concacaf tie to fellow Mexican side Atlético Español, who would win that year’s tournament.
In the following year’s competition, two Canadian sides — Serbian White Eagles and Toronto Italia — would enter, but both sides ultimately withdrew before they could take on Mexican opponents, despite having been drawn against León and Toluca.
No Canadian team would play in the Concacaf Champions Cup again until the 2008-09 tournament, when the Montreal Impact qualified as Canadian Championship winners.
Montreal take on giants as USL underdogs
The 2008 Canadian Championship was the first one to offer a spot in the premier Concacaf competition — at the time, rebranded to be known as the Concacaf Champions League.
The Montreal Impact (today known as CF Montreal) claimed that trophy, triumphing over newly-formed Major League Soccer club Toronto FC despite themselves playing a division below in the USL.
So, Montreal entered the 2008-09 Champions League, needing to beat Nicaraguan side Real Estelí in a preliminary round before advancing to the group stage. Their Group C draw saw them match up against Olimpia of Honduras and Joe Public of Trinidad and Tobago, as well as — at the time — recent Mexican champions Atlante.
Astonishingly, the Impact went unbeaten against Olimpia and Joe Public, and managed to hold Atlante to a 0-0 draw at Stade Saputo before a narrow 2-1 loss in Cancún — still enough to finish second and qualify for the knockout round.
Their reward for advancing? A quarter-final matchup with another recent Mexican champion, Santos Laguna.
The first leg saw 55,000 people pack Montreal’s Olympic Stadium to watch as, for the first time ever, a Canadian team beat a Mexican one over 90 minutes. Eduardo Sebrango scored twice and the Impact took a 2-0 lead on aggregate.
Unfortunately, the second leg was a heartbreaker. Although Montreal scored twice more in the first half down at the Estadio Corona, making it 4-1 on aggregate at halftime, Santos came out of the gates flying in the second half.
As the clock ticked past 90 minutes, Montreal still had a 4-3 lead on aggregate. Two minutes into stoppage time, though, Darwin Quintero scored — but the Impact still had the edge on away goals. Moments before the final whistle, however, Quintero scored again, as Montreal’s tournament ended in shock and disbelief.
Quintero is something of a recurring villain in matchups between Canada and Liga MX. In 2012, he played for Santos in a semi-final against Toronto FC and was sent off at the end of leg one for a confrontation with Ashtone Morgan. The following year, when TFC and Santos met again, Quintero scored a goal that helped eliminate Toronto in the group stage.
That’s not to mention the five goals he scored in two games against TFC for Minnesota United in MLS, nor the role he would play to haunt Montreal one more time in 2015…
Heartbreak at the Stade Olympique as Montreal go to the final
Montreal continued the tradition of strong Canadian showings in the Concacaf Champions Cup in the 2014-15 edition, when they made their third appearance in the tournament.
Although their 2014 campaign in MLS was underwhelming — in fact, they finished last in the entire league — they managed to get through the Concacaf group stage ahead of New York Red Bulls and Salvadoran club FAS.
It was a very different Montreal team that entered the knockout stage the following spring, though. They’d made some serious roster changes — adding the likes of Igancio Piatti, Laurent Ciman and Dominic Oduro, among several others — and they approached the quarter-final tie with Liga MX side Pachuca with a vengeance.
The Impact were resilient in that matchup; they took a 2-0 lead away from home in the first leg at Pachuca’s Estadio Hidalgo, but let that lead slip as they returned home with the score 2-2 on aggregate — but two valuable away goals in hand.
Then came some heroics. Although Pachuca scored an 83rd-minute goal at the Olympic Stadium that seemed to seal Montreal’s elimination, Cameron Porter came through in the 93rd minute with an equalizer that shocked the Mexicans and won the tie for the Impact on away goals.
After they dispatched Costa Rican side Alajuelense in the semi-finals, also by a narrow margin on away goals, Montreal found themselves face-to-face with Club América in the Concacaf Champions League final. They were just the second MLS team ever to get that far in the tournament’s Champions League era, and they were hoping to become the first to win it.
Montreal did enough to impress their foes at the Estadio Azteca in leg one, as Piatti’s early goal secured a 1-1 draw, giving the Canadians plenty of hope to head home with.
As 61,000 fans again packed the Olympic Stadium, the crowd nearly blew the roof off just eight minutes in when Andrés Romero scored to put Montreal up 2-1 on aggregate. Could this Impact team, not far removed from a wooden spoon campaign in MLS, really win the entire Concacaf Champions League?
Even at halftime, Montreal still had the lead. That, however, is where the wheels came off. América’s Darío Benedetto scored a second-half hat-trick, and Oribe Peralta added one of his own — two of those goals courtesy of Darwin Quintero assists — and the Mexicans ran away with the title, winning the match 4-2 and the tie 5-3 on aggregate.
It was quite the disappointment for Impact fans, who for a moment could taste Champions League glory. Still, they had proven to the whole continent that Canadian teams have what it takes to compete on this stage.
Toronto FC knock off two Mexican giants, fall short in final
Perhaps the most legendary chapter of Canadian teams’ campaigns in Mexico, Toronto FC’s run to the 2018 final is arguably the most impressive — but most heartbreaking — of them all.
The Reds came into the 2018 Concacaf Champions League brimming with confidence, having won a treble the year prior with the Canadian Championship, Supporters’ Shield and MLS Cup. After a change in format meant there would no longer be a group stage, and that MLS teams would have to begin their campaigns before their regular season started, TFC still had their work cut out for them, but they figured they could nonetheless have the best chance in years for an MLS team to win the whole thing.
The path to get there would not be straightforward, though. If they could beat the Colorado Rapids in round one, they’d be faced with the likely prospect of three consecutive Mexican opponents.
They did defeat Colorado in a freezing cold round of 16 tie, which got TFC the chance to play Tigres in the quarter-finals. Arguably the best team in Mexico, Tigres — led by the likes of Andre-Pierre Gignac and Eduardo Vargas — had won back-to-back Mexican league titles, and had been to each of the prior two Concacaf Champions League finals, but they wanted to cement their superiority by finally winning the tournament.
Despite Vargas putting Tigres up 1-0 at BMO Field, TFC would equalize via Jozy Altidore, and then — in a moment of brilliance — take the lead via Jonathan Osorio’s 89th-minute backheel. Though they brought a lead down to Monterrey with them, TFC did not have an easy night in leg two; they scored first, and after a brief scare from another Vargas goal, Sebastian Giovinco silenced El Volcan with an outrageous free kick — something of a trademark of his by this point.
Confidence boosted by eliminating Mexico’s best team, and proving to pundits across North America that the top side in MLS was a match for the best of Liga MX, TFC set their sights on Mexico’s historically most successful team: seven-time Concacaf champions, Club América.
Again, TFC were the better side on a chilly night at BMO Field, this time taking the lead early through a Giovinco penalty, as Altidore and Ashtone Morgan went on to score for a 3-1 win. This game remains more memorable, perhaps, for its off-field antics, including a halftime confrontation that saw at least one bloodied nose as well as a wild accusation from América coach Miguel Herrera.
The result was enough for TFC, who went down to the Azteca and scored early to ride comfortably to a 1-1 draw and a 4-2 aggregate win, setting up one last Mexican clash.
Chivas fans travelled in numbers from Guadalajara to Toronto to see their club try to win its first Concacaf title since 1962. They were treated to a first-leg victory that, by this point, was a bit of a surprise, considering how TFC had dominated two ostensibly stronger Mexican teams in prior rounds. However, Chivas’ man-marking and defensive structure made things difficult for TFC, who found themselves down 2-1 after conceding in the second and 72nd minutes.
Needing a miracle down in Guadalajara if they were to win the final, TFC nearly got one. Conceding the first goal did little to dampen their spirits, as Altidore responded in short order and Giovinco scored before halftime to make it 3-3 on aggregate.
With a penalty shootout looming, Toronto threw all they could at the Chivas goal, and nearly found it a couple of times — Marky Delgado in particular will forever be haunted by a close-range shot he missed.
So, to a shootout they went, and the rest is history. Osorio and Michael Bradley missed from the spot, and TFC’s dreams were crushed.
Looking back, that run was one for the ages — six high-pressure games against the best that Mexico had to offer, with a host of injuries (especially at the back) causing a litany of selection headaches for Toronto, and yet they still came so close to the trophy.
Forge FC introduce themselves to Mexico
Before the new Champions Cup format, and before two Canadian Premier League teams got automatic spots in the top Concacaf tournament, Forge FC found their way in the hard way.
After competing in the now-defunct Concacaf League for three years, Forge had their ambition focused on qualifying for the Champions League, which they could do by getting to the semi-finals of the lower-level Concacaf tournament.
They came incredibly close in 2020 despite not playing any home games, losing a quarter-final on penalties to Arcahaie before falling in a play-in round against Marathón that would also have got them into the CCL. The following year, however, Forge did finally made their way into the final four, memorably beating Costa Rican side Santos de Guápiles in the quarters by reversing a 3-1 aggregate deficit from the first leg.
Although they lost the semi-final tie to Motagua on away goals, Forge had achieved their main goal of qualifying for the 2022 Concacaf Champions League.
They were not given an easy debut in the tournament, either. Forge got matched up against Cruz Azul, which meant a clash with a strong Mexican side and a trip to the Estadio Azteca.
The most impressive part of Forge’s battle with Cruz Azul may have been their first-leg performance in Hamilton. They went toe-to-toe with the Liga MX side for 90 minutes, and although they did concede once in the 30th minute — a frustratingly-handled free kick from distance — they threatened repeatedly and held their opponents otherwise silent.
Marching into the lions’ den in the second leg, Forge’s resolve did ultimately break and Cruz Azul ran away with the tie, winning it 4-1 on aggregate, but Forge’s first foray into Mexico was far from embarrassing; indeed, for a club starting just its fourth year of existence, with a budget a fraction of Cruz Azul’s, they did remarkably well.
David Choinière is in the history books now as the first player to score for a Canadian Premier League team in the Champions Cup, and he did so at such a storied venue as the Azteca.
With Forge and Cavalry now slated to take on more Mexican opposition, could they possibly add another keystone moment in the history of Canadian-Mexican matchups? Or could the Vancouver Whitecaps go deep in the tournament and bank a win of their own over a Liga MX foe?
The Concacaf Champions Cup kicks off on Tuesday, Feb. 4. For all of CanPL.ca’s coverage, click here.
