Just as it did recently at the Club World Cup, the Leagues Cup will now have a new format for the 2025 edition.
Since the first edition was held in 2019, the Leagues Cup has been constantly evolving to improve the spectacle and competitiveness between Liga MX and MLS in this tournament.
The duels between Liga MX and MLS will be more intense as they seek to crown a team in the Leagues Cup for this edition. Now we will be able to enjoy more matches between leagues due to the distribution and the change they made in the format, here we tell you all the new things about the tournament and the clubs participating in this edition.
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Participating teams in the 2025 Leagues Cup
One of the most significant changes to this edition of the Leagues Cup is the number of teams that will participate. The first time this tournament was played, it was with only eight teams, but in 2025 the tournament will have the presence of 36 clubs (18 from Liga MX and 18 from MLS).
In this case, all the teams in the Liga MX were considered, while for the MLS, the clubs that qualified for the MLS Cup playoffs were chosen to compete in this edition of the Leagues Cup.
The 2023 and 2024 editions of the Leagues Cup were the ones with the most participants, when all the teams from Liga MX and MLS were included to have a total of 47 clubs (San Diego did not exist) and both leagues had to stop for a month while the tournament was played.
New Leagues Cup format for 2025
On this occasion, the Leagues Cup, in addition to reducing the number of teams, will have a different format to have more matches between Liga MX and MLS and thus prevent them from being eliminated among teams from the same league.
Each team will play three matches against rivals from the other league and points will be earned (three for a win, two for a win on penalties and one for a loss on penalties) in two tables: East and West.
Subsequently, the four best teams from each conference will advance to the next round and there, the clubs will be redistributed to have as many matches as possible between Liga MX and MLS teams.
This Leagues Cup will begin on July 29 and end on August 31, although another change is that from the knockout stage (quarterfinals) the matches will be played during the week and thus not stop both leagues completely as happened in previous editions.
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