As to Costa Rica, joejoejoe, that’s the beauty of these kinds of competitions. The little guys can win it – or at least upset the big guys. Also, MLS isn’t quite in the “big guys” category yet. Yes, its true we have to play CONCACAF Champions Cup in the winter in our offseason, when our clubs are out of form. We may have surpassed the Central American clubs, but we haven’t surpassed the Mexican clubs. Not yet. I would say the fans should stop complaining about losing away games in Costa Rica, and start demanding that MLS clubs win those games. MLS clubs have shown that they can do it.

As to MLS not taking US Open Cup seriously, apart from marketing it better and getting some serious sponsorship money into it, you can also make it more important by sending the US Open Cup winner to the CONCACAF Champions Cup. Right now we can’t since we only have two slots (MLS Cup winner and MLS Supporters Shield winner), but there’s nothing keeping CONCACAF from opening up a few more slots – for example, one more slot for the US Open Cup winner, one more slot for a Canadian Cup winner (or whatever it is called by the CSA up in Canada, assuming they have an equivalent of the US Open Cup), etc.

In fact come to think of it, Canada hasn’t had any representation in CONCACAF Champions Cup recently, AFAIK, and still won’t have any unless Toronto FC steals an American slot by winning either the MLS Cup or Supporters Shield.

Seriously, Costa Rica does not need our help. Canada does. We need to help give the Canadian national team a leg up and an annual Tri-Nations series with Canada and Mexico, home and away (each playing four games in other words) would do a lot to boost the Canadian national team’s media exposure in Canada and give them some much needed time playing together as a team in meaningful competition.

If the Canadian team gets better, we have a meaningful four way race for World Cup qualifying, ie, Mexico, USA, Canada, Costa Rica. That will make things more interesting in CONCACAF. Which is a good thing.

As for the CONCACAF Champions Cup, I wasn’t being a smartass when I said fans wouldn’t be happy losing away matches in Costa Rica — Costa Rican clubs won the ‘04 and ‘05 competitions and the Houston Dynamo lost the first leg of their tie in ‘07 to a Costa Rican club this year. Sometimes the minnows are sharks.

As of right now, there are 8 teams in the CONCACAF Champions Cup. How many more would they need to form a Champions League? 12? 16? If they go to 12, then it turns into Copa America, where 8 teams get through and the losers look even worse than they are. If they go to 16, where would they pull them from? You’d have four from Mexico, four from the USA and a lot of minnows.

I’m starting to think that the made-for-TV miniseries that is SuperLiga might just be the best answer for now. There aren’t enough quality domestic leagues in CONCACAF to make the Champions Cup more intriguing.

The problem with the US Open Cup is a complete lack of marketing of the competition. That can be easily rectified. USSF should get a corporate sponsor, and work closer with MLS and USL to market it properly.

The point of an expanded CONCACAF Cup, joejoejoe, is to get more MLS and MFL teams involved, thus driving up TV ratings and ticket sales here in the USA. Lots of Mexican futbol fans here in the USA to market to. There would not be any more Central American or Caribbean teams than there are now (unless the Mexican/North American team slots were expanded by a lot more than just two or four).

I don’t see what “expanded” CONCACAF Champions’ Cup will do for US soccer. If American fans can’t get excited about the US Open Cup with a familiar open format (golf, tennis) and plenty of lovable underdogs (Lynch’s Irish Pub, Milwaukee Bavarians) then they sure aren’t going to get excited about MLS teams losing away matches to Costa Rican pro teams.

As for Tri-Nations, sure, why not. It would however be just another cup championship though, in addition to the Gold Cup, Copa America, Confederations Cup, etc. It would be more meaningful than just friendlies.

One thing which soccer has lost, which rugby and cricket have retained, is the concept of the Test Match. That’s probably because soccer very early on developed international competitions (Copa America, World Cup, the British Home Championship, various European cups that predated the European Cup, etc), and these international competitions negated the concept of the Test Match. So in soccer now you’re either in a cup match, or qualifying for one, or else it’s a friendly.

BTW, some kind of Tri- or Four-Nations competition would be good for USA Rugby too. Who to play, besides Canada? Argentina and Uruguay are in the Americas, but are far away (and Argentina is an order of magnitude better than the USA in rugby anyway). Japan and Korea are closer, and more in our league.