‘Everybody wants to win’ — Players embrace MLS vs. Liga MX rivalry at All-Star Game

BLAINE, Minn. — Fans can argue all they want about whether an All-Star Game is a real competition. But if the players want to win, the rest is bound to take care of itself.

When the ball rolls for Wednesday’s match between the stars of Major League Soccer and Liga MX, kicking off at 7:48 p.m. CT on ESPN from Allianz Field in Minnesota, the players will want to win. The reasons why are varied, but most of them are genuine.

And especially for the MLS players with Mexican ties, seeing these two leagues pitted against one another unlocks a level of passion that fans of individual clubs may struggle to muster around an event that’s so thick with marketing messaging. 

Javier ‘Chicharito’ Hernández is arguably the greatest star here. At Monday's press conference previewing the event, the Galaxy striker characterized the experience of captaining MLS against Liga MX — a league he recognizes as having “helped [him] to open the big doors” to Europe — to be, in a word, “surreal.”

And on the other side, Liga MX players are under somewhat of a microscope. That league, and its long-held superiority over baby brother MLS, is under threat. MLS won last year’s All-Star Game, the first edition against Liga MX, in penalties. And in May, the Seattle Sounders became the first MLS club to win the Concacaf Champions League over Pumas after 16 consecutive Mexican teams won that tournament.

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“From my point of view, I see it as a game to enjoy, a game to give a lot of fans a spectacle,” said Chivas and Mexico national team winger Alexis Vega. “After that, looking at ‘maximum tournaments’ in which MLS has been able to face the Mexican league, I think in an official tournament I do see that as a parameter to see what both leagues have done. Meanwhile, I think this game is to enjoy, as I said, with a lot of responsibility and for everyone to give their best.”

Imagine how questions like that must sound to someone like LA Galaxy and Mexico national team right back Julián Araujo, who grew up in Southern California watching Liga MX with his uncles, all of whom pull for different Liga MX clubs.

“I don't know who they're gonna cheer (for),” the 20-year-old Araujo said about Wednesday’s match. 

He wouldn’t say which Liga MX club had his heart as a boy. And as reports and rumors swirl that Araujo could be on his way out of MLS, either to FC Porto in Portugal or Club América in Mexico, beating the Liga MX All-Stars would be a heck of a way to earn long-term bragging rights.

“Everybody wants to win,” said Araujo, making his second All-Star appearance. “We're MLS, they’re Liga MX. It’s bragging rights. We want to win. It was an intense game last year, and I’m sure everybody’s seen what it brought. I don't think I need to say much to a lot of people because they know what they're coming to do.”

The 2021 All-Star Game was rich with compelling moments, from Jorge Sanchez’s overhead clearance of a Diego Rossi chance, to Jonathan Rodriguez putting Liga MX ahead in the first half and, of course, golden boy Ricardo Pepi scoring the winning penalty kick on the day it was revealed he had chosen to represent the United States over Mexico.

“The most important thing is the reason these guys are where they are is because that's their nature,” said Minnesota United coach Adrian Heath, who’s managing the MLS squad. “I guarantee you they’ve had that competitive nature since they started playing the game. That's why they made the careers that they've made.

Liga MX coach Diego Cocca, the manager of two-time defending champion Atlas FC, echoed those sentiments.

“I think that when they enter the field, all players want to win,” Cocca said. “And they’re going to try to do so with maximum force.”

The job of Heath and Cocca will be to make sure to balance the bevy of attacking talent that an All-Star team presents with the handful of defensive stalwarts who were selected. Perhaps nobody knows that delicate balance better than Los Angeles FC midfielder Ilie Sánchez and left back Diego Palacios, who were selected for their work carrying the piano for the Supporters’ Shield leaders.

“We know our roles within our teams in LA.,” Sánchez said. “But we also know that we're gonna have to bring the same that we're doing with our team to the All-Star team because obviously we have a lot of quality on top. And that's what we want, because they're gonna be the ones winning the game, but we are gonna work to make the job easier and to try to keep the balance within the squad.”

For a night, rivals (of various club teams) will become friends — and friends (of various national teams, especially Mexico) will become rivals.

And certainly the other marketing components of this league vs. league showcase matter, too. It just makes sense for MLS and Liga MX to continue joining forces, as they will next summer for a full month during the expanded Leagues Cup. Even if the majority of fans from both leagues aren’t asking for it, this is the way of the future.

And that brings us to the impassioned plea of Chicharito, for fans of Mexican soccer in the United States to watch matches like this with fresh eyes, with acceptance that MLS is catching up with Liga MX, and that’s not all bad.

“Growth is something that takes time. It takes time to develop and it takes time as well to accept in the minds of a lot of people,” he said. “That's evolution, that's part of life that a lot of things are evolving. You need to adapt and you need to accept that competition is something that makes you better. You don’t need to feel threatened by it. We’ve always been neighbors.”

The same can be said of soccer fans in the United States who have long dismissed both leagues in favor of the European game. On Wednesday, the greatest spectacle in the world’s game will be taking place in the Northland.

“Liga MX has so many things that we need to praise, and it’s the same with MLS,” Chicarito said. “These types of events are going to help us both keep growing.”