No Major League Soccer team has ever won a Concacaf Champions League, a reality Portland Timbers head coach Giovanni Savarese faced head-on in his Tuesday press conference. Roughly 30 hours before his team kicked off its CCL quarterfinal matchup with Mexico’s Club América, Savarese acknowledged his team was playing for more than his club’s potential reward.
“We see this as a match [where] we are not only representing the Portland Timbers,” Savarese said. “We're representing Major League Soccer and U.S. soccer.”
This is the context whenever Major League Soccer’s teams face Mexico’s best in CCL. Two times in the last three years (and four times, overall), MLS teams have made a Champions League final only to be thwarted by Liga MX opposition.