The CONCACAF Champions League (Spanish: Concacaf Liga Campeones; French: Ligue des champions de la CONCACAF) is the annual international club football championship for teams from the CONCACAF region (North America, Central America, and the Caribbean). The winner of the CONCACAF Champions League qualifies for the FIFA Club World Cup.
Prior to 2008, the top-level competition for CONCACAF club teams was the CONCACAF Champions' Cup, sometimes called simply the Champions' Cup. The tournament was played in a variety of formats over the years. In 2008, CONCACAF announced a change in both name and format, inviting twenty-four teams to participate in a preliminary round, group stage, and knockout tournament called the CONCACAF Champions' League.
Between 2008–09 and 2011–12, the tournament was played as a twenty-four team tournament with a preliminary round, followed by a sixteen-team group stage (four groups of four), followed by an eight-team home-and-away single-elimination tournament. In early 2012, CONCACAF announced a new format for the 2012–2013 CONCACAF Champions' League. Under the new format, the preliminary round would be eliminated, and group play would consist of eight groups of three teams each, with each group winner advancing to the quarterfinals.
The title has been won by 27 different clubs, 11 of which have won the title more than once. The all-time record-holders are Cruz Azul and América, who have won the competition five times each. Mexico's Primera División is, by far, the most successful league, amassing 27 wins in the tournament. Until 2011, when Major League Soccer team Real Salt Lake reached the finals, each CONCACAF Champions League final had been an all-Mexican affair. The Mexican Primera División also holds the record for most appearances in the final of both the Champions Cup and Champions League as well as the highest number of winning clubs.
In the Champions' Cup era, the second most successful league has been Costa Rica's Primera División, while in the Champions League era, the second most successful league has been the United States and Canada's Major League Soccer.
Read more about CONCACAF Champions League: Qualifying, Format, Finals
Famous quotes containing the words champions and/or league:
“Myths and legends die hard in America. We love them for the extra dimension they provide, the illusion of near-infinite possibility to erase the narrow confines of most men’s reality. Weird heroes and mould-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of “the rat race” is not yet final.”
—Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939)
“Stereotypes fall in the face of humanity. You toodle along, thinking that all gay men wear leather after dark and should never, ever be permitted around a Little League field. And then one day your best friend from college, the one your kids adore, comes out to you.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)