The 2025 Leagues Cup will undergo a significant format change, effectively following a plan Sounder at Heart first laid out over a month ago. Although the term “Swiss” is not used in the announcement, the new format does broadly mimic systems used in the UEFA Champions League and Europa League competitions, with MLS and Liga MX teams facing off against teams exclusively from the other league. Each team will play three games in Phase One with the top four teams from each league advancing to the Knockout stage that starts with the quarterfinals.
For Phase One, the 18 teams from each league are evenly divided into Eastern and Western groups, and then placed in one of three tiers based on last year’s standings. Teams will be matched up against one team from each tier from the opposite league. Exact matchups will be determined at a later date, but the Western MLS teams will play one of Cruz Azul, Tigres and Club America; one of Atletico San Luis, Tijuana and Pachuca; and one of Querétaro, Mazatlán and Santos Laguna. As was the case in previous Leagues Cups, all matches will be played at MLS venues.
All points earned during Phase One will count toward the standings for each league regardless of which tier teams are placed in. The top four teams from each league will then advance to the quarterfinals and be matched against the teams from the other league, with MLS 1 facing Liga MX 4 and so on. The semifinals will simply follow the bracket with no reseeding.
The finalists and winner of the third-place game will once again earn spots in the Concacaf Champions Cup. Also similar to previous iterations, ties will be settled in a shootout.
The upshot to all of this is that the Sounders now officially have 42 competitive matches on their 2025 schedule, even without advancing in any of their competitions.
