How to watch FC Cincinnati vs Chivas Guadalajara in Leagues Cup

Cincinnati

01 January 0001

The 2023 Leagues Cup match at TQL Stadium Thursday will be an encounter of best-versus-best. As in, the best Major League Soccer has to offer at the moment versus the best of Liga MX, the Mexican top-flight.

FC Cincinnati, the frontrunner in MLS by a significant margin, will host on Thursday at TQL Stadium Club Deportivo Guadalajara, a postseason runner-up last season and the early leader in the fledgling 2023 Liga MX campaign.

Guadalajara, or "Chivas" for short, will play FCC in the second of three group-stage matches for the Leagues Cup "Central 3" group. The top two teams of the three in Central 3 will advance to the knockout rounds, and Cincinnati can clinch its progression with a victory.

Combine the stakes of the game with the fact that few soccer clubs in the Western Hemisphere are bigger in their reach and on-field successes than Guadalajara, plus FC Cincinnati is increasingly one of the more ambitious clubs in MLS, and the resulting match has the potential to be a true spectacle.

"I don't know if they're the best yet but I know that we are in our league," FC Cincinnati captain Luciano Acosta said during a Wednesday interview. "They're having a great start to the season and Liga MX is very hard, but I can't say that they're the best because I played at (rival) Atlas. A lot of time remains to see how their season will go but it will be a good game. We'll enjoy the show. The fans will have a good time."

Chvias brings to Cincinnati more than a century of soccer heritage, and likely more than a handful of noisy supporters, but the aura of Chivas doesn't threaten FC Cincinnati.

During interviews in the days leading up to the match, FCC rightfully projected confidence about its current standing in the league and how that could translate to Thursday's match.

"We're working for us. We don't think about another team," FC Cincinnati forward Aaron Boupendza said Sunday following FCC's Leagues Cup opener. "All the games are important. It's not because (they're) a big team. Cincinnati also is a big team here. So, we're not worried about Chivas. We're working toward a win."

Coming off Sunday's come-from-behind, penalty-shootout win against Sporting Kansas City to begin its Leagues Cup, that attitude should serve FC Cincinnati well against one of the continent's more imposing clubs.

A win against Chivas would be worth the usual three points and guarantee FC Cincinnati (0-0-1, two points) the top spot in Central 3. A shootout win worth two points − a unique quirk to Leagues Cup, which doesn't have extra time as part of its format − would give FCC four points in group play and put the club in solid standing.

But short of some variety of win on Thursday, and especially in the event of an outright loss in the 90 minutes, Cincinnati will have to sweat out its knockout-round status Monday when Chivas meets Sporting Kansas City to determine the fate of all three clubs.

"We could do all the numbers. If we win a game, in our second game, we're at the top of the group," FC Cincinnati head coach Pat Noonan said Sunday. "So, that's the math that I know. I try not to figure out the rest, because if we take care of business in our second game, we'll be the top of the group. So, that's the goal.”

Reintroduce yourself to Guadalajara of 'los cuatro grandes'

FC Cincinnati and Guadalajara first became acquainted with one another during the 2022 Leagues Cup Showcase matches, which were a series of MLS-versus-Liga MX friendlies designed to whet fans' appetite for the expanded 2023 tournament.

Cincinnati won the match handily, 3-1. But if the 2023 Leagues Cup has shown us anything, it's that previous iterations of the competition shouldn't be used to project what happens this year.

With seemingly all clubs involved from both leagues taking the competition seriously, Chivas doesn't seem likely to be an exception to that rule. And that's saying something because the club's most recent results point to it being a title contender.

The Mexican league season is split into two halves: The Apertura, which runs July through December, and the Clausara, which runs from January to May. Last season, Chivas qualified for the playoffs via ninth-place finish in the Apertura.

In the Clausara, Chivas finished in third and advanced to the championship round where it lost, 3-2, on aggregate to Tigres UANL. But the club picked up where it left off and has started the new Apertura with a league-leading 3-0-0 record.

Chivas is outscoring opponents 7-2 in its three wins. That's what you expect from one of Mexico's "los cuatro grandes," or "big four" clubs.

Guadalajara is considered one of the Mexican heavyweights alongside Club America, Cruz Azul and Tigres. Club America is considered by many to be one of the most successful Mexican clubs with 13 league titles and two CONCACAF Champions League triumphs, but Guadalajara is also in that conversation with its 12 league titles and a Champions League triumph in 2017-18.

Chivas features five senior Mexican national team players, the most capped of which is winger Roberto Alvarado, a veteran of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar and the recently-concluded CONCACAF Gold Cup won by Mexico.

Alexis Vega played just under 200 minutes at the Qatar World Cup and Érick Gutiérrez was a veteran of the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia.

Seventeen-year-old Yael Padilla is a Mexican youth international and is Chivas' joint-leading scorer in the young Apertura season alongside Fernando Beltran (two goals ).

A familiar face returns to Cincinnati

Chivas manager Veljko Paunović knows well the perils presented by playing against FC Cincinnati, and in the Queen City. Play in cup competition has been especially cruel to Paunović against FC Cincinnati.

Paunović is winless in three previous matches against FC Cincinnati (0-2-1). During the 2019 season when he managed Chicago Fire, FCC beat Paunović's side, 2-1, and later played to a scoreless draw at the University of Cincinnati's Nippert Stadium on Sept. 22, 2019.

Paunović was also in charge of the Fire when they memorably fell to FC Cincinnati during FCC's 2017 U.S. Open Cup run to the semifinal round of the competition. FCC dispatched the Fire in a penalty-kick shootout at Nippert in what was arguably the most famous match in Cincinnati's history.

"I know maybe in Chicago, it wasn't always perfect, but he obviously has this (Chivas) group working in a good direction and playing in a really good way," Noonan said Wednesday. "But he knows this league (MLS). So what I've said to our guys is, you have a coach on the other side that is going to understand how to message to his player, what this game is going to look like − with the travel, with accommodations, all of it. He knows. He's experienced it. Som he will have their group ready."