Good Monday morning Caps fans, hope you all had a restful weekend and that the buzzing of your alarm clock this morning wasn’t too painful.

We are in the final week of Leagues Cup and while the Caps haven’t featured for awhile now, I think it’s a logical time to reflect on the competition’s first year and whether it was worthwhile from a fan’s perspective (everyone knows that the real reason this was trotted out was the dollars and cents).

As indicated previously, I actually have found this to be a lot of fun. We’ve gotten to see some enjoyable match-ups that we wouldn’t get to see otherwise, even in CONCACAF Champions League. The atmosphere at a lot of the games has been fun and interest from casual fans has been, somewhat surprisingly, high. None of the players have treated this like a cash grab and the fans have responded accordingly.

In part, this is naturally due to the presence of Lionel Messi, who has inspired Inter Miami to a run to the semi-finals, where they will face Philadelphia Union. In what was clearly MLS’ goal, Messi’s presence has legitimized Leagues Cup and helped give it a bit more caché, helping to reach those eyeballs who generally couldn’t tell you a single thing about MLS, much less Toluca or Juarez.

But whether the tournament will feel as refreshing next year, when the novelty won’t be as attractive, remains to be seen. The world’s greatest player won’t make his debut in your competition every year and the allure of winning might not be as strong when you aren’t the first team to claim the coveted Leagues Cup trophy (I feel like we need a fun name for it).

There also are the logistical problems with the tournament. Playing every game in the US isn’t ideal for the Liga MX teams and hampers one of the most appealing parts of the competition: comparing the two leagues top to bottom, not just the elite clubs that generally make CCL. It’s not quite a fair fight when the Mexican sides must base themselves away from home.

But fixing this would require either having only a few host cities (my preferred solution, though I doubt people in Tijuana turn out for, say, San Jose vs. Colorado), an implausible level of travel or changing the group stage format in pretty major ways. This isn’t even accounting for the fact that the Liga MX bean counters are probably perfectly happy to have all the games in the US, players be damned.

Leagues Cup may ultimately wind up being short lived or, perhaps most likely, a trial balloon for a long-term restructuring of the two leagues. That doesn’t mean we can’t get some fun in the short term: Columbus yamming on Club America or Messi’s free kick stunners come to mind. And the Caps got to show that they are closer to being competitive with CONCACAF’s best than certainly I expected, which is certainly worth something.

I guess the real Leagues Cup was the friends we made along the way.

Shameless Self Promotion

I neglected to share previously Caleb’s nice deep dive into the new Whitecaps 2 players, who will look to elevate a side that has been in free fall as of late.

Best of the Rest

In keeping with the above theme, Liga MX wants CONCACAF to review the use of VAR in Leagues Cup when everything is set and done.

A look at the best U-22 players in the league, featuring Pedro Vite.

Expectations are being set high for the new Canadian women’s soccer league.

If you’re sick of Messi in MLS content, well, I have bad news.