Concacaf Champions League

Mexico opened play in the Concacaf Nations League with an easy 5-1 road win over Bermuda on Friday night. 

Well, it was mostly easy.

Chucky Lozano was the victim of an incidental punch to the face from the referee, an intentional stomp from an opponent and sliced a penalty kick off the post and wide. But the Napoli winger persevered to record a goal and two assists.

Mexico vs Bermuda Highlights

Early in the match, Lozano was getting up from a foul when the referee inadvertently smacked the Mexican in the face.

France? Naw. England? Pshh. Brazil? As if. 

Want a favorite for the 2022 World Cup? Look no further than the United States men’s national team after it throttled Cuba 7-0 on Friday night. 

Any team that can score four goals in 13 minutes against the 178th-ranked team in the world has to be the frontrunner for the 2022 World Cup. That 3-0 loss to Mexico last month? That was just a meaningless friendly, nothing compared to the intense rigor of a Concacaf Nations League match. 

Sergiño Dest, an 18-year-old Ajax fullback, is one of the brightest young players in the USMNT pool. But he might not be in the pool for long.

Dest has opted not to join Gregg Berhalter’s team for upcoming Concacaf Nations League matches, which would cap-tie the Dutch-American to the USMNT. 

Sergiño Dest turns down USMNT roster call-up - The Washington Post https://t.co/uIs0xSy0Qp

Cuba’s national team left Toronto on Saturday having not only lost its opening Nations League match to Canada 6-0, but having lost five of its players permanently.

| #MLS | [La Presse][French]Five Cuban players defect after the loss to Canada https://t.co/gAMGPcwFC5

Being a national team coach in a landscape where you rarely get to see your players must be difficult, and Costa Rica manager Gustavo Matosas has said to hell with it after less than one year in charge.

Matosas, the head coach, said that he gets bored with the amount of downtime he has compared to the amount of time he actually has to train and work with his players. He felt “unproductive” with so much down time, even though he spends loads of it studying film so that he is prepared to get the most out of the little time he has with his players.

The Jamaica women’s national team has announced that it will refuse to play until it receives the compensation that the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) owes them.

Jamaica's women's national soccer team made the #FIFAWWC for the first time ever in 2019.

They apparently were never paid for their effort, and now they're refusing to play or train. https://t.co/BHkfZO09Pt

Last night in Atlanta, Minnesota United became a truly Minnesotan franchise. It’s got to mean more than an expansion love-in and a celebration of soccer stadia specificity — it’s got to hurt, and Tuesday had that Sisyphean quality that encapsulates everything Minnesota teams try their hand at.

The USMNT’s debut fixture in the Concacaf Nations League has finally been announced.

"Events DC is honored for DC to host the U.S. Soccer Men’s National Team vs. Cuba in the first-ever CONCACAF Nations League competition..." @EventsDCPrez

Jack Warner, the former Trinidad and Tobago soccer official, has been ordered to pay $79 million in damages for his role in negotiating and accepting bribes and kickbacks over his years as a FIFA vice president and Concacaf president.

The ruling came Tuesday from a New York court, with U.S. District Judge William Kuntz writing the ruling after Warner failed to show up to fight the charge, the Associated Press reported. 

Concacaf announced the redesigned qualifiers for the 2022 World Cup on Wednesday. The Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football has made it even simpler for the two heavyweights in the region — Mexico and the United States — to qualify for the 2022 tournament in Qatar.