The Liga MX Season

In recent years, it seemed like Mexico’s Liga MX clubs weren’t all that interested in US soccer players. That changed quickly, with several USMNT players either moving to Liga MX or getting more opportunities with their clubs. In December 2024 that led to an Apertura finals showdown between two of Mexico’s biggest clubs, both with Americans in the lineup.

Liga MX is an 18-club league playing what is the standard two seasons model in Central and South America. That model means playing over parts of two calendar years divided between a fall season, the Apertura, and the spring season, Clausura. As the names suggest, rather than counting two seasons in one calendar year, the Apertura is the opening season, and the Clausura is the closing season. Given the short calendar for each season, teams play each other once for 17 regular season games.

Liga MX is a playoff league, with ten of the 18 teams advancing to the liguilla at the end of each season. The teams finishing 7th through 10th enter a play-in round, with 1st through 6th waiting in the quarterfinals. The play-in round is single elimination with ties decided by penalties but with the twist of the loser of the 7th vs 8th-place play-in game playing the winner of the 9th vs. 10th-place game to determine the 8th-seed. The winner of the 7th vs 8th-place game advances as the 7th-seed. The remaining rounds of the playoffs are home-and-away.

Another characteristic of the Liga MX system, when compared to MLS and Europe, is their use of the coefficient table. Simply put, Liga MX employs a fine system for poor performance. The teams finishing in the top four aren’t fined. The rest of the table is, to varying degrees, with the teams at the bottom paying the most. That can be $80m pesos or more, the equivalent of almost $4m US dollars. The money is used to support soccer in the lower divisions.

What Liga MX doesn’t currently have is relegation and promotion. When their version of promotion and relegation was active, it wasn’t straightforward at the end of a season. Instead, it depended on performance over several seasons for a club to drop to the lower division.

Liga MX combines the points from the Apertura and the Clausura to determine their entries into the Concacaf Champions Cup. Due to the timing of the Leagues Cup, Liga MX uses the combined calendar year Clausura and Apertura tables to determine who plays in the Leagues Cup. The winner of the Apertura plays the winner of the Clausura in the Campeon de Campeones. That winner plays the MLS Cup champion in the Campeones Cup.

USMNT players currently in Liga MX