Football General Manager
Thomas Mayo’s closest flirtation with glory, as an athlete at least, came in 2002. He was a 1,500-meter runner for team Great Britain in the 2002 Commonwealth Games. The final started well, Mayo positioned well in the race. But he faded late, and settled for eighth place – the highest position he would reach in a major competition.
But back then, that didn’t really matter. It was about the knock on effect.
“The week after, every gym, every running track, every swimming pool was packed with people that wanted to play, participate, umpire, help, support, volunteer,” he recalled.
He may not have won that race, but the impact was worth it. Great Britain would go on to host the 2012 Olympics – using the 2002 Commonwealth Games as proof of concept. Mayo was well off the pace when it counted, but still felt integral in a larger movement.
That was his first exposure to being a part of something big. And now, 20-plus years on, he is in a similar position. Mayo isn’t running. Instead, he will be working rooms, sitting on panels, or crunching numbers behind his desk. Still, his impact might just be similarly broad.
The former team GB runner has been tasked with helping fix the oft-maligned Leagues Cup – the yearly tournament that pits MLS and Liga MX. Last year, the competition underwhelmed. This iteration, he claims, will bring more jeopardy, deeper storylines and must-watch soccer. And he, along with others, insist that this splintered competition can be fixed – and become pivotal in the world soccer calendar.
“The decisions that you make today, in the back of your mind, all the time you think… ‘Will this still be relevant in 10 years and is this going to make it a great tournament?’ So that’s the sort of thinking that you put in,” he said.
Thomas Mayo’s closest flirtation with glory, as an athlete at least, came in 2002. He was a 1,500-meter runner for team Great Britain in the 2002 Commonwealth Games. The final started well, Mayo positioned well in the race. But he faded late, and settled for eighth place – the highest position he would reach in a major competition.
But back then, that didn’t really matter. It was about the knock on effect.
“The week after, every gym, every running track, every swimming pool was packed with people that wanted to play, participate, umpire, help, support, volunteer,” he recalled.
He may not have won that race, but the impact was worth it. Great Britain would go on to host the 2012 Olympics – using the 2002 Commonwealth Games as proof of concept. Mayo was well off the pace when it counted, but still felt integral in a larger movement.
That was his first exposure to being a part of something big. And now, 20-plus years on, he is in a similar position. Mayo isn’t running. Instead, he will be working rooms, sitting on panels, or crunching numbers behind his desk. Still, his impact might just be similarly broad.
The former team GB runner has been tasked with helping fix the oft-maligned Leagues Cup – the yearly tournament that pits MLS and Liga MX. Last year, the competition underwhelmed. This iteration, he claims, will bring more jeopardy, deeper storylines and must-watch soccer. And he, along with others, insist that this splintered competition can be fixed – and become pivotal in the world soccer calendar.
“The decisions that you make today, in the back of your mind, all the time you think… ‘Will this still be relevant in 10 years and is this going to make it a great tournament?’ So that’s the sort of thinking that you put in,” he said.
Sound far-fetched? Of course. Remember, Leagues Cup was at a crossroads at the end of the competition last year. Although the Columbus Crew were good value for their championship win – and Wilfried Nancy’s tears at full time showed how meaningful lifting the trophy can be – the tournament lacked bite.
There were empty stadiums, second-string XIs, and a lack of digestible narratives. Intended to be a forum to foster the rivalry between the United States and Mexico, the competition had run cold.
“When you put Liga MX versus MLS, it’s a different construct, a different game,” Mayo said. “The players like it, the fans like it. And that’s what this tournament’s about. It’s trying to put the two leagues together.”
MLS responded with a wholesale review. They crunched the numbers, brought executives together, and decided what worked and what didn’t. Their ultimate solution was rather simple: this competition was meant to pit Liga MX teams against MLS counterparts – and it wasn’t doing so frequently enough.
Organizers decided there should be very few – if any – intra-league games. In fact, the whole of the first round of the competition this year – in effect, the group phase – will only feature Liga MX teams against MLS. Do the math, and 93 percent of the matches are guaranteed to test one league against the other. Once the quarterfinals hit, all bets are off, anyone can play anyone.
Former participants praised the revamped schedule.
“If you’re an American player and you’re a Mexican player, it’s huge. The US-Mexico rivalry in every aspect of football is really big,” two-time MLS All Star Dax McCarty told BALLGM. “It stems from years of the Mexican National Team playing against the US Men’s National Team. It stems from CONCACAF and wanting to have supremacy in CONCACAF.”
Those slated to participate this year also see the logic.
“This year’s format is an interesting one,” NYCFC goalkeeper Matt Freese told BALLGM. “Obviously, the big priority, a big ambition, is to get Liga MX versus MLS games, rather than Liga MX teams playing against each other in Harrison, New Jersey. I don’t think that necessarily was the original goal of the tournament. And so I think that the format change is dedicated to that.”
There are further changes, too. Only the 18 MLS clubs that qualified for last year’s playoffs will participate in the Leagues Cup. Meanwhile, all 18 Liga MX sides will play. This time around, there are no draws. Matches tied at full-time go straight to penalty kicks.
A win in normal time awards a club three points. A win on penalties gets you two. Liga MX teams have also been designated to special “pods” – or hubs where all of their fixtures will take place. That initiative is meant to counter a common gripe made by Liga MX surrounding the traveling issues they have encountered in previous iterations of the competition.
There are more significant implications on the line, too. The top three clubs all qualify for the CONCACAF Champions Cup. The winner will book their spot in the 2029 Club World Cup, which technically does not exist yet.
These may be the same two leagues participating, but it is, in effect, an entirely different tournament. Mayo wasn’t involved in any of the decision making. He didn’t conduct a wholesale review. He didn’t sit in meetings with clubs and stakeholders. He wasn’t there when the whole thing was thrown together.
Instead, he is here to promote it. Mayo insists that an outside perspective – especially from someone still involved in sports – was only a good thing.
“I’m not from soccer, but I am from sports and building brands and companies. So it’s very much like a startup, a three-year-old startup, in a way, and that was my background,” he said.
He wants to think long term. And that’s where his impact might be most keenly felt. Leagues Cup is still being tweaked. And after this transitional year, there will be even loftier ambitions for the future. Mayo insists that the competition could be a must-watch event for the whole of the footballing world within a decade.
“I think that the litmus test will be in 10 years’ time – you’ll know in your head when it’s on, what’s happening, who’s won it before – you’ve got all the stats,” Mayo said.
Building that, though, won’t be easy. Sure, the format can be adjusted, but there’s more that goes into piecing together a tournament than the right framework.
What so often makes soccer is the storylines and jeopardy surrounding it. That’s why the World Cup yields a fan favorite every four years, or why fans tune into games in which they have no stake. McCarty insists that the Leagues Cup can offer that. For him, it already has. The 2023 quarterfinal between his Nashville FC and Club America was perhaps the most encapsulating game in the competition’s history. Nashville trailed 2-1 until the 99th minute, when Sam Surridge headed home to equalize.
The game eventually went to penalties. America thought they had won it when Luis Malagon denied Jack Maher’s spot-kick. Their fans flooded the pitch. McCarty thought he was going home. But VAR determined that Malagon stepped off his line before the kick was taken. Maher buried the re-take, and Nashville went on to win the shootout, 6-5.
“That was one of the craziest games I’d ever been involved in in my whole career, it was amazing,” he said.
Mayo and Leagues Cup organizers. are hoping to facilitate more of that. The matchups are big early on.
Chucky Lozano’s San Diego FC are facing off against his former club, Pachuca, to open the tournament on Tuesday. NYCFC against Puebla will be significant, as will New York Red Bulls vs Chivas. Toluca are excellent, and they will take on reigning champions Columbus Crew in the first game.
And with starpower of Lionel Messi and Inter Miami from the MLS side, and Sergio Ramos and Monterrey from Liga MX, there figures to be no shortage of content.
“The stories are going to start unfurling,” Mayo said. “There already are today. I sort of saw quite a lot come through. But I’m fascinated by the ones from the communities and the towns and the clubs, and how it affects them.”
Fans, of course, are another question. Leagues Cup attendance was down by as much as 40 percent compared to regular season MLS games last summer. And although that represented a 1 percent increase from the 2023 edition, a handful of games were played in mostly empty stadiums.
Leagues Cup officials hope that good content will lead to better attendance.
“We look at the fans, we look at the players,” Mayo said. “Get the format, the rivalry, a great game on the field right. Obviously, if the players are excited and they’re on the field in an intense game. What’s the fans’ reaction? It’s great. It’s a knock on effect.”
Some things cannot be accounted for. The Leagues Cup is still a relatively young competition, and there is a lot of soccer on.
You cannot guarantee that fans will show up for something they’re not sure they will care about. TV viewing figures averaged around 30,000 on FS1 last year – which excluded Apple TV streaming that the league is yet to disclose.
Still, a revamped format seems as good a place as any to start. Mayo isn’t running this time. But he hopes there still might be people in gyms and on pitches who want to kick a ball sometime soon.
“We’re only in year three,” he said. “We’ll start building. And then one day, there will be people who will be able to account for every game, every quarters, every semi. Who won it, where it was held. That’ll be the dream.”
