In looking at the differences between Latin American soccer and soccer in the United States, we have to start the conversation with one basic fact: They’re intertwined, thanks to being in the same soccer federation. Concacaf is a federation that brings the teams from North America, Central America, and the Caribbean (plus a few stray South American teams) together.
That’s made the U.S. and Mexico one of the best international rivalries in world soccer — with both countries representing the region at multiple world cups.
But it’s also given people wondering about the differences between soccer in the U.S. and Latin America a ready measuring stick. That includes top Latin American soccer nations like Costa Rica, Honduras and Panama, as well as up-and-comers like El Salvador and Guatemala.
Table of Contents
- There’s an argument that the U.S. soccer league is better than the Latin American ones
- Latin American teams have the World Cup edge
- There’s a historical difference in styles (but dual nationals are helping change that)
There’s an argument that the U.S. soccer league is better than the Latin American ones
When it comes to club teams, U.S. soccer vs. Latin American soccer mostly boils down to a competition between Liga MX and Major League Soccer.
Though some top U.S. and Latin American soccer players find their way to Europe to face top global competition, many of the best soccer players in the U.S. and Latin America — starting with the best players from the U.S. and Mexico — play in one of those two leagues.
Among the top soccer league rankings, according to globalfootballrankings.com, Liga MX ranks ninth in the world and MLS ranks 15th, with no other leagues in the region coming close to that level.
But there are signs that MLS is poised to overtake Liga MX in supremacy, including wins in the last two All-Star contests involving top players from the leagues, and an MLS team winning the 2022 Concacaf Champions League title after years of falling short against its Liga MX rivals.
While those leagues are an important showcase for top American and Mexican talent, players from other high-level Concacaf nations play professionally in those leagues as well.
And though there are differences between soccer in Latin America vs. the U.S., the development of MLS in particular means those players are learning from each other and getting better as a result.
Five Thirty Eight’s rankings of top soccer clubs around the world gives a good gauge as to how the leagues are matching up. As the article notes, regarding the Soccer Power Index rankings they employ,
“Before a season begins, a team’s SPI ratings are based on two factors: its ratings at the end of the previous season, and its market value as calculated by Transfermarkt (a site that assigns a monetary value to each player, based on what they would fetch in a transfer). We’ve found that a team’s market value — relative to their league’s average value — is strongly correlated with its end-of-season SPI rating. Thus, we use these market values to infer each team’s preseason SPI rating.”
Five Thirty Eight rankings
According to those rankings, Liga MX has 12 teams in the top 300.
- Club America (80)
- Monterrey (82)
- Tigres (91)
- Pachuca (130)
- Cruz Azul (163)
- Santos Laguna (164)
- Guadalajara (174)
- Leon (203)
- Atlas (210)
- Toluca (217)
- Pumas (263)
- Puebla (287)
But it’s actually MLS that leads the pack with 16 teams in the top 300.
- LAFC (125)
- Philadelphia Union (126)
- NYCFC (144)
- Atlanta United (173)
- FC Cincinnati (212)
- Austin FC (218)
- LA Galaxy (227)
- Seattle Sounders FC (240)
- Toronto FC (246)
- FC Dallas (250)
- Orlando City (255)
- CF Montreal (258)
- Nashville SC (273)
- New York Red Bulls (275)
- Portland Timbers (286)
- Columbus Crew (295)
The list didn’t include other top Latin American clubs like Costa Rica’s Saprissa, Panama’s Tauro FC, or Guatemala’s Comunicaciones.
But if you expand the definition of Latin America to include the whole of South America, you’ve got some big clubs and some big leagues to add to the mix.
That includes Argentina’s top-tier league, which includes giants and rivals River Plate (No. 99) and Boca Juniors (No. 198) and nine other teams in the top 300, and Brazil, which has six teams among the top 100 global clubs (including Palmeiras, Flamengo and Fluminense) and 10 more in the top 300.
While Major League Soccer is a relatively new league, it has some mechanisms in place that control salary costs while encouraging young and in-their-prime talents to play for teams in the league.
While Latin American leagues, especially the top-flight leagues in Mexico, Argentina and Brazil, are more established, they can also be a little less stable.
That said, though, the talent in those three countries is still the best in the Western Hemisphere, and success in soccer starts (but doesn’t necessarily end with) talented players.
In competition, when it comes to the Concacaf Champions League — the tournament involving top U.S. and Latin American club teams — it’s also typically the U.S. and Mexico that reign supreme. The last time a team outside of one of those two countries made the final, it was Saprissa, losing to Liga MX side Pachuca in 2008.
To find a non-U.S. or Mexico winner of the tournament, you have to go back a few more years to 2005, when Saprissa was able to triumph over Liga MX’s Pumas UNAM.
Latin American teams have the World Cup edge
When it comes to World Cup representation, the U.S. and Mexico are far and away the best teams in the Concacaf region. Mexico has been to the global tournament 17 teams, and the U.S. has been to it on 11 occasions, with both of them heading up the field in 2022.
Another 2022 entrant, Costa Rica, made its third straight World Cup and its sixth overall by qualifying for Qatar.
From there, there’s considerable dropoff. Honduras is next on the list, making three appearances, including recent appearances in 2010 and 2014 for what’s been arguably the nation’s best generation of players. Honduras first qualified for the World Cup in 1982.
Canada’s appeared twice, including 2022 qualification from perhaps its greatest generation of players, along with a 1986 appearance.
El Salvador has also made a pair of appearances, once in 1970 and once in 1982.
Five other nations have made a single appearance representing the region: Cuba in 1938, Haiti in 1974, Jamaica in 1998, Trinidad and Tobago in 2006, and Panama in 2018.
Technically, the U.S. has done the best of any World Cup entrant, finishing in third place in the inaugural tournament in 1930 in Uruguay. Of course, there were many less entrants at the original World Cup, although Mexico was also present at that first-ever World Cup.
Recently, the best finish at a World Cup from a Latin American Concacaf team was from Costa Rica, who got to the quarterfinal of the 2014 match, getting edged out by the Netherlands in penalty kicks.
But, if your definition of Latin America includes South America, and brings in CONMEBOL in addition to Concacaf, that’s a whole different deal.
Save for Europe, South America’s been the most successful continent in World Cup competition. Uruguay won the first-ever World Cup in 1930, Brazil has won the most with five, Argentina is the reigning World Cup winner — and those three nations together have combined to win 10 World Cups, compared to European nations who have gotten up to 12 titles in the tournament’s history. Also, Brazil is the only nation to appear in all 22 World Cups.
Of the South American nations who competed, they stack up this way:
- Brazil: 22 appearances, five wins
- Argentina: 18 appearances, three wins
- Uruguay: 14 appearances, two wins
- Chile: 9 appearances
- Paraguay: 8 appearances
- Colombia: 6 appearances
- Peru: 5 appearances
- Ecuador: 4 appearances
- Bolivia: 3 appearances
There’s a historical difference in styles (but dual nationals are helping change that)
If you’re reading this, you’re probably curious about differences in how Latin American and U.S. soccer is played stylistically.
At some point in soccer history, you might have been able to say that the U.S. played a more defensive, counter-attacking style of soccer, while Latin American teams — especially Mexico, Argentina and Brazil — played a more free-flowing, attacking style.
Those days are long since gone, though, in some measure due to the influence of dual nationals on the U.S. and various Latin American national teams.
One recent example involved the Roldan brothers. Both Cristian and Alex went to the same Southern California high school, played college soccer in Seattle, and now play professionally for the Seattle Sounders.
But while Cristian opted to play for the U.S. national team, Alex plays his international soccer with El Salvador, and their mother roots for both of them.
A current group of Mexican-American players who made names for themselves in Major League Soccer — including FC Dallas players Ricardo Pepi and Jesús Ferreira, and LA Galaxy players Efrain Alvarez and Julian Araujo, have made high-profile choices between the U.S. and Mexico national teams, with both Galaxy players joining El Tri and both Dallas players choosing the U.S.
As battles like that play out in the future, it will tip the balance back and forth between the two North American soccer superpowers, while emphasizing that the teams aren’t so dissimilar. While some Latino players and coaches might argue that they’re not yet as represented as they should be on U.S. rosters, that’s changing over time, and the dual national battles are just one of the reasons why.
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