CONCACAF Champions League: Group D Preview

The Islanders have a chance to do USL proud in this group

San­tos Laguna was my pick to win the Superliga tour­na­ment. They bowed out in the group stage. Will the Cham­pi­ons League be any dif­fer­ent? San­tos stout defense starts with Oswaldo Sanchez once again the undis­puted num­ber one for Mex­ico ahead of the young and incon­sis­tent Guille Ochoa. Edgar Castil­lio, the US native gives San­tos an excel­lent man marker and attack­ing minded left back. Chrsit­ian Bene­tiz is one of the most dan­ger­ous attack­ing play­ers in the FMF and his con­tin­ued sharp shoot­ing will keep San­tos on top of this group.

How­ever after San­tos any sce­nario is pos­si­ble. You really have three evenly matched sides. For sen­ti­ments sake, I am going to be a homer and pick the lone USL or MLS club in this group, Puerto Rico sec­ond. How­ever the Orange Troop could fin­ish last in this group as well. Colin Clarke is one of the best coaches at an Amer­i­can club. His tenure at Dal­las Burn/FC Dal­las was cut short even though he had built the club from a laugh­ingt­sock who had an iden­tity cri­sis and the MLS worst record to the West­ern Con­fer­ence Reg­u­lar Sea­son Cham­pi­ons. Clarke has been allowed time to build the Islanders and he had made the side more ath­letic and tac­ti­cally sound. Bill Gaudette is the hot keeper com­ing into the group stage: he’s helped lead Puerto Rico within a point of the USL-1 reg­u­lar sea­son title, which they can clinch this week­end and saved a momen­tous penalty in San Jose which even­tu­ally was the dif­fer­ence in elim­i­nat­ing Ala­jue­lense one of the pre tour­na­ment favorites.

CSD Munic­i­pal fea­tures a num­ber of play­ers that are part of Guatemala’s national setup. Fredy Gar­cia may have washed out for the Colum­bus Crew but his exploits are near leg­endary with Munic­i­pal. For­mer Crew and Miami FC attacker “El Loco” Rodriguez did not stand out in USL-1 but that doesn’t mean the Islanders can shut him down. The US learned last month how dif­fi­cult he can be to con­tain on home soil and expect a strong tour­na­ment from him.

Tauro FC did what they had to do against a depleted Chivas USA team to advance to the group stages. How­ever given Chivas’ gen­eral weak­ness enter­ing the tour­na­ment, Tauro’s per­for­mance was less than con­vinc­ing. Nonethe­less teams 2 thru 4 are evenly bal­anced in this group and Tauro cer­tainly has as good a shot as Puerto Rico or Munic­i­pal of advancing.

Group Pre­dic­tions

1– San­tos Laguna

2– Puerto Rico Islanders

3– CSD Municipal

4– Tauro FC

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