The side-quest continues
After a seven-month pause, tomorrow the Thorns continue competing in the CONCACAF W Champions Cup. The what?
What is the CONCACAF W Champions Cup?
It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it? The CONCACAF W Champions Cup is a continental qualifying tournament, to enter into a global tournament, the FIFA Women’s Champions Cup. So, each of the six continents around the world are staging their own continental tournament in 2025. Then, the winner of each continental tournament will play in the FIFA Women’s Champions Cup in early 2026. This is the first time either tournament has been held in the women’s game.
Okay, then: so what is the FIFA Women’s Champions Cup?
Yeah, wow: another tournament with a sentence-length name. The FIFA Women’s Champions Cup is a brand-new tournament to crown a global champion among club soccer teams. Think of it as a sibling to the FIFA World Cup, which crowns the global champion among national soccer teams. Except: the FIFA World Cup has actual tradition, a captivated global audience, and every elite player around the world builds their career around being at their absolute competitive peak during the FIFA World Cup.
What are the stakes with the FIFA Women’s Champions Cup? Well, we don’t really know, since this will be the first one. But: probably quite a bit lower stakes.
And, uh, there’s another problem with the FIFA Women’s Champions Cup. It is not the only brand-new tournament that will crown a global champion among club soccer teams.
You have to be kidding me. There is another tournament to try to keep track of in all of this?
Uh, unfortunately, yes. There will be a tournament, called the FIFA Women’s Club World Cup, to be held for the first time in 2028, among 19 teams from around the world. (That’s not a typo: we have an odd number of teams, 19, intended to be in this thing.)
Why has FIFA created two new tournaments, at virtually the same time, with the exact same goal (crowning the global champion of club soccer teams)? Honestly, I would love to know. It does seem fairly obvious, though, that creating two nearly identical tournaments dramatically undercuts the meaning and stakes for both events.
But! The FIFA Women’s Club World Cup is for another day. Back to the current task: Playing in the CONCACAF W Champions Cup, to qualify for the FIFA Women’s Champions Cup.
How did the Thorns get involved in this?
The CONCACAF W Champions Cup was scheduled to have 10 teams from across the continental region, including three berths for NWSL teams. Because the CONCACAF W Champions Cup started in 2024, the NWSL sent three high-performing teams from the 2023 season, since that was, at the time, the most recent completed season. Those teams were:
1. Gotham FC - 2023 NWSL Champions
2. San Diego Wave - first in points in the 2023 regular season
3. Portland Thorns - second in points in the 2023 regular season
Is including the Thorns a bit random, since the Seattle Reign were actually the other team to make it to the 2023 NWSL Final? Yes: it is a bit random.
What has happened already in the CONCACAF W Champions Cup?
This tournament is formatted a lot like a miniature World Cup: a group stage where you play each team in your group. Then, the two teams with the most points from each group advance to single-elimination knock-out games, until we get to a champion.
Now, the World Cup takes about a day or two to transition from the group stage, to the knockout rounds. Between the two stages of the CONCACAF W Champions Cup, the tournament hit the pause button for about seven months. But, it’s all the same tournament. This week, we hold the knock-out rounds.
This continental tournament consisted of two groups of five teams each. The Thorns played their four group stage games late in the 2024 regular season. The games went like this:
1. September 4: Portland Thorns 3 - América (Mexico) 1
2. September 18: San Diego Wave 3 - Portland Thorns 2
3. October 1: Portland Thorns 2 - Santa Fe (Panama) 1
4. October 15: Portland Thorns 6 - Vancouver Whitecaps FC Girls Elite (Canada) 0
The Thorns lost to the Wave, but, both teams ended the group stage with the same amount of points. Incredibly, despite losing the head-to-head matchup, Portland advanced on the tiebreaker of total goal differential. This is because Portland blew out Vancouver by six goals, while San Diego had a comparatively mild 2-0 victory against the Canadian youth team.
The other team to advance from this group is the Mexican squad, América. Although anything can happen in a single elimination game, the Thorns’ 3-1 victory over América last September was relatively easy, while doing a bit of squad rotation with the starting lineup as well.
What is going to happen this week?
The four teams who are still standing in the CONCACAF W Champions Cup have travelled to the northeastern Mexican city of San Nicolás. They will play a single-elimination semifinal round, and then a final game, to determine the winner of the tournament.
The two semifinal games are both going to happen on Wednesday, May 21. On one side of the tournament, América will go up against Gotham FC. Then comes Portland’s game:
CONCACAF W Champions Cup Semifinal
Thorns vs. Tigres UANL Feminil (Mexico)
Wednesday, May 21st | 7:25 PM
Broadcast and Replay: Paramount+
The Liga MX Femenil season actually goes from September-to-May, so both América and Tigres are playing a potentially-emotionally-confusing postscript to their seasons. And, Tigres is going to have a bit of a rest advantage, since everything this week is happening at their literal home stadium.
Tigres is actually full of recognizable players. In particular:
Ana Dias, who played 10 games for the Thorns in 2024, has been with Tigres since last August.
Midfielder Aaliyah Farmer is a native of Tustin, California, and played collegiately at USC from 2021-2024 — where she no doubt repeatedly went up against UCLA Bruins Jayden Perry and Reilyn Turner.
Jenni Hermoso is a 2023 World Cup champion with Spain, and is by far the country’s all-time leader in goals scored. She is, unfortunately, perhaps best-known for her mistreatment at the hands of Spanish management just after the victorious final.
South African forward Thembi Kgatlana played for Racing Louisville from 2022-2023.
Mexican midfielder Lizbeth Ovalle scored a monster individual goal against the USWNT in February of 2024. That goal gave the USWNT their only loss out of 23 games played in 2024.
The winners of each semifinal will play each other in the final with a quick turnaround, on Saturday, May 24th. There will also be a consolation game between the two semifinal losers on May 24th — a game I expect to have the competitive juice of a preseason contest.
The one winning team from the CONCACAF W Champions Cup will advance to the FIFA Women’s Champions Cup. That will be a very short tournament during January of 2026, in a location, uh, somewhere around the world.
Is getting to that global tournament a big priority for the Thorns? Or would it be a burden to evaporate so much of the precious short months of the offseason? Like everything about this bizarre journey…we’ll see!
Excellant summary...cleared a lot of unknowns- Thanks