Every MLS team's CCL history: Eastern Conference
With CCL 2022 reaching its latter stages, let's take a look at how each MLS team has done in the premier continental competition of North America.
CCL Fever is in full swing, and we’ve already seen the anarchy claim a couple MLS teams. Colorado lost to Comunicaciones in a snow bowl penalty shootout, NYC nearly blew a massive lead to the same club, and New England actually blew a 3-0 lead over Pumas.
Most MLS teams have been to the CCL. The only ones that haven’t are mostly recent expansions and two folded teams. The format has changed plenty as time has gone on, from a week-long tournament at a single site in the 90s to the group stage format of the late aughts and early 2010s to the bracket of today.
Let’s take a look at each MLS team’s history in the premier continental competition of our reason. We’ll divvy them up by conference, so we’ll start out east.
Atlanta United
CCL Appearances: 3
Best Finish: Quarterfinals (2019, 2020, 2021)
Atlanta has probably the most efficient CCL record ever, giving that one Open Cup from 2019 got them into not one but two CCLs.
However, the result was always the same: a Round of 16 win and quarterfinal loss.
In 2019, in the aftermath of their MLS Cup win, Atlanta lost 3-1 in the first leg to Herediano. They made up for that by crushing them 4-0 in the second leg, advancing to the quarters against Monterey.
The Five Stripes entered the last quarter-hour in Mexico down just one goal, but two late goals by Rayados buried them, a 3-0 deficit they’d never be able to overcome.
2020 was much the same - dispatch a Central American foe (this time it was Motagua of Honduras) in the Round of 16, but get crushed 3-0 in the first leg against a Mexican team (Club América) that was not going to be overturned, though that tie took nine months to finish due to COVID-19.
In 2021, qualifying again through their Open Cup triumph after the competition’s 2020 cancellation, they once again booted out a Central American club (a severely undermanned Alajuelense missing half their team for the second leg). This time, though, they faced an MLS foe in the quarters: Philadelphia Union.
With the first leg at home, surely Atlanta couldn’t lose the first leg 3-0 again, right? Well…they did. Kacper Przybylko scored twice, then set up an Anthony Fontana dagger as the Union galloped past the Five Stripes with ease. It’s still Atlanta’s heaviest ever home defeat, and that hole was just too deep.
Charlotte
CCL Appearances: 0
Best Finish: N/A
Charlotte has literally never even been eligible to qualify.
Chicago Fire
CCL Appearances: 3
Best Finish: Semifinals (1999, 2004)
The Fire won the double in their first MLS season, earning a spot in the then-Champions Cup, at the time a week long single-site tournament held that year in Las Vegas.
Chicago zoomed past Joe Public (remember this name) of Trinidad and Tobago 2-0 in the quarters, and managed to get to penalties in the semis against Alajuelense. But it wasn’t to be - Chicago fell in the lottery.
In 2002, they were back, once again winning their first tie. This time, it was a 3-1 aggregate Round of 16 win over Guatemalan side Municipal. But that was as far as they got, as they were eliminated by Mexican side Morelia.
Their most recent appearance was in 2004, after losing the prior season’s MLS Cup to San Jose. They survived a serious scare in the quarters against San Juan Jabloteh of Trinidad and Tobago in the first round/quarterfinals, overturning a 5-2 loss in Port of Spain with a 4-0 rout in Chicago, but fell 3-2 in the semis to Saprissa.
They haven’t returned since.
Cincinnati
CCL Appearances: 0
Best Finish: N/A
Sorry, they don’t give out CCL spots for the winners of that particular trophy. Next.
Columbus Crew
CCL Appearances: 4
Best Finish: Quarterfinals (2003, 2010, 2011, 2021)
Nothing if not consistent.
Before we get into the detailed history, I should note that Columbus joined DC in that 2001 Giants’ Cup. Saprissa dispatched them at…wait for it…the quarterfinal stage.
Two years later, Columbus reached the Champions Cup quarters, overturning a first leg deficit to take down Árabe Unido. But those quarters saw them face off against Morelia, who absolutely annihilated them 6-0 in the first leg.
They returned to CCL in 2009-10, the second year of the group stage, and would also take part in 2010-11. Both times they got out of their group, both times in second, both times second only to a Mexican team.
In ‘09-’10, they emerged from a group with Saprissa and Puerto Rico Islanders and locked horns with Toluca in the quarters. They fell behind 2-0 in the first leg at home, and hope was fading quickly.
But Steven Lenhart, even before joining San Jose, had that Goonie Magic in him, bagging a brace in the last-half hour to salvage a draw. In Mexico, Guillermo Barros Schelotto converted a pen just before halftime, but Toluca would pull it back with a pen of their own after it. Sinha would add a second for the hosts ten minutes later, but Schelotto struck back with a tie equalizer in the 70th. Sadly for them, Columbus lost their concentration and saw Sinha score a second two minutes later to knock the Crew out.
In 2011, they emerged from a group including Santos Laguna, Municipal, and Joe Public and would face a league rival, Real Salt Lake, in the quarterfinals. A 0-0 draw at home wasn’t ideal…but the 4-1 defeat in Utah was even worse.
Their most recent appearance came last year. They easily dispatched Nicaraguan side Real Estelí in the round of 16, but Mexican side Monterrey saw to it that their run ended there. A 2-2 draw at home isn’t going to do it against Liga MX opposition, and the Crew got slaughtered 3-0 in Monterrey.
DC United
CCL Appearances: 11
Best Finish: Winners (1998)
Early DC: the biggest wagon in MLS history, easily.
DC were a staple of CCL the first years of the league, qualifying in five of the league’s first seasons. The one season they didn’t, 2001, the competition didn’t even happen. Even then, DC participated in the “Giants’ Cup,” a CONCACAF tournament for teams that led their domestic leagues in attendance. DC finished runner up to América, but their run qualified them for the ‘02 Champions Cup, where they’d fall in the Round of 16 to Comunicaciones.
But we’re talking about the actual CCL here. DC won their first round tie in each of their first four CCL runs, beating United Petrotrin in ‘97, Olimpia in ‘99, and Alajuelense in 2000 before losing in the semis.
But 1998 was the crown jewel. That 1998 neutral site just so happened to be their home ground, RFK Stadium. DC made it pay off, defeating Joe Public 8-0, León 2-0, and Toluca 1-0 to conquer the continent.
DC’s mini-dynasty of the mid-to-late aughts also got them into a few CCLs. 2005 saw them beat Harbour View 2-1 twice in the quarters, but in the semis they ran into a Pumas buzzsaw that thrashed them 5-0 in Mexico.
2007 was a little bit better, as DC again beat their first opponent (Olimpia) with a 7-3 aggregate smackdown. Once again they matched up against a strong team from south of the border, this time in the form of mighty Chivas Guadalajara.
This time though, DC could fight. 2007 MLS MVP Luciano Emilio rescued a last-gasp 1-1 draw at home, and club legend Jaime Moreno opened the scoring in the second leg. But poor marking netted Chivas an equalizer through Adolfo Bautista, and a goalkeeping error from Troy Perkins gave the hosts a lead they would not relinquish.
(Fun fact: All three Chivas goalscorers in that 2007 tie were future MLS players. 2011 SKC DP Omar Bravo scored in the first leg, and Perkins’s error gifted a goal to one-time Sounder and current Atlanta manager Gonzalo Pineda. The aforementioned Bautista played seven games for Chivas USA in 2014.)
2008 was an eerie repeat of 2007. They crushed Harbour View in the quarters, and faced Pachuca in the semis. They were able to limit the damage to a 2-0 defeat in Mexico, but conceded first at home. They nearly got the miracle comeback, too; Rod Dyachenko and Franco Niell scored in the last 5 minutes to cut the aggregate lead to 3-2, but it wasn’t enough.
DC also made 2009-10 CCL, by which point the competition had adopted a group stage. They didn’t make it out, finishing behind Toluca and Marathón.
The Black and Red’s most recent CCL window came in 2014-15 (through the ‘13 Open Cup) and 2015-16 (when they topped the East in the regular season). Both saw them get out of the groups (both groups, oddly, were one Jamaican club and one Panamanian club), but both also saw them fall in the quarters. In 2015, they were crushed in Costa Rica by Alajuelense, and in 2016 they put up a decent fight but could not get past Querétaro.
The CCL appearance drought since is actually the longest in this club’s rich history.
Inter Miami
CCL Appearances: 0
Best Result: N/A
The Fusion never qualified either, by the way; taking in the two Giants Cup finalists from 2001 made the 2002 tournament a lot easier, considering the 2001 Shield winners had folded.
Just to get it out of the way: the Tampa Bay Mutiny never made it, either. We’ll get to Chivas in the Western edition.
Montréal
CCL Appearances: 4 in MLS, 1 in USL
Best Result: Runner Up (2015)
So Canadian teams are weird because they don’t qualify through MLS, they have to qualify by winning the Canadian Championship. This isn’t unprecedented in the world, as anyone who’s tried the Vaduz Challenge on FM can testify, but it is worth keeping in mind.
I mentioned Montréal’s 2008-09 run in USL briefly in the Puerto Rico piece from last week, so I’ll keep it brief: They won the Canadian Championship, beat Real Estelí in a qualifier, got out of a group of Atlante, Olimpia, and Joe Public, and were a Darwin Quintero brace away from a semifinal. As a USL team.
After jumping to MLS, their first appearance in CCL came in 2013-14, where they missed out on the knockouts thanks to a tiebreaker - every team in that group had 2 wins and 2 losses, but San Jose had a +2 GD to the Impact’s -1.
Le Bleu et Noir returned to CCL in 2014-15, with the groups kicking off in the midst of a Wooden Spoon season. And boy, would it be a run all right.
Montréal topped their group unbeaten, with just two points dropped: a scoreless dead rubber on the final day against the Red Bulls. That put them in the quarters, where it was expected that the 2014 Wooden Spoon winners would be no match for Pachuca.
But you’d be wrong.
A Dilly Duka brace opened up a 2-0 first leg lead, and gave Montréal two vital away goals. Pachuca came back to equalize, but a 2-2 draw in Mexico is a fantastic result.
A result that looked like it was going to be thrown away in the second leg, after Germán Cano converted a penalty in the 80th minute. Time was running out.
And then came a moment so iconic that if you were watching, you remember where you were.
When Calum Mallace, an average depth player, hit the best pass of his life.
When Cameron Porter, a kid who was just a late-round SuperDraft pick with like ten minutes of pro experience, received the ball and deposited it into the net, sending Impact through on away goals.
It’s the loudest crowd for an MLS team I think I’ve ever heard. Porter played just 4 MLS games in his career, but that moment will be remembered forever.
In the semifinals against Alajuelense, a late second half scare in the second leg mattered little, as Jack McInerney and Andrés Romero scored two precious away goals earlier in the match as the Impact went through on away goals again.
This time, the opponent was THE behemoth of this continent. Club América. Five Champions Cups/Champions Leagues entering this one. Twelve league titles. The most hallowed ground in CONCACAF, and potentially the second-most iconic stadium in the Western Hemisphere, the Azteca.
But this team was unfazed.
Impact survived Azteca with a 1-1 draw, with Oribe Peralta snagging a late equalizer to cancel out Ignacio Piatti’s opener. They had a decent result. Just take care of business, at the Big O, in front of 61,000 Montréalais.
Slight problem: Who was playing in goal? Starter Evan Bush, who had been fantastic all tournament, had picked up a controversial yellow that saw him banned for the second leg for accumulation. No problem, go to your backups…oh, wait. Eric Kronberg was cup-tied having played for SKC in the groups, and Maxime Crépeau was injured. That left this team with zero healthy keepers. They tried to swing for the fences, attempting a short-term loan of Chicago’s Sean Johnson, but MLS kiboshed that, and the team ended up going with Indy Eleven starter Kristian Nicht.
Montréal scored within ten minutes, and the crowd was going nuts. By halftime, they were still in front. They were really doing this.
But the pinch of reality came in the second half, when Dario Benedetto went nuts, scoring a hat trick (with an added Peralta goal as well). McInerney got a late consolation goal, but it wasn’t enough. Cinderella was a pumpkin again.
Montréal returned to the CCL in 2020, and knocked out Saprissa on away goals in the round of 16 before being knocked out on away goals themselves by Olimpia in the quarters. Which is weird, because the second leg took place nine months later in Orlando. The wait was so long that Montréal’s first-leg goal scorer, Saphir Taïder, was no longer on the team.
They returned again post-rebrand in 2022, where they exacted revenge a decade-plus in the making on Santos Laguna with a 3-0 smackdown in the second leg at Olympic Stadium. But despite a heroic first leg from keeper Sebastian Breza, Montréal fell 1-0 to Cruz Azul, and only managed a 1-1 draw at home.
New England Revolution
CCL Appearances: 4
Best Result: Quarterfinals (2006, 2022)
Only three MLS teams that have qualified for CCL have never a) survived the group stage or b) won a round on the field.
We’ll get to the second in the next part, but the Revs are one of them. Their first two appearances, in 2003 and 2006, both ended at the hands of Alajuelense. In ‘03, they were crushed in Costa Rica in the first leg 4-0, and that was that; in ‘06, they were shut out over 180 minutes of soccer and quickly catapulted out.
Their last two appearances may be 14 years apart, but they might be two of the worst CCL losses ever. One in terms of heartbreak, one in terms of sheer incompetence.
The Revs had just won the 2008 North American SuperLiga, and probably felt good about their chances against Joe Public in the CCL prelims. After all, the Revs were one of the best teams in MLS in the late aughts, and Joe Public has been kicked out of CCL by MLS teams so many times. Perhaps...they felt too good.
A 2-1 loss in Port of Spain, while not great, wasn’t totally terrible, so long as you took care of business at ho- oh my goodness they lost 4-0 at Gillette Stadium with a performance that should’ve revoked their SuperLiga on principle. Now granted, Taylor Twellman had just suffered a concussion that would end his brilliant MLS career prematurely. But you do NOT lose 4-0 at home to anyone, let alone a Caribbean team.
The Revs were CCL-dormant again until this year. Following a record-setting 2021, the Revs actually advanced in CCL for the first time in the Round of 16. Problem was…it was because opponents Cavaly couldn’t get into the US due to visa problems, and they couldn’t even host their leg in Haiti due to a CONCACAF ban on games in the country.
So the Revs made the quarters by default, and a 3-0 home win against Pumas in the first leg at a snowy Gillette should’ve been enough, right?
Yeah, no. Now granted, they had some injuries. But Bruce Arena bunkered, and the Revs just did not have the personnel to make it work.
That lead evaporated, and we all pretty much knew the minute it hit penalties it was not going to be the Revs moving on.
But what else would you expect from a team that is 1-7 in cup finals all-time?
New York City
CCL Appearances: 2
Best Finish: Semifinals at least, 2022
This 2022 run’s still going on, though it nearly didn’t. Thanks, Away Goals Rule!
The Pigeons have made CCL one time before this, two years ago. They crushed San Carlos 5-3 in Costa Rica on a Héber hat trick, then brought it home with a 1-0 “home” win at Red Bull Arena in the second leg.
That set them up for a quarterfinal match against Tigres, who had just barely squeaked by Alianza of El Salvador with a 94th minute winner. The Mexican side continued the late heroics with a 93rd minute winner for the first leg’s lone goal in Harrison, then mauled NYC 4-0 in the second leg nine months later in Orlando en route to the title.
This season, the Pigeons crushed Santos de Guápiles 6-0 in the octofinals, then scraped through the quarters on away goals after a 5-2 aggregate lead over Comunicaciones turned into a 5-5 nailbiter. We’ll see how they do in the semis, but it’s already their most productive run.
New York Red Bulls
CCL Appearances: 5
Best Finish: Semifinals (2018)
We were so, so very close to an all-MLS final.
Metro’s first two CCL berths ended at the first hurdle - a preliminary round loss in 2009 to Trinidad’s W Connection (marking two years in a row of MLS sides losing to Caribbean sides), and in 2014 they were bounced in the groups by Impact.
They were also eliminated by a Canadian MLS team in 2017, their first of three straight berths. After topping their group of Guatemalan side Antigua and El Salvador’s Alianza, they were bounced in the quarters by Vancouver.
2018 was the real heartbreaker. After cruising through Olimpia in the octofinal and stunning the continent by crushing Tijuana 5-1 in the quarters, Metro would take on Chivas Guadalajara in the semifinals.
A 1-0 defeat at Guadalajara in a tight game wasn’t the worst result, and Red Bull dominated the second leg.
But, Metro gonna Metro. They couldn’t find the net even once, and the dream of Toronto and New York squaring off on the continent’s biggest stage was dead.
The magic didn’t carry into 2019. After dusting off Dominican side Atlético Pantoja easily in the octofinal, Red Bull was crushed like a can by Santos Laguna in the quarters.
Orlando City
CCL Appearances: 0
Best Result: N/A
Orlando is the oldest still-running MLS team without a CCL appearance, though Exploria Stadium did host the latter stages of the 2020 competition in a bubble.
They did come extremely close to qualification in 2020, when they lost the MLS is Back bubble tournament in the championship.
Philadelphia Union
CCL Appearances: 1
Best Result: Semifinals (2021)
Philadelphia’s 2020 Supporters’ Shield got them to their first CCL ever just last year, and it wasn’t a half-bad debut.
The Round of 16 against Saprissa is mostly remembered for Ricardo Blanco’s attempted shattering of Kai Wagner’s leg, but the Union brought a 1-0 lead home from the Monster’s Cave, then put them to the sword in the second leg.
Heading on the road to Atlanta for the first leg of the quarters, Philadelphia stayed above water thanks to a first-half masterclass by Andre Blake, then crushed the Five Stripes in the second half with set pieces and counterattacks for a 3-0 win. They saw off their league rivals with a 1-1 home draw, but hit a wall in the semis against América.
It’s not that Philly had no chances, they did (including a missed penalty in the second leg), but América prevailed with a pair of 2-0 wins.
The U should be a strong contender to get to CCL a second time this season, but MLS is a wild place that doesn’t care about what should and shouldn’t be.
Toronto
CCL Appearances: 8
Best Result: Runner Up (2018)
Being the first Canadian team by nearly a half-decade has its perks!
After losing the 2008 Canadian Championship on the final day to hated rivals Montréal, Toronto made the next five consecutive CCLs. But this was the banter era for the Reds, an era where the team was stapled to the bottom of the East, and they only got out of the groups once.
That came in 2011-12, where they survived a competitive group with Pumas, Dallas, and Tauro to reach the quarters. Despite being in the midst of one of the worst starts in MLS history, Toronto had enough in them to knock off the Galaxy in those quarters, but were sent packing by Santos Laguna to the tune of a 7-3 aggregate beatdown. That included a 6-2 shellacking in Mexico.
After 2012-13, Toronto went five years without making it back to CCL. And they nearly made the wait completely worth it.
The octofinal against league foes Colorado was pretty uneventful, with the Reds winning 2-0 in the first leg in bitterly cold conditions in Commerce City, then advancing via a scoreless second leg.
That set up a quarterfinal against the mighty Tigres UANL. The Mexican side struck first in the first leg at BMO Field, but Toronto struck back with two goals in the last half-hour from Jozy Altidore and Jonathan Osorio.
But we’ve been here before. 2-1 heading to Mexico is usually not enough.
This Toronto team wasn’t your usual team, though.
An own goal just past the hour mark gave the Reds a critical away goal, but Tigres scored in the correct goal just under five minutes later on a corner.
And then Sebastian Giovinco stepped up with what an MLS video described as “the free kick that silenced a nation.”
A curler from just outside the area, slightly to the right of the goal, curled exquisitely into the top corner.
4-2 aggregate lead, and the away goals edge.
Tigres needed a miracle, and nearly got it thanks to two late goals by Eduardo Vargas. But it was too little, too late. Next stop: Club América. The team that three years earlier had crushed their archrivals’ CCL hopes in the final.
They won that, too. A 3-1 home win gave them a good base, and Jonathan Osorio’s early goal at Azteca put the whole thing to bed; Las Águilas could only manage an extremely late consolation goal.
All of a sudden, TFC not only were in the final, they’d taken out two of Mexico’s biggest clubs. Just one challenge remained, in the form of Chivas Guadalajara, who had just barely squeaked past the Red Bulls in the other semi.
A 2-1 loss at home in the first leg, to most teams, is lethal. Especially against a Mexican opponent, who tend to dominate MLS foes. But Toronto wasn’t most teams.
Not even an early goal from Orbelín Pineda was going to bury them. Giovinco and Jozy Altidore both scored before halftime, and the Reds held serve in Guadalajara. The game went all the way to the lottery no one likes to play: penalties.
And it was there that the trophy dropped from the clutches of the Ontario side. Jonathan Osorio hit the bar, Michael Bradley hit one to the moon, and MLS’s closest chance to a modern CCL title flew away with it.
Toronto returned again in 2019 and 2021. 2019 ended right away, with a 4-0 first leg loss to Independiente in Panama dooming any shot of a run. 2021 lasted a bit longer, with a more youthful Reds upsetting León 3-2 on aggregate in the octofinals before bowing out in the quarters to Cruz Azul. Noteworthy is that Toronto actually didn’t play at home in 2021; due to COVID-19-induced border closures, they instead played in Orlando at the Wide World of Sports.
Which Eastern team will be the next to make a CCL run? Who knows. Maybe NYC goes all the way this year and gets MLS its first continental honor, or maybe it doesn’t happen for another few years. This tournament is tough, and the opposition from south of the border will never ease up.