PREVIEW: Miami visits Vancouver for Champions Cup semifinal’s first leg
The Herons and Whitecaps, two of Major League Soccer’s best sides, are vying to play the winner between Mexican powerhouses Cruz Azul and Tigres for the Concacaf club championship.
Expect fans to favor Vancouver
Inter Miami will play the ‘Black Hats’ to Vancouver’s Whitecaps when the teams meet Thursday in the first leg of the Concacaf Champions Cup semifinal.
Vancouver defender Tristan Blackmon celebrates after scoring in the 93rd minute April 10 to eliminate Pumas UNAM and send the Whitecaps to the Concacaf Champions Cup semifinal against Inter Miami. PHOTO: whitecapsfc.com
The ‘Bad Guys’: Three seasons into the Messi Era, the Herons are used to being the league’s favorite villain. That comes with having four all-time great players on your roster (Jordi Alba, Sergio Busquets, Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez); a global icon (Messi) causing clubs to change venues and raise ticket prices while becoming the face of the league; and an unabashedly ambitious front office.
The ‘Good Guys’: Vancouver, on the other hand, is the best feel-good story in Major League Soccer right now. The club, created in 1974 to play in the original North American Soccer League, has enjoyed a relatively uneventful 14-year run in MLS. The Whitecaps never have finished atop a conference table or advanced past the MLS Cup quarterfinals.
But through nine league matches in 2025, Vancouver has won six (6-1-2) and accumulated an MLS-best 20 points under first-year head coach Jesper Sørensen. More impressively, they’ve advanced to the Champions Cup semifinal and done it in dramatic fashion.
How they got here: Whitecaps
Vancouver eliminated three-time Champions Cup winner Deportivo Saprissa of Costa Rica in the first round, then beat Mexican sides CF Monterrey (five cups) and Pumas UNAM (three cups) using the same formula: 1-1 draws in Canada and identical 2-2 scores in Monterrey and Mexico City. Getting through that gauntlet is made more remarkable by MLS teams’ history of struggling south of the border.
Both rounds ended tied 3-3 on aggregate, but the Whitecaps won the away-goal tiebreaker 2-1.
Magic Moment: It looked as though Pumas would end the Whitecaps’ Champions Cup run after Ignacio Pusseto scored in the 88th minute of a 1-1 tie, but Tristan Blackmon smashed home a volley in the 93rd minute to secure Vancouver’s spot in the semis.
The Whitecaps advanced to the Cup semifinals for the second time; Vancouver lost in the 2017 semis to Tigres UANL, a team they could face in the 2025 final if both win their semifinal competitions.
How they got here: Herons
Inter Miami has had an easier path to the finals than Vancouver. They easily dispatched Sporting FC (4-1 aggregate) and Jamaica’s Cavalier FC (4-0). But Los Angeles FC presented a greater challenge.
Bus Parked: LAFC coach Steve Cherundolo’s defenders packed the penalty box, surrendering the wide areas in order to thwart the Herons’ dangerous combination play in front of goal. The strategy worked, and the Black & Gold claimed a 1-0 win.
The away-goal tiebreaker ensured Inter Miami needed a two-goal win to advance (a 1-0 win would force extra-time and, potentially, a penalty shootout.)
Miami Magic: LAFC scored first in the second leg at Chase Stadium, taking a commanding 2-0 aggregate lead with an away goal. Suddenly the Herons needed three goals to move on.
Cue Lionel Messi and the Superfriends. Messi scored in the 35th minute, Federico Redondo in the 61st, and suddenly the pressure was on LAFC.
Inevitably, Messi provided the final dagger. A handball in the Los Angeles box gave the Herons a penalty kick in the 85th minute; Messi casually booted the ball by Hugo Lloris for a 3-2 aggregate lead, sending Inter Miami to its first Champions Cup semifinal.
Monterrey eliminated the Herons in the 2024 quarterfinals, ending Inter Miami’s first foray into Concacaf competition.
Last time out
The Whitecaps and Herons earned results Saturday, though Inter Miami (5-0-3, 18 points in MLS) had to be more pleased with its 1-0 win against then-unbeaten Columbus (5-1-3, 18 points) than Vancouver was with its scoreless draw in St. Louis (2-4-3, 9 points).
• WHO: Inter Miami CF vs. Vancouver Whitecaps
• WHAT: Concacaf Champions Cup semifinal, first leg
• WHEN: 10:30 p.m. ET Thursday
• WHERE: BC Place, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
• TV: FS1, OneSoccer, (English), TUDN, ViX (Spanish)
• RADIO: Inter Miami — ESPN 106.3 FM (English), Deportes Radio 760 AM (Spanish)
• RADIO: Vancouver Whitecaps — AM730 CKNW and cknw.com (English)
Pink & Black vs. Blue & White
So, what about Thursday’s match? What should we expect in the semifinal’s first leg?
Lionel Messi scored two of Inter Miami’s three unanswered goals to top LAFC in the Concacaf Champions Cup quarterfinals. Photo: Megan Briggs/Getty Images
Inter Miami plays a 4-2-3-1 and Vancouver plays a 4-3-3, but both teams want to possess the ball and control the game’s pace; both teams play well on both sides of the ball, and both clubs are led by first-year coaches who have quickly established their teams’ identities.
Blue & White
Sørensen has emphasized ensuring the Whitecaps read and react to the game according to his philosophy.
“For me, football is not played by 11 players — it’s played within, in between 11 players, and that's very, very important. So you have to make players see the same thing at the same time,” the Danish coach told MLS national writer Charles Boehm. “What we've worked on every day is to see if we can get people to recognize the situations alike. So if something happens in the game, they react in the same way towards that.”
To read Boehm’s article on the Whitecaps’ unexpected success, go here.
‘Caps’ projected starters
Goalkeeper: Yohei Takaoka has an MLS-best six clean sheets.
Back Line: Sam Adekugbe (left back; 2 goals) and Edier Ocampo (right back; 1 assist). Adekugbe is returning from injury; Ocampo is an Under-22 Initiative signing beginning to earn minutes with the senior team. The center backs are Ranko Vesilinovic, the longest tenured Whitecap, and former LAFC player Tristan Blackmon (1 goal), the hero of Vancouver’s quarterfinal battle with Pumas.
Midfield: Ecuadorian Pedro Vite, 23, (left midfielder, 1 goal, 3 assists); Andres Cubas (center midfielder, 1 goal, 3 assists); and Sebastian Berhalter (right midfielder, 1 assist).
Brian White celebrates after scoring a goal for the Vancouver Whitecaps. PHOTO: Darryl Duck/CP/PNG
Forwards: Ali Ahmed (left wing, 3 assists), Brian White (striker, 6 goals), and Jayden Nelson (right wing, 1 goal, 4 assists). White, the ‘Caps all-time leading scorer and U.S. Men’s National Team member, has nine goals in 14 games in all competitions in 2025. He scored four April 12 against Austin FC.
Vancouver will be without captain Ryan Gauld, who suffered a leg injury against CF Montreal in March.
Pink & Black
While Sørensen’s approach allows every player on the roster to feel equally involved and important to the team’s success, first-year Inter Miami coach Javier Mascherano’s Herons are still very reliant on the “Fantastic Four” — especially Messi.
The Argentine icon and reigning MLS Player of the Year has 10 goal contributions (8 goals and 2 assists) in 12 appearances, including five scores in five Champions Cup matches.
Will he or won’t he? Messi has missed two matches nursing what was described as a minor groin injury, but he seemed to be even less mobile than usual in Saturday’s win in Cleveland, especially in the final 20 minutes. Broadcaster Taylor Twellman, calling the match for MLS Season Pass on Apple TV+, said he noticed Messi’s inactivity, a grimace when he did kick the ball, and a slight limp as he left the field at the whistle.
The Fantastic Four are in Vancouver, but Messi’s status is uncertain. Mascherano has said he’s unaware of any injury, but he often doesn’t reveal whether his players are fit until lineups are released.
Away goals: Vancouver’s path to the semis is a clear and recent lesson on the importance of the away-goal tiebreaker; Mascherano is aware.
“This is a very important game for us, one of the most important in the history of the club. We have a 180-minute game [over the two home-and-away legs] and Thursday is the first half,” he told the media, according to Miami Herald soccer writer Michelle Kaufman. “It is important that we play a good game and try to score as many goals as possible,” “because road goals are valuable in this competition [they are the tiebreaker in the aggregate scoring]. We want to have the ball, be protagonists.”
Herons’ Projected Starters
In goal: Oscar Ustari, 38, has earned the starting goalkeeper’s role, but three-year starter Drake Callender is a more than capable backup.
Back Line: An adventure last year, the back line has been solid and deep in 2025. Expect Alba (left back) and Ian Fray (right back) to bookend center backs Noah Allen and Maxi Falcon. It’s equally possible that Gonzalo Lujan (center back or right back), Tomas Aviles (center back), David Henderson (center back), and Chelo Weigandt (right back) start or see significant minutes. Allen also can move over to left back, where he has developed chemistry with Falcon.
Sergio Busquets, 36, continues to excel in Inter Miami’s defensive midfield. Photo: Goal.com
Defensive Midfield: Busquets practically invented the modern central midfielder: Besides playing competent defense, disrupting opposing offense with interceptions, deflections and timely tackles, the defensive or central midfielder also must be smart, fundamentally sound, able to read the game, dictate tempo and direct the attack.
Yannick Bright and Federico Redondo are much younger players who can pick up some of Busi’s defending duties so he can focus on creating plays for the front four. Redondo could start besides Busquets because he is slightly better going forward to help on attack; if Mascherano decides to be more defensive, Bright is among the best purely defensive center midfielders in the business. Benjamin Cremaschi could play here if necessary, but he’s more valuable as a box-to-box attacking midfielder.
Attacking Midfield: Speaking of which, this is where the offensive magic happened early in the season, although productivity has dropped lately. If Messi is healthy, he will start on the right wing or center forward. I hope to see speedy Fafa Picault (2 goal, 1 assist) at left wing, Telasco Segovia (3 goals, 2 assists) in the middle and Messi on the right, but Tadeo Allende (2 goals) or Benjamin Cremaschi (1 goal, 2 assists) could contribute here as well.
Striker: So far, 38-year-old Luis Suarez (2 goal, 5 assists) has been an iron man up front and, in this critical match, will be the starter unless he’s physically unable to play. Inter Miami acquired 18-year-old Ecuadorian Allen Obando on loan from Barcelona Guayaquil to give Suarez an occasional day off, but evidently the highly regarded Obando has yet to earn Mascherano’s trust.