Mexico's Liga MX Soccer Playoffs Set to Begin

Mexico's premier professional soccer league, commonly known as Liga MX, is set to begin its Liguilla championship playoff series for this Clausura split-season in the 2015-16 year.  In last fall's Apertura split-season, the UANL (Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León) Tigres, based in suburban Monterrey, won the Liguilla, although they were only the fifth-seed out of the eight top-finishing teams.  This season, Tigres, which also is my favorite team in the league, barely qualified for the Liguilla as an eighth-seed after winning its final regular season contest.  No problem: a year ago in the Clausura playoffs, it was eighth-seed Santos Laguna that caught fire and stormed through to that championship.  UANL's opening-round match will be against Monterrey, winner of the Clausura regular season and the top-seeded team in the Liguilla.  Also, had the Liga MX run things as they do in Europe in the English Premier League, Spain's La Liga, or Germany's Bundesliga...none of these leagues have a post-season championship playoff system nor do they break up the year into two split-seasons...Monterrey would have won the 2015-16 title as the team with the league's best cumulative regular season record...

This will mark the fourth Liguilla series I've been following as my second year of interest in Mexican soccer comes to an end.  I've noticed that the level of play in Liga MX, while not of the caliber of the English Premier League or Bundesliga, does seem a bit better than our North American MLS.  The Monterrey-Tigres round in this Liguilla should be a classic: not only is it a "derby" (a match between two same-city clubs), but the winner could well go on to win the title: it pits the regular season champs against the defending playoff champs.  The Liguilla, composed of four rounds with two matches per round (team with highest two-match score advances), will begin on May 11, with the final championship match to take place on the 30th...