In Mexico, unlike most other countries with top-tier professional soccer leagues, the year is divided into two seasons, the Apertura from August to December and the Clausura from January to May. The 2017-18 Liga MX (their premier league) takes the top eight (out of the league's eighteen) teams from the regular season and has a championship playoff system called the Liguilla. This 2018 Clausura season has Toluca, with the best regular season record, against Santos Laguna. My favorite team, UANL (Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon) Tigres, lost in the first round to Santos Laguna...and a curious trend going on for the last three years continues...
In the summer-to-autumn Apertura season for the last three years, Tigres has won the Liguilla championship series every time. But then when the Clausura season comes around, Tigres still makes the playoffs but gets knocked off. Upstart teams, for some reason, do well in the Clausura season while traditional winning teams like Club America and Tigres excel in the Apertura. There shouldn't be any difference between Apertura and Clausura, but at least lately something weird has been going on. Here are the Liguilla champions in each season for the past four years:
YEAR APERTURA CLAUSURA
2014-15 Club America Santos Laguna
2015-16 UANL Tigres Pachuca
2016-17 UANL Tigres Guadalajara (Chivas)
2017-18 UANL Tigres Toluca or Santos Laguna
It should be interesting to see whether Tigres can win a fourth straight Apertura title later this year. In the meantime, I'm stuck with a championship series between two teams I care little-to-nothing about...
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