InterLiga Opens Tonight With Four Mexican Teams
Soccer’s first event of 2005 at the Home Depot Center will be a doubleheader tonight featuring four teams from Mexico’s first division playing in the InterLiga tournament.
The eight-team tournament, also being played in San Jose, Phoenix, San Antonio, Dallas and Houston, will qualify one team directly to the annual Copa Libertadores and send another to a playoff with a yet-to-be determined Peruvian team for a place in South America’s premier club competition.
Pachuca of Mexico already has qualified for the Copa because of its record over the last two Mexican seasons.
Tonight, Necaxa plays Jaguares at 5, followed by Toluca against Club America at 7:30.
The Home Depot Center will stage another InterLiga doubleheader Saturday, when Santos Laguna plays Atlante at 6 p.m. and Chivas of Guadalajara, the parent club of Chivas USA, takes on Tigres at 8:30 p.m.
The tournament’s final doubleheader, at Reliant Stadium in Houston on Jan. 12, will see the winner with the best point total throughout the tournament qualify for the Copa Libertadores.
The other winner will go into the playoff.
The InterLiga is being staged by Soccer United Marketing, an offshoot of Major League Soccer, which hopes to see its own teams invited to take part in the Copa Libertadores in future years.
