Jonathan Osorio is one of 14 Canada national team players at Copa America who plays his club soccer... [+]
With the final rosters coming out for all 16 participating nations in the 2024 Copa America earlier this week, MLS has reached the impressive threshold of tying with the Premier League as the competition with the most rostered players in the tournament.
The 41 MLS players across the 16 MLS squads,according to a report from TheyScored.com,represents an increase of 12 from the previous Copa America staged in the same format with six guest teams from CONCACAF in 2016.
But look a little closer and there’s evidence that MLS’ influence on the international game is not as large as the raw numbers suggest, and may actually be in a stage of stagnation rather than growth over the last few seasons.
Canada Factor
For starters, the 12-player difference between the two tournaments owes mostly tothe inclusion of Canada in 2024,which was not one of CONCACAF’s six best teams represented eight years prior.
Canada’s 14 MLS players are 10 more than are on any other contending team, including the United States — which has only three MLS players on its squad. Haiti was the lone CONCACAF team in the 2016 field that did not return in 2024, and the Haitians took only one MLS player to that tournament.
Quality vs Quantity
Secondly, the number of MLS players on a Copa America follows an inverse correlation with the chance oddsmakers' are giving those teams to win the tournament.
Of those 41 players, only six were on teams whom oddsmakers favored to advance from their respective groups,according to data from Odds Shark.
Put another way, what MLS appears to currently be doing well is giving opportunities for advancement to players from nations whose domestic leagues are in the lower tiers of quality in the Western Hemisphere. That’s not a bad thing. But to grow further, there is still plenty of room to do more business with the region’s better players in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and elsewhere in South America.
World Cup Context
Then there’s the matter of comparisons to 2022 World Cup rosters, which suggest that the growth of MLS representation in the international game may be stagnating.
Seven Copa America competitors took MLS players to Qatar. Of those, only Canada has seen the size of its MLS cohort grow between then and now. The United States’ MLS cohort shrank by six, Ecuador’s sank by three, and Mexico went from rostering one MLS player — Hector Herrera — to rostering none.
The size of the Argentina and Uruguay MLS contingents remained the same, and even that is somewhat damning, considering the addition of Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez to the league amounted to a net gain of zero in those national teams.
Stars Left Behind
But perhaps the biggest disappointment in the group of MLS players competing in the tournament is the absence of a few MLS stars who are eligible for the tournament.
BothReal Salt Lake’s Christian Arangoand the Columbus Crew’s Cucho Hernandez — two genuine MVP contenders — were not deemed good enough to qualify for Colombia’s super talented squad.
Atlanta’s Thiago Almada and Orlando City’s Facundo Torres have both had disappointing first halves of their domestic campaigns and played themselves out of the picture for Argentina and Uruguay, respectively.
For all the benefit of having a large contingent at the tournament, it would be even better for MLS to be able showcase its most captivating players at the event. And that’s not going to happen.
