What hath the preliminary round wrought?

The groups for this year's Champions League is finally complete.  This is what we have:

• Sixteen clubs representing ten countries
• All four Mexican qualifiers
• The same number of representatives from MLS (2) as the USL (2)
• Two clubs from the Caribbean
• One Costa Rican side
• Of the countries given more than one slot, only Mexico, Panama, and Honduras have all their representatives in the group stage.
• Nine teams that have not appeared in the old Champions' Cup in the last five years.

Some of the results in the preliminary round were totally unexpected, and the upsets have given us a geographically diverse collection of teams in the group stage.  That can only be a good thing for the Champions League as it tries to generate interest across the CONCACAF region.

I wasn't able to liveblog Wednesday and Thursday's matches, but I did watch a replay of the Puerto Rico Islanders-Alajuelense match.  Knowing the score beforehand, I watched the final minutes wondering how the Islanders managed to come back.  The Islanders' first goal was controversial, to say the very least, should not have counted and is the first refereeing incident of the tournament (from the matches that I've seen).  The second goal was just comically defended.  What a bitter defeat for Alajuelense!

I felt sorry for Harbour View that they had to play a one-off match in Mexico City, and their chances ended before the match even started.  Even with an extra man UNAM made it difficult for themselves, with the penalty miss by Palencia.  But in the second half they figured out how to score and made the scoreline more impressive during second half stoppage time.  It was a credible effort by a very unfortunate Harbour View.

During the weekend and throughout next week, I'll have some posts featuring my comments on the way the Champions League matches looked on TV, the repercussions of MLS failing to advance all of their entrants to the group stage, and some analysis of the groups.