Canadian Championship Preliminary Round, MLS, USL Jägermeister Cup & CONCACAF Champions Cup Semi-Finals previews, April 30-May 2

The preliminary round of the 2024 Canadian Championship concludes this week, beginning with a trio of matches tomorrow night from Ottawa in the East to Vancouver Island in the West. The two midnight kick-offs (all times BST) from Ontario are all-Canadian Premier League affairs, with Atletico Ottawa facing Valour FC, and Forge FC hosting York United. Forge currently top the CPL table after three rounds with a perfect record, having defeated Cavalry, Valour, and York, the latter a 3-0 win in Toronto that rarely saw the visitors troubled. York, though, saw off previously unbeaten Vancouver FC at the weekend with a 3-0 win of their own and will look to restore some pride and hopefully land a plum, two-legged tie against MLS club CF Montreal in the quarterfinals. Ottawa are one of two teams sitting in second, with two wins and a draw so far and will expect to sweep aside the challenge of Valour, last year's bottom side who are yet to earn a point in 2024.

The winners of the Atletico-Valour clash will face the winners of the 2am kick-off in Langford, where Pacific FC welcome League 1 British Columbia side TSS Rovers to Starlight Stadium. A semi-professional club based in Richmond on Lulu Island, south of Vancouver, TSS were late replacements for L1BC runners-up Victoria Highlanders (champions Whitecaps FC Academy being ineligible to qualify for the Canadian Championship). Highlanders withdrew from L1BC in April to return to amateur soccer, leaving TSS  - formed as the Total Soccer Systems academy in 1997 and beginning league play in the 2017 USL League Two - to take their place. TSS were knocked out by Pacific (who, like Ottawa, have seven points from three games this season) at the quarterfinal stage last year after beating Valour in the preliminary round. The final preliminary round tie comes from Nova Scotia on Thursday, where HFX Wanderers - pointless after three games this season - face Ligue 1 Quebec champions CS Saint-Laurent in an 11pm kick-off. Saint-Laurent celebrated their fortieth anniversary in 2022, originally started as a youth soccer club in the western Montreal suburb of Ville St-Laurent, close to Pierre Trudeau Airport. They only began playing at semi-professional level in 2022, when they finished second in L1Q, going one place better last year to qualify for this trophy. The winners of this match face a two-legged tie with Toronto FC of MLS.

When Seattle Sounders travelled to Philadelphia Union on March 9th this year, they never thought that their game would last less than six minutes due to inclement weather forcing the players from the field. The game resumes tonight at 0.30am from that six-minute mark, ostensibly with the same starting eleven and line-up of substitutes, although allowances are always made for injuries. Union lost their unbeaten record at the weekend with a rare home defeat to Real Salt Lake, while Sounders continued their woeful season thus far with another red card and another defeat, this time to DC United (although they did, at least, manage a goal).

US soccer's newest competition, the USL Jägermeister Cup, continues on Wednesday night with the final game from round one of matches in the twelve-team, round-robin competition. With Spokane Velocity and Central Valley Fuego having already opened the West Group with a Fuego win on penalties, Union Omaha and Northern Colorado Hailstorm will be looking for an outright victory in ninety minutes to top the group when they meet at Werner Field in Nebraska, also at half-past midnight. Union currently sit fourth in USL League One, with two wins and a draw from their three league games this season, while Hailstorm prop up the table, just two points from four games giving them that unwanted basement club tag. Hailstorm are yet to recover from the loss of Trevor Amann to the USL Championship with Sacramento Republic, but head coach Eamon Zayed will probably welcome a chance to start afresh in a new competition tomorrow.

The CONCACAF Champions Cup reaches the semi-finals stage this week, with Pachuca and Club America meeting at Estadio Hidalgo tonight, the tie poised after a 1-1 draw at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City last week. The second semi-final features the sole remaining MLS club, Columbus Crew, as they travel to Nuevo Leon to face CF Monterrey having earned a 2-1 win in Ohio last week. Crew largely rested star player Cucho Hernandez at the weekend, giving him just half an hour of the 0-0 draw with CF Montreal, and will be hoping that they will at least have a chance of becoming only the fourth US club to win the competition in its 63-year history.