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By Dylan Butler
CONCACAF.com
It's a familiar tale: two Mexican teams contesting for the CONCACAF club championship.
The two-leg clash that begins Wednesday between Monterrey and Santos will be the third time in four years since the CONCACAF Champions League began, the fifth time in six years and will guarantee a Mexican champion for the seventh straight year and 28th time since the confederation began staging the tournament in 1962.
If there is anything new, it's that Monterrey can become the first team to win consecutive titles since the start of the Champions League and the first two win back-to-back confederation crowns since Pachuca won the old Champions Cup in 2007 and 2008. Or, Santos will become the 28th different club to win the CONCACAF trophy.
Monterrey, which beat Real Salt Lake in last year's title series, already has had to defeat Mexican rivals Morelia and Pumas UNAM in the knockout stage to reach the final. Santos Laguna had to eliminate a pair of Major League Soccer squads - Seattle Sounders and Toronto FC - to book its first-ever CONCACAF Champions League final appearance.
The clash that will begin at Estadio Tecnologico will be a rematch of the 2010 Mexican Apertura finals, which Monterrey won with a 3-0 second-leg win and qualified both for the Champions League.
Santos Laguna, which was eliminated in the semifinals by eventual champion Atlante in the Champions League's inaugural season, has lost the past three finals it has reached: the 2009-2010 Mexican Clausura to Toluca, last season's Apertura to Monterrey, and December's Apertura to Tigres.
Both teams will also be down a key starter to yellow-card accumulation. Cesar Delgado, who has nine goals in 28 appearances for Monterrey since July, and Santos Laguna will be without Oribe Peralta, who has six goals in the CONCACAF Champions League, tied with teammate Herculez Gomez for the overall lead.
Monterrey will be additionally hampered by the absence of injured defender Ricardo Osorio.
Gomez, who has 11 goals in Santos' last 12 overall games, is expected to carry the scoring lead in place of Peralta.
Both teams enter Wednesday's first leg having extended unbeaten streaks snapped. Santos' 3-1 loss at America ended an eight-game unbeaten string - dropping it to second place in the Mexican league, while Monterrey had a nine-game streak halted - a 1-0 loss at Atlas that could have catapulted it from fourth to first.
Team co-scoring leader Humberto Suazo played only the final 29 minutes, leaving him relatively rested for Wednesday's game.
"We are going step-by-step, yesterday things didn't go well, but for us right now, the game on Wednesday (the championship against Santos) is more important than anything else," Monterrey president Luis Miguel Salvador told Univision.com. "If we get that done, the Mexican league leadership will come along. If you ask, what do I prefer, the overall Mexican league lead now, or the CONCACAF championship, the logical answer would be to be champions.
"We do not lose sleep over (not taking the Mexican league lead)," he added. "Yes, we are very upset about the outcome [Saturday], we did not like it, but on Wednesday we have a big commitment. We have to move forward."
Besides losing three straight finals, Santos Laguna's loss to Monterrey 2½ years ago is a sore spot. But this time at least, it will have the advantage of hosting the second leg April 25 at home in Torreon.
"We all know what happened at that meeting and [we] have a thorn," Santos Laguna defender Carlos Adrian Morales told El Siglo de Torreon. "The first leg will be important. You have to work well, the best an expect a great final at Estadio Corona."
