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Another year, another start to the Liga MX. Friday will see a new beginning to the Mexican tournament with the Clausura being kicked off by Necaxa and Atletico de San Luis at Estadio Victoria in Aguascalientes. It will be the first Liga MX game in 68 days since Pachuca was crowned the Apertura champion for the seventh time in their history against Toluca on October 30th.
Like every new edition of a Liga MX tournament, whatever happened in the previous four-month semester is in the past and like the teams and fans that are able to renew their hopes of reaching Mexican glory, we at The18 would like to renew our set of Apertura 2022 predictions and take a chance at prognosticating the results of the longly-awaited Clausura 2023.
Guillermo Almada’s Pachuca won the last tournament by practically running through each team in the playoffs and having scored eight goals and received only two in a two-game final (the largest aggregate difference in Liguilla history). Light work.
Yet, as things stand, our famous friends at FiveThirtyEight still don’t see Pachuca as the favorites to go back-to-back like Atlas did in the 2021-22 season.
FiveThirtyEight has once again placed Monterrey as their favorite to take the crown. According to their Soccer Power Index (SPI), the northerners have a 22 percent chance to win the tournament, followed by América (17%), Tigres (16%), Pachuca (9%) and Santos Laguna (7%).
We at The18, however, throw the SPI out the window and base our champion predictions off the most reliable source of fútbol knowledge: our brains.
Who’s taking the title isn’t the only category we predicted, though, as we also took it upon ourselves to foretell the top scorer, best signing, biggest disappointment, biggest surprise and the first manager to get sacked.
Let’s get to predicting.
Clausura 2023 Liga MX Predictions
Luis Vidal
- Champion: Club América
- Top-Scorer: Nicolás Ibáñez (Pachuca)
- Biggest disappointment (team or player): Pumas (again)
- Biggest surprise (team or player): Chivas
- Best signing: David Ochoa (Atlético de San Luis)
- First manager to get sacked: Gabriel Caballero (Mazatlán)
Giancarlo Cornejo
- Champion: Club América (I’m just speaking it into existence at this point)
- Top-Scorer: Juan Ignacio Dinenno (Pumas)
- Biggest disappointment (team or player): Toluca
- Biggest surprise (team or player): Rafa Puente’s Pumas
- Best signing: Fernando Gorriarán (Tigres)
- First manager to get sacked: Andrés Lillini
David Moore
- Champion: Tigres
- Top-Scorer: Andre Pierre-Gignac (Tigres)
- Biggest disappointment: After a decent outing last time and finishing 11th, Juárez goes back to doing what they know best: eating ass like it's their 9 to 5. Juárez only wins 2 games.
- Biggest surprise: Pumas finishes in the top 5
- Best signing: Fernando Gorriarán (Tigres)
- First manager to get sacked: Hernán Cristante (Juárez)
