Liga MX Clausura 2020 cancelled

The Mexican 2020 Clausura season has been cancelled amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the league has announced.

No champion will be crowned but Cruz Azul and Leon will qualify for next season’s CONCACAF Champions League.

Cruz Azul and Leon had been the top two in the table after 10 games when the league was suspended on 15 March. The final weekend of games that went ahead were played behind closed doors.

A statement on the Liga MX website read:

“In recent weeks, permanent working groups and talks have been held with the federal government’s health department that would allow us to resume the 2020 Clausura responsibly and without putting any member of the soccer family in Mexico at risk.

“However, the time of the [pandemic] that we are living through has caused increasing schedule restrictions, which do not allow us to continue the competition without putting at risk the members of this great family. Therefore, in absolute unity, the Extraordinary Assembly of the LIGA MX agreed to conclude the Liga MX 2020 Clausura for both the men’s and women’s leagues.”

The 2020 Clausura still had seven rounds of matches and the play-offs to play at the time of the league’s suspension.

Many clubs and the league themselves had been confident of finishing the season prior to this announcement on Friday. The hope was that the league would restart in early July with many club owners publicly stating that cancellation would badly hurt their finances.

That was before Santos Laguna announced on Friday that 15 players had tested positive for coronavirus, with the numbers in the country of Mexico also on the increase. Los Guerreros had been third in the table at the time of suspension.

Mexico are not the first country to cancel their 2020 football season – France’s Ligue 1 and the Dutch Eredivisie were both cancelled back in April. France awarded the championship to Paris Saint-Germain and relegated the bottom two, whilst there was no champion, promotion nor relegation in the Netherlands.

The 2020 Liga MX Torneo Apertura was originally due to start in mid-July but for the pandemic that has disrupted all sport worldwide. Monterrey won last season’s competition but were bottom of the 2020 Clausura with just five points from their 10 matches.

Liga MX president Enrique Bonilla contracted the virus on 20 March but has since made a full recovery.