Club América and Columbus Crew will meet Wednesday in the Leagues Cup 2026 quarterfinals at Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, with a semifinal place on the line. The winner moves on in a tournament that now pays off in direct knockout rounds and a route to the CONCACAF Champions Cup 2027.
The match is scheduled for 7:45 pm Pacific time and will be shown on Apple TV. Club América arrives with momentum after finishing second in the overall Leagues Cup table with two wins and one draw, while Columbus Crew is still unbeaten in the current tournament.
For América, this is more than a date on the bracket. It reached the quarterfinals after an unbeaten group stage, scored seven goals in the opening round and has gone eight matches without a loss across all competitions, with six wins and two draws. It also leads the Liga MX Apertura, and Henry Martín has tried to keep the focus narrow, saying the team wants to advance and prove itself on the field rather than lean on what happened before.
That message matters because the setting gives América an edge that did not come from form alone. The club has home-field advantage in Carson because of its table position and the tournament regulations that place this round in the United States, and that should help a team that has also had production from Brian Rodríguez and Isaías Violante, who each scored two goals in the Leagues Cup. Martín added two goals in a Liga MX match, another sign that América is arriving with multiple ways to threaten.
Columbus Crew brings a very different kind of pressure. It remains unbeaten in the Leagues Cup, but it has also lost its last three MLS matches since the group stage ended and sits last in its conference with five wins, five draws and 11 losses. Laurent Courtois called this kind of game a luxury, which is true in knockout soccer and also a reminder that the tournament can look cleaner than the league table beneath it.
The history between these teams leaves little room for easy assumptions. Columbus beat Club América 4-1 in the final group-stage match of the Leagues Cup 2023, but América turned the last major meeting around by eliminating Columbus in a penalty shootout in the Concacaf Champions Cup 2024 final. Monterrey and León already moved on Tuesday by eliminating Chicago and Real Salt Lake, and the quarterfinal winner here will join them in the semifinals while keeping alive a shot at one of the three CONCACAF Champions Cup 2027 places reserved for the finalists and the third-place team.
América has the venue, the form and the sharper scoring spread. Columbus has the unbeaten tournament record and the kind of history that can make a quarterfinal uneasy. One of those advantages ends Wednesday night, and the other becomes the reason the winner stays in the hunt.
