Hugo Cuypers is spending this week with the Belgium national team, earning the first senior call-up of his career, and he could have kept his answers to the media diplomatic. He did not. Speaking to Belgian media outlet Het Nieuwsblad, the Monterrey Rayados striker made his position clear. “The Mexican competition is stronger than MLS,” he said. He called Liga MX more European in style, more intense and more even. MLS matches before the playoffs, by comparison, sometimes feel almost like training matches.
The other part of the interview is what MLS supporters should actually be concerned about. Cuypers said he wanted to leave Chicago because he missed the emotion around football: the passion, the intensity, the feeling that the matches actually mattered. He pointed to the crowds in Mexico, where clubs in Monterrey, Mexico City, Toluca, and Guadalajara can regularly draw large crowds, and said Monterrey has given him the atmosphere he was looking for. Players criticize MLS plenty, usually on their way down or on their way out. Cuypers did it on his way up, during the best week of his career and he kicked off another round of a familiar argument.
MLS Supporters Can’t Ignore Hugo Cuypers Criticisms
Cuypers left Chicago as a hero. He scored 44 goals in 82 appearances for the Fire, and his first half of 2026 was his best: 13 goals in 11 matches, top of the Golden Boot race. Chicago had signed Robert Lewandowski in June. Cuypers handed him the number nine shirt in public, took the number 99 himself, and less than a month later was on his way to Monterrey in a
reported 7.5 million dollar deal, a player who was set to replace German Berterame, who had moved from Rayados to Inter Miami to be the goalscoring outlet for none other than MLS MVP Lionel Messi.
A poll of 337 Fire fans found 69 percent would rather have kept Cuypers than signed Lewandowski, and many MLS supporters felt another club should bid for Cuypers, to keep him within the league. Cuypers made it clear his choice was Liga MX, saying the MLS regular season did not feel like real competition. He believed Mexico gave him a better chance with Belgium than staying in MLS, and it has worked: Belgium’s staff had spoken with him in Chicago in March, under Rudi Garcia, and now, under Mark van Bommel, he has his first senior call-up for matches against Turkiye and Italy.
Former Rayado Vincent Janssen Now With Portland Timbers
Six days after Cuypers left Chicago, Vincent Janssen signed for Portland on a free transfer. Janssen was the last European striker to hold Cuypers’ job at Rayados, where he won a Liga MX title and the CONCACAF Champions League. At 32 he arrived as a veteran striker bringing both experience and depth, and scored a hat-trick in his first start, the first by a Timbers player since the club has been in MLS.
Janssen went north for a new career chapter. Cuypers went south at 29, in his prime, looking for the opposite. At this point, it’s become a frequent occurence for the two leagues that border each other to swap players. After saying his children faced racism in school, Frenchman Allan Saint-Maximin left Club America, and is now with Charlotte FC. Saint-Maximin telling the Athletic “It was difficult because Mexico has been one of the best places I’ve ever been, but I couldn’t let my children think they had to accept that (racism)”
Cuypers is Happier, But Wins Haven’t Followed
Here is the question the Cuypers quotes actually raise. Is he saying this because everything has gone well for him in Mexico? Not really. Rayados are 10th in the Apertura table with 21 points and two league matches left, next at Querétaro on Saturday, which Cuypers will miss because he is with Belgium. His own return is six goals in 14 Liga MX appearances. At Rayados, missing the Liguilla is a failure, and Cuypers knows it. His former club, Chicago Fire are already in the MLS playoffs.
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He is still happier there. Or happy enough.
Even its most strident supporters don’t pretend Liga MX is perfect. The defending, especially by Cuypers’ own Rayados this season, can be maddening, and the refereeing is inconsistent. But the competition does not lack emotion. It is the other side of the argument Júnior Alonso made from inside MLS earlier this year: the Atlanta defender from Paraguay said a team bottom of the table in South America would leave its players unable to show their faces in public. Cuypers has now described choosing that pressure cooker that is Latin American football to try to elevate his level.
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MLS will point to its own numbers, that its clubs are improving on a global stage, but still the CONCACAF Champions League, and to a lesser extent, the US hosted Leagues Cup has tilted towards Liga MX, with Toluca the most recent champions. With it’s less restrictive budgets and deeper squads, and Cuypers claims just add an emotional edge to the Liga MX argument of what league weighs heavier. MLS supporters will fire back with their own media headline this week, former US MNT star Landon Donovan, who spent time in Mexico with Club Leon, trashed the conditions of Liga MX facilities, as reported by AS “I can’t even describe to you how bad the facilities were.”
Extra Time Notes
These arguments about league quality and atmosphere flare up every time a quality player moves between MLS and Liga MX. Cuypers might stick in the memory longer than most, because there is no easy way to dismiss him. He was a star in MLS, Chicago supporters wanted him to stay, and he left anyway. Four months later he has his first Belgium call-up, with his club’s season two matches from being called a disaster. It leaves a question that MLS can’t easily answer: why did one of its best strikers feel he had to leave for Mexico find the football experience he wanted?
Main Photo Credit: Alan Poizner-Imagn Images via Reuters Connect
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