The first half of the 2023/24 Liga MX Femenil season has drawn to a close. After another very competitive campaign, Tigres have been crowned champions as they comfortably won the final against Club América with an aggregate score of 3-0.
This was a thoroughly deserved title for Mexico’s most successful women’s team, who finished the regular season atop the league table with 44 points from 17 games and just one defeat. They then entered the Liguilla (playoff tournament) as the top seed, dispatching Pumas 5-2 on aggregate in the quarterfinal.
Their semifinal proved to be a much tougher affair, as Monterrey pushed them all the way until Stephany Mayor scored the only goal of the tie in the 82nd minute of the second leg.
The gran final saw the top two teams in the league table face off as Tigres took on Club América. A resounding three-goal win in the first leg away from home meant that Las Amazonas effectively had one hand on the title going into the second leg, and they got the job done at the Estadio Universitario.
Immediate Success For Mila Martínez
The head coach behind Tigres’ fantastic 2023 Apertura campaign was Mila Martínez. Hired in the summer after a disappointing 2022/23 Clausura, she won a trophy after her first couple of matches in the shape of the Campeón de Campeones (for which they defeated América 3-0 on aggregate funnily enough).
The 2023/24 Apertura marked her first regular season in charge of the club, and although they were the first team to qualify for the playoffs (with an unbeaten record at the time) and never dropped out of the top two in the standings, fans were not fully pleased with her work.
They say defense wins titles, and Tigres clearly seemed to subscribe to that philosophy. They had the joint-best defensive record in the regular season with just 11 goals conceded in 17 games. At the same time, their attack was not half-bad either as their return of 51 goals was the second-best behind the free-flowing América.
Tactically, Martínez has been very fluid in terms of formations. She has used everything from a 4-3-3 and 4-2-3-1 to 3-4-3 and even a 3-5-1-1. Clearly, her first priority is to set her side up in a way that best suits the match and opposition without rigidly sticking to a structure.
This, in turn, has meant that most players have had to play differing roles to some degree over the course of the season. Although most of them dealt with this quite well, the constant chopping and changing unsurprisingly had an impact on the attackers as everybody did not fire to the best of their abilities.
Two youngsters stood out, though, as 23-year-old Maricarmen Reyes and 24-year-old Lizbeth Ovalle were the team’s top scorers with 15 and 11 goals respectively. Reyes’ return also makes her the joint top-scorer in the league, as she did a great job alternating between the striker and right wing positions and even dropping into midfield at times. Ovalle, on the other hand, nailed down the left wing spot for herself and dealt her damage from there.
All things considered, Tigres were deserved champions at the end of a very strong season for them. It has not been all smooth sailing, but Las Amazonas got the job done against their direct rivals both in the regular season and playoffs to consolidate their position as the most successful team in the league.
The 2023/24 Clausura will kick off in January. Tigres will look to complete another seasonal double for the first time in front of their fans (their effort in 2020/21 had to be behind closed doors due to the pandemic), and they surely have to be considered very strong contenders yet again.