With the group stage kicking off tonight, it seemed like a good time to total things up by country. The surprises so far:
MLS Goes Five-for-Five: All four US teams made it through to the group stage. Additionally Toronto FC made it to the group stage and propelled Canada to the top of the list thus far.

Now that we have a couple of years of data to work with, I wanted to know if how teams qualified for the CCL had any correlation to their success. There are four ways to qualify for the tournament:

• Win MLS Cup
• Win the US Open Cup
• Win the Supporters Shield
• Be the MLS Cup Runner Up

If the same team fills more than one of these slots (like Columbus which won MLS Cup and the Supporters Shield in the same year) another team gets one of the slots.

Since qualifying for the CONCACAF Champions League is by country and not by league, it's possible for the same league to qualify teams for multiple countries. For the current 2011-12 tournament, the USL/NASL could have qualified teams by winning the US Open Cup, the Nutrilite Canadian Championship and through the qualifying for Caribbean teams.

Below are the results by country for the first three full years of the Champions League. Once the 2011-12 tourney is done, I'll update this post.
As you can see, not every country competes in the tournament every year. The 2011-12 tournament will see two new countries added to the list: Guyana and Haiti.

Well, I suppose if I'm going to do this again for 2011-12, I should probably post the summary stats from lat year first, huh?
W L T GF GA DIF Win% PPG
Mexico 25 10 7 91 42 49 59.5 1.95
Costa Rica 6 4 2 20 17 3 50.

Introducing Darnell De Guzman.

These are the overall records for each team that's competed in the Superliga tournament. All ties in the knockout stages have been counted as wins and losses for the teams involved based on the results of the penalty kick shootout.
Team W L T GF GA DF PTS PPG
America 1 2 0 3 4 -1 3 1.

Appearances
Rk Team App
1 Chivas USA 3
Houston 3
New England 3
Pachuca 3
5 Chicago 2
DC United 2
Guadalajara 2
Morelia 2
Santos 2
Title Game Appearances
Rk Team App
1 New England 2
2 Houston 1
Pachuca 1
Chicago 1
Morelia 1
Los Angeles 1
Tigres 1
Championships
Rk Team App
1 New England 1
Pachuca 1
Morelia 1
Tigres 1

Last year I compiled a list of everyone who had scored more than one Superliga goal. Since the Superliga site is nearly impossible to get useful stats from, I decided to expand things a bit this year.
9/2/10 Update: With his brace in the final, Morelia's Miguel Sabah wrote his name into the record books, climbing into a tie for most career goals and most goals in a single tournament.

Over the last two years I've developed an overwhelming hatred of Panama's Arabe Unido. The strategy in their 2009-10 home leg against Houston consisted of two-footed tackles and overall hackery. This year's performance against Real Salt Lake alternated between thuggery and the worst display of "ow my spleen" time-wasting I've ever seen.

Three stinking minutes. All Real Salt Lake had to do was hold out for another three minutes last night and they would have become the first American team to beat a Mexican team in Mexico during an official competition. Instead they managed to give up three goals from the 87th minute onward and go on to lose 5-4 to Cruz Azul.

Less than 24 hours after I opined that a Mexican team had to lose at some point in the CONCACAF Champions League, Toronto FC managed to shock Cruz Azul 2-0 at BMO Field. By defeating last year's runners-up Toronto FC became the first MLS team to beat a Mexican team in the 2+ years of the Champions League.

With the group stage about to kick off, it seems like a good time to recap the current results by country. Teams from Mexico, the United States, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala and Panama will join the survivors of the preliminary round, so these number may change drastically by the end of the group stage.

If you're a Dynamo fan you have to feel slightly ill about your stable of forwards. Houston's leading scorer is Brad Davis - a midfielder by trade who's bagged just four goals this season. No forward on the roster (including Brian Ching) has scored more than two goals. To make matters worse, two players that were recently wearing the Houston orange are the leading scorers for other teams.

As a Fire fan, I was a little surprised that they acquired Freddie Ljungberg for the MLS equivalent of a bag of soccer balls (well, at least now that Supplemental Draft picks no longer exist.) He's certainly talented, and his contract only runs until the end of the year so it's a low-risk maneuver for the Men in Red, but Shawn Francis over at The Offside Rules captures the existential malaise surrounding the deal.