Champions Cup: Miami must be ruthless against young Jamaican club | OneFootball

Tonight’s Concacaf Champions Cup match between Inter Miami and Cavalier FC isn’t a David vs. Goliath matchup: it’s not that close.

The Herons will host Cavalier, from Jamaica, tonight at 8 p.m. EST at Chase Stadium in the first of two legs in the Champions Cup Round of 16. The second leg will be played at National Stadium in Kingston, Jamaica’s capitol, on Thursday, March 13.

Whichever team wins the Inter Miami-Cavalier home-and-away tie will face the winner between Columbus Crew and LAFC in the quarterfinals. To see a full Champions Cup bracket, go here.

Cavalier plays in the Jamaican Premier League; it has won three championships and finished second last year, but sits in fourth place — 16 points behind league leaders Mount Pleasant — in 2025. It plays home matches at a stadium with 3,000 seats (its Cup match next week has been moved to National Stadium) and the average age of its players is 20.2 years old, according to Transfermarkt. It won the Caribbean Cup in 2024 to earn a spot in this year’s Champions Cup; its only other Cup appearance was last year, when FC Cincinnati dispatched them with a 6-0 aggregate score.

Inter Miami set a Major League Soccer record with 74 points in 2024; the Herons won the Liga MX/MLS Leagues Cup in 2023 and MLS Supporters Shield last year. Inter Miami plays home matches at Chase Stadium in Fort Lauderdale, a temporary home that seats more than 19,000 fans, and the Pink & Black expect to move into multi-billion-dollar Miami Freedom Park, a multi-use development centered around a 25,000-seat soccer-specific stadium. The Herons made their Champions Cup debut last year and reached the quarterfinals, where they lost to Mexican side CF Monterrey. Trasfermarkt reports the average age of Inter Miami’s players is 26.5 years.

Rudolph Speid, 63, has coached Cavalier since 2016. He said the teams’ age difference could help his squad.