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Brais Mendez Scores Again as Columbus Crew Open Leagues Cup With Win Over Atlas
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- Brais Mendez Scores Again as Columbus Crew Open Leagues Cup With Win Over Atlas
A month ago, Brais Mendez was a Real Sociedad player who had never kicked a ball in Major League Soccer. Now he is the man delivering goals in back-to-back games for the Columbus Crew , and he did it again as Columbus opened its 2026 Leagues Cup campaign with a 3-1 win over Atlas FC on Tuesday at ScottsMiracle-Gro Field.
As the reigning 2024 Leagues Cup champions, Columbus knows what it takes to win the tournament, and interim head coach Laurent Courtois 's team showed exactly that pedigree again, following up a tough first half with a second-half response that put the game away.
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Columbus won that 2024 title with a 3-1 victory over LAFC in the final, a repeat of the previous year's MLS Cup, and Cucho Hernandez's contribution to that run made him the toast of Ohio at the time. Two years on, a different cast is doing the damage in the group stage, with a new Designated Player and a homegrown academy product sharing the goals and the headlines this time around.
A Whirlwind First Month for Mendez
Mendez, signed as a Designated Player, made his Columbus debut just last weekend against Inter Miami , coming off the bench for a 29-minute cameo and scoring a late goal that rescued a point in a 2-2 draw on August 1. Against Atlas, he did it again, bagging his second goal in as many games to help send Columbus's Leagues Cup campaign off on the right foot.
"Very happy to be able to help the team with goals, especially in today's win," Mendez said. "This is the way we need to continue. Not only for myself but for the team, looking forward and earning more victories."
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The impact has been immediate, and it has not gone unnoticed by his new teammates. Midfielder Taha Habroune described the difference Mendez's quality makes inside the team. "It just gives you so much confidence when you give him a ball like that through on goal," Habroune said. "You kind of just know he's going to finish it with his qualities. I'm super excited to continue playing with him."
"I mean, his technical qualities are honestly unreal," Habroune added. "He's very good in tight spaces, and that kind of fits the way we play. So, I think he will help us a lot going into the rest of the season."
The Player Columbus Brought In
Mendez, 29, arrived in Columbus as a Designated Player after four seasons at Real Sociedad, where he scored 33 goals and provided 24 assists in 166 appearances. He helped the Basque club qualify for the Champions League for the first time in years, scoring three goals in seven European appearances, including the opener in a 1-1 draw with Inter Milan on his tournament debut. He also won a Copa del Rey title with Real Sociedad, coming from behind to beat Atletico Madrid on penalties in the final. He has four caps and one goal for Spain at senior level.
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That pedigree is exactly why Columbus moved to sign him and why his instant impact, a debut goal against Inter Miami followed by a second in his first Leagues Cup start, has landed with so little surprise inside the club. A player used to Champions League nights and cup finals in Spain has needed almost no time at all to find the net in MLS colors.
Habroune's Own Breakout Continues
Mendez was not the only Columbus player to stand out against Atlas. Habroune, a 20-year-old homegrown midfielder in the middle of a breakout 2026 season, turned in a Man of the Match performance, assisting on a pair of goals in the win.
Habroune has appeared in 17 league matches this season, contributing a goal and an assist before Tuesday's showing against Atlas, and the confidence in his game has grown alongside the new faces arriving around him. "I feel very confident," Habroune said. "Even before the game with all the new guys, and I think the coach kind of just gives us that confidence going into any game, no matter who we're playing now, it's been good."
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Courtois has noticed the same growth in his young midfielder. "He's in the continuity of what he's been doing the last couple of weeks," Courtois said. "The intensity and the volume of actions, a little bit more bite to intercept, to individual defending, to track back, he's having more impact in the duels and we know his quality on the ball."
Courtois on a Tough Second Half and a Tougher Test Ahead
Courtois was pleased with how his team responded after Atlas made things difficult in the second half. "Honestly, we are very happy because we just faced a great team," he said. "Earning the victory in the fashion that we played and suffered in the second half, it gives us a lot of joy."
"In the first half, we played our game," Courtois said. "In the second half, it was tough for us, but like I said, the guys showed that they can suffer together and change the game. So very happy, and we'll see how Friday turns out. It will be even tougher."
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Why This Run Counts for Columbus
The timing of this form could hardly be better for Columbus. The Crew currently sit outside the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs positions, trailing D.C. United by three points for the East's final postseason spot heading into the second half of the MLS regular season. A strong Leagues Cup run carries no direct bearing on that standings table, but a team riding confidence from wins like this one over Atlas has history behind it, and Columbus knows that better than most sides in the competition after lifting the trophy in 2024.
With only three Phase One matches on the schedule and only the top four teams from each league advancing to the knockout rounds, every point counts for something in the group stage, and Tuesday's win puts Columbus in a strong position after just one game. The Crew's next Phase One match comes against Pachuca on August 7, a fixture Courtois has already flagged as a step up in difficulty from what his team just faced.
For now, Columbus has a new Designated Player scoring in bunches, a homegrown academy product playing the best soccer of his young career, and a Leagues Cup campaign that has started exactly the way the club's championship pedigree suggested it might.
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Who Columbus Just Beat
Atlas FC brought a long history to ScottsMiracle-Gro Field even in defeat. Founded in Guadalajara in 1916, the club known as Los Rojinegros for their red-and-black colors and Los Zorros for the pace of their players in the 1970s were founding members of the first professional league in Mexico . Atlas won back-to-back Liga MX titles in 2021 and 2022 after decades without a championship, a run that ended a long wait for silverware at a club nicknamed the Academy for the number of players its youth system has sent into professional and international soccer.
That history made Tuesday's result a meaningful marker for Columbus, not just a routine group-stage win. Beating a club with Atlas's pedigree, and doing it by playing through a difficult second half rather than around it, is the kind of result Courtois and his players will point back to if the Crew's Leagues Cup run continues into the knockout rounds.
