If anybody is well equipped to adjudicate Major League Soccer's standing in the world, it is Atlanta United defender Greg Garza.
The native Texan began his career in Sao Paulo's youth system down in Brazil, and he made his professional debut in Portugal. He moved around so often in his teens that he got a tattoo of a gypsy woman on his arm in tribute to his rambling ways.
"I kind of see myself as a gypsy," Garza told ESPN FC in a phone interview. "I've never been afraid of leaving home."
He spent five years south of the border in Liga MX before joining Atlanta on loan earlier this year, playing for both Club Tijuana and Atlas. And so before this Sunday's big U.S.-Mexico World Cup qualifier at Estadio Azteca, Garza lent his perspective on the relative merits of the two rivals' domestic leagues.
Most neutral observers would still give Liga MX the decided edge.
Just look at the results of the CONCACAF Champions League, the continental club championship that remains the best head-to-head measuring stick between the leagues. (A reported Liga MX/MLS eight-team cup tournament that could debut as early as next year would add another layer to this long-standing debate, but that's a story for another day.)
Only two Major League Soccer teams have ever won a competitive match on Mexican soil. Just a pair of MLS clubs has ever reached the Champions League final, and both lost. Liga MX teams have won all nine editions of the tournament in its current format, seven of which involved all-Mexican title games.
MLS fans with longer memories harken back to D.C. and Los Angeles' triumphs in the Champions Cup, an earlier version of the event. But those happened in 1998 and 2000, respectively, and Mexican teams won five of the last seven championships before the new format began in 2008, too.
From the outside, it would appear that as much as MLS would like to be considered a true peer to Liga MX, a sizable gap remains. Garza, though, contends otherwise.
"If there's a gap, I think it's very minimal," Garza said. "If you would have asked me six or seven years ago, the Mexican teams were more advanced. They were looking forward to playing MLS teams in the quarterfinals and the semifinals. They looked at it as an easy way to advance.
"I would give it a couple more years, because the tables are really turning."
MLS teams have had a ready excuse for their failure to break through in the Champions League: scheduling.
Because the tournament runs in concert with Liga MX's autumn-through-spring league calendar and contrary to MLS' spring-through-autumn slate, Mexican teams are in sharper form come the elimination rounds. MLS players are still shaking off the rust of their winter offseasons; what do you expect?
There's another reason for it, too, not cited as often because it's not as quick of a fix. MLS teams simply aren't as deep. Liga MX clubs are typically wealthier, and they invest heavily in their squads. Held back by the salary cap, even well-off MLS teams are at a disadvantage.
That, more than anything else, is changing -- even if it still has a way to go. The injection of targeted allocation money into the player acquisition pool has allowed Major League Soccer to beef up its upper-middle class. Purse strings are being reluctantly loosened.
Garza, 25, watched MLS' growth with personal interest from afar. He'd left the United States at 12 years old and has been abroad for more than half of his life.
"I probably feel a bit more foreign than American at this point," Garza said. And yet he always knew, if the timing was right, he would love to come home.
Alhough he has been pleasantly surprised by Atlanta's success in quickly building its fan base -- "We've filled our stadium every week," he said; "there's nothing more you can ask for" -- Garza was not immediately drawn to Georgia by the expansion club's ambition.
He just wanted to play. Garza underwent major surgery on his hips in late 2015, necessitating more than a full year off.
"The main decision was to get back playing again," he said. "I had been out of the game for close to a year and a few months. I just wanted to touch the ball again and feel useful for a moment."
Garza has played in 12 of Atlanta's 13 matches so far, establishing himself as the first-choice left-back. His critique on MLS' style of play versus Liga MX's is standard: It's more physical, less technical, but changing every day.
His enthusiasm for his fresh lease on his career is evident in how willingly he hypes his new league. Garza pauses just once, considering his words when asked what, exactly, MLS must do to finally bridge that Champions League gap and establish itself as Liga MX's equal once and for all.
"I wish I could answer that for you," Garza said. "There's no perfect explanation. But the gap is very minimal. The teams in Liga MX are starting to realize that the teams in MLS are right behind them and can actually beat them. There are so many different whys and becauses as to why we haven't been able to surpass them in the [Champions League], but they're minimal.
"We're taking the right step forward. As long as we keep developing and growing in the way we have, we'll surpass those Mexican teams soon enough."