One of soccer's oldest knock-out competitions kicks into gear across the U.S.A.
Is there anything quite like the U.S. Open Cup? Marking its 110th anniversary this year, older than its counterparts in France, Germany or Italy, this annual knock-out tournament has just won a major battle with MLS for North America’s premier league to continue to be represented in the competition.
With the soccer schedule squeezed in a Copa America year, and commitment to the Leagues Cup linked with Liga MX in Mexico, MLS had first announced it would only be sending its reserve sides from the Next Pro league in 2024.
Often criticised by America’s soccer fraternity for its elitist and dollar-focused attitude, detached from its roots, MLS then rowed back on a complete withdrawal – but not before harsh words from the de facto second-tier USL. Eight MLS teams, about one fourth of the full complement, should join this year’s tournament at the Round of 32 stage in May.
This week, meanwhile, 23 representatives from USL Leagues One and Two join 21 smaller teams in the First Round of this coast-to-coast odyssey, described in that justifiably indignant USL statement as an “historic and integral part of America’s soccer culture… an authentic and inclusive competition.”
And, looking at the names in the First Round, being played March 19-21, who could argue?
Days after the FA Cup has just provided more than enough thrills to underline its reverential status in the English game, its equivalent across the Atlantic has romance by the bucketload.
On Thursday, representing Buddy Holly’s hometown, Lubbock Matadors plays Arizona Monsoon. FC Folsom, as in Johnny Cash, faces Central Valley Fuego. Fans of FC Motown may have been disappointed to have been drawn against New YorK City reserves. Will Bob Dylan be rooting for Duluth (‘The Beautiful Game in the Beautiful City’), on the road and up for the cup at Forward Madison?
Azteca, about which nothing, zip, zero, is known outside of a small enclave of Denver, strides into the 20,000-capacity Dick’s Sporting Goods Park to go mano a mano with Colorado Rapids reserves.
And it’s not only Latinos heavily involved in this stage of soccer’s most patchwork competition. Vereinigung Erzgebirge is not a doom-laden band from 1980s’ Berlin but a soccer team dating back to 1931, formed by German-American immigrants from the Ore Mountain region of Eastern Germany, whose descendants battle it out this week with Charlotte Independence.
With 64 teams taking part in the Second Round, 80 in the Third Round, both in April, and a whopping 96 from the Round of 32 onwards, the dream of soccer pioneer Lamar Hunt to nurture the sport right across America is still very much alive. These days, the competition even carries his name.
The distances and logistic, of course, are mind-bending, and this may well be the last we see of the U.S. Open Cup in this format. The local qualifying rounds alone, which started in early September, would put Kerouac to shame. Of those 109 (!) teams, 11 have advanced to the tournament proper.
Though the early rounds of the competition are zoned, the revamp currently under consideration for 2025 may involve funding, or at least recompense, by the U.S. Soccer Federation, which oversees the competition.
And, if it doubts the wisdom of keeping this venerable institution viable, the USSF should pay a visit to its own National Soccer Hall of Fame, embedded into Toyota Stadium, home of FC Dallas. The history of U.S. soccer can be traced in the list of winners, from the great factory teams of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts – Bethlehem Steel, Fall River F.C. – to the ethnic representatives of the Big Apple, New York Hungaria, S.C. Eintracht, Brooklyn Italians. The originally named National Challenge Cup has kept the game going in America through thick and thin.
For this century-old flame-keeper to be extinguished by a long-awaited successful soccer showcase would have been the ultimate irony. Then again, they said that the FA Cup was dead after holders Manchester United pulled out for a tournament across the Atlantic in 1999.
U.S. Open Cup, First Round, March 19-21.
