The US Open Cup is one of the oldest soccer tournaments in the world. Tim Hall explains its importance to US Soccer culture.
By Tim Hall
OK, judging by the chirping of crickets and the tumbleweed that blew across your monitor with that introduction, the Open Cup doesn’t exactly fill anyone with the same electricity as do some other, billion-dollar tournaments that we might mention. That’s fine. The great thing about this tournament – the Magic of the Cup, if you’d like – is that there’s something in it for just about everyone, and everyone can make that little facet their pet project, and make it stand for whatever they would like for it to mean.
The Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup is one of the longest-running knockout football competitions in the world, and it pits teams from all strata of American soccer against one another for bragging rights as the true champion of the country, as well as the eponymous trophy. It’s the equivalent of the FA Cup or the Copa del Rey with which fans of the game overseas might be more familiar.
How the US Open Cup levels the playing field
Some will try to tell you that the opening round games, with groups of semi-professionals knocking the ball around on a college field on a weeknight, are the true essence of the beautiful game, where the heart and soul lie, hoping that will stir up some sleeping passion in your gut.
You never know which of these teams might possibly make a run and knock off the big boys; it’s the magic of the cup! Fans who could not be bought by the big corporate sports behemoth take their places on metal bleachers. Granted, there usually aren’t many such people, but, hey, quality over quantity.
Only, the illusion of this being the game played the proper way gives away its tricks when you watch the pregame warmups and a player’s partner delivers their clearly forgotten shin guards 15 minutes before kickoff. When you have a pretty good idea that the man working the public address system is also the one who will be cutting the checks. When the backup goalkeeper is behind you in line for the restroom at halftime.
Swimming with Minnows
For all those miniature sides that needed to make do on a shoestring budget, there were some deeper-pocketed clubs who had to mingle in. The North American Soccer League was supposed to be the big heavyweight challenger to the throne occupied by Major League Soccer, but for a number of reasons to numerous to recount right now, the NASL imploded, much to the consternation and conspiracy theory of those convinced it would one day at least enter into a promotion and relegation agreement with MLS.
If you watch the Open Cup games this summer and get a kick out of them, that’s great. Lower-level soccer in this country is not anywhere near the point where it can be picky about where they draw their viewers from. And despite some cautionary tales, yes, the USOC really is a fun tournament with a lot of good points. Unfortunately, anyone who tries to exalt the Open Cup as anything more than that probably has their own personal objectives at stake, and as such, risks revealing that the magic of the US Open Cup is merely sleight of hand.
Why isn't the US Open Cup a big deal?
The Open Cup resides in a very strange place within a sport and culture in America that itself has an odd place all its own; the USOC is a dark corner of the creepiest room of an abandoned insane asylum. It is a relic that everyone loves, but nobody cares about.
The monument nobody visits, yet everyone protests the plans to knock it down and build something useful there. It gently nestles into a spot where it can serve as everything to everyone and nothing to anybody. For example, it has been asked by more than one immigrant to American shores why, oh why, doesn’t American soccer have something equivalent to the FA Cup or similar challenge cups all over the world?
When they are told that we do have such a competition and, depending on how one wishes to do math, it may in fact be older than the FA Cup, the inevitable follow-up question is “Well, why doesn’t anyone know about it? Why isn’t it a big deal?”
To which the correct response is to remind them that, as best as anyone can tell, the FA Cup hasn’t been a big deal in about thirty years either.
The Special One
Of course, this conversation also allows our friend the American Soccer Snob to puff out their chest and attempt to prove their superiority as a way to ingratiate themselves with their European cousins. They will tell you that, of course they know all too well how special the Open Cup is, in fact it is the only soccer they will descend from the mountaintops to watch, and they do their very best to promote it, but the mouth breathers that populate American soccer culture are not civilized enough to grasp the lofty concepts of the magic and allure of cup competition.
At which point, provided your prayers for a meteor strike have gone unanswered, a devotee of the Cult of the Open American Soccer Pyramid will turn up like a bad penny. They will use this opportunity to try to make some tenuous connection between the US Open Cup and the absolute need for promotion and relegation in American soccer, because their singular goal in life is to make tenuous connections between anything and pro/rel.
A Troubled Tournament
US Soccer’s own history with what should be their marquee club tournament is at best troubled. Until far, far too recently, this grand old tournament did not have a presence on social media, and record keeping and history tracking was done on an ad hoc basis by enthusiasts. That’s odd for an organization that cannot move quickly enough to remind you of one game in 1950 and will shut down for a month once Walter Bahr shuffles off this mortal coil.
To their credit, however, US Soccer has stepped up their game in the last handful of years and managed to place the USOC final televised on channels some Americans actually get. Believe it or not, this is a marked improvement.
Although maybe US Soccer just did all that to shut us up for a while, because USSF president and visible face of the American soccer establishment, Sunil Gulati, could not be bothered to make the trip to Texas for this prestigious affair, leaving the presentation of the greatest, most magical prize in American club soccer to a man in a suit.