Amid MLS row, is a watered-down Open Cup on the ropes?

It was the summer of 2014. Nestled away in a spring training ballpark in the West Valley, Arizona United was getting set to take part in a showpiece U.S. Open Cup clash against Los Angeles Galaxy.

That was the first time I went to see the team that would become Phoenix Rising, a club that since then has taken over far too much of my life as I travel across the country to tell its story. Back then, I’d just finished my junior year of high school, at the same school once attended by now-Rising head coach Danny Stone.

Perhaps it isn’t a surprise, then, that the Open Cup holds a special place in my heart. It does so even as its soul is ripped out by in-fighting at the top of the U.S. pyramid, amid power plays of who really runs the game in this country.

I’ll be fair and point out that the Open Cup, and the meaning behind it, probably came easier to me than to those raised on a steady diet of American sporting leagues. Cup competitions were a familiar language, one I could identify with after growing up in South Wales as a Cardiff fan, fed on a steady diet of 1927 stories and key moments from across the years.

That lore became reality as Cardiff reached an FA Cup final in 2008. I knew Cardiff weren’t a phenomenal team. This wasn’t some top-four club that could afford to turn their nose up at cup competitions. It meant something to outlast the bigger clubs like Manchester United and Liverpool and Arsenal and Chelsea, and to put yourselves on the map in their place, just for a moment.

That same feeling, or some form of it, is what this past week’s decision by the U.S. Soccer Federation, kowtowing to the requests of Major League Soccer, denies to fans of smaller clubs across the country. It’s not possible to say that you’ve outlasted the top clubs if they never showed up to the party in the first place.

For a cup competition to be able to call itself the national club championship, as U.S. Soccer refers to the Open Cup, it needs the top teams to be present. Refusing to put out a team under the club’s own name sits somewhere between distain and cowardice. Refusing to put out a team at all… well, that’s on the next level.

While some top-flight supporters groups have backed the cup publicly, there are MLS fans that’ll tell you that nobody cared about this competition anyway, and that the attendance figures bear that out. But when most of Major League Soccer has never really known the reality of being an underdog, why is it a particular shock that this competition isn’t meant just for them? That it could instead be an important part of the ecosystem that they ought to have a responsibility towards?

It’s a funny thing, though, growing the game.

Just look at San Diego. When the top-flight needs fans to get over a new club’s “minor league” cousin meeting an untimely end and fall into line behind its latest expansion, you’ll hear that phrase trotted out. Active opposition would be selfish, don’t you know? Why aren’t you thinking about growing the game? Do you even really love the sport?

Yet when growing the game means boosting the pyramid outside of MLS control, up winds the middle finger with its “I’m alright, Jack” attitude.

It pushes the question of what growing the game actually means. Is it measured by community engagement across the country, or by the number of dollar signs next to the latest batch of Messi tickets to hit resale sites? These things aren’t mutually exclusive, of course, but quite how you prioritize can raise questions.

Those priorities have led us here, with a watered-down Open Cup on the slate. It’s something that doesn’t feel right.

I’ve travelled the country covering USL matches, and seen fanbases in smaller markets that care deeply about their clubs. They’re never going to join the billionaires’ table in the top flight, no matter how they perform on the field. The Open Cup, though, gave them their chance for a place in the spotlight and to show they can meet the top teams in the country as equals. With each change, those opportunities slip further and further out of grasp. MLS raises the drawbridge, symbolizing that the money, power and image of the game in this country should belong to them, and not to anybody else.

USL clubs will go out with the aim of winning the Open Cup this year, of course. On paper, in some aspects, they’ve never had a better opportunity. The lure of a CONCACAF Champions Cup spot still remains, for now at least.

But it won’t feel the same. It won’t feel like Sacramento’s surprising run of 2022, which showed the entirety of the lower divisions that they could dare to dream. And as Rising shows up in the fourth round of the competition, much like they did in 2014, it won’t feel the same either.

That night, Arizona United fell 2-1 against Galaxy in Peoria. For a spell in the game, Arizona led.

It’s a matchup that couldn’t happen this year. Galaxy haven’t entered their first team in the tournament, and a matchup with Los Dos just isn’t as mouthwatering.

Just weeks from the 2024 edition, there are questions over the long term future of the Open Cup. One USL owner is publicly saying that this “could be the final one.”

Hopefully, it won’t be. But unless something drastic changes to the position of MLS or U.S. Soccer, it certainly won’t ever be the same again. And that isn’t something we should look forward to.

Top Image: Nathan Ray Seebeck-USA TODAY Sports

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