But just as the English FA Cup, run by the English Football Association, is open to teams from the Premier League to the Football League to the National League and other non-League divisions, the U.S. Open Cup—the closest you can get to the FA Cup in American soccer—is open to numerous league organisations.
The U.S. Open Cup has been getting along nicely this year in the pre-Messi soccer landscape and appears to have been enjoying slightly more coverage than usual from soccer’s social media influencers and some media outlets.
Despite it being such a historic and unique tournament, it doesn’t always get the coverage to reflect that or to reveal it to a wider audience.
The Cup has already produced one of the soccer moments of 2023 when Pittsburgh Riverhounds of the USL Championship hosted MLS side Columbus Crew in the Round of 16.
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The Riverhounds had already defeated the Maryland Bobcats of the National Independent Soccer Association (NISA) and upset MLS opposition, the New England Revolution, in Massachusetts.
The game against Columbus combined the home advantage of the Bobcats game with the giant-killing storyline of the Revolution matchup to produce a great occasion at the Highmark Stadium on the banks of the Monongahela River, sealed with a 1-0 win for the ‘lower league’ side.
If you wanted an example of everything that’s good and unique about American soccer in 2023, this was it.
The early rounds of this tournament reveal all of American soccer’s quirks, from the glorious team nicknames to games played in uniquely American stadiums on unique fields that often have markings for several other sports as well as soccer.
This is soccer at its grassroots, or at its AstroTurf or FieldTurf roots, but it is grassroots soccer with at least a chance of progress. A hope of moving through the stages of a tournament and maybe getting a chance to prove something against opposition from another league. Something that doesn’t exist in the closed league system, but does in the Open Cup.
There will now be a lot more attention on the Cup due to the arrival of Lionel Messi at Inter Miami and their upcoming semifinal against FC Cincinnati, while Houston Dynamo and Real Salt Lake face off in the other semifinal.
Messi has already won one trophy in the United States—the Leagues Cup—but while that tournament was only three editions old, playing its first in an expanded format featuring all teams from MLS and Mexico’s Liga MX, the 110-year-old Open Cup is one of the oldest domestic cups, not just in the whole of United States sports, but in the world.
This is the cup with the prestige, the history, and a legacy.
It is important to remember that despite Inter Miami’s struggles in MLS pre-Messi (going into Messi’s MLS debut on Saturday, it is the worst team in the league) it was the pre-Messi version of Inter Miami that made it to the semifinals of this tournament.
On its way to this stage, it defeated Miami FC, Charleston Battery, Nashville SC, and Birmingham Legion.
Only one of these sides—Nashville—is a fellow MLS team. The other opponents in this run to the final all play their regular season soccer in the USL Championship, the league that is the designated “second tier” in the nonporous league pyramid.
It could be said that the U.S. Open Cup is the only true national championship in U.S. soccer as it includes teams all the way down the ‘pyramid’ to amateur and semi-pro levels at the qualifying stage, and is also nationwide, including teams solely from the United States, whereas MLS contains a handful of Canadian teams.
Its winner also secures qualification for the Concacaf Champions Cup, which is Concacaf’s equivalent of the various Champions Leagues or the Copa Libertadores.
So there is plenty at stake in terms of bragging rights, glory, and continental progress.
If fans of association football from around the world are following Messi in the United States, then the U.S. Open Cup might be the most intriguing tournament to get into.
Qualifiers for the 2024 edition begin next month, while the winners of the 2023 National Amateur Cup, SC MesoAmerica, have already booked a place in the first round proper.
If Messi is to go down in U.S. soccer history, U.S. soccer doesn’t come more historic than the U.S. Open Cup.
