Open Cup Digest #8

Last week, Los Angeles FC beat Sporting Kansas City, 3-1 after extra time, to win their first-ever US Open Cup title. The game was good, not great, with a well-filled BMO Stadium as the backdrop of the 109th edition of the tournament. It was a game in which silverware was lifted, resumes were extended, and the past met the present.

Things look different on the other end of the US Soccer pyramid, where more than one hundred teams with thousands of players are ready to add to write their own legends this coming weekend: The first matches of the 2025 US Open Cup are already here, technically speaking, and New York City is once again a hub for the tournament.

LAFC makes history, SKC falls short of immortality

Los Angeles Football Club winning the 2024 Lamar Hunt US Open Cup Final didn’t really come as a shock to many. LAFC are second in Major League Soccer’s Western Conference and are coming off a Leagues Cup Final played earlier in the summer. LAFC beating Sporting Kansas City wasn’t a certainty, but it was the smart bet.

SKC fell short of becoming the first Major League Soccer team to win the USOC five times. The list of five-time champions remains at three: Bethlehem Steel, Maccabee Los Angeles, and New Bedford Whalers (who succeeded four-time champion Fall River FC). Longtime Kansas City manager Peter Vermes also fell short of lifting his fourth Open Cup title, having previously won with Sporting in 2012, 2015, and 2017.

LAFC is now the 11th Los Angeles-area team to win the national championship. That history permeated throughout the night, as the pregame ceremonies saw members of the 1964 champion LA Kickers honored. Former Kickers’ Eberhard Herz, Lothar Pospich, and Manfred Norstadt all soaked in the moment, watching LAFC lift the same cup they’d held 60 years prior. The game was introduced by an opening monologue voiced by Eric Braeden, maybe best-known for his role on The Young and the Restless but who will be enshrined forever as a member of the Maccabee AC (Maccabee Los Angeles) squad that won the 1973 US Open Cup, then known as the National Challenge Cup.

The 90-year-old Herz, a one-time member of the US Men's National team, had a long history with the cup over his decades-long career. He also won it with the Kickers in 1958 and with the New York City-based SC Eintracht of the German-American Soccer League (which is still active today as the Cosmopolitan Soccer League) in 1955. Coincidentally, that game was won on the road against the Los Angeles Danes.

The game itself was a thriller, even if watching on the East Coast meant staying up into the early hours of Thursday morning. A scoreless opening half was broken, perhaps illegally, by former FIFA World Cup winner Olivier Giroud less than ten minutes into the second half. The underdog Kansas City equalized thanks to Erik Thommy, lighting hopes that one of the worst-performing teams in MLS this season could still earn silverware.

With extra time needed, LA’s victory was ensured by players at different stages of their careers. First, the young Mexican national team left-back Omar Campos scored the game-winner, and then the 40-year-old Kei Kamara iced the result. After the game, Kamara made a plea that Major League Soccer stays in the competition.

“(Don Garber) was here. I saw him. He was on the podium. He gave me a medal. Get him in here and make sure he doesn’t take MLS away from this. This is amazing. This is American soccer right here,” Kamara said at the post-game press conference. “That’s just my opinion. Don’t take away our history.”

An article by Jeff Reuter of The Athletic that came out after the final noted MLS and US Soccer are having productive talks about upcoming editions of the tournament, with the expectation that more MLS teams will participate next year. The final number, however, is still uncertain.

That moment tied a bow around what has been a controversial, yet historic US Open Cup. A competition that began under the shadow of uncertainty following MLS’s attempt to fully pull out of the competition, muddied by the inclusion of reserve sides, and held up by phenomenal performances by teams across the pyramid.

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Despite neither team being from the Tri-State Area, there were a few familiar faces on LAFC that are easy to be happy for. Longtime New York City defender Maxime Chanot played center back for the entire 120 minutes. It's his third major honor in three seasons after having previously won the MLS Cup and Campeones Cup. He was joined on his left by longtime New York Red Bulls captain Aaron Long, who secured his first major trophy from a knockout competition since he won the USL Cup in 2016 with New York Red Bulls II.

But as one story concludes its final chapter, another one begins.

2025 US Open Cup qualifying begins

This coming weekend, amateur teams from around the country will compete in the 2025 US Open Cup Qualifying tournament. Plenty of the entrants come from the Tri-State Area and have ambitions of reaching the tournament proper.

Qualifying has seen a few tweaks for 2025. Previous tournaments saw pairings featuring cross-state battles, especially in later rounds. It was increasingly common for New York teams to pair up with New England sides — increasing the travel for whichever team drew away.

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Hudson River BlueMichael Battista

This year, the field of 114 teams has been divided into 14 geographical groups, with US Soccer looking to ease the travel burden. These groups feature teams that will play one another until only one remains, who will qualify for next year’s Open Cup.

As it happens, the eight teams competing from NYC and Long Island create a perfect group for three rounds of competition, which begin this Saturday and will conclude the weekend of November 16-17.

Historically, New York City teams compete in a State Cup, that can provide a path to qualification. The Dr Rudolf G. Manning Cup is organized by the Eastern New York State Soccer Association and feeds into the National Amateur Cup. That, in turn, puts the winner in contention for the National Amateur Cup, and possible qualification for the following year’s US Open Cup — with the New York Pancyprian-Freedoms winning the cup this past summer and qualifying for the 2025 tournament.

But as it stands, this US Open Cup qualifying round has all the makings of a miniature NYC amateur cup.

Games, games, games

That brings us to the games happening around NYC this weekend. The 2024 US Open Cup final had the glitz of Hollywood and the shine of an Apple TV broadcast, but these qualifiers have all the glamor of the cold metal bleachers of a public park with a YouTube stream — if you’re lucky. To be clear, I say that with all the affection in the world,

One game is happening north of the Bronx, one in Manhattan (or, technically, on a smaller island in the East River connected to Queens by a causeway), one in Queens, and one on Long Island.

The New York Greek Americans are hosting NY Renegades FC in a cross-league battle. The four-time US Open Cup champion Greeks have been eliminated in their first game of qualifying during two of the last three tournaments. Still, the team is riding momentum after winning the Eastern Premier Soccer League championship for the first time over the summer.

The Renegades are currently one of the better teams in the United Premier Soccer League, winning five games and beingfirst in the Northeast American Conference, North Division. Two of those games were 10-0 wins against Real New York on August 24 and Future Soccer Academy on September 14. Forward Rances Reneau Bardales leads the team with 13 goals through six matches in the fall season.

The match at Hofstra University Soccer Stadium is not far from a place NYCFC fans might remember well. James M Shuart Stadium is right across the street, where New York City fell in penalty kicks to the second-division New York Cosmos in the 2015 US Open Cup Fourth Round.

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Hudson River BlueRaf Noboa y Rivera

Another cross-league battle features an all-Long Island clash. Leros SC, champions of the Long Island Soccer Football League, host UPSL newcomers NY Empire FC. On the surface, this could be one of the weaker matches consideringneither team has any real experience in a high-stakes regional competition. However, both have large backings behind them. Leros has deepened its ties to the Greek Island it is named after and is working on organizing a friendly match against competition from the island itself. Meanwhile, Empire is still drawing good crowds at its home base at St Joseph’s University. While it's unclear how many fans will make the trip over to College Point, the momentum taken from the game could help propel the team in the UPSL’s Northeast American Conference, North Division.

The other two NYC area matches are all Eastern Premier Soccer League teams from the Metropolitan Conference, most of which have only played four games this season. First-place Lansdowne Yonkers FC hosts ninth-place KidSuper Samba AC north of the Bronx, while tenth-place Central Park Rangers FC visits eleventh-place Zum Schneider FC 03 on Roosevelt Island.

There’s also one game happening across the Hudson River in New Jersey. SC Vistula Garfield, another EPSL side, travels across Bergen County to face USOC Qualifying regular New Jersey United FC from the UPSL. These two teams are part of the Mid-Atlantic group alongside teams from South Jersey (Oaklyn United FC), Maryland, Virginia, and a lone Pennsylvania side. The last team standing from this group will also qualify for the 2025 Open Cup.

As the season clicks over to fall, it's exciting to see how much high-stakes soccer will be happening around the country in the next few months. But especially, it's nice to see so many New York City area teams all vying for glory.