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Jeff Carlisle, US soccer reporter
The US Soccer Federation announced the format of the 2023-2024 US Open Cup on Friday, confirming that only eight of 26 potential MLS teams will field their top teams.
Atlanta United FC, FC Dallas, Houston Dynamo FC, LAFC, Real Salt Lake, San Jose Earthquakes, Seattle Sounders FC and Sporting Kansas City are the MLS teams that will play their top teams.
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Eight of the nine MLS teams that qualified for the CONCACAF Champions Cup this year will not participate in the US Open Cup in any capacity, with the exception of the defending champion Houston Dynamo.
this means Lionel Messi Inter Miami, which reached the final last season, will not participate in this year’s competition.
The top teams participating in MLS consist of the top seven ranked teams in the United States – based on the 2023 MLS Supporters’ Shield standings – not participating in the CONCACAF Champions Cup.
Of the ten remaining MLS clubs, nine will participate with their MLS Next Pro teams from the first round: Austin FC II, Chicago Fire II, Colorado Rapids 2, Crown Legacy (affiliated with Charlotte FC), Minnesota United FC2, LA Galaxy II, New York City FC 2, New York Red Bulls 2 and Portland Timbers 2.
The only team not participating in the CONCACAF Champions Cup or Open Cup in any capacity is D.C. United, which does not have an MLS Next Pro team.
Finally, eight Division I teams, 24 Division II teams, 32 Division III teams and 32 Open Division teams will compete for the 2024 title, with $300,000 going to the winner.
The US Open Cup crowned its first winner in 1914, making it one of the oldest soccer competitions in the United States, and allowing professional and amateur teams to participate together in a single-elimination tournament.
This creates potential titan-killing scenarios as lower-tier teams face off against their professional counterparts.
In a change to the format of the tournament, the upcoming first round will be the first time since 2008 that all 32 matches will bring together amateur and professional teams.
USSF also announced new business partners, including Marriott, Michelob Ultra, New York Life and Nike.
This allowed US Soccer to prioritize enhanced financial incentives for participating teams, including a significant increase in travel compensation. The Federation also committed to increasing promotion of the tournament.
“First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all of our members for their invaluable contributions over the past two months – sharing with us why the US Open Cup is so great, and what we can do to make it happen,” said JT Batson, CEO. For US Soccer: “Better than that.” “After extensive discussions, we have developed a competitive format for the 2024 Lamar Hunt US Open Cup, promising exciting encounters from the first round and throughout the entire tournament.
“US Soccer values the tradition and importance of the US Open Cup, and we will continue to have conversations with all of our members to explore ways to enhance future editions of the tournament and how we all work together to grow soccer in every community in the country.”
There are also economic changes, said Nelson Rodriguez, MLS’s executive vice president of sports products and competition. What he called “onerous hosting fees” were eliminated, while also allowing hosts to keep more ticket revenue.
United Soccer League President Paul McDonough added: “The USL has supported the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup for nearly 30 years, and we are proud to be part of it again in 2024. We applaud all the USL clubs who have decided to take part in this.” “This year’s US Open Cup, although we were given the option to decline. We appreciate and share the fans’ passion for our country’s most historic and authentic competition, and look forward to watching the drama unfold over the course of the tournament.”
Although the tournament has long held appeal to soccer fans in the United States, it has struggled to attract investment and a wider audience, and the tournament’s future has been in doubt since Major League Soccer announced in December that due to fixture congestion, the tournament would be cancelled. . The top teams will not participate in the competition and will be replaced by teams from MLS Next Pro.
MLS Commissioner Don Garber has often expressed his dissatisfaction with the tournament, and he continued his criticism in a February interview with ESPN.
“Everyone in football [needs] “Rethinking how we organize competitions to ensure we can continue to develop and manage the biggest problem for all of professional football, which is managing our agenda,” he said.
Although the MLS schedule has become more crowded in recent years, some of that is due to what the league did by creating the League Cup in collaboration with Liga MX.
MLS’s position was at odds with the US Soccer Federation’s professional league standards, which are designed to set minimum standards for elements such as owners’ finances, stadium capacity and market size. In this case, the standards state that teams from the top-flight outdoor league “must participate in all US Soccer and CONCACAF representative competitions for which they are eligible.”
Five days after the MLS statement, Major League Soccer announced that “Major League Soccer has requested that MLS Next Pro teams be allowed to represent MLS in the 2024 U.S. Lamar Hunt Open Cup. After careful consideration, we have informed MLS that the recommendation of the U.S. Soccer Team, which… Adopted by the Professional League Task Force, the request is rejected.”
MLS’s desire to field only its reserve teams has caused problems at the union level.
The winner of the Open Cup earns a place in the CONCACAF Champions Cup, and a source familiar with CONCACAF’s thinking noted that if the Open Cup had become a competition only for second-tier teams and below, this would have sparked protests from other countries. In CONCACAF.
The source indicated that these concerns, although they did not rise to the level of the request, were reported to the NFL by CONCACAF.
But MLS continued to work against the participation of all its teams. A seven-person USSF subcommittee of its board was formed in December 2022 after the issue became public.
Last month, the subcommittee decided that the 2023-24 tournament would be held in a mixed system that includes some of the top teams in the American League.
“I don’t know that anything changed after our request was denied as much as it was just a matter of continuing discussions,” Rodriguez said.
This approach has not gone down well with the USL, which runs leagues that include some of the lower levels of the American soccer system.
At one point, some teams in the USL’s second-tier tournament threatened not to participate, but in the end all of the organization’s 47 teams agreed to participate.
Despite this, the NFL appears to be waiving its requirements for top-tier teams to participate, causing turmoil within the USL ranks.
“I’m disappointed that US Soccer didn’t handle the whole situation in a stronger or better way,” USL’s McDonough said.
The format announced on Friday is for 2024 only. Rodriguez noted that the USSF is forming a “working group” that will work with stakeholders to determine the format that will be used for 2025.
