U.S. Open Cup Quarters & A Little Heresy
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by user The Manly Ferry
With the Chicago Fire’s B-Team beating the Kansas City Wizards' last night, the quarterfinal draw for the U.S. Open Cup is now set. Here are the quarterfinal match-ups (home teams first):
LA Galaxy v. Colorado Rapids
Houston Dynamo* v. FC Dallas
Chicago Fire v. New England Revolution
DC United v. Red Bull New York
- Due to renovations at their home stadium, the Dynamo/Dallas Open Cup tie will be played in some little crap-hole. (I’m kidding. It sounds intimate.)
And now for the touch of heresy: as much as I love this tournament, with its giant-killing dramatics (see Roma FC), it just wreaks of consolation prize. And that’s only in the years when no team pulls off the double - i.e. when they win MLS Cup and the U.S. Open Cup. Every team may say the right things about “taking the tournament seriously” (check the article about the Houston venue for just the latest example), but come game time, they’re looking under their bench - never mind the far end of the thing - for their starting 11.
As with a lot of things, put the blame on MLS’ playoff structure. With nearly every team making the post-season - where there’s always hope; just ask the 2005 Chicago Fire - this short-circuits another tradition of England’s FA Cup, the tournament on which the U.S. Open Cup is modeled: that of teams “putting all their hopes” into a Cup run. Put another way, when a team knows they're not going to win the league, they start to get really excited about the Cup games in hopes of walking away with something for the season.
While this year hasn’t necessarily been as bad in this regard as past editions - for instance, New England’s fielded their starters against the USL Division 1 Rochester Raging Rhinos - even two clubs with a snowballs chance in hell of winning MLS Cup (see Kansas City and Chicago) chucked only a pair of starters in with the parade of anonymity that were their game-day rosters (Ryan McMahen? Stephen Shirley? Jared Montz? Floyd Franks? (truth be told, this last player received some praise). While it’s true that the Wizards, especially, have a tight schedule (three games in six days, the last two on the road), the thing to look for is which of those games featured more of their bench.
Limit playoff participation to the top six teams - or, better still, the top four - and I’m betting that would change. I'll still tune in and will squeal like a five-year-old girl if my New England Revolution bring home a trophy - it would be their first, after all - but it's a methadone trophy and everyone seems to know it.
Date
Tue 08/15/06, 12:33 pm EST
