History of the U.S. Open Cup

The first non-league organizing body within the United States was the American Football Association (AFA) which was incarnated in 1884.

The AFA sought to standardize rules for teams competing in northern New Jersey and southern New York.

The conflicts within the AFA led to a movement to create a truly national body to oversee American soccer.

Drawing on both its position as the oldest soccer organization and the status of the American Cup, the AFA argued that it should be the nationally recognized body.

That year, both the AFA and AAFA applied for membership in FIFA, the international governing body for soccer.

The colloquial "war" has been considered responsible for the fall of the ASL, and the end to the first golden age of American soccer.

[4] With the hope of breaking away from the National Challenge Cup, Charles Stoneham,[3] an owner of the New York Nationals proposed that the ASL would create their own tournament to determine the champion of the ASL, and thus ultimately determine the top American soccer club.

Before the proposal, the National Challenge Cup was seen as the ultimate title in American soccer since most professional leagues in the United States focused on a specific region, rather than encompassing the entire country as a whole.

Due to such reasons, three teams, Bethlehem Steel, the New York Giants S.C. and the Newark Skeeters, rejected the proposal, played in the 1928 National Challenge Cup[5] and were subsequently suspended from the league and fined $1,000.

[8] Just two weeks following the United States Football Association and American Soccer League settlement, the stock market crashed.

At the apex of the Depression, several surviving clubs created an incarnation of the ASL which began play in 1933, but the stringent economy lessened the ability of ASL teams to field strong teams, and thereby lacked the financial means nor interest to attract foreign players.

This consequently caused a Dark Age of soccer in which the sport as well as the National Challenge Cup fell out of popularity and into obscurity.

Pawtucket F.C., Ponta Delgada S.C., and Morgan Strasser also made multiple finals appearances in the decade, each winning one title.

The rivalry between Philadelphia and New York did not make its way to the National Cup Final, because of the Eastern vs. Western bracket set up, in which the final typically included a Mid-Atlantic or New Englander team, against a team from the Greater Los Angeles or San Francisco Bay Area of California.

[12] For both the Philadelphia and N.Y. Ukrainians, their domination came to an end with the rise of Cosmopolitan Soccer League juggernaut, Greek American Atlas, who won three National Cup titles consecutively, winning their first tile in 1967 against Orange County.

[13] Towards the latter portion of the 1970s into the 1980s, the National Cup featured a final more times than not between soccer clubs based in New York and Los Angeles, the two largest metropolises in the United States.

With the arrival of Major League Soccer in 1996, MLS franchises had the option to participate in the tournament on their terms.

The most successful MLS clubs in Open Cup play are the Chicago Fire, Sporting Kansas City, and Seattle Sounders FC, who have each accumulated four domestic titles in their existence.

[18] Often, it is considered that the MLS team that wins the Open Cup is one with great depth on their roster, or one that has nothing much to play for in league competition.

The fact that there is a lesser amount of interest in the competition leads most MLS clubs to play their home Open Cup games at smaller stadiums, usually high school or smaller college football fields or on their training facilities due to the lower seating capacity, and to create a more "intimate" setting.

The reasoning behind the large crowd has been attributed to the fact that D.C. United's management marketed the Open Cup as a tournament for the team to add an additional trophy to their collection and earn a preliminary berth in the CONCACAF Champions League.

[20] Such a crowd was considered to be the result of the Sounders' large fan base and desire to defend their 2009 Open Cup title.

In the past, the bracket had been redrawn after each round to match regional teams against each other to save travel expenses.

Now, in the round of 16, they would draw teams to a regional quarter of the bracket that would remain locked through the end of the tournament.

Through 2015, the amateur clubs have decided how to qualify their teams based on the number of allocated spots provided by USSF.

[24] On January 25, 2022, U.S. Soccer announced that 2022 would see the largest field in the Open Cup's modern era: 71 fully professional teams, and 103 in total.

[25] 31 teams played their first-ever Open Cup match in 2022, and Sacramento Republic eliminated three MLS sides to join the Rochester Raging Rhinos and Charleston Battery as the only non-MLS teams to reach the Open Cup final since that league kicked off in 1996.

Sacramento lost the final 3–0 to Orlando City SC, who claimed their first trophy since joining MLS in 2015.

On December 15, 2023, Major League Soccer announced that its teams would no longer participate in the U.S. Open Cup, starting with the 2024 edition, due to fixture congestion.