On Friday, Major League Soccer announced it will not enter its teams into the 2024 Lamar Hunt US Open Cup. It is a move which means the United States Soccer Federation (USSF) sanctioned Division I soccer league will not compete in the country’s national cup competition next season – think every team in La Liga refusing to compete in Spain’s Copa del Rey, or all English Premier League teams deserting the FA Cup.
Though soccer in the United States is often considered to lack the history, longevity and prestige of its European counterparts, the US Open Cup flies in the face of this perception and has a similar history to its equivalents elsewhere. The tournament’s first matches were played in November 1913, more than 82 years before MLS’s inaugural season and, unlike franchise-based, closed-shop sports leagues across the US, the Open Cup is, as its name boasts, open to all teams throughout the would-be American soccer pyramid.
Before the Open Cup was forced to stop during the Covid pandemic, it was the second-longest continuously running cup competition in the world after the Irish Cup. Given that Canadian teams also participate in MLS, the Open Cup is the only professional men’s national soccer championship in the United States.
In a press release, MLS said it “plans to be represented by MLS Next Pro clubs in the 2024 Lamar Hunt US Open Cup.” This means MLS will be sending clubs from a Division III league – its version of reserve teams – to the 2024 edition. DC United, which doesn’t have an MLS Next Pro team, will not be represented at all, as confirmed by reporting from Jeff Rueter of The Athletic.
MLS’s withdrawal of its teams, and the charade of entering MLS Next Pro teams in a tepid attempt to still be represented, displays an arrogant attitude towards the tournament and the whole ecosystem of soccer in the United States. A national cup competition needs participation from its top-tier teams as much as it needs the depth and romance provided by lower-tier involvement. It takes two to produce a cupset. Every giantkilling requires a giant to be present.
MLS head coaches were among the many stakeholders not consulted in this decision-one which took away an opportunity for them to make history with their respective clubs and challenge for one of US soccer’s biggest prizes. Imagine the 2023 season for Houston Dynamo and its coach Ben Olsen without their Open Cup win. It loses a huge part of what defined it and made it so joyous for club staff and fans. Decisions of whether to rotate or introduce youth players in cup competitions should belong to the coach, but this tournament has now been taken away from them altogether.
Supporters of MLS teams were not consulted either. The Independent Supporters Council (ISC) of North America said in a statement: “MLS’s withdrawal of their first teams from the Cup is not only a disservice to the fans but also to the sport itself. It undermines the inclusive nature of American soccer, where dreams and ambitions are nurtured on the principle of open competition. The decision threatens to erode the very foundations of the sport’s heritage and its connection to communities.”
It is increasingly clear the league treats supporters only as customers. Much of the rest of the world of top-level soccer tries to do the same with various levels of success, but MLS is more flagrant in how it goes about it. MLS guidelines for fans are even called “supporter privileges” as if to present the idea fans should count themselves lucky the league lets them be involved. The truth is, the league is lucky to have fanbases that are so engaged, giving character and life to these single-entity league franchises.
So why has MLS pulled out? One of the reasons given was that not competing in the Open Cup “benefits the MLS regular season by reducing schedule congestion, freeing up to six midweek match dates.” In July, MLS joined forces with Liga MX to play an entirely new World Cup style tournament shoehorned into the middle of the MLS regular season. It is absurd for MLS to use “schedule congestion” as an excuse to abandon the Open Cup when it concocted a whole new tournament out of nothing just this year.
Perhaps MLS is worried by the growth of soccer below it, and that the gap between itself and the Division II-sanctioned league, the USL Championship, is closing. MLS teams being knocked out of the Open Cup by USL sides, as regularly happens, doesn’t fit with MLS’s marketing of itself as the top league – the only league – in America. It views the rest of soccer as competition and it aims to stifle that competition. By withdrawing itself from the cup, MLS is simultaneously harming markets in other leagues and undermining a tournament that has more history than itself and is 110 years older than the Leagues Cup.
A major reason for MLS turning its back on the Open Cup will be one of control. Control of the marketing, broadcasting, and narrative – control it doesn’t have in the Open Cup. The Leagues Cup was broadcast on Apple TV+ via MLS’s subscription service, Season Pass. The Open Cup, now run and marketed by the USSF, was open to other broadcasters with CBS eventually doing an admirable job of giving it the reverence it deserves. It was given more prominence last year under the marketing of USSF than it ever was under the marketing arm of MLS, Soccer United Marketing, which oversaw it until the end of 2022. Now it isn’t under its control, MLS suddenly wants out.
A footballing Americana 🤌
— CBS Sports Golazo ⚽️ (@CBSSportsGolazo) September 27, 2023
A tournament over a century old that has served as refuge for people from many walks of life. The @opencup magic lives on. ✨ pic.twitter.com/Uv3DWR8WVN
That 2023 coverage included Inter Miami’s progress to the final of the 2023 Open Cup. In turn, this meant much of the early hype when Lionel Messi joined Miami in July focused on his involvement in this tournament. Messi produced a magical display in the semi-final to steer his team to a comeback victory against FC Cincinnati in August. It was telling that none of this was mentioned in the Messi Meets America documentary on Apple TV+. It was as if his involvement in the Open Cup hadn’t happened.
By removing itself from the Open Cup, MLS is attempting to control the story of Messi in US soccer by limiting Messi Mania to its own in-house marketing. In doing so, it denies those outside MLS – from broadcasters to lower league teams to fans – the chance to ride the Messi soccer wave. This is more evidence that the focus of MLS is now on growing itself rather than the sport in the country as a whole.
This is a move MLS has been building up to for some time by belittling the Open Cup, claiming it not of sufficient quality, and questioning viewing figures. “From our perspective, it is a very poor reflection on what it is that we’re trying to do with soccer at the highest level,” MLS commissioner Don Garber said in May.
Things like the creation of the Leagues Cup and the planting of the idea that the Open Cup is somehow not worthy of MLS teams’ presence, despite being partly responsible for the marketing of the tournament, have set up the excuses used by MLS for withdrawing its teams. This manoeuvring is comparable to a government that favors privatisation gradually defunding public services before declaring they are not working and that only private companies can save them. MLS has privatised and monopolised the people’s game of soccer, or is trying to.
What next? The USSF’s Pro League Standards state that US-based teams in the Division I Men’s Outdoor League, ie MLS, “must participate in all representative US Soccer [USSF] and CONCACAF competitions for which they are eligible.” In sending its Division III MLS Next Pro teams to the USSF-run Open Cup, it appears MLS is breaking this rule.
Meanwhile, the ISC has been backed since releasing its statement by numerous supporters’ groups across MLS and beyond. There has been talk of boycotting the Leagues Cup while petitions have been set up to urge MLS to reverse its decision. It is now over to the USSF to deal with this disregard for its domestic national tournament, and to the groups of supporters who have invested so much in their clubs and the sport to hold MLS to account.
