For the record, the scene at CenturyLink Field on Tuesday was everything you’d want, a cauldron of mean green, awash in Open Cup frenzy. And also for the record, Seattle is a deserving Open Cup champ, a club that takes the competition seriously and now has solid historical evidence to prove it. (The Sounders won their third consecutive Open Cup crown, the first side in 40 years to do so.)
Seattle and U.S. Open Cup: Deserving champs, but a flawed process
Having said all that … it shouldn’t have happened that way.
I know this won’t be a popular post for the legion of Sounders faithful. And I sure don’t want to be a wet blanket on those deserved good feelings. But it’s time for the U.S. Open Cup to conduct itself as a proper competition.
Hear this: Nothing can ever be an actual, proper, completely forthright competition so long as host sites are chosen through financial heft.
Frankly, U.S. Soccer’s methodology throughout the tournament cheapens the entire competition. It’s a bit tacky.
None of this is Seattle’s fault. The Sounders are exercising their rights, playing within the tournament rules. It’s U.S. Soccer’s fault. Throughout the tournament, sites are decided through a bid process, one that ensures that bigger clubs can get the matches if they want them.
I understand that this system rewards clubs that do well at the gate, and there’s some value to that. On the other hand, it’s a competition. And again, no team should get to put their thumbs on the scales of athletic justice just because they have a fatter wallet than the next guy.
And here’s something else: the wonderful tournament is named after Lamar Hunt, an epic figure in American soccer and a man of unimpeachable honor and generosity. And I hate that a tournament named after Hunt, who never really cared about how much money he lost in the sport, has a site selection methodology attached to – let’s call it what it is – a money-motivated practice by an organization that apparently operates in the black.
Seattle has played seven consecutive U.S. Open Cup matches at home. Seven. That’s five or six too many by my counting.
Again, the Sounders are a very good team right now. But so is Chicago. And some of the difference on Tuesday was down to one thing: the Fire was playing on the road while Seattle enjoyed a huge home field edge. Again.
I said it before when D.C. United got so many matches at home in this competition, and I’ll say it again now: U.S. Soccer is wrong about this. Period. Its methodology was developed in another day, and it needs updating.
How? There are plenty of ways to make this process fairer. For instance, once matched, teams could simply flip a coin. If one side doesn’t want host duties (or simply cannot perform them, for whatever reason), they can opt out. Or be bought out. At least then it becomes their call.
Or, U.S. Soccer can limit the number of home matches for a club. Or, they can stipulate that two teams who have met before must play at the venue not used in the previous meeting.
There are also arguments for home-and-away aggregate goals series, although fixture congestion is an issue as it is.
Don’t forget, by the way, that sites selection for the FA Cup, the standard bearer that we all point toward as a model of what these things should be, is a random process.
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