Every soccer player's dream, the young and older player alike, can be embraced by the oldest cup competition in the United States. The Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup is the oldest cup competition in the United States, dating back to 1914. The competition is open to all amateur and professional teams in the U.S. affiliated with US Soccer, the nation's governing body for soccer.

Anyone could form a team, pay the entry fee and enter the competition. It would help, though, to have a team full of experienced, accomplished players. Nearly all the entrants play a level of soccer considerably higher than even men's college soccer. All 12 Major League Soccer teams, the top professionals in the United States, are entered. So as they say, do not try this at home unless you have the players, organization and the money to see it through. 

Lamar Hunt's name was added to the competition in 1999 to honor his support of soccer in the United States. Ironically, that was the only year since MLS was formed in 1996 that a non-MLS team, the Rochester Rhinos, won the Cup. The reality, though, is that the U.S. Open Cup has evolved into a competition that most clubs, from Major League Soccer to many amateur teams, cannot afford to win from a financial standpoint.

Case in point: the Kansas City Brass.

The Brass is an amateur team laboring in the Premier Development League (PDL), the fourth division of soccer in the United States. The team is composed mostly of college players from area colleges and college players who grew up in the Kansas City area. The Brass is required by the United Soccer Leagues (USL), which operates the second-division A-League and third-division D3 Pro League, to compete in Open Cup play.

In 1997, the Brass' inaugural year, the club set out in earnest to qualify for the Open Cup. After gaining enough points in four qualifying games, the Brass had to hop on a bus after a PDL game on a Friday night and travel to Detroit for a playoff to determine which PDL teams would qualify for the first round. After a 15-hour bus ride, the Brass got off the bus in Detroit with two hours to spare before kickoff. Predictably, they lost, but still qualified for the first round because of the result of another playoff in California. 

Now the Brass was faced with a first round game in New Brunswick, N.J., against the third-division Central Jersey Riptide. Two minutes before the tied game would have gone to a penalty-kick shootout, a mysterious handball call was made by the referee against a Brass player who had come in contact with the ball in the Brass penalty area. It was a call seen only by the referee. The resulting Golden Goal penalty kick gave Central Jersey a 1-0 victory and put the Brass out of their misery, at least as far as Open Cup competition was concerned. 

Two Brass players had to be hospitalized as the result of the game, one whose shoulder needed a nearly total reconstruction. The trips to Detroit and New Brunswick cost the club about $18,000. US Soccer reimbursed the Brass $5,000 for qualifying for the first round. There was no reimbursement for the trip to Detroit. The huge expense for the club was the result of the Open Cup schedule. The qualifying and first three rounds are compressed into a much smaller time frame (roughly four months) than, for example, England's F.A. Cup (spread out relatively evenly over the better part of a year). 

The Brass could not take advantage of low-cost airline fares to Newark, N.J., because their opponent in the first round was known only one week before the game. Add the cost of hotels, meals, van to transport the teams to and from the airport, hotel and game for 16 players, two coaches and it adds up to a recipe for financial disaster for the Brass, owned by a not-for-profit corporation. 

Even if the Brass had earned the $10,000 prize from US Soccer for being the amateur team that made it the furthest into the competition, the club would still have not come out ahead. As a result, the Brass and many other PDL teams have adopted, with a wink and a nod, an unwritten policy of keeping scores low or playing reserves in the initial PDL Open Cup selection games.

"We do not try to lose these games," Emilio John, Brass president said. "But we learned that running up the score to gain maximum points in the competition will lead to bankruptcy." 

To combat this trend and force PDL teams to try to win with maximum points in Open Cup competition, the USL changed its policy in November. The four Open Cup selection games were changed from exhibition games to PDL league games that will have a bearing on the final league standings. The Brass will, nonetheless, compete in the 2001 Open Cup. 

The club has two qualifying games on the road: April 28 in Wichita against the Wichita Jets and May 6 in Boulder against the Boulder Ascent. The home qualifiers are May 11 against Colorado Springs and May 19 against Boulder. The Brass plays at the Blue Valley District Activities Complex at 135th and Switzer in Overland Park, Kansas. 

While the Brass must play well enough in four qualifying games just to make the first round, the Wizards (and all MLS teams) enter the competition in the second round. The Wizards, who have never won an Open Cup game, will be one of 32 teams in the second round. Last season, the Wizards lost to the Chicago Sockers of the PDL in a penalty-kick shootout. 

This Cup May Be Costly to Lift.

© Kansas City Soccer Scene