2019 U.S. Open Cup

I'm really interested to see how the USL League One teams fare in this.

I'm also hoping that Madison gets to host an MLS team this year. That feels like it has the potential to be a lot of fun.

 

I'll try to place the clubs. Since no clubs enter in Round 3, Round 2 must have an amount that is a multiple of 4 in each region. I am not guaranteeing that the USSF will do this.

Northeast:
Round 2: 8
7 from Round 1
Hartford

Round 4: 8
2 from Round 3
CIN
CLB
NYCFC
NYRB
NE
PHI

Southeast:
Round 2: 12
4 from Round 1
Austin
Birmingham
Charlotte
Charleston
Memphis
North Carolina
Saint Louis
Tampa Bay

Round 4: 8
3 from Round 3
ATL
D.C.
FCD
HOU
ORL

Central:
Round 2: 12
5 from Round 1
Indy
Louisville
Nashville
Pittsburgh
Oklahoma City
San Antonio
Tulsa

Round 4: 8
3 from Round 3
CHI
COL
MIN
RSL
SKC

West:
Round 2: 12
3 from Round 1
Colorado Springs
El Paso
Fresno
Las Vegas
New Mexico
Orange County
Phoenix
Reno
Sacramento

Round 4: 8
3 from Round 3
LAFC
LAG
PORT
SEA
SJ

I split up the Tennessee teams and the Texas teams, but in both cases they're not nearby. Teams could swap between the Southeast and the Central, such as Louisville or Nashville to the Southeast and Memphis or Saint Louis to the Central. I didn't like putting Pittsburgh in the Central instead of the Northeast, but putting Pittsburgh in the Northeast would make three more clubs move there.

 

That's not how it would work. US Soccer stated that for round 2, each of the 19 round 1 pairings would be matched with a USL-C team, and the remaining 6 USL-C teams would play each other.

If you go back and look at my post that had the imaginary second round matchups on the previous page, that's why some of them are so awful geographically.

 

Second round pairings announced today, right?

 

I'd like to congratulate Birmingham and Memphis for being promoted to the Northeast. (Heck, of the 21 teams listed in the "northeast", I'd say that 10 of them are not even in the northeast.) I'd also like to ask the person who made the El Paso vs Wisconsin matchup if they've ever looked at a map.

That said, I was indeed right about the 3 all-USL-C matchups being the leftover teams from out west and the southwest, even if I didn't quite guess the exact matchups.

 

Yeah, I did correctly predict the Memphis vs New York matchup back in post #83, just because you knew the rules would force stuff like that.

It just seems odd to have Indy/Lansing/Ann Arbor in the northeast, when none of the 3 teams are in the northeast. Go figure. That said, regional names are just names, and won't have any effect whatsoever going forward in future rounds, so no big deal.

 

Okay, now that the pairings for the first 2 rounds are out, here's what the 3rd round draw could look like:

third round will look somewhat close to this (open) third round will look somewhat close to this (close)

Third round draw won't happen until after the first round results are known, but I can't imagine there are too many first round games that will affect the third round pairings in a significant manner.


Fresno/Academica/ElFarolito vs Sacramento/Reno
LasVegas/Cal/Portland vs OrangeCountySC/OrangeCountySC/GoldenState
Phoenix/NewMexico vs ColoradoSprings/MidlandOdessa/Denver
Austin/Tulsa vs OKC/LittleRock/NTX
SanAntonio/Laredo/BrazosValley vs ElPaso/Bavarians/Madison
StLouis/DesMoines/Duluth vs Indy/Lansing/AnnArbor
Pittsburgh/Erie/Dayton vs Louisville/Reading/PhilLoneStar
Hartford/NYCosmosB/BlackRock vs Memphis/NYRB23/Motown
Birmingham/Baltimore/WestChester vs NorthCarolina/Richmond/Virginia
Charleston/Greenville/SouthGeorgia vs Tampa/Lakeland/Villages
Nashville/SouthGeorgia2/Chattanooga vs Charlotte/Miami/FLSS

I put it under spoiler text since its completely made up.

I originally typed that out to have St Louis facing Memphis, because that makes by far the most sense geographically, but I kind of have a feeling US Soccer won't do it that way. Thumbs up for them if they do.

And one benefit to having a Pittsburgh/Hartford matchup is that you'd have an eastern team that you could throw into a 4th round pod with the MLS trio of NE/NY/NY. So I wouldn't fault them for trying it that way. We'll see.

I though about doing another imaginary set of 4th round pods, but there are so many geographic variables that it's rather pointless. If a team from Wisconsin beats El Paso, or if a team from the NY area beats Memphis, they could really shake up the 4th round pods if they win their 3rd round match too.

 

Are all these groups reshuffled when the MLS teams come in? I really wanted to see a Birmingham/Atlanta United or Nashville matchup, but if we get stuck in the Northeast then it won't be as fun.

As an aside, go West Chester Predators! (so we have a home game )

 

The draw for round 4 will not be made until after round 3 is complete.

When MLS teams enter in round 4, the remaining 11 lower league sides will be paired with the 21 MLS teams in 8 pods of 4 teams each. All pods must contain either 1 or 2 lower league teams, so there's a very good chance that Atlanta and Orlando will be in a pod with 2 other USL teams from the southeast. So Birmingham has a pretty good chance of being in that group if they make it through.

That said, there's also a decent chance that of the 11 lower league survivors, 3 of them will be from the southeast. But Birmingham would seemingly still have a better chance of being in the Atlanta/Orlando group than teams like Charlotte or Nashville, which could be put in groups with teams like DC or Cincinnati.

It all depends on exactly who the 11 third round winners are of course, but there could be some geographic anomalies due to the rule that each group has to have at least 1 of them. Imagine if 3 teams from the state of Texas advanced to join Houston and Dallas. (There are 5 different second round games with Texas teams listed. If enough of them win, it's possible.)

 

Is this a good place to complain about the format as MLS expansion continues? It sucks that there will be so many intra-MLS games in the round of 32, and that they'll mostly be repeats of years past.

I'd love to see MLS teams all enter in the round of 64, with geographic restrictions removed for the round of 32 (you can persuade me to keep it til R16, no later). Half of the fun of the early parts of cup competition is interleague play, and this format totally neuters that.

 

Amen! I'd argue that it's way more than half the fun.

 

Surely it must change. If both Miami and Nashville do start playing next year, would they dare to have a round of 32 where 23 of the teams are MLS and only 9 others from the lower levels make it? Let alone when even more teams like Austin/Sacto/STL enter MLS.

Surely it must change. Surely?

 

At least under the current format, US Soccer can say there's only a 1 in 3 chance of Portland vs Seattle in this round. It's the luck of the draw which of the other 3 teams in your pod you'll get.

You're certainly right that it's far more fun to play Birmingham or Louisville or whoever than yet another Open Cup game against Chicago or DC.

That said, for the fans in Ohio this year, I suspect that many would enjoy an extra Crew/Cincy game. For some reason, our 2 MLS games this year aren't until August, so an Open Cup matchup would actually be the first with both in MLS. Cincy's first visit to Columbus could actually come 2 months before that scheduled game in August.

Part of me is wondering if the front offices would actually be opposed to an early USOC game stealing their thunder. And perhaps even detract from ticket sales for the MLS games. I am slightly worried about some magical map redrawing happening where Columbus gets thrown in a group with Philly and DC while Cincy gets grouped with Chicago and Indy or STL or whoever. (Presumably done at the request of the two MLS teams' front offices.)

 

I hope not. It doesn't make any sense, conceptually, to allow every team from USL-Champ and USL-1 and then artificially limit the number of teams from the top flight.

Collectively, adding MLS to the Round of 64 adds quite a few MLS games to the calendar, but per team it only adds one, at most.

 

I truly hate the idea of an all-MLS elimination round. Those MLS qualifying rounds from the old days never seemed to help much, as I seem to recall the Crew playing Salt Lake or San Jose or something geographically nonsensical like that.

It also doesn't really change the amount of games an MLS team would have to play. 14 teams playing each other to get to the 4th round would be the exact same amount of games for those teams as 14 teams entering in the 3rd round instead of the 4th round. The only difference of course would be that you'd only have 7 teams winning those MLS-only games, as opposed to likely more than 7 if there were 14 games against lower division teams.

This idea was widely rejected and panned years ago (how long did it last, maybe 3 or 4 seasons?), it would be a massive step backwards to bring it back now.

Absolutely. A bad idea that needs to be left in the trashbin of history.

 

yes

I mean, under your plan, two thirds of the league would still play an extra game, so why not have that last third join too?