======================================= MLS cup is announced in advance and fans make it to the game even though they may only know 1-2 weeks in advance their team makes it = So why not Oneota as permanent site for USOC final? Great to tie it in to the hall of fame...it would be similar, it would always be pretty much a neutral site game, except say if NY. TOR or NE make it- driving distance.. === Agree with the other post.. We need a real league cup to replace/bump up the MLS CUP.. AND a truely promoted USOC, its the true national championship!!!! Not some frumpted up MLS cup.... thats about as bad as baseball calling their champion the World Champion.. MLS cup is not the national champion, the USOC is... JUST GET A SPONSOR AND PUT SOME MONEY IN IT. MAKE THE MLS TEAMS COME IN 1-2 ROUNDS EARLIER AND PROMOTE THIS THING!!!! THE USSF AND MLS NEED TO HAVE A SENSE OF HISTORY AND TRADITION !!! SOME OF THE BEST GAMES I HAVE EVER BEEN TO WERE USOC, RATHER THAN BORING REGULAR SEASON MLS GAMES THAT HAVE LITTLE ON THE LINE. HOW HARD CAN THIS BE???
My reasoning is that this isn't a cup final to play before a regular season starts. The US Open Cup isn't a preseason Cup final before they start qualification for the next one. This is suppose to be after the MLS Cup final. The winner as the best professional or semi-pro soccer club in the entire USA at the end of the MLS/USL/USASA Calendar year. The only problem with the US Open Cup is that US Soccer has put little to no promotion into this Cup Tournament. There is no title sponser what so ever. Basically all the promotion for the Cup final has to be done by the home team that will get the winning bid. Sadly FC Dallas didn't do any to bring in more than what they had for a Cup Final in Pizza Hut Park. It was mostly the die hard supporters. This is the trophy for the end of every soccer season, not to hold it back just to play it before the regular season starts. Tradition is what I believe in sir. US Soccer must do a better job in getting a title sponser as well as promoting it much better.
By holding it to the following spring, you could have a team with 50% of the players that are technically cup tied because they played for another team the previous season. You could have a team playing in the USOC Final with 4/5/6 starters that didn't play one game for that team on the way to the final. FWIW, the idea of playing the game at Oneonta is really appealing to me.
How about for the majority of the country, for which getting to Oneonta (especially on short notice) is really, really difficult? If the Soccer Hall of Fame was in St.Louis, I'd be all about it being the home of the US Open Cup final.
Not to keep hitting you over the head or anything, but your asking the Hall of Fame that only has 5 rows & 4 sets of bleachers to host a US Open Cup Final. I understand we would like to have some form of a Wembley situation, but right now that's not the case. I think what should happen is that if they rotate the MLS Cup Final in the different stadiums of MLS, then I think they should rotate the US Open Cup final in the different stadiums of MLS & USL. Say next year an MLS Stadium hosts the final, 2009 it's in a USL-1st stadium, then in 2010 it's in a USL-2nd stadium, or at least a bigger sized stadium for the final in 2011.
Having the final in a neutral venue isn't the worst idea ever, so long as it's announced far enough in advance. People can travel their if it's a centralized location, like Indianapolis, or people will want to travel there if it's a place like Miami or San Diego. Having the final in Oneonta is retarded. Why would you only want 2000 people to show up for the Open Cup final?
And if, as in 9 of the 11 US Open Cup finals to this point, it's an MLS vs. MLS matchup, watch nobody show up.
Then that's the risk it's going to take. But if an USL side has fans who have never seen an MLS Side or 2 in their own stadium for a final or sees different ones coming to their grounds for the final, I believe it can do the job. Your also going to have the supporters of the two finalists coming to that stadium as well. If MLS rotates their Cup Final, I don't see the harm from US Soccer doing that as well.
But....they're not going to take that risk. Because the reward isn't that great. And I don't necessarily agree. Depends on what you mean by "do the job." Get a few thousand midweek? Probably. Is that worth it? Probably not. Considering not too many go when the game is in their own stadium, I don't see people booking a flight to Rochester for a Wednesday night game when it's on TV. I just don't see it. You don't see a difference between MLS Cup and the US Open Cup Final? As in - one draws many thousands of people and one rarely draws a decent crowd? When it's in the stadium of one of the competing teams? You don't see a difference? US Soccer sees the harm. They tried it before. They got a crap crowd in Columbus in 1999, a decent-but-bleh crowd in Indianapolis in 1997 and one of those years it was supposed to be in Virginia Beach (1998?) but a hurricane took care of that. US Soccer has decided that, at this stage of the "modern era" of the US Open Cup, the final needs to be held in the stadium of one of the two competing teams. I don't disagree.
US Soccer could throw a ton of effort behind it and it would still be just another tournament played on Wednesdays with little interest. For all the "grand spectacle" that MLS makes MLS Cup, still fewer than a million people watch it on TV, and if Houston hadn't made it last year, the crowd at PHP would very likely have been a big disappointment. Bottom line: you can't play the US Open Cup final in a neutral (or very potentially) neutral stadium (especially a USL-1 stadium) and hope to draw people. No matter how many resources you throw at it.
337 comments, 16,573 views, 1 kick, two years plus. That's by far the most popular thread I've started, dwarfing "Show Me a Photograph of Your Foot" on the Player forum (the "foot" thread was funnier, though). I figure I should be able to start collecting residuals from BigSoccer pretty soon. I heard somewhere that advertisers pay about $.05 per view, which amounts to $800. Bigsoccer should owe me part of that.
MLS teams need to embrace this tourney, rather than diss it. I bet if they scheduled some of these games on saturday night, people would show up. Bottom line the cup is named after Lamar Hunt, and for that reason MLS should embrace this tourney. Lamar deserves better, from a league that he helped save, and save soccer in america
====================== Finally, a voice of reason.... Set the OPEN CUP dates far enough ahead and on Saturdays especially in the later rounds. Move the league game to Wednesday..You have season ticket advance selling ability with a Wednesday game, not so much for a OC game. If the team has a SSS, play there. If you are still playing in a large, too expensive stadium, then alternate sites are ok. I still think the MLS coming to play in a USL 1 , USL 2 or PDL city would be a big deal to those towns...
Unless, of course, they didn't advance in the Cup. In which case there wouldn't be a Saturday night USOC game for them to go to. And there'd be an idle Saturday with no chance of generating revenue. Which is part of the reason they don't do it. You could, yes, have all the MLS teams that qualify hold open a Saturday night for their first USOC match, assuming they were all going to host (which they don't - not always). That solves one round. One. What then? And USL teams, for whom a Saturday night gate means a hell of a lot more (as a percentage of annual revenue) than an MLS team, could do that, too. For one round. And one round only - the round they know they're qualified for. But that's only a band aid on the whole problem. There's a lot of intrinsic wrongness with the USOC that can't be solved by moving games to Saturday. Even if you could do it.
I blame US Soccer. There has to be more behind this tourney for MLS teams to take it seriously. $100,000 to the winner probably doesn't cover the expenses to win the tournament. So offer up something that will cost them nothing. A spot in the CONCACAF Champions Cup. Drop the Supprters Shield winner, who will be going to SuperLiga anyway, and replace with the winner of the USOC.
well. your idea about a greater reward for USOC winner is a good one, but removing the incentive for the supporter's shield is a very bad one.
I'm not in favor of the supporters shield winner getting a spot unless everyone meets each other the same amount of times, other wise someone is getting shafted.
=============================== Supporters Shield for regular season of your top division and the USOC as the true national champion should be the automatics to CONCACF, not the fabricated joke of MLS playoffs.. My exception would be, a proper/expanded MLS CUP that becomes a true LEAGUE Cup with all MLS teams and USL 1 (the pro version of the USOC) I have always felt the CONCACAF champions league was too small. I don't see a hard sell to get us a 3rd team in, especially if the expanded to 16 teams and/or pool play in the opening rounds;
Thats a good point, and if Canada get one or two more teams in MLS they will be knocking on the door for their own seperate way to get into the CONCACAF Champions Club. Does Canada have a club championship? Ohh, this could get sticky. What if Toronto won the Supporters Shield and Montreal/Vancover won the MLS cup? That would leave the USA with no entry into CCC. Maybe if that even came close to happening US Soccer would make that push to give US Open Cup a slot in the CCC? But going on past history, they would probably opt for the SS and MLS Cup runners up to get the nod instead of supporting the US Open Cup even a little.