Write On Sports LLC - "A Brief Explanation of US Soccer Prizes" by Jeff Bull

A Brief Explanation of US Soccer Prizes

2006-10-10 21:20:58 | By: Jeff Bull

“So,” my wife asked, “does this mean they won? Are they the champions of everything?”

“No,” I replied. “It means they won the Open Cup.”

“What’s the Open Cup?”

I explained that the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup is the oldest soccer tournament in the United States, dating back to 1914. It is “open” - hence the name - to all soccer clubs affiliated with the United States Soccer Federation, whether amateur or professional. Major League Soccer (MLS) clubs have entered the competition every year since the league’s founding in 1996 and have won the Cup each season except 1999 when the second-division Rochester Raging Rhinos took the title by beating the Colorado Rapids, an MLS club. MLS’s Chicago Fire won the 2006 trophy, which makes four wins in that team’s short history, though both facts - e.g. that they won and the number of times they’ve done so - join a list of unintended secrets in U.S. Soccer history.

“So, there’s more than one trophy?” My wife asked. When I replied that was the case, she responded, “That’s stupid.”

It’s not so much that it’s stupid as it is, frankly, confusing. Part of the reason is cultural: every other American sport plays one final, defining game, series - something - to establish a champion for that league. MLS, America’s top domestic soccer league, does hold one final championship game that two teams reach through a playoff system. The winner of that final game wins MLS Cup, which officially, and unquestionably, dubs a league champion for the season. But then there’s the U.S. Open Cup...and that’s just the beginning.

In the same way that relying on one final game or series to dub a champion is cultural, running multiple, simultaneous competitions is, in a sense, cultural as well. Clubs in the “Big Five” of Europe - England, Spain, Italy, France and Germany - compete in several competitions each season. In England, for instance, every professional club competes in their league (there are four) plus the FA Cup and the League Cup. The top teams in the top league - Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, now Chelsea, etc. - also typically play in one of two Europe-wide cup competitions: the UEFA Champions’ League or the less-prestigious UEFA Cup. “Lucky” teams can vie for a squad-draining sixth tournament when they qualify for the World Club Championship, a tournament that pits the top club teams from the world’s respective regions against one another. All told, a team could theoretically win six trophies in one season - and that’s apart from national team competitions like the World Cup, the European Championship, and all the qualifying games each entails.

Deliberately or not, soccer in the United States follows a similar tradition. The U.S. Open Cup and MLS Cup are only two among several prizes, formal and informal, constituting seasons-within-seasons across MLS. After those two, the biggest of these is the Supporters’ Shield, which goes to the MLS team that compiles the best regular season record. This honor amounts to a throwback the “league system” that holds throughout Europe; it doesn’t use playoffs, but awards the league title to the best team over the course of the season - and that’s it.

Prior to the 2006 season, the Supporters’ Shield offered nothing more than bragging rights; on one level, it offered a way for a team that had the best regular season record, but that failed to win MLS Cup, to turn lemons into lemonade. This year, for the first time, it offers entry to the CONCACAF Champions Cup, a tournament that pits the top club teams from that region against one another; the other one of the two seeds awarded to MLS clubs goes to the winner of MLS Cup, the actual league champion. Because the CONCACAF region comprises club teams from North America, Central America and the Caribbean, it is nothing like as lucrative, visible - or essentially competent, really - as the UEFA Champions League. Whatever its global status, it does offer a shot at international play, particularly against Mexican clubs, which provides an outlet, even if a modest one, for patriotic fervor among players and fans alike. It also sends the tournament’s winner to the World Club Championship where they can challenge not only Europe’s top club, but South America’s, Africa’s, and Asia’s, for the honor of being best in the world.

Below such lofty possibilities lurk the great oddities of MLS and American Soccer in general: the “supporter” cups. While there are antecedents even for these - namely, the “derbies” of Europe’s league that pit teams from the same city against one another - MLS fans established a number of these informal trophies to add spice to a long regular season. The oldest of these is the Brimstone Cup, which goes to the team that wins the season series between the Chicago Fire and FC Dallas; the name rose from a time when FC Dallas was the Dallas Burn, which made the “fire” theme make some sFirense. Three other cups have since followed - the Atlantic Cup between DC United and (now) Red Bull New York; the “Texas Derby,” which passes a mountain howitzer between the Houston Dynamo and (again) FC Dallas; and the Rocky Mountain Cup, which goes to the winner of the season series between Real Salt Lake and the Colorado Rapids - and each of them provide an admittedly tacked-on, yet bizarrely real, sense of rivalry between the clubs in question. For evidence of this, look no further than the useful excitement and controversy that occasioned Pablo Mastroeni’s celebration on winning the Rocky Mountain Cup with the Colorado Rapids.

The important thing to understand is that each of these tournaments, with the exception of the links between the CONCACAF Champions Cup and the Supporters’ Shield and MLS Cup, stand on their own. Count them up and every MLS club aims for three honors each and every season. The best teams get to add the CONCACAF Champions Cup, which takes them up to four; add a (long) shot at World Club Championship and the total rises to five. The teams that vie for one of the supporters’ trophies, technically, go for six prizes in a season, but because the games involved are also part of the regular season, they don’t burden the team, so much as the fans trying to keep track of who’s winning what. Winning one doesn’t bar a team from winning another; for instance, teams can do the “double” - what they call winning both MLS Cup and the U.S. Open Cup, something the LA Galaxy managed last season.

For all that, both the clubs and fans rank each trophy differently and organize their season accordingly. Part of the reason Chicago has won more Open Cups than any other MLS team is that they’ve tended to take that tournament more seriously than others; until recently several teams fielded weakened line-ups in order to spare their starters the extra games. But no one rests key players if it means putting their shot at MLS Cup in jeopardy. The national title remains the top prize - at least until MLS clubs start topping Mexican clubs in the CONCACAF Champions Cup; who knows what will happen then. Then there’s all the talk of sending MLS teams to South America’s Copa Libertadores...

In the end, knowing how all this fits together doesn’t make any better sense of it all. Most fans just want to see their team win and will talk up the Supporters’ Shield, for instance, when their team wins it. Confusing as it can be, there’s something nice about having more than one bite at the apple.

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