NEW YORK, NY–For the 2024 Lamar Hunt US Open Cup, Major League Soccer clubs are set to field their affiliated MLS NEXT PRO teams for the competition as they face an expanding fixture list which for ten clubs includes the Concacaf Champions Cup and for all 29 clubs, the Leagues Cup.
Major League Soccer announced Friday that at its recent Board of Governors meeting its clubs voted to have MLS NEXT Pro teams represent the organization in the 2024 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup
“This decision will provide emerging professional players with additional opportunities for meaningful competition,” MLS said in a statement. “The move also benefits the MLS regular season by reducing schedule congestion, freeing up to six midweek match dates.”
This move is currently just for the 2024 season as the league says it will ‘reevaluate its approach’ to the Open Cup next season.
With the 34-match regular season, Leagues Cup, and the recently expanded playoffs from last season; a team could end up playing 48 matches from those three competitions alone. LAFC played a total of 53 matches in all competitions including the Campeones Cup against Leon.
MLS Commissioner Don Garber hinted at the change during his state of the league remarks last week in Columbus just prior to MLS Cup saying “there might be changes to our participation sometime in the future.
“I believe if we’re going to have our professional teams competing in a tournament — that is the oldest tournament of its type anywhere in the country — we all need to embrace it, from our federation to our respective leagues, and give it the profile and the support it needs,” Garber said. “If we can’t do that, then we should meet and decide that there needs to be a new plan.”
COMMENT: Since entering the competition in 1996, MLS clubs have won 27 of the last 28 Open Cups with Chicago Fire, Seattle Sounders, and Sporting Kansas City winning four each. This decision by MLS will not go over well with the fanbase who believes the league is more focuses on competing with Liga MX clubs and being perhaps too open to whatever Apple suggests to them as far as broadcasting goes.
Fans of clubs who take the Open Cup seriously like the Fire will no doubt be unhappy on top of several reasons they are unhappy right now. Fans of clubs in the lower leagues of American soccer will be unhappy because it gives the perception that MLS does not want to waste its time, nor see their teams lose, to the likes of Chattanooga FC, Charleston Battery, or FC Tucson.
Above all, this decision by MLS threatens to widen the disconnect between the league and its fans when it comes to issues from the Open Cup to the ever changing guidelines on what is acceptable conduct by fans (i.e. use of flares and certain banners) while at the same time using said fans as part of their marketing campaign.
This is a situation where nobody wins and one hopes MLS and US Soccer can find a solution so that if not for 2024, the 27 US-based clubs from MLS (with the addition of San Diego and with the three Canadian sides in their own cup competition) will be able to field first teams (or reasonable facsimiles thereof) for the oldest soccer competition in America for 2025.
US Open Cup
