The Chicago Fire stand at the precipice of Open Cup history.
Today, in 2025 – the 110th edition of the country’s oldest and most historic soccer tournament, and the 28th year of MLS’ comparatively short life – the honor of having been named five-time Champions remains the exclusive domain of clubs from the deep past. But the Fire, of MLS, a four-time winner whose last title came back in 2006, now stand on the cusp of that rarefied air.
Before the flash and buzz of today’s MLS, there was soccer in this country. It had its hard times to be sure, but it survived in booms and busts through the early years of the last century to this very bright, shining here and now. The Open Cup, formerly known as the National Challenge Cup, being handed out to the best team in the land every year beginning in 1914 is the hard evidence of a country with deep-lying soccer traditions and heritage.
The first club to claim five titles was Bethlehem Steel – the Pennsylvania outfit widely regarded as the first Super Club of American soccer. Playing at their Steel Athletic Field, this country’s first soccer-specific stadium, built long before any concrete was poured in Columbus, Ohio in 1998, they were the power-team of the Teens and 1920s.
The squad was built around the bulk and influence (and dollars) of the company of the same name that dominated shipbuilding and steel-making – a superpower in global commerce.
They won the first of their five Open Cups in 1915, sparked by the energy and talent of Bob Millar. This was a man known as much for his willingness to brawl (and his aptitude at doing so) as he was for scoring goals. Later inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame, he scored the Steel’s second in a 3-1 win over Brooklyn Celtic in that year’s Final.
Millar would go on to win four Open Cup titles as a player (with three different clubs) before coaching the first Team USA to play in a World Cup to a third-place, semifinal finish (best, still, all these years on).
Bethlehem Steel soon won three more Open Cups (1916, 1918 and 1919) and sealed the last of their quintet in 1926 before shuttering in 1930 as a result, at least in part, of the era’s so-called Soccer Wars.
The 1916 Final, played at Coats Field in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, was noteworthy for a major controversy. A penalty kick was called with ten minutes left. It sent the local crowd of 10,000 into hysterics feeling the (closer to)-home side, the Fall River Rovers, were being cheated, or at least mistreated. Tommy Fleming, another Bethlehem Steel legend the size of Millar, scored the only goal of the game from the spot to seal the deal for the Pennsylvanians. But not before, in the dying moments, a fan ran on the field and attacked the referee, who was further beaten by an angry mob before a local policeman, revolver drawn, dispersed the assailants.
Now’s a good time to talk about Fall River, Massachusetts. The same immigrant-heavy city that sent a side to the 1916 ‘Revolver’ Final, was home to another club that would go on to win five Open Cups.
The first of those titles for Fall River (who would at times wear the various names of Fall River Marksmen/New York Yankees/New Bedford Whalers) came in 1924 (the mill city in southern Massachusetts also had a team win the Open Cup back-to-back in 1917 and 1918).
Two legendary names of the Fall River team(s) are Adelino ‘Billy’ Gonsalves, who eventually won eight Open Cups, played in two World Cups for the USA and is generally considered one of the greatest this country has ever produced. His attacking partner, Bert Patenaude, was known for a bloodhound’s nose for goal and aerial ability both. Born, like Gonsalves, in Fall River, he’s credited as scorer of the first hat-trick in World Cup history, with all the goals in the USA’s 3-0 win over Paraguay at the 1930 finals.
Fall River’s remaining Open Cup titles came in 1927 and 1930 (again under the name the Marksmen), 1931 (as the New York Yankees) and, again, in 1932 as the New Bedford Whalers. The club, under its various names, boasted, in addition to Patenaude and Gonsalves, some of the best players of the era. Men like Archie Stark, Alex McNab and Fleming too.
Many decades would pass between the early days of Bethlehem and Fall River glory and the next five-time Open Cup winner – but no less light should shine on the giants of those 1970s and early Eighties known as Maccabi Los Angeles. The story is too long to tell here (and too amazing not to read all about, so you cando so here). But this team, the only West Coast five-time winner, was founded by Jewish immigrants, some of them Holocaust survivors, and featured defender and Daytime Emmy Award winning actor Eric Braeden, who went by his given name Hans-Jörg Gudegast when playing.
One of the best of the Maccabees’ winning era was Benny Binshtock. A player of grace and power, who would later go on to become a toy designer, starred on the bumpy pitch at the Jackie Robinson Stadium that Maccabi called home. “You could put him [Binshtock] anywhere on the field and he could turn any game around,” said Braeden, famous for his decades-long turn playing Victor Newman on the soap opera The Young and the Restless.
Braeden and Binshtock both – and a number of their winning teammates – were VIP guests at the El Trafico derby in the 2022 Open Cup and again at the 2024 Open Cup Final, won by LAFC.
The Maccabees raised the old Dewar Cup in 1973, 1975, 1977, 1978 and 1981 in a time when the NASL teams of Pele, Franz Beckenbauer and Johan Cruyff refused to participate in the Open Cup. The competition had become largely an all-amateur and all-semi pro affair for a time. Why didn’t those NASL teams play in the Open Cup, you ask? Well, Dr. Joe Machnik, Hall of Famer and 1965 Open Cup winner with the NY Ukrainians has a theory: “They were afraid they would lose!”
It’s as good an explanation as we’ve heard.
Two years after the Maccabees won their last title in 1981, the NASL collapsed under its own bloat and many of that league’s players found themselves back in the Open Cup once again. There they helped keep the game alive during U.S. soccer’s so-called Dark Days.
And that leads us up to 1996 and the founding of MLS.
Four-time Champions Sporting Kansas City and the Seattle Sounders both had the chance to become the first MLS teams to win five Open Cup titles last year, in our 2024 edition. Both came up short – Seattle in a Semifinal loss in Tukwila, Washington to our eventual Champions LAFC and SKC in the thrilling Final in Los Angeles.
And among the 16-club field of MLS sides participating in this year’s Open Cup, the Chicago Fire are the only four-time winner and thus the only team able to reach the mountaintop of a fifth crown.
Fans of the early Fire will remember the club’s first Open Cup triumph fondly. It formed half of an MLS League-Cup Double they won in their first year as a competing club in 1998. The game was played in driving wind and rain on October 30, just five days after the Fire beat D.C. United in the decider of that year’s MLS campaign at the Rose Bowl in sunny Pasadena.
With the Open Cup Final tied, and with the Golden-Goal rule still in use back then, up stepped Chicagoland legend Frank Klopas. The homegrown USMNT hero sealed a 2-1 win over Brian McBride’s Columbus Crew with a goal that would become famous in the legend and lore of the Chicago club.
“It came down to little details,” Klopas said. “In the end it’s down to us making a couple plays. And the rest is history. Guys in that team hated to lose and Bob [Bradley, the then Fire coach] made sure everyone bought into what we were doing and that the balance was right,”
Two years later, in 2000, the Fire lifted the Open Cup for a second time. After beating LA Galaxy in the Semifinal, they hosted the decider once again at Soldier Field where they snuck past then coach (and now iconic broadcaster) Ray Hudson’s Miami Fusion 2-1 in the Final. The goals came from former Barcelona star Hristo Stoichkov and a late own goal by Tyrone Marshall.
Three years after that triumph, the 2003 Final was played at the Meadowlands and it needed a late and lone goal from Damani Ralph to see the Fire pip the MetroStars to our historic trophy. That year’s Chicago Fire was one of the best teams ever assembled in MLS – with the likes of Ante Razov, DaMarcus Beasley, Carlos Bocanegra, Jim Curtin and Zach Thornton between the posts.
A fourth Open Cup title for the Fire, in the tight space of just eight years, came in 2006. They weren’t to know it at the time, but it would also be their last for (at least) 19 years. It was a totally revamped team from 2003, with many of the club’s stars jettisoned – but a 3-1 win over Landon Donovan and Cobi Jones’ LA Galaxy in Bridgeview, Illinois brought another star for a proud Fire organization.
The Fire of today, struggling in MLS Eastern Conference play and coached by former USMNT boss Gregg Berhalter, have the chance to capture the spirit of those old glory days. They’ll open their 2025 Open Cup campaign at home with a tricky visit from the always dangerous Division II (USL Championship) powers Detroit City FC on May 7 LIVE on Paramount+.
Fontela is editor-in-chief of usopencup.com. Follow him at @jonahfontela on X/Twitter.