Even the youngest clubs have a history.
Since El Paso Locomotive launched and joined the USL Championship in 2019, they’ve been a model of success, making the playoffs in all but one season. Several of those post-season runs went deep too, including back-to-back appearances in the Western Conference Finals. Yet for all the regular season success, the club’s struggled to make a mark in the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup.
In 2019, they fell to USL League One darlings Forward Madison of Wisconsin. In 2022, when the Open Cup returned from a two-year Covid hiatus, another League One club, Central Valley Fuego, knocked Los Locos out of the competition. Last year, Union Omaha dispatched the El Paso-based Championship side 2-0 in the Second Round.
Regardless of impressive league form through the years, Locomotive has yet to win a single match in the Cup. And Lucas Stauffer, the defender signed earlier this year from Las Vegas Lights, is well aware of the expectations that come with that kind of record.
“The pressure is on us,” he said. “The dynamics shift when you’re playing a team in a lower division. You can debate the discrepancies between the levels up and down, but they [Union Omaha] are a very professional club and have had a ton of success in their short history.
“I lived in Omaha for four years so it has a special place in my heart,” said Stauffer, who played his college soccer at Omaha powers Creighton University, ahead of a second straight Cup opener for El Paso in Nebraska. “But for us going into the game, we have to approach it as normal as possible.
“I think if you talk to any player, it’s much more difficult than it sounds,” he said of facing off with a motivated team from a lower league. “I know it is for me.”
Stauffer spent several years in Germany, playing in the lower leagues with the likes of Wacker Nordhausen and Carl Zeiss Jena. While there, he participated in the DFB-Pokal. It’s the national cup in Germany and, just as the U.S. Open Cup does, it affords lower-league clubs the chance to play against the big names of the top flight (there, the Bundesliga). Even two years later back in the States, Stauffer still watches the Pokal closely for the excitement and surprises it breeds.
“The traditions of the Cup in Germany are taken very seriously. It’s a community event,” said the Kentucky-born defender. “I still watch the German Cup every year. Every time the games are on, I always watch. This year, I saw Bayern Munich get knocked off by a lower-league club. When does that happen?
“For a spectator, you couldn’t ask for anything more,” he said. “It’s David versus Goliath, it’s great!”
And while fans do love a Cupset, the players that fill that upper-tier club roster are petrified about being next on the list. Stauffer explained it as a mentality issue, but one he thinks his club is ready to handle. “I think subconsciously you look at it as if you're playing a league lower…It’s really difficult. For us, we’re not going to have that because we haven’t had the success we’ve wanted early in the regular season [Locomotive started 2024 slowly, winless through five matches].
“So going into these upcoming matches, we’re going in with the same mentality and same mindset for every game,” Stauffer said. “I know we have the quality and we’re putting in the work and right now we’re just trying to get into that rhythm of winning games."
Locomotive’s struggles in the USL Championship regular season so far have been serious. Earning a single point in five matches wasn’t the plan – and the prospect of losing to another-lower league side in Open Cup play isn’t the result coach Brian Clarhaut is looking for.
In a conversation with Alberto Huichapa for the official Locomotive website, Clarhaut mentioned his goal to change the club’s record in the Cup. “Like I said last year, I’d like to get the first win in the club’s history in the Open Cup,” he said. “Our fans are devoted to this tournament as are a lot of U.S. soccer fans. Once we get there…we’ll go there to win.”
Clarhaut will be counting on Stauffer’s experience and drive toward that aim. “He [Stauffer] is an extremely technical competitor with a top mentality,” the coach said of his signing. “He leaves everything on the field and is a student of the game.”
Rather than seeing the Cup match as a change of pace from league play, Stauffer sees it as part of his club’s chance to find a win – any kind of win. “It’s more connected than disconnected. It’s an unbelievable way for us to go from Oakland [the regular season match on Saturday against the Roots] to Omaha [on the Wednesday after] and get a bit of a run going. Get a hot streak rolling.”
With Locomotive struggling to find a footing in the regular season, exacting some revenge on Union Omaha in the Open Cup could offer a bridge to more success. But like last year’s competition showed, beating a lower league club is no guarantee – no matter how up the food chain your club might be.
After all, Cupsets do happen.
Union Omaha drew two USL League Two clubs in the previous rounds, so the Third Round match against Locomotive will be a reversal of roles for the third-division USL League One club. Of course, El Paso will also be hoping for a reversal of its traditional role of early exiters from the competition.
So let’s roll the dice, as we do in our Open Cup, and see what comes up.
Dan Vaughn is a veteran soccer journalist and the founder and editor of Protagonist Soccer. Follow him at @TheDanVaughn on X/Twitter.