The U.S. Open Cup, known for much of its life as the National Challenge Cup, and informally for many years as, simply, the National Championship, took its sweet time drifting out West.
Westward expansion out of the Northeast, from where 17 of the first 18 Champions hailed between 1914 and 1932, touched the midwest first, with St Louis’ Ben Miller bucking the trend of East Coast dominance in 1920 and Stix Baer & Fuller, also from St Louis, winning two in a row in 1933 and 1934. Chicago Sparta were crowned in 1938 to become the first Champion from the Second City before finally, in 1954 – some four decades after Brooklyn Field Club lifted the first Open Cup – the tournament reached its physical terminus of the West Coast.
The LA Scots entered the 1952 Open Cup and the McIlwaine Canvasbacks did the same in 1953, but both were forced to withdraw when the cost of travel to St. Louis proved too high.
So 1954 was the year that marked the first time teams from California took part in the Open Cup in earnest. One of those, the LA Kickers, would become the first club from the West Coast to lift the Dewar Cup (the original Open Cup trophy) four years later. And that win kicked off a run of ten titles for teams from the City of Angels spanning the space of 47 years (1958-2005).
Der Kickers of Old
The historic 1958 Final pulled the LA Kickers – a club founded in 1951 by German immigrants – eastward to play home side Pompei SC in Baltimore, Maryland on June 8th. It was three years, nearly to the day, since Danish-American SC of LA became the first team from the West Coast to play in an Open Cup Final. But those Danes of 1955 were no match for S.C. Eintracht of Astoria, Queens, despite playing at home at Rancho La Cienega. They pummeled St Louis powers Simpkin Ford in the Semis, but the Danes lost out in the decider when John Pinezich, former all-american and national champion at Penn State and future USMNT player, scored both in a 2-0 Eintracht win.
“I was in the army, stationed at Fort Dix in New Jersey,” said Eberhard Herz, about being allowed – quite against regulations – to travel with Eintracht to LA for the 1955 Final. Later, after being transferred to a base in California, Herz, still alive and approaching his 91st year, joined the LA Kickers, where he’d go on to win the Open Cup 1964.
“Soccer was different back then,” Hertz said. “The games were always hard and I had the honor of playing in three Finals (1955, 1960 and 1964).
Members of the Greater Los Angeles Soccer League (GLASL), one of the oldest leagues in the country, founded in 1902, the Kickers didn’t suffer for the long trip to Baltimore for the historic 1958 Final. Both goals came from another U.S. National Team player of the era, Scottish-born forward Willie Carson. His first was in the eighth minute and he scored a second after a grueling 110.
That marked the birth of a dynasty. The Kickers spent the next ten years winning California State titles and sniffing around national Finals. In 1960, they finished Open Cup runners-up – led by Al Zerhusen, who would go on to play in the Olympic Games of Melbourne in 1956. He also became a regular in the U.S. National Team and was inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame in 1978. That 1960 Final, played at Edison Field in Philadelphia needed two overtime periods before the eventual four-time Champion Ukrainian Nationals edged the Kickers 5-3 behind a five-goal day from Mike Noha.
That game’s gone down in history as one of the greatest Open Cup Finals ever played, with the Philadelphia ‘Ukes’ twice coming from behind to beat the Kickers.
The Kickers didn’t stay on the canvas for long. They were back on the winners’ podium in 1964. And in the intervening decade between the Kickers’ pair of wins, LA teams went on a tear. The McIlvaine Canvasbacks – from the LA neighborhood of San Pedro – won the 1959 Final over Massachusetts' Fall River SC and the LA Scots and LA Armenians were Runners-up in 1961 and 1963 respectively.
The 1964 Final was played over two legs and allowed the Kickers to earn some revenge in a rematch against the reigning ASL-Champion Philly Ukrainians. The first leg was played at Cambria Field in Philadelphia, PA (site of the 1960 Final) and it ended 2-2 after extra-time. The second leg, at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, ended 2-0 for the Kickers, with Helmut Weiss scoring two of the Kickers’ four and the icon Zerhusen, who passed away in 2018 at the age of 86, grabbing the first.
Between 1965 and the heyday of the North American Soccer League (NASL) in the early 1970s, LA-Area teams had to be content with Runners-up finishes at the Open Cup. Orange County SC came second in 1966 and 1967. The same was true for the Montebello Armenians in 1969, LA Croatia in 1970 and the San Pedro Yugoslavs twice in 1971 and 1972
Maccabee Dynasty & the MLS Years
From 1972 to 1984, while the NASL was in full-flow and enticing a raft of global stars like Pele, Franz Beckenbauer and Johan Cruyff, the Open Cup continued on without it. The glitzy new national league decided not to take part in the country’s oldest tournament and the reasoning, according to the learned Dr. Joe Machnik, was simple. “They were afraid they’d lose and be embarrassed,” exclaimed the U.S. soccer pioneer and, incidentally, an Open Cup winner in 1965 with the New York Ukrainians.
The NASL’s LA Aztecs or the San Jose Earthquakes, both clubs where the legendary George Best had playing stints, might not have lost all their games against the part-time, semi-pro heroes of LA’s Maccabee AC, but they certainly would have lost a few.
READ: Maccabee AC: Hollywood’s Five-Star Dynasty
The Maccabees, founded by Jewish immigrants, several of them Holocaust survivors, boasted bona fide stars of their own like Benny Binshtock, who worked as toy designer for Mattel in his day job. Also in the Maccabees mix was defender Eric Braeden – star of stage and screen – who played soccer under his birth name of Hans-Jorg Gudegast while acting on such TV staples of the time as Rat Patrol and Combat, and later, as Victor Newman on the Soap Opera The Young and the Restless.
“We dominated Southern California in those years,” said Moshe Hoftman, a standout at UCLA during his time playing with the Maccabees, who won five Open Cups and reached seven Finals between 1973 and 1982. “It was no surprise to us that we were able to win five national championships [U.S. Open Cups] because of the kind of players we had. We were loaded.”
Lifting the Open Cup five times is an achievement only two other teams can claim through 109 years of play: Bethlehem Steel and the Fall River Marksmen – both legendary clubs of yesteryear. This year’s Open Cup might well produce a fourth – and the first from Major League Soccer (MLS) – if Sporting Kansas City shock LAFC on September 25th (LIVE and FREE on APPLE TV).
Major League Soccer (MLS) chose not to make the same mistake as the NASL, joining the Open Cup – renamed after American soccer pioneer Lamar Hunt in 1999 – in that league’s inaugural year. Thus was ushered in the so-called Modern Era of our tournament. And while MLS teams have won 25 of 26 crowns in this brave new era, Dr. Joe Machnik’s prediction proved prophetic. LA Galaxy became the only Los Angeles-area team of the MLS years to win the Open Cup (2001 and 2005) but they also lost their fair share of games to lower-league opponents (Minnesota Thunder in 2004, Richmond Kickers in 2007 and, famously, the Carolina Railhawks in 2012, 2013 and 2014) .
For now, we’ll focus on the Galaxy’s successes. In 2001, led by USMNT stars of the era Paul Caligiuri and Cobi Jones, they beat the New England Revolution 2-1 in a Final at Titan Stadium in Fullerton, California thanks to goals from Danny Califf and Ezra ‘EZ’ Hendrickson.
Galactic Double Sets the Stage for LAFC
The Galaxy finished Runners-up a year later, in 2002, missing out on a rare back-to-back achievement as Brian McBride’s Columbus Crew earned their first and only Open Cup via a 1-0 win in Ohio.
The Galaxy’s second and last Open Cup triumph came in 2005, led then by an all-time icon of the U.S. game. One Landon Donovan. A Quarterfinal win (2-1) over the San Jose Earthquakes was followed by a 5-2 hammering of Cinderellas Minnesota Thunder, when Donovan, and that year’s top scorer Herculez Gomez, both got on the scoresheet to seal half of a 2005 MLS-and-Open Cup-Double for the Galaxy.
Gomez also scored the winner in the 1-0 victory over FC Dallas in the Final, at home at the then-named Home Depot Center in Carson, California. The Galaxy would finish Runners-up two more times, but 2005 signaled the last of their Open Cup glories.
It was also the end of the road for LA teams lifting this country’s most historic prize.
Until now, that is. LAFC have the chance to pick up where the rest left off as hosts of the 109th Open Cup Final on September 25th against four-time Champions Sporting Kansas City – who’ll aim for their own piece of history as they try to join LA’s Maccabee AC as rare five-time Champions.
Fontela is editor-in-chief ofusopencup.com. Follow him at @jonahfontela on X/Twitter.