Today, in 2024 – the 109th edition of the country’s oldest and most historic soccer tournament, and the 27th year of MLS’ comparatively short life – the honor of having been named five-time champions remains the exclusive domain of clubs from yesteryear. But four-time winner Sporting Kansas City, who’ll take on first-time Finalist LAFC on the road on September 25th, 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 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 bullied the Teens and 1920s.
The team 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 it) 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.
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 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 can do 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 between LA Galaxy and LAFC in the 2022 Open Cup.
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 participate in the Open Cup, you ask? Well, Dr Joe Machnik, National Soccer 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 its 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.
The city of Kansas City fell in love with the Open Cup in 2004, when old hero Tony Meola and then young-guns Josh Wolff and Jimmy Conrad led The Wiz (as they were known in their early days in MLS) to a first Cup crown. The only goal of that year’s Final came from Igor Simutenkov.
Then it was former USMNT hero Peter Vermes’ turn to guide the Kansas-based side to Cup glory. Manager from 2009 to this very day, he led the club to titles in 2012, 2015 and 2017. The four (so far) Open Cup wins stand beside the club’s two MLS Cups (2000 and 2013) in the trophy room at Children’s Mercy Park.
It should be mentioned that the Seattle Sounders, who lost in this year’s Semifinal to LAFC, also have four Open Cup crowns (2009, 2010, 2011 and 2014). The Chicago Fire (who SKC beat in their inaugural Open Cup Final in 2004) also sit on the verge of an historic fifth.
SKC have the added distinction of never having lost an Open Cup Final. The four trophies they claimed came from three wins at home and one on the road – in Philadelphia in 2015. They’re now through to our 2024 Final, meaning they’re one win away from lifting the trophy again and claiming an historic fifth.
Peter Vermes’ men beat Div. III powers Union Omaha in OT on the road in the Round of 32 and followed up with a 4-0 home rout of Div. II FC Tulsa before a tense, weather-delayed Quarterfinal win against two-time Champions FC Dallas. Inclement weather had a say again in the Semifinal Round, when a two-and-a-half-hour delay was followed by a dominant 2-0 SKC win over second-division Cinderellas Indy Eleven at Children’s Mercy Park.
On September 25th Sporting KC have the chance to become the first team of the modern-era – and the first from MLS – to join the pantheon of Open Cup fiver-timers. Be sure to WATCH LIVE and FREE on Apple TV.
Fontela is editor-in-chief of usopencup.com. Follow him at @jonahfontela on X/Twitter.