Major League Soccer side St. Louis CITY SC, who dispatched Division III pros Union Omaha in the 2025 Round of 32 earlier this month, are still hunting for a first U.S. Open Cup crown since launching in the top-flight in 2023. But the city that CITY calls home has the deepest Open Cup pedigree.
You can’t talk seriously about the history of the U.S. Open Cup (or the National Challenge Cup, as it was known in the early days) without spending a good chunk of time in St. Louis, Missouri. The Gateway City made a huge impact on the history of this country’s oldest soccer tournament, beginning in 1920 when St. Louis Ben Miller (a club sponsored and named for a local hat-maker) shocked Fore River Rovers of Quincy, Massachusetts to lift the title for the first time.
The Ben Millers’ city rivals Scullin Steel FC followed up with a second U.S. Open Cup title in 1922 after reaching the Final in 1921 (they reached the Final again in 1923).
Stix Baer and Fuller took over as the St. Louis power team of the 1930s by winning three Open Cups in a row in 1933 and 1934 (in 1935 too, under their changed name of St. Louis Central Breweries). Those Stix/Central Breweries teams boasted one of the giants of the American game in Adelino ‘Billy’ Gonsalves. The Massachusetts-born all-rounder – dubbed the ‘Babe Ruth of American Soccer’ – won eight Open Cup titles and lined up for the U.S. Men’s National Team in two World Cups, including when the Stars and Stripes made their best-ever finish by reaching the Semifinals of the inaugural global showpiece in 1930.
In all, the city of St. Louis can claim ten Open Cup titles – spread among seven teams and nearly 100 years. Only teams from California, New York and Pennsylvania have more Open Cups than Missouri and that’s all thanks to St. Louis and its century-strong romance with the game of soccer.
In addition to Stix Baer & Fuller/Central Breweries, Vesper Buick, Scullin Steel, St. Louis Shamrocks and Simpkins-Ford dominated with Open Cup titles and multiple appearances in Finals. There’s no denying that St. Louis grew into an American soccer power in the decades following their first Open Cup trophy lift in the early 1920s.
And those teams all paved the way for the dominant Saint Louis Kutis club of the 1950s.
“When we started out we were known as the Saint Louis Raiders,” remembered former midfielder and 1957 Open Cup winner, the late Bill Eppy, speaking to ussoccer.com in 2019. “In those days, you worked a job and played soccer on the side. You didn’t get paid, but you might get a nice Christmas present when the holidays rolled around.”
In the early 1950s, when Eppy joined up, a new sponsor came on board too. Tom Kutis, who operated a local funeral parlor, gave the club his name and an American soccer legend was born. The club won seven straight National Amateur Cups in that decade and collected a pair of Open Cups over a 50-year history.
Eppy was a no-nonsense defensive midfielder and he missed out on Kutis’ 1954 loss in the Open Cup Final to the NY Americans because he was bouncing from base to base doing his military service. But he came back and played a critical role for the 1957 side that demolished New York Hakoah 6-1 over two legs in that year’s U.S. Open Cup Final series.
“It wasn’t much of a party for the team from New York,” said Eppy, who made his living as a machinist for the South Side Machine Works while doing his part in Kutis’ many successes. “I remember they didn’t really have a chance in the game.
“It probably wasn’t the most exciting Final ever played,” Eppy added.
What Eppy remembered best were the differences from his day to today. “The game’s so different,” he said. “I see guys today passing the ball around their own penalty area. The last thing I wanted to do was jack around with the ball near my own goal. You make a bad pass back there and it’s Goodnight Irene.
“If I played around with the ball back there, back then, I would have heard it from Harry…”
That Harry is one Harry Keough, legend of the American game and a teammate of Eppy’s in that outstanding Kutis team of 1957. Such was the quality of soccer coming out of the city of St. Louis at the time, five members of the Starting XI of the USA’s 1950 World Cup team – the one that famously beat the English in one of the World Cup’s biggest upsets – came from their local league.
“Back then we played with four attacking players and we had some really good forwards,” Eppy remembered, not laboring much on the celebrations and the lifting of the Cup or the one-sided 6-1 scoreline of that ‘57 Final.
“He didn’t say much except to congratulate me and say we had a good team and that we did a fine job,” the younger Eppy remembered. “But thinking back, it was a pretty amazing thing to climb the same mountain he did.”
The 1986 Open Cup trophy still sits on proud display in the late Sam Kutis’ funeral parlor – operated now by his own kids and grandkids. “It’s there. The Cup with the game ball stuck inside it,” said Joe Eppy. It’s not far from where trinkets of his own dad’s glory days of the 1950s still sit, behind glass and taken out only for a respectful dusting now and then.
Joe Eppy doesn’t remember a wild celebration after the 1986 win over San Pedro’s Yugoslavs. “We played two games in two days and we were pretty gassed. Plus it was a Sunday and we all had work the next day,” he said, remembering back to days before the glamor of Major League Soccer and the city’s new team, St. Louis CITY SC – who’ll hit the road to take on fellow MLS side Minnesota United FC in the Round of 16 on May 21 (LIVE on Paramount+)
“But I think I remember going into work with a hangover on Monday,” said Joe Eppy, the second generation of his family to lift American soccer’s most historic prize. “I think a lot of us did.”
Two years later, in 1988, St. Louis Busch Seniors became the last team from the city to win the Open Cup with a win over Greek-American A.C.
There’s no way to overstate just how much the game has changed in this country from 1920 to the bright shining now. St. Louis CITY SC’s soccer-specific Energizer Park would have been a concept difficult to explain to the old heroes Gonsalves, Keough and Eppy. But the city’s devotion to the Open Cup was on full display when, on April 25, 2023, the club hosted its first-ever Open Cup game.
A crowd of 22,423 – a record for our Third Round – turned out to watch their top-flight stars beat Division III Union Omaha 5-1.
And when CITY lines up again on May 21, they’ll be desperate for a spot in the Quarterfinals – one step closer to bringing the Open Cup trophy back home for the first time in nearly four decades.
Fontela is editor-in-chief of ussoccer.com/us-open-cup. Follow him at @jonahfontela on Twitter.