FC Cincinnati was the story of the 2017 U.S. Open Cup. But those Division II pros, who drew huge crowds on a run that ended seconds shy of a place in the Final, and eventually opened the door to an invitation to join the star-studded top-flight of MLS, nearly went out before the party started.
There’s an alternate history worth considering, whereby amateurs AFC Cleveland – fellow Ohioans, and underdog Cinderellas – were the ones who moved on that day in the 2017 Second Round, leaving the full roar of Nippert Stadium, and FC Cincy’s charge to American soccer relevance, unheard and untapped. According to AFC Cleveland’s then-coach Michael Sesar, that’s exactly what should have happened.
this is a BIG deal!
— Croatia Juniors Soccer Club (@croatiajuniors) November 16, 2025
Wear your checkers next Saturday, and come support Croatia Cleveland as they take on Steel City FC in the 4th round of the U.S. Open Cup!
Sat, November 22
Mentor High School @ 5pm
Croatia Jrs players wearing checkers get free admission pic.twitter.com/Nl2fQGWqoi
“I can’t believe I didn't get thrown out for some of the things I said to the referee,” he admitted with a warm smile that belied his firm belief that the game, which required extra-time before FC Cincinnati finally sealed a slim 1-0 win three minutes before a penalty shootout, should have ended quite differently. “There was a situation [near the end of regulation] and we definitely had the ball over the line – I swear that we should have won that game.”
“It’s not every day you get to coach in front of 15,000 fans," Sesar said of that warm May day nine years ago. “They [FC Cincinnati] came in a little arrogant against us, with a really high press – but they had to change to two holding midfielders in the second half. It was a big compliment, to me as a coach and to the players we had, that they had to make that adjustment.”
Sesar’s tactical sense, and his keen reading of the game, are hard earned. It’s not the kind of education you get from books, but rather from being out on the field and growing up where the soccer game was as much a Sunday tradition as the lunch and the church service. “I was born with a soccer ball in my crib,” he laughed, thinking back to being at the NASL’s 1982 Soccer Bowl with his parents, both Croatian immigrants. “I still have a poster signed by Pele; you can say I fell in love with the game early.”
After early years spent in his birthplace of Ontario, Canada, and a time over the border in Detroit, Sesar “chased a girl to Cleveland” as a young man. Four kids and nearly three decades after arriving in the city he’s on the cusp of taking another amateur team to the Open Cup. Croatia Cleveland, a jewel of this country’s influential ethnic leagues, need to beat Steel City FC on November 22 to qualify directly for next year’s 111th edition of the U.S. Open Cup Tournament Proper.
Sesar has played for decades in the Croatia Cleveland first team. And he’s coached for many of those years among the club’s juniors, a roster of teams which numbers 40 at last count. He’s part of a generation of talented players who came up through the club in the 1990s and have now done the hard work of assembling a talent pipeline and an outstanding first team, boasting some of the best players from the city and its surrounding areas.
And at the age of 53, he won’t hesitate to hop on the field. “I scored the winner in a league game not long ago,” added a smirking Sesar, who’s still active on the Open Cup roster if needed.
Coaching is not Sesar’s fulltime job (he spends his days in finance at a University Hospital, a field he’s worked in for the last 20 years), but you’d never know it. Such is his passion for the game, stoked early, and his desire to get the absolute best out of his side. “I have a radar that’s pretty much up to 200 miles around Cleveland. I’m a soccer purist and an enthusiast and I know where all the good players are.
“And it’s not just a sports club here,” insists Sesar, whose affection and affinity for Croatia Cleveland, and his grasp of the meaning of the club in broader terms, is obvious right away. “It's a community and there are so many family ties you can’t even believe it. There’s friendships, marriages and families born here. It’s a generational thing running through the club.”
Since the 1960s, Croatia Cleveland has participated in the U.S. Open Cup on more than a dozen occasions, reaching as far as the Semifinals in 1975. That run, under their then-name Croatian Rebels, ended at the hands of NY’s Inter-Giuliana in the Final Four.
In Sesar’s current squad, who’ll play Steel City of USL League Two in the Final Qualifying Round in nearby Mentor, Ohio, are Daniel Kalic and Dominik Bruketa. Their grandfather, Anton Bruketa (3rd from left in the top row above), was a member of that 1975 Semifinalist squad. Sesar’s coach in the 1990s, Ante Butic (2nd from left in the top row), was a member of that historic side too.
The influence of the club can be felt all over Northern Ohio. Evidence of that could be seen in their Third Qualifying Round game against Akron City FC earlier this month. “There were a lot of familiar faces in that [Akron] team,” Sesar chuckled, counting about six players from the other side of the field who had, at one time or another, donned the blue of Croatia Cleveland.
The club’s first team, now on the cusp of a return to American soccer’s most historic tournament, is made up of a combination of players of all ages and experiences. Many are fresh off the college circuit, but there’s also a handful of old-timers whose wisdom and commitment help steady the ship.
Lovorko Duvnjak, born in Bosnia, lined up in the last Round of Qualifying at the age of 40. So did Mike Derezic, now 35, and one of the biggest names in Cleveland-Area soccer in the last two decades. The captain on that day in Akron was 24-year-old Daniel Kalik and 21-year-old Tanner Hodgson also did his share of the heavy lifting.
Sesar’s only loss in the Open Cup as a coach is that bittersweet 0-1 result with AFC Cleveland against FC Cincinnati back in 2017. And even that one, according to him, deserves an asterisk. “I’m four and one in Open Cup play,” he said, remembering back to the 3-1 road win over Open Cup powerhouses Des Moines Menace that same year (First Round). “But I still say it should be five and oh.”
A connection to the community, to its past and to a sustainable future, is something not easily come by. It’s the work of folks like Sesar who keep the doors open at the clubs of old, many of them facing big challenges in a changing American soccer landscape. “Cleveland was a stronghold of the ethnic leagues, but the trend in North America is kind of moving away from the ethnic leagues,” he said of the city with deep soccer roots. “The key is to adjust and always keep a pipeline of players coming in.”
The number of fans who travelled to Akron earlier this month – and the red, white and blue checkered flags that flew – are a testament to Croatia Cleveland. Sesar expects something similar this weekend at nearby Mentor High School, where he's also head coach, with a place in the Open Cup on the line.
“This U.S. Open Cup run is a huge thing for our club; we’ve been talking about trying to get back to the tournament for a lot of years now,” said Sesar, a busy man, generous with his time, and who’s doing his part and more to keep Croatia Cleveland relevant and thriving. “It’s a way to promote what we’ve accomplished since 1957, our rich history, and how we want to keep the game growing.”
Jonah Fontela is editor-in-chief of usopencup.com. Follow him at @jonahfontela on X/Twitter.