By AVI CREDITOR
The Columbus Crew might have the best Major League Soccer record among the four U.S. Open Cup semifinal teams, but even if they make the final, they won't be hosting the match.
U.S. Soccer announced Thursday that the three possible venues for the U.S. Open Cup final are Qwest Field in Seattle, RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C., or the Home Depot Center in Carson, Calif.
Columbus faces D.C. United in one semifinal, and Chivas USA and the cup-holding Seattle Sounders meet in the other match that will determine the championship game and venue.
Should Seattle defeat Chivas, Qwest Field would host the final no matter what happens in the other semifinal. Should Chivas defeat Seattle and Columbus defeat D.C., Chivas would host the final. Should Chivas defeat Seattle and D.C. defeat Columbus, D.C. would host the final for the third straight season.
Here are some more items involving Major League Soccer teams:
JOHNSON EARNS SAVE AWARD AGAIN
For the third time in the last four weeks, Chicago rookie goalkeeper Sean Johnson has earned Major League Soccer's Save of the Week award.
Despite yielding four goals to the Houston Dynamo, Johnson earned more than 70 percent of the fan vote for his effort in denying Brian Mullan's clean strike with a diving save in the 15th minute of a then-scoreless match.
Here's video of the award-winning save:
BOSKOVIC EARNS NATIONAL TEAM NOD
D.C. United Designated Player Branko Boskovic has been called into the Montenegro national team for its Euro 2012 qualifiers in early September.
Boskovic will be available for D.C. United's match against Chivas USA this weekend, but he will miss the team's U.S. Open Cup semifinal match against the Columbus Crew on Sept. 1 and its league match against the Crew on Sept. 4.
Montenegro faces Wales on Sept. 3 and Bulgaria on Sept. 7. Other members of its qualifying group are England and Switzerland.
KANSAS CITY TRIO EARNS CALL-UPS
Kei Kamara (Sierra Leone), Shavar Thomas (Jamaica) and Roger Espinoza (Honduras) also earned national team call-ups this week. Kamara will feature for Sierra Leone in its African Cup of Nations qualifier against Egypt on Sept. 5.
Espinoza rejoins Los Catrachos after appearing twice for them in the World Cup. Honduras faces Canada in a Sept. 7 friendly in Montreal.
Thomas will suit up for the Reggae Boyz in their Sept. 5 friendly against Costa Rica and their Sept. 7 friendly against Peru.
Also called up for Jamaica from MLS were Lovel Palmer (Houston Dynamo), Donovan Ricketts (L.A. Galaxy), Ryan Johnson (San Jose Earthquakes), Omar Cummings (Colorado Rapids) and Dane Richards (N.Y. Red Bulls).
DE ROSARIO, DE GUZMAN HEADLINE CANADIAN ROSTER
Five MLS players find themselves on Canada's roster for its two friendlies with Peru and Honduras. Dwayne De Rosario, Julian de Guzman and Nana Attakora-Gyan (Toronto FC), Will Johnson (Real Salt Lake) and Dejan Jakovic (D.C. United) will dress for manager Stephen Hart on Sept. 5 and Sept. 7.
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What do you make of U.S. Soccer's decision regarding the U.S. Open Cup final? What did you think of Johnson's save? Hope Boskovic shows well in Euro qualifying? Pleased to see so many MLS players earning national-team duty?
Share your thoughts below.
Give me a break, where do you see evidence of Seattle acting “superior” ?
Here I will give you a reason to hate.
YOU ARE JEALOUS.
There now you have it.
I am from Seattle and I still say that was right on the money.
They need to define how they determine it, or else everyone will whine ( when they lose )
I get it Jason, but I’m still not sure if Montero even knows exactly where he was “stomped”…
That being said, message boards nationwide were lit up with people who seemed to think that Seattle would be able to get 20k+ for a mid week/mid day Cup Final that people still don’t really care about. That, is still laughable.
Doesn’t really matter anyway. Good luck with the fixture congestion.
hes not exactly costing you millions… 380k is nothing… its not as if dcu has three dps and hes preventing the signing of a fourth…
FA Cup is on tv tho… 🙂 I agree about smaller teams hosting the big teams, fun night out for some fans who may be converted into fans of MLS. No one cares about the us open cup, no more than 1000 ppl can name the last 5 champions of the competition…
Right on cue
Its Lebrons fault
Needs to be run just like the FA Cup. Creates better nights and more memories for the “giant killers” who are able to topple MLS teams.
I think the glory of a cup is that the big boys can be beat by the minnows. Putting more big boys into the pond helps the minnows chances of beating a big boy.
The next best thing about a cup is for a smaller team to host one of the big teams, then for a smaller team to travel to one of the big stadiums. Putting more MLS teams in there gives them a better chance of playing MLS teams.
Nobody complains that all the EPL teams are in the English FA Cup afterall.
More valuable then Houston’s Landin was.
More valuable then FC Dallas’ Denilson was.
More valuable ON THE PITCH then oft-injured Golden balls.
That hurt my head. How about:
If Seattle loved their football as much as they loved trying to act superior to other MLS suporters, then perhaps neutrals would love Seattle too.
(Instead everyone hates them).
That’s cause she’s ugly. And those yellow jersey’s are ugly.
That’s because the MLS doesn’t have to pay rent, they just have to cut a whole in the fence along the perimiter big enough for everyone to sneak in, then rig the lights to draw off the neighbors power bill, and of course pull down all the “Condemned: Do Not Enter” yellow tape.
Just remember, if the cops show up we all have to scramble so they can’t catch all of us.
To rephrase Mr Baggins, and expand on Scott’s insights, Seattle seem to feel that less than half of the other teams’ fans know them half as well as they would like and less than half of them like them half as well as they deserve.
I still don’t see the DP value in Boskovic. He is a calm, composed player, great touch on the ball, but not a DP in my eyes.
edit : clearly I meant road game
When was DC’s last USOC home game again? And why hasn’t anyone actually looked into how this was possible?
The amount that some Seattle fans care about how much other people care about them is more than the amount of caring that other people allegedly have for them.
Get ready with your overused puns to hate on Seattle once more
Blair: Respectfully disagree with the suggestion to open the tournament to the whole league. The entire point of an “open cup” is the wonder of an equal footing for the biggest fish and the minnows—the chance for some pro-am team to topple a squad starting the likes of Landon Donovan and David Beckham. Load the tournament with every MLS side and things tilt too much in that league’s favor. Besides, aren’t enough MLS schedules sufficiently cluttered?
Completely concur, however, with any and every effort to “bring more glory” to the tournament. As with CCL, bigger financial rewards and some professional marketing would be a good start.
You miss the meaning of the phrase, Carl. The red-headed step-child can never get any love _regardless_ of how successful s/he is. That’s the whole point of the saying.
I didn’t cry last year when we didn’t get to host the game in which we stomped all over you (get it?), but you’re comparing apples to mutant oranges: Seattle would have had no problem filling Qwest 30,000 deep for the Open Cup final. Columbus can’t promise half that with a straight face. Seattle would have drawn more than anyone, Columbus would draw the fewest of anyone.
Crew fans need to recognize that they’re going to lose out on opportunities such as this if neither they nor the Crew marketing team can convince more Columbus folk to attend games. Sucks, but it is what it is.
see my comment above with the attendance stats
Im from ny and to be honest, follow the red bulls passively and am not that interested. My point, is that all of those facilities can offer more than columbus.
A few things to consider:
A full Qwest field = more $$ for US Soccer
Kevin Payne worked for US Soccer for many years.
HDC is the training base of US Soccer and where operations staff is available to work the game.
Columbus is a poorly attended stadium for a very good team (sorry but the truth hurts). Less crowd = less $$ for US Soccer
See why Crew Stadium is not hosting the final?
a rented, crumbling stadium that can fit a lot more than columbus, and has for big games. Look at the the RFK attendance everytime they hold a final for MLS. Granted, this wont be quite the same, but it shows a comparable situation. COlumbus is on there, about 17,000 less than dc’s worst. The point is that all of these locations. LA averaged about 5,000 more than Columbus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MLS_Cup
The Open cup record for both DC and columbus is rather abysmal but DC united averaged more fans in the open finals, though not by much. It’s also worth to note when each stadium had an all mls game, rfk basicaly doubled crew stadium in attendance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamar_Hunt_U.S._Open_Cup
Half the time you barely remember it’s going on, no tv coverage it’s absolutely ridiculous the way the USOC is run
it seems that US Soccer is real shady with the US Open Cup. D.C. United seems to always host the final if they make it. The only reason Seattle will get it was b/c of their fuss last year, which was good. Why do they not expand the format so that all 16 US teams in MLS start in the competition proper. They seem to not want to expand this competition and bring more glory to it. Consider that the winner gets CONCACAF Champions League bid, they should bring more prominence to the longest running competition in America!
DC can get a big crowd? Really? Last I checked they are pretty much even with Columbus in attendance. Not to mention they play in a rented, crumbling stadium.
The red headed step child that is consistently the class of the league? The one that has won two Supporters Shields in a row? Riiiight.
The red headed step child of MLS is Dax McCarty.
Like everyone in Seattle didn’t cry like babies when you lost the bid last year dude.
I’d like some transparency from US Soccer and to know why Columbus can’t host it. It could very well be a legitimate reason but I don’t think the host should be determined by $$$ bids
Every team’s fans can point to ways the league has screwed them over the years, certainly RB New York included. Nah, RB New York and the Galaxy aren’t the babies of the league, they’ve just decided to play within the rules and raise the bar, doesn’t some teams apparently aren’t willing to do
Columbus is like the red headed stepchild of the MLS
Chivas USA seams to have a very deep academy! Good for them! Developing the future of the US National team…
speaking of US National Team.. Sean Johnson.. next in line after Guzan.
RFK possibly three years in a row hosting the final…interesting….
my point was, there was no NY/LA bias in this decision, as Matt was insinuating…
GO CREW. MASSIVE.
Thank you
Reading comprehension must not have been his best section of the SATs.
Wow, you are clueless on this one. The final is at the home site of one of the finalists. The reason RBA isn’t listed as an option is because the Red Bulls aren’t in the semi’s.
Vamos ChivasUSA!
by the way, notice that RBA isn’t even an option, the only east coast option is RFK (bc they can get a big crowd)
wow, you sounds like a whiny 12 year old. Why would they want to have it in a crappy, old, small stadium when they can have it in Seattle (massive crowd basically guranteed), Home Depot center (center of US soccer right now and bigger, better) or RFK (big stadium, not so nice but on the east coast). Just deal with it, not everything is a major F U to columbus.
$$$
Columbus didn’t guarantee enough of it to USSF
Why can’t they host? Do we know if they just failed to bid or if USSF decided the stadium isn’t fit to host the final?
Sad that Crew Stadium can’t host the Open Cup final…I mean it’s not like Lamar Hunt built the stadium and the Open Cup bears his name or anything…Yet another example of the Crew getting thrown under the bus…take a look at mlssoccer.com’s Power Rankings for this week: the league doesn’t have the balls to back up its own team over a totally legitimate complaint about the bad call at Santos…they could have commented on the Crew’s win over the Rapids or the fight they showed in Mexico and instead chose to take a shot at Crew fans, players, coaches, and beat writers who have rightfully complained about the overruled goal. I really hope that FCD plays the Crew in the MLS Cup final this year…What will the league and USSF do without their babies, NYRB and the Galaxy?
US open cup finals aren’t the draw MLS Cup is. The attendance would be poor if the host team wasn’t one of the participants.
I don’t understand how this isn’t determined before the season starts. It’s not like they assign the MLS Cup to the highest bidder during the playoffs
Clearly a money reason for no crew…which is kind of lame.