Chicago Takes the Cup: What People Are Saying

It’s hard to hit a domestic soccer site today without bumping into some mention of last night’s U.S. Open Cup final, which the Chicago Fire won by topping the Los Angeles Galaxy by a score of 3-1. I have to confess, as I did in my post-game wrap, that I caught only the second half. All in all, I liked what I saw: a good, hard-fought game and not a bad one either. Another positive, albeit a curious one, came with the size of the crowd: only 8,851 showed up. Small as it was it looked bigger and sounded bigger still - another good thing.

With my wrap-up linked to above, I thought I’d pull together a tour of other Open Cup commentary because there’s plenty of it out there, starting with the 17 sources available through Topix.net’s aggregator. But the best stuff comes from some of the more prominent pundits.

Marc Connolly, writing for USSoccerplayers.com, credits Chicago for taking the Open Cup in general as seriously as any Major League Soccer team ever has; implicit in that notion is the idea they deserved to win, though he gives LA their propers too. And there’s something to that as well: either Los Angeles of Chicago, and now both, have been in every Open Cup final since 2000. One can also include Connolly among those mightily impressed with Tony Sanneh’s assist on the third, “nail-in-coffin” goal, which was scored by Thiago; count me among them too - the precision on that pass was what fans pay to see.

The pick of the bunch, though, comes from Jeff Carlisle on ESPN’s site. While the larger service of his column grows from the way he uses the Open Cup win to explain why Chicago are legitimate contenders for MLS Cup, I like that he singles out the play of Justin Mapp, both in this game and in the season in general, for admiration. Mapp is growing into a better player, which is good news not only for Chicago, but for the U.S. men’s team; even if Mapp never makes the squad, he forces the left-sided players that do make the squad to raise their game or keep checking their shoulder.

Finally, another article raised a neat point of curiosity:

“Thiago sealed the win for the Fire in the 88th minute on a Tony Sanneh pass, ensuring Chicago became only the fifth team to win the title four times.”

That kicked off a search for the identity of the other four teams. That in turn led to a Wikipedia entry and the possibility that the phrasing on this historical morsel isn’t the most helpful or accurate. Wiki's entry shows three teams that have one the Open Cup title five times in the tournament's 83-year history: Bethlehem Steel FC, Maccabee SC, and Fall River FC. Along with Chicago, another two teams have lifted the trophy four times: Greek-America AA of New York and Ukranian Nationals of Philadelphia. Apart from counting six teams with four titles, three of those teams have more than four titles. Am I being nit-picky? Yeah....

Still, good game and good win for Chicago. A number of people ought to be checking their shoulders on their way into the playoffs.

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