USOC Qualifying Pairing Released

By: Featured, MLS, US Open Cup

The lovely (yes that is sarcasm) qualifying round for the 2011 edition of the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup has been announced (per Soccer Insider Steve Goff). While the Seattle Sounders, the Los Angeles Galaxy, Real Salt Lake, FC Dallas, the New York Red Bulls and the Columbus Crew, all wait until early June for their third round match-ups, the rest of the MLS teams (minus the two Canadian clubs of course) must go through qualifying. I love how Goff put it, the Open Cup isn’t totally open to all MLS clubs.

The pairings:

First stage
D.C. United vs. Philadelphia Union
Chivas USA vs. Portland Timbers

Second stage
DCU-Philly winner vs. New England
Chivas-Portland winner vs. San Jose
Colorado Rapids vs. Chicago Fire
Sporting Kansas City vs. Houston Dynamo

Third stage
Chivas-Port-SJ winner vs. Colorado-Chicago winner
DCU-Philly-NE winner vs. KC-Houston winner

MLS will conduct coin tosses today to determine the host clubs. Teams must then mutually agree on the date.

Thought: The first round pairing of DC-Philly sounds interesting. After that its kind of a crap shoot to tell if any MLS club in these rounds will even care about this tournament other than say D.C. United.

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