Sounders not competing in the US Open Cup, Ballard FC and Tacoma Defiance to replace them.

It was announced that the Sounders will not be entering the US Open Cup and will be replaced by Tacoma Defiance along with Ballard FC. With the most interesting thing being that it was a decision made by US Soccer and the MLS, not the Sounders. With this coming on the 11th anniversary of the Sounders last US Open Cup win. Now it does suck that the Sounders will not be participating this year but this does come with it's own benefits and they have their reasons so let's go into them.

The first reason listed is that we choose the Leagues Cup over the Open Cup. Now this shocked me as I don't give a flying feather about the Leagues Cup and I thought other teams had the same attitude and maybe they do but the MLS and US Soccer Federation clearly do, so why? Well I look stupid because my God there's some great reasons. If you win the Open Cup you get 300,000 dollars and a spot in the CONCACAF Champions League while if you win the Leagues Cup you get 40,000,000 million dollars and a spot in the FIFA Club World Cup. So there's great reasons and benefits to enter the Leagues Cup vs the US Open Cup in other words.

Now this is disappointing to me. The US Open Cup is so much more meaningful as it allows all the clubs in the US to compete against each other no matter what league they're in. Leading to amazing underdog stories or the little guys getting their 15 minutes of the spotlight by facing a MLS club. It's a celebration of all of US soccer on all levels which helps develop the game as it gives younger players a chance to face veterans of the sport and gives a chance for lower league journeyman to shine and make a career for himself in the MLS unlike the Leagues Cup. Created in 2019 it's a knockout style tournament between teams in the MLS and Liga MX. Gotta be real I don't know what the point of this is other than pure extravaganza. It screws over the Mexican clubs as they don't play at home ever. It creates a awkward month long break for MLS league competition something that no other cup competition in the world does as far as I know. Lastly it's always been formatted really awkwardly.

To start in 2019 the 1st ever Leagues Cup the contest was held between 4 Liga MX and 4 MLS teams. Which gave those 4 teams a huge disadvantage as they had to play a game or multiple whilst the rest of the league got a month long vacation. Then for the 2022 showcase it was going to be 5 MLS teams and 3 Liga MX teams which is strange enough. As it was meant to showcase the expanded version for 2023, which was even more of a mess. The matches were increased from 5 to 77 with it now including 16 teams from each league. To understand how stupid this is, Liga MX has 18 teams in total then again 2022-23 was stupid for Liga MX in general so this fits with that theme. That does fix the unfair advantage problem but opens up a much worse problem.

There's been a lot of talk recently about players playing too many games which is costing them their bodies. This has already been said as a problem by Brian Schmetzer that the Sounders have too many games to play and it's a real worry. No wonder as if we add the US Open Cup the amount of games they'd have to play would be 59 games if they were to make the final of each contest, including the MLS playoffs, with 34 MLS regular season matches, 5 MLS playoff games, 7 US Open Cup games, 7 Leagues Cup games and 8 Club World Cup games. Sure that is with the Sounders making the final in all contests, like they wouldn't. But even if they get knocked out early that is a staggering amount of games. So it makes sense for the MLS to pick one contest over the other. So the real problem is the Leagues cup existing at all really.