“The Open Cup is where I started and there’s beauty to it – all the teams from all the divisions, ” the 25-year-old said. “And to be this close to a trophy means something. To me and to us as a club.”
It would require two wins for Inter Miami to lift the oldest prize in American soccer – played out every year since 1914 with a brief pause in 2020 and 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition to Messi and Co’s first trophy in the U.S., it would be Inter Miami’s first as well.
The club, founded in 2018 and part-owned by one-time Major League Soccer glamor-signing David Beckham, is in only its fourth season in MLS.
But as close as the Open Cup trophy is to being in Miami’s hands, it’s quite far by another metric.
FC Cincinnati a Formidable Semifinal Foe
Inter have to travel to FC Cincinnati’s TQL Stadium to take on the best team in the league in front of some of its best and most fervent fans. The rampaging Ohio side are top of the league at the halfway mark with eight points more than their closest chaser (as of July 16) and a full 33 more than Inter Miami.
FC Cincy boast the likes of MLS All-Star captain Lucho Acosta, star striker and 2019 Open Cup champion Brandon Vazquez and his USMNT teammate Matt Miazga.
It should also be mentioned that the winner of the 2023 Open Cup qualifies for the Concacaf Champions Cup (formerly the Concacaf Champions League) as is the case every year. That's another potential trophy for Miami and Messi – and a route to the FIFA Club World Cup, to be played in the U.S. in 2025.
You don’t need to be great at math, or have a functioning crystal ball, to know that Inter Miami, just one step from a first-ever Final, should make an A-1 priority of our venerable U.S. Open Cup.
Fontela is editor-in-chief of usopencup.com. Follow him at @jonahfontela on Twitter.
