“I love this competition,” Dolabella said, smiling, about the Open Cup. “I just love knockout games. It’s the pressure-test. The plan is always the same – take care of business and survive and advance.”
He scored the only goal for Union Omaha in the Third Round last year (a 5-1 loss in front of over 22,000 fans at MLS side St. Louis City SC). And this year his well-documented versatility has been on full display again.
In the Second Round, up against amateur outfit Des Moines Menace, packed with recently retired MLS veterans like Sacha Kljestan, AJ Delagarza and Roger Espinoza, he scored an opportunistic first in a 3-1 Union Omaha win. “There was a lot of hype with Sacha there, an you want to test yourself all the time against the best players you can,” Dolabella said. “There were a lot of eyes on this game, but we weren’t holding anything back. If we had to kick someone, we did. At the end of the day, we’re here to take care of business.”
Sporting Kansas City Pt. II
“Sometimes you're the underdog and you have to embrace that,” he said of the next contest against El Paso Locomotive – from a division above in the USL Championship. Omaha won that one on penalties after a goalless draw in which Dolabella’s defensive qualities were the order of the day. “So we just came ready to play.”
And now comes the big one. It’s the game everyone in Omaha – the fans, the players and all who’ve had a hand in building this club – have been waiting for. At home against four-time Open Cup champions Sporting Kansas City of Major League Soccer – the top division in the land, where 25 of the last 26 Open Cup winners call home.
It’s a rematch of the Quarterfinal game that ended Omaha’s 2022 Cinderella Cup run 6-0 and the third time in three years that the third-division Nebraskans have earned the right to meet an opponent from MLS.
For Dalobella, always attuned to opportunities on the field – and in a wider sense too – it will be a moment to not let slip away. “We want to win every game,” he said, his voice suddenly stern. “You prepare. You go full-strength and sometimes, maybe you’re the underdog, and that can be fun. No one, maybe, is expecting anything from you.”
It’s from this precise position that Union Omaha’s Owls, and Dolabella himself, love to strike.
Fontela is editor-in-chief of usopencup.com. Follow him at @jonahfontela on X/Twitter.
