You won’t find too many former Champions playing in the U.S. Open Cup’s early rounds. It’s the domain, largely, of earnest strivers trying to get a toehold in the game. Amateurs and journeymen pros toiling away in relative obscurity with precious few chances to lift a major national trophy.
That’s not Bill Hamid. He’s a goalkeeper that “always played big” according to Tim Howard, among this country’s greatest-ever minder of nets. A veteran of the USMNT, Hamid has a pair of Concacaf Gold Cup winners’ medals at home and he knows what it feels like to lift the U.S. Open Cup up into a warm early-fall evening after a title run with D.C. United in 2013 that no one saw coming.
“You can’t overstate what the Open Cup means to a team from the lower leagues, from the second division,” said Hamid, who now, at the age of 34 and after lining up for amateur side Virginia Dream in the Qualifying Rounds of this year’s tournament, is the number-one choice between the pipes for USL Championship (Div. II pro) side Miami FC. “You saw what it meant when Sacramento [Republic, of that same USL Championship] went to the Final in 2022. It was massive.
“You see those Cup games coming up on the schedule and you feel it in the locker room. There’s an excitement,” added Hamid, who played in last year’s Open Cup with amateurs NoVa FC and the year before that with USL Championship side Memphis 901. “It’s massive for these clubs and it’s a great thing to have something that’s open to the whole pyramid – the top teams to the amateurs.”
Love for the Open Cup
Hamid, who’s suffered injury setbacks, dips in form and an unhappy stint in Denmark over the course of his career, talks about the Open Cup like someone who loves it. The opportunities. The possibilities. The chaos and the magic. All of it. And that has everything to do with not just winning the whole thing back in 2013, but the manner in which it happened. D.C. United beat more MLS teams (four) in their Open Cup run that year than they did in a full 34-game MLS season (3).
It was, by any measure, a horrendous year for D.C. United in league play. They picked up just 16 points from a possible 102 on offer, making their run to the Cup title all the more unlikely and inspired.
