SANDY, Utah (Thursday, May 28, 2015) - Real Salt Lake will host a fourth-round match in the 2015 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup at Rio Tinto Stadium on Tuesday, June 16 against USL side Seattle Sounders FC 2. Kickoff for the game - RSL's seventh home match out of nine total to be played in June and July - will be at 8:00 p.m. MT, with 2015 season ticket holders having until next Friday, June 5, to opt in and purchase their seats at preferred pricing ($10-60 each). General public tickets go on sale tomorrow, Friday, May 29, at 10:00 a.m. MT via RealSaltLake.com and RioTintoStadium.com, starting from $15-75 each, depending on location.
RSL is 2-1-3 in MLS regular-season play so far this season at its Sandy venue, with last Saturday's NYCFC visit setting a new Rio Tinto Stadium attendance record with a standing-room-only crowd of 20,801, marking the club's fourth sellout in its six games this year, and the 26th in its last 33 matches overall. Since the beginning of 2008, RSL boasts an 88-19-36 mark in its last 143 home games (all comps) in that span, during which it has outscored opponents by 156 goals (261/105), with a 72-14-33 reg. season mark (217/87), 6-1-1 CCL record (17/5), 5-2-2 playoffs (11/4) and 5-2-0 in the Open Cup (16/9).
RSL made its deepest run in the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup back in 2013, winning a series of coin flips and advancing to host the 100th Final in tourney history, dropping an 0-1 decision at home to D.C. United, missing out on a CONCACAF Champions League berth. Later that season, RSL lost a penalty-kick shootout in MLS Cup 2013, becoming the only team out of 11 all-time to have advanced to both the USOC and MLS Cup Finals, but winning neither.
Following this week's double road trip at LA - losing 0-1 Wednesday night - and Saturday's visit to Vancouver to close out the month, RSL returns home for an extended stint in June and July. With the addition of the June 16 Open Cup match, RSL will host seven of nine matches at home, with the potential addition of a June 30/July 1 date in the Open Cup's Fifth Round, should RSL advance past Sounders FC 2.
Dating back to 1914, the U.S. Open Cup is the oldest cup competition in United States soccer and is among the oldest in the world. Open to all affiliated amateur and professional teams in the United States, the annual U.S. Open Cup is a 100-plus-year-old single-elimination tournament. In a nutshell, the U.S. Open Cup is very similar to domestic cup competitions popular throughout Europe, South America and the rest of the world. Cup competitions, which usually run concurrent with a country's league season, are open in the early stages to any club that qualifies, giving local amateur teams a chance to compete against the best teams a country has to offer.
In 1999, the U.S. Open Cup was renamed the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup to honor the long-time soccer supporter and pioneer. Hunt, who died in 2006, was one of the sport's first major ownership figures in the United States and is a member of the National Soccer Hall of Fame. His family continues to operate FC Dallas in Major League Soccer.
The winning team of the U.S. Open Cup has its name engraved on the Dewar Challenge Trophy, which has been permanently retired and remains at U.S. Soccer House in Chicago. At present, Seattle Sounders FC are the reigning Open Cup champion after defeating the Philadelphia Union to claim the 2014 title - the Sounders' fourth in the last six years.
In leagues like the English Premier League, Serie A in Italy and the Bundesliga in Germany, cup competitions are prestigious tournaments waged between countries' strongest teams such as Manchester United, AC Milan and Bayern Munich, and smaller teams like the amateur French side Calais that made it to the finals of the 2000 Coupe de France only to fall to defending champions Nantes on an injury time penalty kick. Watford F.C. in England, was another small-time club that hit it big in 1984 by making it all the way to the F.A. Cup Final. Unfashionable Chesterfield of the Second Division (the third flight in England) advanced to the semifinals of the 1997 F.A. Cup in England before finally losing. And the U.S. has seen its share of Cinderella runs, the most recent of which saw amateur side Cal FC advance past two professional clubs (Division III USL Pro side Wilmington Hammerheads and Division I MLS team Portland Timbers) on its march to the Round of 16 in 2012.
The winner of each country's domestic cup competition, in addition to taking home the prize money, is automatically placed into a tournament to compete against neighboring countries' cup winners.
