Will a pub team beat US soccer's best in the Open Cup?

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/may/13/will-a-pub-team-beat-us-soccers-best-in-the-open-cup

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The age of romance in British football can often seem almost sepia-toned— or at least bedecked in the clobber associated with early 90s indie music, the last age perhaps when the fashion of the terraces was not dominated by the game’s commercial arm. For better or worse, that culture could be seen replicated more tangibly on the field too, football’s organic, working-class roots on display in the form of a more industrial football identity, a time when the moneyed class of world football had yet to uniformly take over the game.

Perhaps the one remaining hotbed of the game’s everyman spirit rests in the FA Cup, where a team from the lowest reaches of the English soccer pyramid can technically progress through the qualifying rounds and eventually hope to meet a big club from the game’s upper reaches. If they dare to wonder: a Liverpool or a Manchester United. If they dream big, a giant-killing, an against-the-odds humbling of the sort that sends blood rushing to the fingertips of back-page headline writers at tabloid newspapers.

In the United States, that potential glamor and mystique is bound up in the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup. The oldest soccer competition in the country still in existence, it was first christened the National Challenge Cup, its inaugural year of 1914 an all Brooklyn affair between Brooklyn Field Club and Brooklyn Celtic in which the former come out on top. It was a symbolic event for the tournament for another reason: the early years were a time when the competition was dominated by amateur and semi-professional outfits like the two Brooklyn sides, both quaint, forgotten names that, like others, became extinct. That is, until the modern era, when MLS sides began to dominate.

Now the Open Cup can rightly offer a moral equivalence, where a lowly, ramshackle outfit can claim the scalp of an expensively acquired team operating several magnitudes above them. Witness English third-tier Bradford City knocking out Premier League champions Chelsea and top-flight strugglers Sunderland on the way to this year’s FA Cup quarter-finals. Colorado upstarts Harpo’s FC dream of something that would surely outrank even Bradford’s unlikely feat: becoming probably – in British parlance – the first Sunday league-style pub team to take down a pro side. They also break new ground in another way by becoming the first and only club to make it into the first round proper from the USSSA (the United States Speciality Sports Association), a relative newcomer to the soccer establishment and easily the rank outsider in the country’s football pyramid.

On Wednesday night, they travel to face BYU Cougars, of the USL Premier Development League, the fourth tier in American soccer for the chance to meet third-tier USL side Colorado Springs Switchbacks. BYU have pedigree after a moderately successful 2012 run. Harpo’s have none at this level. Club officials consider themselves dead last among the 91 teams in this year’s Open Cup.

“We are from the rogue association, the new kid on the block,” says team owner and manager Johnny Freeston. “You have to earn your spurs and earn your stripes. I think overall we are not nearly as mature as say the USASA or US Club Soccer associations. That said, we are competitive. This isn’t a team of guys who don’t know what they’re doing. We have ex-pros, guys who have been played to play.”

Quite. The club retains a belief they can cause an upset or two. They’ve had BYU scouted. Freeston thinks if they’re taken lightly, they can prosper. He is confident of a win in Utah. There is recent precedence for amateur glory. In 2012 USASA side Cal FC achieved an unprecedented run to the fourth round, upsetting the odds in US footballing circles by knocking out both the USL’s Wilmington Hammerheads and, the big one, Portland Timbers of MLS, before finally succumbing to Seattle Sounders. But even that benchmark comes with formidable caveats. The Ventura County, California, club was the brainchild of US Soccer Hall of Famer Eric Wynalda, a partial one-fingered salute to establishment circles that said players cast adrift from the fringes of the professional ranks might have a point to prove.

For Harpo’s, it all began in a bar called Barrel House in 1997 when a group of former college players assumed the establishment’s name for their maiden season in a local recreational league. In true Sunday pub league style, back then there was more enthusiasm directed at ensuring the beer kept flowing than at engendering a smooth passing game, laughs Freeston. “You had guys really just being college kids, drinking more than playing – a true Sunday league pub team if you will,” explains the 37 year old, a former Harpo’s player himself who gave up playing to take over as manager in 2008. It’s a role he juggles with his roles as father of a young family and a day job as a sales director at a software and service solutions. Harpo’s has since become something more than a labour of love, as much for him as any of the squad. Minus coaching licenses, he has produced some impressive advances. The players, too. All have day jobs, though the more youthful and ambitious yearn for a last crack at impressing a pro team. Such as 24-year-old striker Shane Wheeler, a one-time trialist with several USL outfits.

As such, since 2010 a younger, more aspirational tone has been forged. Individuals who have played at a high level in college form the squad’s backbone. That is perhaps best typified by a couple of current players. Dan Campbell is described as a 28-year-old midfielder formerly of the NCAA Division I with University of California-Davis. Kyle Luetkehans, 26, also stands out, says Freeston. Also a midfielder, he played professionally, albeit down the ranks, in both Finland and Australia. The team competes virtually year-round, operating a semi-pro indoor league team under the name Avery Brewing FC. The convivial social scene from which they draw their team history and spirit has not detracted from on-field achievements. Since becoming Harpo’s FC after a spot of bar hopping – they are now named after Harpo’s Bar and Grill in Boulder – they’ve moved on to play at a higher level in the Colorado Amateur Soccer League, claiming a string of championships since 2013.

So their story can be seen through the prism of rags to relative riches, at least on the field. Off it, less so. Home base is still the pub. Their home playing ground is a commons in Broomfield, between Boulder and Denver, though a stadium, along with on-field progression, remains a hazy ambition. For the purposes of the Open Cup, they moved to the more plush surroundings of ancillary fields adjacent to Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, home of MLS side Colorado Rapids. Formal training is almost non-existent, indoor play substituting as preparation for outdoor matches. Except for the upcoming BYU encounter. By contrast, training was methodical, the carrot of a local tussle with a Switchbacks team Freeston professes to know intimately an extra incentive.

In this year’s Open Cup, some 40 amateur or de-facto semi-pro teams enter in the first round, a group that represent myriad associations and means of qualifying. Such is the byzantine nature of the US soccer pyramid’s lower reaches. But Harpo’s ranks so low down the food chain, they were one of two clubs who had to contest a “play-in” contest in order to qualify for round one. The lead up was a mixture of confusion, euphoria and, ultimately, a bruising encounter that owed as much to their roots swimming in some of Colorado’s finest brews. First, they played their opponents in the USSSA national cup final for what they thought was the right to contest the play-in round. But at the last minute, they learned they would reach the qualifier regardless, their opponents gaining passage through association with another governing body. Quixotically, that same team, KC Athletics, were the very same play-in round opponents. It was a peculiar doubler-header. They lost the first 3-1. They were hopeless, admits Freeston. “Hungover,” he ventures sheepishly, wild celebrations giving way to professionalism. “Boys were missing simple balls they never usually would.” It went differently in the one that mattered when a sober Harpo’s triumphed 2-0 on home turf.

The first lot of teams from the pro ranks, those from the third-tier USL, join the tournament in round two, with the second-tier NASL clubs following in the third. Round four is when the big scalps enter the fray, where any amateurs still standing can collide with the pros who populate MLS, the NASL and USL.

Like Bradford, they dare to dream. Over their shoulder during the play-in round against KC Athletics, the home of the Rapids lingered like a beacon. Might the dream be a local derby of unfathomable proportions, one ever so close to home on a level besides geography? Harpo’s midfielder Sean Sullivan works in the MLS club’s ticket department, the avenue through which they secured a temporary Open Cup home. But it’s a complicated scenario. There’s the mammoth task of making it through three rounds, two of which burgeon with pros from USL and the NASL. Then the small matter of a kind draw that throws up an unlikely clash with Sullivan’s employers. Freeston responds to the possibility, despite the improbability, emphatically: “You know it!”