CHICAGO – The Tampa Bay Rowdies will be a US Open Cup entrant for 2021 following US Soccer announcing that the tournament has been cut to just 16 teams.
The original plan for 2021 was a 24 team tournament, so halving the tournament made for big cuts and led to the USL Championship having its entrants cut down to four. As a result of the decision to have the USL Championship represented by the four conference semi-finalists which includes the USL Championship Eastern Conference Champion Rowdies.
“After meeting with the Committee and listening to our members and our medical professionals, it became clear that the difficulties of staging the Opening Round given the current environment made the decision to not play the correct one, as we will always prioritize the health and safety of the players and staff first.”
U.S. Open Cup Commissioner Paul Marstaller.
With the USL Championship Conference Semifinalists being the teams sent from the league the Rowdies are joined by Phoenix Rising, Louisville City and El Paso Locomotive. From the USL League One Greenville SC, the champions of that league will compete. Outside of USL, Detroit City FC comes in as NISA champion while eight MLS teams will qualify based on points per game in the first three weeks of the 2021 season. The final two places will go to “open division” (amateur) teams which will be decided by a random draw.
The new round of 16 will take place on May 18th or 19th, the final is due for June 29th or 30th. The US Open Cup Committee will meet one more time, April 19th to make a final decision on if the tournament can proceed.
Photo: Skotywa used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
Florida Soccer Report 