As the unofficial and self proclaimed “odd sport guy,” here on Atlanta All Day, I’ve taken it upon myself to bring you all of the news of those sports and teams around the area that most people don’t think of or care about and try to shed a little more light on them.
Well, with the MLS coming to Atlanta in 2017, I’d pay attention to this particular story: the North American Soccer League’s Atlanta Silverbacks, after defeating Chattanooga FC 5-0 last night, are set to host Major League Soccer’s Real Salt Lake on June 14th at Silverbacks Park in the fourth round of the 2014 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup. Now, before you leave to go to Google to figure out what all of this means, let me break it down for you and put all of this in perspective.
It’s common place in professional soccer to play in exhibitions and tournaments, whether their league is in season or out of season. Over in Europe with the English Premier League, a couple of European-wide tournaments take place based on last year’s finishes for the team – almost like if this years Final Four teams got an automatic bid for the 2015 March Madness tournament.
So lets use Arsenal for an example: if Arsenal finishes the 2016 season in third place, they’ll get an automatic entry into the 2017 Champions League tournament. And, while playing their EPL games (typically a Saturday deal), the Gunners will play Champions League matches during the week.
Now we will bring it stateside – the Silverbacks, who were 2013 Fall Champions and runners-up in the league’s Soccer Bowl Championship Game (hosted by the Silverbacks), are in the midst of their NASL Spring Season (the league has a Spring and Fall season) while RSL is well into their MLS schedule, but the two will still hook up while there is a break in their schedule on June 14th. The two teams also did well enough last year to qualify for this year’s tournament, as we’ve already talked about the Silverbacks’ 2013 accolades, and RSL also fell in the MLS Cup Finals but still did more than enough to qualify. Get it? Got it? Good.
While it’s the fourth round of the U.S. Open Cup, it’ll be just the second game that the Silverbacks play in and the opening game of the tournament for Salt Lake. The first two rounds feature teams of the lower tiers of the U.S. Soccer ladder (think of it as the A and AA of soccer here in the states), while the Silverbacks and seven other NASL teams (the AAA, to keep the baseball metaphor going) entered in the third round. The big boys of MLS enter in the fourth round.
These two teams actually met last year in Salt Lake, again in the fourth round, and Atlanta forced extra time (soccer likes to make everything sound fancy – the field is a “pitch,” a game is a “match,” the team is a “squad,” overtime is “extra time,”) with less than two minutes to play, but ultimately fell 3-1.
This will be the first time the Silverbacks bring in an MLS team to Silverbacks Park, and tickets went on sale last night, ranging from $15 to $100 dollars. We will have more on the Silverbacks and the match as it rolls around.