KC Wizards Will Play Reserves In Open Cup Game – No respect for tournament?
The Kansas City Star is reporting that Curt Onalfo’s Kansas City Wizards will roster a team of reserve players when they take on the Minnesota Thunder on Tuesday night June 30, at 7:30 p.m. in the third round of the US Open Cup. The game will be carried on USL Live.com.
Onalfo told the paper that he will probably only use two starters in the contest against the Thunder.
“You shouldn’t play Sunday-Tuesday — it’s not the right thing for the athlete,” said Onalfo, “But that’s what we’re dealt with, and we’ll overcome whatever gets thrown in our path.”
Evidently Onalfo is not familiar with USL-1 schedules that often see teams playing 2 games in the course of 2 to 3 days.
The Star goes on to say that the team will also be without the services of midfielder Davy Arnaud and defender Jimmy Conrad as well as midfielder Roger Espinoza. Arnaud and Conrad will be with the US National team and Espinoza with the Honduras National team. All three players will be participating in the CONCACAF Gold Cup.
Onalfo’s concern’s are genuine and legitimate but again it seems as if the US Open Cup takes low priority for MLS teams.
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I don’t blame Onalfo. He’s got to protect his players. The scheduling is insane for K.C. They’ve got to improvise. There’s just no reason for SuperLiga to continue to exist.
Can’t blame him either. Since we can barely win over an under-PDL team, why put his better players in jeopardy. If there’s an advantage for the Thunder, is that they’ve played more competitive games together than KC’s reserves.
That, and nother the Thunder has done this year should garner any respect.
They’ll be even more short handed after their defenders pick up a nasty case of Civilikas.
Sorry…I just think his name sounds like a really badass disease.
USOC: Portland vs Seattle
where and when?
watch party?
I think this is a case of fixture congestion and the Cup just not having the meaning ($$$$ Value) it once did. We see this is domestic competitions in many places but particularly in England with the FA Cup. To the smaller clubs they still try because it means silverware. To the larger clubs they just don’t value it because league placing is more important. In the US that means playoffs.
On top of that it’s quite possible that Onalfo is playing this up for the press a bit as well. They lost on Sunday, have to play on Tuesday and do have guys out.
Also, someone emailed me this which I think is right on:
They have 3 players called up for the national team. He is going to give the nod to his back up keeper to give him some minutes. This is not surprising. Guzman for Villa got all of his minutes in cup games. He has stated that he will probably start two regulars. That leaves him in reality making 5 changes from what would be his ” regular” starters. ( I am not sure what that means all the time with teams making so many changes to deal with things like this in the season and due to poor play)
3 games in 8 days in SuperLiga, traveling from St. Louis to Boston, back to KC in that time frame. Most of the starters got quite a few minutes in that competition. That’s the main reason why you’re seeing reserves.
Totally makes sense Mike. When are they going to get rid of SuperLiga? It was fine in the beginning but not anymore.
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It makes total sense, and it underscores the problem the MLS have. Teams would probably look more favorably on these tournaments if they were allowed to carry a big enough reserve squad. They simply don’t have enough players to compete in the league and then compete in the US Open, or Champion’s League or what have you.
But it’s good news for the Thunder!
Couldn’t agree more about SuperLiga being a joke, but unfortunately for us Open Cup lovers, it brings in a ton more money than the Open Cup does. If only the Open Cup could get some major sponsors to sign on though and perhaps a TV deal, this tourney could really take off. I think the best thing for the Open Cup would be to see a lower tier team make a run and win it all because hopefully it would make the tourney received the kind of press it deserves.