The U.S. Open Cup and Washington D.C.'s Golden Age
A Moment of Brilliance: A Soccer History Blog, October 22, 2015
In 1985, the U.S. National Team (USMNT) failed to qualify for yet another World Cup, extending the country’s absence from the tournament to twenty-six years, while the shuttering of the North American Soccer League (NASL) left the country without a singular professional division one outdoor league. For American soccer, the mid-1980s may well have been considered the sport’s Dark Ages. When the sport did make headlines, the doomsday coverage wrote off the sport and its future in America. Though soccer may have seemed on the precipice of oblivion nationally, it continued to thrive within local leagues, as it had for decades, in cities throughout the U.S. It ultimately became the era that would produce some of the greatest American players in recent history and a period that saw Washington, D.C. usher in a “golden era” of soccer in the city and surrounding area, which culminated in the city’s first U.S. Open Cup championship courtesy of the area's most successful team, Club España. Soccer in Washington, D.C. D.
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