GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala (Tuesday, August 4, 2015) – Real Salt Lake tonight commences its Fall 2015/16 CONCACAF Champions League slate, facing Guatemalan power CSD Municipal in Central America at 8:00 p.m. MT (TV: Fox Soccer Plus; RADIO: ESPN700 AM) at Los Chapines’ national stadium, Estadio Mateo Flores. Tonight’s game – kicking off the Utah side’s third foray in the continental championship since 2010 – is the first of four Group G matches involving RSL, Municipal and Salvadoran debutant Santa Tecla FC, which hosts the Claret-and-Cobalt on Tuesday, September 15.
RSL arrived in Guatemala midday Sunday following Saturday night’s 4-6 loss at D.C. United, the highest-scoring game in RSL’s 11-year history and the second-highest combined goal total in Major League Soccer’s 20 seasons. Head Coach Jeff Cassar’s club continues on to Vancouver, B.C., Canada this weekend prior to next Wednesday’s 2015 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup Semifinal in Kansas City, concluding a 5-game, 15-day, 3-country, 4-venue, 3-competition, 11,000-mile odyssey from August 1-15 at its Rio Tinto Stadium home on Saturday the 15th against West rival Portland Timbers.
How to Follow Real Salt Lake at CSD Municipa – Scotiabank CONCACAF Champions League
• Coverage Begins: 8:00 p.m. MT
• TV: Fox Soccer Plus – JP Dellacamera & Brian Dunseth
• English Radio: ESPN700 AM (7:00 p.m. MT) – Bill Riley & Brian Kamler, w/ Trevor Allen
• Spanish Radio: 102.3 La Gran D FM / 1600 AM – Nelson Moran & Fernando Hortal
• Online: The @RealSaltLake Twitter feed will provide updates
Game Guide for Tuesday’s RSL at CSD Municipal Matchup Now Available Online
Following is the link to the Adobe PDF version of the MLS Game Guide in advance of Tuesday’s 2015/16 CONCACAF Champions League contest between Real Salt Lake and Municipal (GUA).
Click here to download the PDF version of the Game Guide for Tuesday’s RSL @ Municipal matchup
In the Scotiabank CONCACAF Champions League play, the Claret-and-Cobalt next travels to El Salvador to face Santa Tecla FC on Tuesday, September 15 directly from another critical Western Conference road game in Houston, prior to wrapping up group play with back-to-back Rio Tinto Stadium games on Thursday, September 24 against Santa Tecla (CONCACAF Game A) and Tuesday, October 20 (CONCACAF Game B) in games included in the club’s 2015 season ticket package. All 2015/16 CCL games will be televised on Fox Soccer Plus or Fox Sports 1 or 2 in the U.S. Each of the eight Group winners will advance to the Knockout Round, which features a home-and-away aggregate goal series starting in March of 2016.
Real Salt Lake earned its way into the 2015-2016 Champions League tournament with its 2014 regular-season finish, posting a 15-8-11 record (56 points) to earn the third seed in the Western Conference. The two teams that finished ahead of Real Salt Lake in the standings – the LA Galaxy and Seattle Sounders FC – both qualified by winning MLS Cup and the Supporters’ Shield, respectively, RSL next in line for the cascading berth.
This is Real Salt Lake’s third entry into the tournament. In 2010-2011, RSL became the lone American team to reach the tournament final, losing 2-3 on aggregate to Mexican power Monterrey, the first time an MLS club had reached the final under the tournament’s current format. Canadian side Montreal Impact matched that feat this year, but also lost in the final to Mexico’s Club America. In the 2012-2013 tournament, RSL failed to get out of the Group Stage, needing only a goal in the final match against Costa Rican side Herediano, forced to settle for a 0-0 draw that eliminated the club from knockout contention.
LAMAR HUNT U.S. OPEN CUP SEMIFINAL
By virtue of the club’s 1-0 home victory over LA Galaxy in Open Cup play, as well as Sporting Kansas City’s 3-1 home win over Houston Dynamo, RSL returns to the site of its MLS Cup 2013 heartbreak in the 102-year old Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup’s Semifinal stage on Wednesday, August 12, with a 6:30 p.m. MT kickoff at Sporting Park.
RSL made its deepest run in the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup back in 2013, winning a series of coin flips and advancing to host the 100th Final in tourney history, dropping an 0-1 decision at home to D.C. United, missing out on a CONCACAF Champions League berth. Later that season, RSL lost a penalty-kick shootout in MLS Cup 2013, becoming the only team out of 11 all-time to have advanced to both the USOC and MLS Cup Finals, but winning neither.
Dating back to 1914, the U.S. Open Cup is the oldest cup competition in United States soccer and is among the oldest in the world. Open to all affiliated amateur and professional teams in the United States, the annual U.S. Open Cup is a 100-plus-year-old single-elimination tournament. In a nutshell, the U.S. Open Cup is very similar to domestic cup competitions popular throughout Europe, South America and the rest of the world. Cup competitions, which usually run concurrent with a country’s league season, are open in the early stages to any club that qualifies, giving local amateur teams a chance to compete against the best teams a country has to offer.
In 1999, the U.S. Open Cup was renamed the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup to honor the long-time soccer supporter and pioneer. Hunt, who died in 2006, was one of the sport’s first major ownership figures in the United States and is a member of the National Soccer Hall of Fame. His family continues to operate FC Dallas in Major League Soccer.
The winning team of the U.S. Open Cup has its name engraved on the Dewar Challenge Trophy, which has been permanently retired and remains at U.S. Soccer House in Chicago. At present, Seattle Sounders FC are the reigning Open Cup champion after defeating the Philadelphia Union to claim the 2014 title - the Sounders’ fourth in the last six years.
In leagues like the English Premier League, Serie A in Italy and the Bundesliga in Germany, cup competitions are prestigious tournaments waged between countries’ strongest teams such as Manchester United, AC Milan and Bayern Munich, and smaller teams like the amateur French side Calais that made it to the finals of the 2000 Coupe de France only to fall to defending champions Nantes on an injury time penalty kick. Watford F.C. in England, was another small-time club that hit it big in 1984 by making it all the way to the F.A. Cup Final. Unfashionable Chesterfield of the Second Division (the third flight in England) advanced to the semifinals of the 1997 F.A. Cup in England before finally losing. And the U.S. has seen its share of Cinderella runs, the most recent of which saw amateur side Cal FC advance past two professional clubs (Division III USL Pro side Wilmington Hammerheads and Division I MLS team Portland Timbers) on its march to the Round of 16 in 2012.
The winner of each country’s domestic cup competition, in addition to taking home the prize money, is automatically placed into a tournament to compete against neighboring countries’ cup winners.
