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St. Louis City SC, like many other Major League Soccer teams, was looking at taking part in four different competitions in 2024: the MLS season, the CONCACAF Champions Cup, the Leagues Cup and the U.S. Open Cup.

On Friday, that number dropped to three when MLS announced that its board of governors at its meeting Thursday in New York voted to have MLS Next Pro teams represent the league in the 2024 edition of the Open Cup.

“MLS remains committed to working with U.S. Soccer to evolve and elevate the Open Cup for everyone involved in the years ahead,� the league said in its announcement.

The decision would send City2, made up of players just out of college or just out of the academy system, into the tournament. How exactly this would work remains to be seen, but the initial response in the American soccer community has been overwhelmingly negative and see as a threat to the future of the tournament, which already has trouble getting attention in an increasingly crowded soccer calendar.

U.S. Soccer said it learned of the decision at the same time as everyone else. Among the things to sort out is how this decision conforms with U.S. Soccer’s standards for a first division league, which says “U.S.�based teams must participate in all representative U.S. Soccer and CONCACAF competitions for which they are eligible.� Also, the winner of the Open Cup automatically qualifies for the CONCACAF Champions Cup; will that still apply with the winner assured of being a lower-division squad?

“MLS will coordinate with U.S. Soccer regarding participation in the (Open Cup),� the league said.

The Open Cup is a single-elimination knockout tournament that is open to all clubs in the nation. It began in 1914, making it the country’s oldest ongoing tournament and one of the oldest tournaments anywhere in the soccer world. It was the Open Cup that helped establish St. Louis as one of the nation’s soccer hubs, with St. Louis clubs winning 11 championships, mostly in the first half of the 1900s, clubs with names like Stix, Baer & Fuller, Kutis, Simpkins-Ford, the Ben Millers and Scullin Steel. The most recent title came in 1988 when the St. Louis Busch Seniors won.

Since MLS teams began participating, they have dominated the completion, but one of the charms of the event has always been second and third division teams, and even amateur teams, knocking off first division clubs, with MLS teams sometimes having to travel to the small fields often used by these clubs.

But that was part of the problem. MLS Commissioner Don Garber complained during a May meeting of U.S. Soccer’s board, of which he is a member, of the substandard conditions of some of the matches, along with the early rounds being streamed on YouTube.

But there was an even bigger problem. MLS teams juggling crowded schedules would often field only a few regular starters in the midweek matches, with teams trying to see how far they could get using reserves before turning to more and more regulars as they went deeper into the tournament. Los Angeles FC, its hands full rotating squads between MLS play and Champions League play, sent a team with no first-team players to an Open Cup road match this year.

With the league taking a month off for the Leagues Cup, pitting every team in MLS and Mexico’s Liga MX, along with more teams participating in the Champions Cup — 10 in 2024 — the number of games teams were playing was getting out of line, especially since MLS salary cap rules keep most teams from being able to field two separate but competent rosters. LAFC, which reached MLS Cup and went deep in both the Open Cup and the Leagues Cup, played 53 games. That took a toll on the team’s play in MLS, as it went more than a month playing two games a week. The league took no steps at its recent board of governors meeting to expand rosters to make it easier to field good teams in the tournament.

But since Garber made his comments, there has been concern about MLS participation in the tournament.

Speaking the day before MLS Cup in his annual state of the league news conference, Garber said: “I made those comments because I believe if we’re going to have our professional teams competing in a tournament — that is the oldest tournament of its type anywhere in the country — we all need to embrace it, from our federation to our respective leagues, and give it the profile and the support it needs. If we can’t do that then we should meet and decide that there needs to be a new plan.

“I will say that I’m pleased that our Competition group and U.S. Soccer have been working together since that last U.S. Soccer board meeting on ways to evolve the U.S. Open Cup so that it can be more valuable to everybody.�

MLS is trying to paint the move as being good for player development. “This decision will provide emerging professional players with additional opportunities for meaningful competition,� it said. “The move also benefits the MLS regular season by reducing schedule congestion, freeing up to six midweek match dates.�

City2 took part in the Open Cup in 2022, the season before the first team began play. U.S. Soccer had created a rule where clubs couldn’t enter both their first team and their development team, but since City SC hadn’t begun play, City2 was eligible. It lost on penalty kicks to Louisville of the second-division USL Championship after a 0-0 tie. In 2023, City SC beat Union Omaha of the third division USL League One 5-1 before a sellout crowd at CityPark that set a record for a third-round game (and the 10th highest in any round) before losing to the Chicago Fire 2-1 on the road.

The Houston Dynamo, City SC’s opponent in the first round of the Champions League, qualified by winning the Open Cup.

Much of the excitement of the tournament comes from those games between MLS teams and lower division teams. St. Louis FC, playing in the second division USL Championship, beat two MLS teams, Chicago and Cincinnati, in 2019 before losing to Atlanta in the quarterfinals.