Coffee and Open Cups

CITY ISLANDERS, TONIGHT: Today is US Open Cup night, as your D.C. United face the Harrisburg City Islanders in hot, steamy, round three action of the US Open Cup. For a change, let's start with the coverage at the Patriot-News courtesy of Penn-Live.

Although the City Islanders have played United three times -- Harrisburg hosted exhibitions with the four-time MLS champs each of the past two seasons and traveled to D.C. in April for a preseason scrap -- tonight's match will sport a much different aura.

Quite simply, it's for real.

Interesting. Now let's look at what The Express's Brian Straus wrote this morning:

D.C. hasn't claimed the trophy since 1996, but it appears confident that a team featuring regulars Troy Perkins, Brian Carroll, Josh Gros and Bobby Boswell will be good enough to advance.

I don't believe in things like Karma (karma bank notwithstanding) or fate, but tonight's game should prove a nice test case. And let me reiterate that I completely support the idea of giving the Open Cup primarily to reserves. Right now that's a vanity cup, and wouldn't mean much in the way of evaluating the season for me except on the margins. Kinney and Oscar may disagree. I imagine Derek Meluzio's Upper 90 blog may have more on the Open Cup later in the day.

Dan Loney notes that when DC United is upset by a USL team, they win the MLS Cup. Of course, the natural riposte is that each time United has won the double, they've won the MLS Cup as well. Tautology, I know...

GOMEZ IS ALONE FOR DC ON ALL-STAR TEAM: How does Tom Soehn feel about this? About the way you'd expect, but Steve Goff gets the quotes to confirm it.