They had the presale for the Cup Final start at 10am for STH's only and had more than 8k tix sold by noon. These things are gonna get gone fast when they go for public sale.

Fox Soccer: SKC's experience key in reaching final

Two teams took the field at PPL Park on Wednesday night in search of a place in a championship final, but only one of those teams entered the contest with that sort of experience under its belt. The way Sporting Kansas City showed poise and patience in beating a talented but young Philadelphia Union side removed any doubts about just which of these teams had been there before.

Sporting KC rode an organized defense and opportunistic finishing to post a 2-0 victory and book a place in the club’s first final since 2004. Just two weeks after coming to this same stadium and suffering an eye-opening 4-0 loss, Sporting KC returned with resolve and a clear determination to learn from their recent past.

The victory, which came courtesy of second-half goals from Jordan Harvey and Graham Zusi, set up a US Open Cup Final at Livestrong Sporting Park against the three-time defending champion Seattle Sounders.

Wednesday’s match at PPL Park wasn’t a pretty game by any means, and you can certainly make the case that the Union were the more attractive side. But Sporting learned just eight months ago that style points don’t win you big games, only goals and good defending can.

In the 2011 Eastern Conference final, it was KC that was the young and talented home team standing a win away from a championship game. They wilted against a tougher and more experienced Houston Dynamo side that carried out a game plan very similar to the one Sporting adopted against the Union on Wednesday.

“Last year we were immature,” said Sporting KC head coach Peter Vermes. “When we went up against Houston they were grinding the game out and trying to pick out the one opportunity they could get. For us it was a huge learning experience and I didn’t think we were going to make that mistake again.

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“One of the mistakes we made in the Eastern Conference final, and I think it’s the same thing that bit (Philadelphia) today, is that when you’re playing at home in those big games sometimes you think that you have to go and take the game right away,” Vermes said. “Tonight that was the difference. We ground the game out, and took advantage of the things we felt we could take advantage of.”

“We didn’t really talk about the Eastern Conference final a whole lot, but we definitely learned from it,” said Sporting KC defender Matt Besler. “In the Eastern Conference final we were too anxious, and we wanted to go out and win the game right away. Here we showed that we were patient.

“There’s 90 minutes to win a game. You don’t have to win it in the first 30 minutes. We were patient and I think it was just a good performance by us.”

The victory over the Union was the second Open Cup-related triumph by the Sounders in the past week. The first came when SKC outbid the three other semifinalists for the right to host the Open Cup Final if they reached it. Beating out the big-spending Sounders was no easy task, but Kansas City’s owners made a winning bid that provided even more impetus for the team to deliver a victory on Wednesday.

“We’ve got the kind of team right now that has the ability to win at this level so, from an ownership perspective, we just said ‘Hey, we’ve got to try and make this happen and do whatever we can’,” said Sporting KC president and co-owner Robb Heinemann. “The great thing for us now is that we have so many fans that come to our games and fill our stadium, so it gives us a different economic profile than we’ve ever had before.

“It’s a group effort. It’s the fans, it’s the players, and of course we have a great ownership team so all of us came together and said ‘Let’s go do this’,” Heinemann said. “It’s going to be incredible for Kansas City just hosting a championship game, and hopefully it’s the first of many to come.”

For the Philadelphia Union, Wednesday night’s defeat was a bitter one—especially for a team that came away from the match feeling like it played well enough to win. The youngest team in MLS didn’t perform badly on the night, but never put together the final pass and didn't take advantage of the respect SKC paid the Union by sitting back and playing a defend-and-counter approach.

“That makes me feel good about our team right now, because if we’re getting that kind of respect from our opponents then that means we’re playing the right way,” said Union head coach Hackworth. “Our biggest challenge is to continue to play good soccer and get results.

“I can’t be upset with how our team played, or tried to play,” Hackworth said. “We’re young but we know if we keep playing this way the results will come.”

Once the dust settles, the Union should realize that while Sporting KC didn’t win with style, the only thing that matters is that they won and reached the US Open Cup final. That is what ultimately matters in big tournaments, because nobody remembers the team that played pretty soccer and lost.

What will be remembered is that this Sporting Kansas City grew up on Wednesday night, and showed that the harsh lessons of eight months ago did not go ignored. Their reward for that maturity is a championship game in their home stadium, and an opportunity to show just how far this club has come in the past year.

http://msn.foxsports.com/foxsoccer/u...p-final-071212

I've got my STH allotment as of half an hour ago. I plan to buy more. This game is going to be rocking. I'm not working the next day. I might not work the day of. I've got my Paint The Wall scarf that I haven't worn (because I was saving it for this and because its like 150 degrees outside).

Bring it Seattle. We will show you how to play on real grass. Tools.

Awesome. I assume your are in the South Stands?

Yeah. I was hoping to buy Cauldron tickets for this game...but turns out you can only buy the seats you normally sit in. I didn't want to risk not getting any.

And P.S., I will personally ensure that the South Stand brings it.

Yea there is a STH presale and the amount of Cauldron seats that aren't STH's these days has to be something like 500 so it is a huge risk for this game.

You guys are going to have a shit ton of Sounders in your corner.

We will paint the wall with their tears.

P.P.S. - those new Sounders jerseys are vomit inducing.

I just want one team in this city to be able to get the ****ing Lamar Hunt trophy.

This is a good point.

Yea I doubt they pull out the "super cyans" for this game. Those colors clash with humanity.

Don't worry, the rest of us in SS feel the same. You're not alone.

The Throw-In: USOC final may start big shift in MLS power

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As of Thursday morning, the Seattle Sounders are beating their chests like silverback gorillas, rightly boasting of the unique opportunity before them to make history.

No team in the 98-year history of the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup has won four straight titles, and the Sounders can become the first to do so if they get past Sporting Kansas City on Aug. 8.

And let’s give them credit – they’ve blazed through this year’s edition of the tournament and mostly dominated, and have backed up all their bluster about how seriously they take America’s oldest competition and how proud they are to be three-time defending champions.

But now let’s slow our roll a little bit. There’s a little stat that deserves some attention: Out of the 18 matches the Sounders have played in the USOC over the past four years, only four have been on the road.

If they’re able to knock off Sporting KC – who, by the way, are 20-6-7 across all competitions at home since Livestrong Sporting Park opened 13 months ago – this may be the most massive achievement of them all.

If they can’t do it, I’m not sure anyone will be too crestfallen. As Sigi Schmid said himself, “There are so many things that can go wrong in a one-off game,” and observers will inevitably say, well, the run had to end some time.

And if the run does end, that will also be a remarkable achievement. That's because Sporting KC will have done something that really hasn’t happened in MLS over the past four years: They’ll have completely shaken up the balance of the elite within the league. And that may signal only the first domino to fall.

Think about that for a second. Since the formation of the CONCACAF Champions League, we’ve been able to measure which teams have been the best in the league on an easily quantifiable scale: by trophies. Because US Soccer awards its berths in the CCL to the Supporters’ Shield winner, the MLS Cup winner and runners-up, and the US Open Cup winner, we’ve had a clear picture of the dominant sides in MLS.

Not surprisingly, that’s been the LA Galaxy, Seattle, Houston and Real Salt Lake, all of whom have participated in the CCL nearly every year since the tournament was reformatted in 2009. Now, we’re nowhere near ready to start crowning our trophy-winners for the 2012 MLS regular season just yet. But take a quick glance at the standings, and you start to understand why things could be flipped on their head by the end of the year for the first time in a long while.

San Jose are sitting atop the Supporters’ Shield race. D.C. United are pushing hard, back on top of the Eastern Conference after more than two years of dark days. And Sporting KC, New York and even Chicago – none of whom have come truly close to winning any hardware in the past four years – have forced themselves into the conversation. Meanwhile, the recent power-brokering Galaxy and Dynamo are struggling to stay afloat in the playoff race.

We can’t predict what will happen over the next four months. But what we do know is that parity is once again winning out in MLS. And when the dust settles at the end of the playoffs, we could very well see four completely new faces earn themselves berths in the Champions League.

But first, in four short weeks, the first salvo could be fired. With a win at home over the three-time defending Open Cup champs on Aug. 8, Sporting KC would become the first qualifier into the 2013-14 CCL.

That wouldn’t only mark the first trophy in eight years for an original MLS franchise, it would also validate all the work Peter Vermes, Robb Heineman and the entire SKC organization have put into reimagining the club over the past four years – just three seasons removed from being one of the worst in the league.

It will be a victory for an innovative attacking system, and a relatively new core of players who have been fighting their tails off for legitimacy in a league that can be very unforgiving. And more than anything else, it will be a sign that things could be changing around MLS, a shuffling of the guard that keeps things fresh and gives all fans hope that their club – no matter how bad things may look right now – can some day join the elite if they put in the work.

On Aug. 8, someone is going to make history indeed. One way or the other.

Jonah Freedman is the managing editor of MLSsoccer.com. "The Throw-In" appears every Thursday.

Goosebumps.

Game day.

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