Reeves' Army

I really don’t feel like repeating myself on the importance of the U.S. Open Cup.

But with our 2-1 win over Ocala Stampede last night, Orlando City is again in the third round. And this time, we will get the first time we will host an MLS side in a match that matters.

This is enormous.

The Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup is our route to higher competition. And this time, they will be here with the full support of their fans.

Tickets will be available on the website soon. You can always call to check at 855-675-2489. If you don’t want to wait, they are already available through Ticketmaster with the interactive seat map. If that’s the case, they should be available at Walgreen’s, too.

Orlando City begins their campaign in the U.S. Open Cup tonight when they go to Ocala to play Ocala Stampede of the PDL. If you want a good midweek night of fun, come up and join us.

DIRECTIONS: The match will be at Forest High School in the southeast portion of Ocala. To get there, take Florida’s Turnpike all the way to I-75 northbound. Continue about another 15-20 minutes to exit 350, which is SR 200, and turn right (east). Follow that to SW 17th St. (SR 464) and turn right. The road will eventually veer right and become SE Maricamp Road. Forest High School is at 5000 SE Maricamp Rd., on the right side. It’s 6.5 miles from SR 200, and 8.5 miles from I-75.

PRO TIPS: This is for the supporters. Ocala Stampede is a faith-based organization. No obscenities, and no YSA. As typical for a road match, any sort of smoke or flare would be highly ill-advised, especially since we’ll be playing at a public school.

I will be heading up early to have dinner before the game. I will be at the Buffalo Wild Wings on SR 200, likely around 5pm. It’s before you get to SR 464, so it’ll be a great place to stage for the match.

After a draw that included an allowed goal by Harrisburg that was far offside, Orlando has some more frustration to take out on Rochester Rhinos tonight.

How much further can the Rhinos fall? Their fans haven’t cared in a while, but at least in the past the team was still competitive. Now they are having an epically bad season.

Same match preview as the Harrisburg match last night, and the usual watch party locations.

If there is a real rivalry for our team within USL Pro, it is with the City Islanders. The team we beat for the 2011 USL Pro Championship.

We have a rough road going into our coming U.S. Open Cup opener in Ocala on Tuesday night. Shall we begin?

Orlando City has a match preview for both this match and tomorrow night’s match against Rochester.

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The Ruckus and the ILF will have watch parties at the usual locations.

Orlando City sent Major League Soccer a message. So did Tacoma.

The Lions dominated all afternoon long, beating the Seattle Sounders Reserves, 2-0, in front of 2,300 at Cheney Stadium.

The Sounders reserves were seemingly stacked, with Steve Zakuani and Shalrie Joseph in the midfield and Eriq Zavaleta up front. But they couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn yesterday; only two of their 12 shots were on-target, and both were saved by Gallardo.

Meanwhile, Orlando City had six shots on goal, with Dom Dwyer getting two goals (4′, 52′) to widen his lead atop the Golden Boot race with 10 goals.

The crowd wasn’t bad, considering Tacoma didn’t have much notice before the match.

Orlando has a back-to-back this weekend on the road, playing in Harrisburg on Friday night, and Rochester on Saturday night. Both matches are at 7pm, with supporters’ watch parties at the usual spots.

And don’t forget to head to Seminole Soccer Complex in West Sanford on Tuesday night as Orlando City U-23 opens their season with a U.S. Open Cup match against VSI Tampa Bay FC. Game time for that is 7pm.

Orlando City will be without TV for the only time this season.

Even though Cheney Stadium in Tacoma is nominally home of the Triple-A Tacoma Rainiers, and ought to have the facilities for streaming.

As I said when the move was revealed, the Sounders want to gauge the support in Tacoma for pro soccer. There are rumors that the next step for the MLS-USL alliance is for the Western Conference teams to sponsor and/or create USL teams in their markets.

With an expansion team already set for Sacramento that would make a perfect pair for San Jose, it is believed the Cascadia Cup (Seattle, Portland, Vancouver) will create their own USL Pro teams, maybe as soon as next season. It would doubtlessly finally fill out a western swing for the third tier, which historically has had an east coast bias.

The big deal with the Sounders Reserves is their goalkeeper, Marcus Hahnemann. Formerly a U.S. national, he spent over a decade in England, most prominently with Reading. In the 2005-06 season, Reading gave up just 32 goals as he led them to a second-tier record of 106 points and promotion to the Premier League. He kept 13 clean sheets in 2006-07 in the Premier League, third overall (behind Pepe Reina with 19 and Tim Howard with 14) for the season, and registered 139 saves over the 2007 calendar year.

Radio stream will be available at http://live.soundersfc.com.

It’s Tuesday again.

Dom Dwyer was named USL Pro Player of the Week this past week for his hat trick against Antigua. Rob Valentino was also named to the Team of the Week.

Dwyer currently has 8 goals, to lead the league. Jamie Watson is second, with 4 goals.

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The draw for the second round of the 2013 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup has taken place.

On Tuesday, May 21, Orlando City will host either Ocala Stampede of the PDL, or the USASA amateur team Red Force of Miami.

Meanwhile, Orlando City U-23 hosts VSI Tampa Bay FC on Tuesday night, May 14, to open the first round. The winner of that match will host the Tampa Bay Rowdies on Tuesday, May 21.

Former U.S. women’s national soccer team player Tiffany Roberts Sahaydak has taken over as head coach of the UCF Knights women’s soccer team.

She replaces former head coach Amanda Cromwell, who was head coach at UCF for 14 seasons, leading them to 11 NCAA tournament appearances, 8 regular-season conference titles (4 with C-USA, 4 with Atlantic Sun) and 5 conference tournament titles (1 with C-USA, 4 with A-Sun). Cromwell left UCF to take over at UCLA.

Roberts and Cromwell were teammates on the U.S. women’s national soccer team. They were on the team that won the gold medal at the 1996 Summer Olympics. As Cromwell retired and began her coaching career, Roberts went on and helped the U.S. win the 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup. Roberts would be a founding player in the WUSA, playing with Carolina Courage all three seasons.

Tiffany began her coaching career as co-head coach at VCU along with her husband, former MLS player Tim Sahaydak. Tim was hired as an associate head coach.

Take one team that is running an historically impotent offense. Mix in one that has a chip on its shoulder after getting yanked around by the Florida House of Representatives. The end result is breathtakingly ugly.

Orlando City made the soccer world feel its pain, posting up a 7-2 annihilation on Antigua Barracuda FC.

It started early, with Jamie Watson getting a corner kick and feeding it to Dom Dwyer, who notched the first goal inside 1′. Not long after, Dennis Chin got behind the goalkeeper and fed an easy goal to Anthony Pulis for his first of the year at 4′.

The Lions refused to let up, with Chin getting his own goal off a pass from Watson at 12′. Dwyer stole the ball at 17′ and shot it in for his second. Orlando finally relaxed for a while, but a new opportunity came when Dwyer headed in a corner kick to notch a hat trick.

The second half was almost as bad for the Barracudas, with an own goal at 49′ and a goal by Rob Valentino at 54′ to give the Lions a 7-0 lead, breaking another USL Pro record with the most goals scored by one team in a third-tier league match. We finally showed pity on Antigua, allowing Hazeley Pyle to score on a free kick at 76′, followed by Yann Songo’o accidentally deflecting in a back-line stop at 89′ for an own goal.

Orlando City will now hit the road for most of May. It starts next Sunday when they play their away match against Seattle Sounders Reserves in Tacoma. Match time will be 4pm EDT, and the supporters groups will have their tailgates.

Let’s face it, nobody cares about Antigua Barracuda. Not USL Pro. Not us. Not even themselves.

We’re just waiting for them to be flushed down the drain at the end of the year.

The PA guy at VSI didn’t even bother calling them that. He called them what they really are: the Antigua and Barbuda national soccer team.

If they disappeared from our league tomorrow, nobody would care. Not even the orthodox NASL fans, who are in no position to snark about it with the failure of Puerto Rico Islanders.

The team website  has a match preview.

What everyone is talking about is the failure of the Florida House of Representatives to vote on the addition of Major League Soccer to the state pro sports sales tax exemption.

The team will plan out their next move for our soccer-specific stadium. But as for us fans, our support has never been conditional on going to MLS.

We will be there tonight, and every other night.

And we will make the rest of the soccer world feel our pain.