Nashville has never before sent a team deep in the Open Cup, but the MLS team from Music City is awakening to the possibilities with a place in our 2025 Semifinals.
A club born in the dark days of Covid-19, when our tournament took a two-year hiatus to regroup, the farthest that Tennessee's lone MLS outfit, Nashville SC, ever went was a Quarterfinal trip in 2022. And they lost that one to local rivals and eventual Champs Orlando City in a razor-thin shootout.
But the Open Cup is about now, always has been, going back to 1914. And now, well, Nashville SC is cooking up some Open Cup Magic you have to see to believe. After a tight win over lower-league strivers Chattanooga Red Wolves and a revenge victory over Orlando City, they rolled out the big guns in their return to the Quarterfinal Round – with 2022 MLS MVP Hany Mukhtar in the starting XI.
Even so, they went down 0-2 at home to D.C. United inside 25 minutes. No sweat, though, as they proceeded to score five unanswered goals in a 5-2 rout to book a place in a first-ever Semifinal. The win marked a 15-game unbeaten run in all competitions and singles out Nashville SC as among the hands-down favorites to lift a club-first trophy – and possibly become the first MLS League-and-Cup Double winner since the LA Galaxy did it way back in 2005.
Mukhtar is peerless. Sam Surridge can’t stop scoring. Walker Zimmerman is back from a rejuvenating stint at the Concacaf Gold Cup with the USMNT. And Andy Najar, a veteran now, is casting delightful shadows of the sprightly Rookie of the Year he was 15 years ago.
Coach B.J. Callaghan – a cult figure in U.S. Soccer circles after his glorious undefeated streak in 2023 as USMNT interim coach – is cooking up something new and wondrous in the club game. “The Open Cup, for me, is one of the great trophies you can win in this country,” said the 44-year-old boss, always with a twinkle in his eye, as Nashville pursues a first-ever trophy of any kind. “It’s a great opportunity.”
Fontela is editor-in-chief of ussoccer.com/us-open-cup. Follow him at @jonahfontela on X/Twitter.