In his own words: Eric Wynalda speaks on CAL FC’s magical but bumpy US Open Cup run of 2012

In our first part of our exclusive interview with Eric Wynalda, the USMNT legend spoke about the issues from MLS’ franchise model and how it does little for US Soccer in the long term.

While touching on the subject of the US Open Cup, Wynalda remembered his famous Cal FC and their magical run in the US Open Cup 2012. While a Cinderella story saw the team of amateur players make it to the fourth round of the tournament, Eric Wynalda believes the groundwork was laid to ensure the run would be short lived.

In his own words, Eric Wynalda speaks about how Cal FC was born and what happened along the way as MLS owners, according to Eric Wynalda, refused to share revenues and US Soccer never took under consideration that the players of Cal FC could not afford road trips and still scheduled games cross country at times.

Eric Wynalda on Cal FC’s US Open Cup run

I remember when Cal FC had that magical run in the US Open Cup, and how it all came together. This was a time when I was in contact with the then ownership of the Chicago Fire.

In the Chicago Fire I still had some of my friends still there like Frank Klopas, CJ Brown, and Zach Thornton. Andrew Hauptman, their owner, who lived in California but he ran a team that was in Chicago.

Andrew Hauptman had a GM named Javier Leon, who was from Chivas USA, and at the time I had dinner with these guys, and we talked about how to make the club better. This is before the DP rule took off and there was still a lot of the rules in roster building, MLS was still penny pinching.

My attention initially was to create an offsite satellite academy for the Chicago Fire, and what that meant was that the club would be tapping into the California talent, now I started a team, we played in the local leagues, I started recruiting players and I called it CFC.

I protected it, I entered the club in league play, I had people at the Fire who sent me all of last year’s jerseys, so we actually played and participated as the Chicago Fire in California, to build the brand of the Chicago Fire in the area.

When people got wind of this there was a big problem, at the end of the day I did not get hired by the Chicago Fire and I was pissed off. So, I kept the jerseys, started my own team and entered the Open Cup.

A US Open Cup with all the roadblocks

The team that went into the competition thought we would be playing locally, and our goal was to play against the LA Galaxy. We were a California team based in Oxnard, we wanted to play against the Galaxy that was our opportunity.

So, the brackets came out from US Soccer and our first game was against 2012 PDL Champions Kitsap. Which was all the way up in Washington, they were the fourth division champions, and we had to participate in a nine-game qualification process.

We ended up beating Kitsap 3-1, we raised a few eyebrows, this group of amateurs, these “nobodies” just beat the champions of the fourth division. We came home and we thought we’d play against a local team in California and then US Soccer did their magic, and we were sent to play the Wilmington Hammerheads.

That game was impossible for us to get to, we had to get on seven different airplanes, couldn’t afford it, we had to go all the way to Wilmington. This was the second division champion (from USL). We beat them 4-0, and at that time a lot of people were saying, “how is this possible?”, we came home, and we thought “great now we get the LA Galaxy”. We really couldn’t afford to travel, and US Soccer spit out the next version of the bracket and we had to play against the Portland Timbers.

Which we couldn’t afford either, and the game was supposed to be on Tuesday, the Portland Timbers had a stadium conflict, called us and said, “could you move it to Wednesday?”. I agreed and I asked Merritt Paulson if they would share the revenues with us, he said “no problem”.

The game was moved to Wednesday, I called (then Timbers coach) John Spencer and told him “play your pros”, “play your first team”, I remember looking at the Timbers schedule they didn’t have another MLS game for 18 days.

Spencer said, “I’ll play my guys, you sure?”, and I said, “yeah, we’re not in this to win, we are in this to prove something. Let us get the opportunity “and Spencer said yes.

We won the game 1-0, Cal FC became the first amateur team to beat an MLS club without needing penalty kicks. And this was a big moment for a lot of us, sadly it would end in the fourth round because we lost to the Seattle Sounders.

It was a 5-0 game, by then Merritt Paulson backed tracked on his deal, never gave us a dime, and the entire tournament cost me personally $27,000 of my own money, to give some of my players some money, and a thank you for their gas money and their commitment.

Ultimately what I was introduced to was the realities of this tournament, now LA Galaxy was still in this competition when we beat Portland, and still after all that trouble and knowing we were amateur team, US Soccer still sent us to Seattle.

We had to pay for more airfare and more hotels which we did not have the funds for, and we were gassed by the end. We just ran out of gas. I took that team, nine of them, and when I was hired as the head coach of the Atlanta Silverbacks, we won the Spring Championship in 2013 in the NASL.

Seven of those kids ended up with professional careers, that’s the success story of Cal FC, was that ever embraced at all by MLS? No. Never. You thought that would impress somebody, and it didn’t.