2011 U.S. Open Cup

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "2011 U.S. Open Cup" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (January 2011) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The 2011 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup was the 98th edition of the USSF's annual national soccer championship, running from June through early October. Seattle Sounders FC, who entered the competition as the two-time defending champions, successfully defended their title again. They became the third team in U.S. Open Cup history to win three straight U.S. Open Cups (the others being Stix, Baer and Fuller/St. Louis Central Breweries from 1933 to 1935 and Greek American AA from 1967 to 1969 — this excludes the run of Fall River F.C. in 1930 and 1931, as the team that won in 1932, New Bedford Whalers, was the result of mergers of teams that included Fall River). As winner of the Open Cup, the Sounders earned a place in the 2012–13 CONCACAF Champions League Group stage (the preliminary round will be eliminated from the CONCACAF Champions League starting from 2012–13). The farthest advancing USL Pro team was the Richmond Kickers.

Like the previous edition, the Open Cup featured 40 clubs from across the five tiers of the American soccer pyramid. This season, due to late provisional sanctioning, the North American Soccer League was not allowed to send its clubs to the tournament. The event featured eight clubs from Major League Soccer, with six automatically qualifying based on their league position in the 2010 season and two qualifying through a play-in tournament. They entered the tournament in the third round. All 11 USL Pro League clubs based in the United States, nine clubs from the USL Premier Development League, four clubs from the National Premier Soccer League,^[1] and eight United States Adult Soccer Association qualifiers began play in the first round.^[2]