The Houston Dynamo will travel to North Carolina to face North Carolina FC in Round 4 of the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup at Sahlen’s Stadium at WakeMed Soccer Park on Wednesday, June 14. The match is scheduled to kick off at 6:30 p.m. CDT. Broadcast or streaming information will be released at a later date.
North Carolina FC, which competes in the North American Soccer League (NASL), routed the Charlotte Independence of the United Soccer League (USL) 4-1 on Wednesday evening to advance to Round 4. North Carolina has been on a tear in the Open Cup, hammering the Carolina Dynamo of the Premier Development League (PDL) 6-1 in the Second Round. The team currently sits third in the NASL table with a 4-2-3 record.
Dating back to 1914, the U.S. Open Cup is the oldest cup competition in United States soccer and is among the oldest in the world. Open to all affiliated amateur and professional teams in the United States, the annual U.S. Open Cup is a 100-plus-year-old single-elimination tournament. In 1999, the U.S. Open Cup was renamed the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup to honor the long-time soccer supporter and pioneer. Hunt, who died in 2006, was one of the sport’s first major ownership figures in the United States and is a member of the National Soccer Hall of Fame.
The 2017 edition of the tournament began with a modern-era record 99 teams in a single-elimination, bracket-style format. Major League Soccer teams were drawn into the competition at the start of the fourth round. Upon completion of the fourth round, the 16 remaining clubs will be placed in a fixed bracket and divided geographically (regardless of league affiliation) into groups of four. A random draw on June 15 will then determine the fifth-round pairings within each group. The tournament will continue throughout the summer leading up to the final on September 20.
The Dynamo are 11-10-1 all-time in U.S Open Cup competition, and have won their opening match of the tournament in each of the last four years. The club’s best runs came in 2006 and 2009 when it advanced to the semifinals. Houston has never faced North Carolina FC nor the club's previous iteration, the Carolina RailHawks, in the competition.
