What is it? It's it.

Action in the second-tier begins tonight in Cary as promoted side  North Carolina FC  - looking for their first win of the season - welcome the reshaped and unbeaten  Hartford Athletic  to WakeMed Soccer Park with an 11pm (GMT) kick-off. Saturday's action starts at 8pm when  Louisville City  play  Birmingham Legion  at the Lynn Family Stadium. City are two from two so far this season and are  always  good value for a tilt at the title, whereas Legion - with one loss and one win from their two games this season - are a curious orange and you never know what you're going to get. There's a pair of games at 11pm, beginning with  Indy Eleven  versus  Detroit City  at Michael J Carroll Stadium in Indianapolis, where Le Rouge will be hoping to go back to Detroit with their third win from three games this season, and continuing down in Florida as a rebuilt  The Miami FC  host  Charleston Battery  at the ca...

The MLS weekend starts at 6pm (GMT) where  Philadelphia Union  welcome  Minnesota United  to Subaru Park. Union picked up their first win of the season last week in Portland despite missing key players due to international call-ups but have otherwise misfired so far this season, whereas United top the Western Conference with three wins from four games, including the scalp of Inter Miami in Florida. Kicking off at 8pm is  Colorado Rapids  versus a  Los Angeles FC  side that finally woke up last week and defeated Nashville 5-0 after three scoreless weekends. Rapids are, well,  Rapids  and so you'd expect a big away win but LAFC didn't enjoy their last trip to the Rockies, so who knows? There's a clutch of games at 11.30pm, including Saturday's sole free game on AppleTV in  DC United  versus  CF Montreal . Both sides have looked combative this season without pulling up too many trees and have strikers in form. Christian Bente...

There wasn't a single away win in the eleven USL Championship matches this weekend, although several sides did manage creditable draws on the road. The weekend's action started in Connecticut where Hartford Athletic  welcomed  Birmingham Legion  to Trinity Health Stadium. Almost 3,000 fans were in attendance to see the reshaped Athletic side dominate the game in terms of sheer chances, their eleven shots on target dwarfing Legion's three. That meant Matt van Oekel had to be in good form in the away goal, but even his acrobatics couldn't prevent Michee Ngalina scoring the game's only goal to make it two wins from two games for Brendan Burke's side. Athletic are joined at the top of the Eastern Conference by two other sides with 100% records, both of them winning their home openers on Saturday.  Detroit City  faced the youngsters from  Loudoun United  at Keyworth Stadium and went behind after just fourteen minutes when Wesley Leggett finished a smart mov...

The MLS weekend got off to a brilliant start for schadenfreuders like myself when  New York Red Bulls  gave  Inter Miami  a shoeing at the Red Bull Arena on Saturday afternoon. Sure, Miami were without Lionel Messi but the rest of their stars were there and unable to prevent Sandro Schwarz's side romping to a 4-0 win, mostly thanks to a hatrick from former Miami striker Lewis Morgan (who declined to celebrate his goals). Wikelman Carmona got the other goal on a night on which Miami had 70% of possession but none of Red Bulls' penetrative power.  New England Revolution  earned their first point of the season at the fifth attempt when they drew 1-1 at home with  Chicago Fire . On a night when just about every team (save, ironically, for Inter Miami) was hit by international call-ups, Hugo Cuypers opened the scoring for Fire in the 20th minute, only for Nacho Gil to bundle in an equaliser from point blank range in first-half stoppage time. That's how it s...

Week three of the USL Championship starts early, with a 6pm (GMT) kick-off in Connecticut as  Hartford Athletic  face  Birmingham Legion . Legion won away in week one and sat out last week, so will be looking to continue that form, but Hartford are a different side this year under Brendan Burke this year and it should be an open game. There's a pair of games two hours later when the exciting youngsters of  Loudoun United  travel to  Detroit City , and perennial heavyweights  Lousville City  open their home season against Eastern Conference rivals  Pittsburgh Riverhounds . Having lost key players in the winter - one of whom, Tola Showumni, is now at Louisville - the Riverhounds looks lacklustre so far but you can never count a Bob Lilley side out. There are also two games at 11pm, with  Indy Eleven  opening their home season against the powerhouses of  Sacramento Republic , and  Tampa Bay Rowdies  visiting  North ...

It's an early start for MLS action again this weekend with a pair of 6pm (all times GMT) kick-offs on the East Coast.  New England Revolution  - played four, lost four, but still in the CONCACAF Champions Cup - host a  Chicago Fire  side that just wouldn't give up last week and earned a wind-assisted 4-3 win over Montreal.  NY Red Bulls  have made an encouraging, if not spectacular, start under new head coach Sandro Schwarz but face a tough test when the ageing legs of  Inter Miami  come to town. There's a big gap then to the five 11.30pm kick-offs - and it should be said that, with MLS, the actual kick-off is 10 to 15 minutes after the advertised time for some reason - and an early start on the West Coast for  Vancouver Whitecaps , welcoming  Real Salt Lake  (and the freeloaders who watch AppleTv rather than MLS Season Pass) to BC Place for another celebration of 50 years since their formation. 2023 Supporters Shield winners  ...

The second biggest crowd on the final night of US Open Cup First Round ties was at the University of North Carolina's Greensboro Stadium, where MLS Next Pro expanside club  Carolina Core  drew 1,500 for the first ever home fixture. They faced  NoVa FC  from USL League Two, a club that can trace their history back to 1998 when they formed as North Virgina Royals. Antiguan Barbudan international Drake Hadeed  got the opener for Core but Eddie Pope's side found themselves a goal down at the break thanks to Noah Holmes and Alex Abril, with an upset seriously on the cards. Carolina restored party five minutes into the second half with a strike from David Polanco and finally managed to make their domination of the game count when Joshua Rodriguez scored eight minutes from time. Elsewhere in North Carolina, Charlotte FC's MLS Next Pro affiliate  Crown Legacy FC  welcomed  South Carolina United Heat  to the Mecklenburg County Sportsplex in Matthews b...

After four of Tuesday's matches ended in "cupsets," it was business as usual in the majority of Wednesday thirteen ties, with just two lower-league sides progressing (and one of those by default). NPSL side  Apotheos FC , formed in 2021 and based 30 miles northwest of downtown Atlanta, were given a walkover win over  Georgia Lions , one of a crop of new sides in the NISA league this year who clearly weren't ready to start a club from scratch in such a short amount of time. They will be joined in the next round by  Des Moines Menace  of USL League Two, who managed to secure a draw away at another of the new NISA teams,  Capo FC , and then win the penalty shootout. The Iowa club made headlines by signing former USMNT star Sasha Kljestan, who retired at the end of the 2022 MLS season with LA Galaxy, could only swell the gate to around 100 fans but played the full 120 minutes for Menace and assisted Cyrus Harmon for the opening goal eight minutes into the second-hal...

Of the nine games that took place last night, each between a third-tier side and one from lower down the (unofficial) soccer pyramid, four saw victories for the lower-ranked teams, a rate of upsets that bodes well for seasoned underdog fanciers. The win that grabbed the headlines was  Vermont Green 's victory over USL League One leaders  Lexington SC . The USL League Two club became the first to host a US Open Cup game in the Green Mountain State, and only the second side from Vermont to take part in the competition's latter stages, and a sell-out crowd of 3,500 was on hand to see the Burlington outfit race into a 2-0 lead courtesy of Zach Barrett and Nick Lockermann (whose corner Barrett had nodded in). Isaac Cano pulled one back for the visitors after 20 minutes had elapsed but Jacob Labovitz added a third for the Green midway through the first half and, with the score at 3-1 at half-time, the upset watch was on. The Vermont fans were in dreamland five minutes into the secon...

The US Open Cup – officially the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup since 1998 in honour of one of US soccer’s most influential figures – is the oldest continuing competition in North America. The competition is predated by the American Cup, which began in 1884 and ran for forty years until it was supplanted in importance by the National Challenge Cup, the name by which the US Open Cup began its existence in 1914. The National Challenge Cup was born after the United States Football Association had received official sanctioning from FIFA and was an attempt to create the first nationwide soccer trophy in the US, with teams playing for the Sir Thomas Dewar Trophy, donated by a whiskey magnate heavily involved in the promotion of US soccer at the time. The early years of the cup were dominated by teams from the first American Soccer League, although clubs from the isolated league in St Louis did challenge their supremacy and took the trophy back to Missouri on occasion. After the collapse of the ASL...