It’s been a few months since Dax McCarty helped Atlanta United eliminate Lionel Messi and Inter Miami from the postseason, before retiring after 19 seasons in Major League Soccer.
It’s been a little over a year since Ozzie Alonso retired, and two years since Sacha Kljestan and Bradley Wright-Phillips retired from MLS.
Ask any former athlete in any sport: The desire to play again never goes away.
The four are now MLS Apple TV analysts, but they’re going to step onto a pitch once again in Kansas City, Missouri on Wednesday night. They’ll play with six other retired stars on an amateur team from Iowa against a bunch of 19- to 24-year-olds aspiring to play in MLS like they did.
They’ll play for the Des Moines Menace on the road against Sporting Kansas City II inside Children’s Mercy Victory Field at 7:30 p.m. ET. The match is in the first round of the U.S. Open Cup – the longest ongoing tournament in America soccer in its 110th edition. It will be available to stream on YouTube.
At least the tournament is older than them?
‘I just ran sprints for the first time in four months. I still got it,’ McCarty, 37, said in a video on social media last week – breathing heavily before laying down on some grass.
‘I don’t know how I got convinced, man,’ Wright-Phillips, 40, told USA TODAY Sports with a sigh.
Kljestan, 39, played with the Menace for two games in last year’s Open Cup. He did the convincing along with Benny Feilhaber, who is going to play against the MLS Next Pro team he coached for the last three years. Feilhaber, who played for the USMNT and was born in Brazil, helped SKC win MLS Cup in 2013, the Open Cup in 2017, and is in the franchise’s hall of fame.
Kljestan and Feilhaber recruited McCarty — the trio competed for playing time together for U.S. Soccer at the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
Alonso, a four-time Open Cup winner and 2016 MLS Cup winner with the Seattle Sounders, said McCarty influenced him before a flight to their current day jobs.
And Kljestan needed his ‘striking partner” in Wright-Phillips. Kljestan led MLS in assists and Wright-Phillips in goals twice each during their careers, and one of those times was in 2016 when they played together for the New York Red Bulls.
‘Sasha worked his magic, wore me down and convinced me,” Wright-Phillips said.
The Menace is a USL League 2 team that plays from May to August and is typically filled with amateur players in college. The former MLS stars aren’t getting paid for participation.
They’re just in it for the thrills.
‘When you retire, you can never get that feeling back of playing in a stadium, scoring a goal and hearing everybody cheer for you. There’s just nothing in life that can replicate that,” Kljestan said. “So, just getting that opportunity to do it one more time, or two more times, or three more times depending how many games we win, I think it’s pretty exciting for us.”
McCarty said he walked away from the game in great shape, but the day-to-day grind and being away from his family took its toll. He started playing some golf and pickleball in his spare time to feed his competitive fire.
But it just doesn’t compare.
‘I absolutely want that feeling back,” McCarty said.
Alonso misses being in the locker room with his teammates and the pressure to perform.
‘I miss everything,” Alonso said succinctly.
Wright-Phillips — who started his career Manchester City before eight MLS seasons – wants to make up for lost fun.
“I’m one of those players that I don’t really miss the game,” he said. “When I played, I was really uptight. It wasn’t fun because I was very hard on myself to always score goals. I didn’t enjoy as many games as I should have because you’re always worried about three points and worrying about other teams’ results.
‘So, I just want to enjoy the game, try to win and just have fun playing with my friends.”
They’ll be joined by AJ DeLaGarza, a three-time MLS Cup champion with the L.A. Galaxy who won the Open Cup with Houston in 2018. Victor Ulloa (FC Dallas, 2016) and Justin Meram (Atlanta, 2019) also won Open Cup titles. Matt Hedges (2016 MLS Defender of the Year) and Mikey Ambrose (former six-year MLS veteran) will also play.
Their first order of business should be getting on the same page.
Kljestan and Wright-Phillips want McCarty to play the whole game since he’s the least removed from professional soccer of the bunch.
‘Their expectations are I’m supposed to play 90 minutes,” McCarty said. ‘I don’t know how that’s going to work out.”
They also need to figure out how far they really want to go in the tournament. McCarty said it would be ‘a little irresponsible and foolish to talk about winning the whole thing.’ Kljestan said his ‘dream scenario’ would be to at least play against an MLS team in a big stadium again.
‘It’s going to sound delusional, but I want to get to the final. I want to win this. That’s the way I am in my mind,” Wright-Phillips said. ‘I’m not saying I’m going to be leading the line. I’ll be on the bench like a great cheerleader. But let’s try and get to the final.”
On Tuesday, U.S. Soccer announced a record $1 million prize pool would be awarded during this year’s tournament. The champion will win $600,000, the runner-up $250,000, and $50,000 for each of the three highest finishers from lower divisions participating.
The Open Cup – despite its history – has been a bit of an afterthought in the American soccer space since the summer Leagues Cup tournament between MLS and LIGA MX teams was created in 2019.
MLS nearly pulled its senior teams from the tournament last year, but eight competed in 2023, and 16 of the 30 of them will play this year.
The former players don’t feel responsibility to play in hopes of reviving the Open Cup, but believe their presence will bring some attention.
‘People over time have seemed to play it down. It’s the oldest tournament in the country, and that’s to be respected,” Wright-Phillips said. “A lot of people made their name in this tournament. Why are we above it? Why would I not want to play in this tournament and get more people interested?”
Added Kljestan: ‘This is just getting a group of guys that want to give it one last shot of playing together at the highest level, and it will shine a light to the Open Cup and hopefully bring more eyeballs for it.”