Today, the USL announced a significant change to the Jägermeister Cup. And yours truly could not be more excited. The tournament will now feature both League One and USL Championship teams. That means our boys in amber and blue have a legit cup competition to compete in (yes I’m aware of the US Open Cup, but I’m ignoring that for the time being). To go along with the addition of the USL Championship teams, an updated format has been announced which you can read about here.

To go over it quickly though, there are 38 teams in the competition that are broken up into 6 groups (2 groups of 7 and 4 groups of 6). Each team will get drawn against teams in their group and will play 4 games (2 home and 2 away). The winners of each group move on, along with the next 2 best teams. The tournament then becomes a simple knockout tournament among the remaining 8 teams.

One of the most exciting parts of this is that the groups are all regional. That means more opportunities for local matchups. In our case, this is what our group looks like:

There are a lot of exciting potential matchups here, so I figured we should take a quick look at each one.

Detroit City FC

The obvious storyline in this matchup would be new RIFC signing Maxi Rodriguez playing against his former team. You don’t need me to tell you about how great of a signing Maxi is, just see Ryan’s blog. If you haven’t read that, what are you doing? While we can expect to play Detroit twice during the season anyway, another matchup with them to hopefully stick it to them that Maxi is ours now is admittedly pretty enticing.

Hartford Athletic

I mean, this one is pretty obvious is it not? A chance at a third derby match? Sign me up right now. We already showed Hartford what real support is in our two meetings this past season. And they have yet to beat us in our two matchups so far, with a draw coming in Hartford before we hit our stride as a team and a 3-0 thrashing at home later in the season. I’d love nothing more to extend an unbeaten run against these frauds to 5 next season. Bring it on.

Pittsburgh Riverhounds

While we were unbeaten against Hartford last season, we were winless against Pittsburgh. We didn’t even get a goal in our two matchups. We had our 0-0 draw at home and a 2-0 loss in Pittsburgh. They proved to be a tough matchup for us and drawing them in the cup could be challenging. I respect Bob Lilley as a manager and another meeting between him and Khano Smith would be intriguing.

Portland Hearts of Pine

This is the most exciting part of this whole thing for me. A matchup with Portland in their inaugural season would be unreal. All indications are that Portland are doing things the right way. We met up with a few fans from Dirigo Union who came down to see our 3-1 win against Tampa Bay last season. They were great guys and had nothing but good things to say about us in their podcast after coming down to the match. I would absolutely love to draw them in this tournament and hopefully travel up to Maine. I would expect it to be one big party amongst friends before the game before becoming enemies for 90 minutes. Fingers crossed that we get this matchup.

Westchester SC

I honestly don’t have a ton to say about this one. It would be cool to see us play another League One team. They’re in New York, which depending on how you look at it could be a good trip or a bad one. With the news that Brooklyn FC pushed their start back to 2026, this would potentially be our first matchup with a New York team. I’m aware that they’re just outside of NYC but as far as I’m concerned, it’s close enough.

This leads me to the question of which teams I would like to see RIFC get drawn against. You probably have a good idea where I stand, but my preferred matchups are Hartford and Detroit City at home and Portland and Westchester away. I think playing both matches against USL Championship teams at home would be a huge benefit. Plus another home derby would be awesome. Trips to Portland and to Mt. Vernon (where Westchester are set to play) would also be pretty good. Especially getting to head up to Portland to see how they do things up there.

As I said at the top, I’m thrilled about this competition. I think cup competitions are such a great part of soccer. That’s why the MLS trying to diminish the Open Cup really rubbed me the wrong way. Honestly, that’s a pretty big understatement. I don’t want to get in to that whole situation, but all I’ll say is that this tournament is a great opportunity for the USL to have their own thing. There’s no need to be at the mercy of the division 1 league in this country. It’s just real, grassroots soccer that we can all enjoy. I can’t wait for the draw and look forward to EVEN MORE Prematch Lookouts and Postmatch Beacons next season. Until next time, UP THE TIDE!