Sporting Kansas City will look to write another glorious chapter in club history on Sept. 20 when the New York Red Bulls visit Children’s Mercy Park for the 2017 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup Final, slated for 8 p.m. CT on ESPN2 and ESPN Deportes.
In our 21-day Countdown to Cup, SportingKC.com is highlighting the most relevant storylines, historical narratives and statistical trends surrounding the Open Cup Final, U.S. Soccer’s National Championship.
Our 11th installment of the daily countdown shines the spotlight on Benny Feilhaber and Sacha Kljestan, two longtime friends who will go head-to-head as the primary playmakers on their respective teams.
The 2017 U.S. Open Cup Final will feature a pair of Major League Soccer's most productive attacking midfielders over the last three years.
Sporting Kansas City's Benny Feilhaber and New York Red Bulls' Sacha Kljestan are household names on the American soccer scene, having followed similar career paths since first playing together for the U.S. U-20 Men's National Team.
After spending two seasons at UCLA, Feilhaber plied his craft in Europe for six seasons before returning stateside in 2011. Kljestan began his professional career in the U.S. with Chivas USA, then set sails for a five-year stint in Belgium.
Feilhaber and Kljestan, who struck a friendship at the U.S. U-20 level in 2005 and periodically represented the U.S. MNT over the next decade, finally found themselves competing in the same league in 2015 when the latter joined the Red Bulls. In the three seasons since then, few have produced goals quite like the duo who are set to feature in the Open Cup Final on Sept. 20.
(Side note and a must-listen: During the 2005 FIFA Youth Championship, Feilhaber and Kljestan recorded an online soccer diary for USsoccer.com. Listen and enjoy!)
The table below lists combined goals and assists from MLS midfielders since the start of the 2015 regular season. Feilhaber and Kljestan sit comfortably in the top five, with chances created added to provide further context to each player's overall playmaking abilities.
MLS midfielders since 2015 (regular season)
<strong>Player</strong> |
<strong>G + A</strong> |
<strong>Goals</strong> |
<strong>Assists</strong> |
<strong>Chances<br>
created</strong> |
Sacha Kljestan |
63 |
16 |
47 |
271 (1st) |
Ignacio Piatti |
59 |
41 |
18 |
147 (7th) |
Diego Valeri |
56 |
32 |
24 |
209 (2nd) |
Lee Nguyen |
55 |
21 |
34 |
202 (3rd) |
Benny Feilhaber |
53 |
22 |
31 |
180 (4th) |
Feilhaber has often been at his very best in the Open Cup competition. His eight career assists in the tournament are four more than any other player in Sporting KC history. A win on Sept. 20 would give the midfielder his second Open Cup title to go along with an MLS Cup championship he won to cap off his first year in Kansas City.
Kljestan, meanwhile, is seeking his first cup championship at the club level. He attained plenty of silverware in Belgium with RSC Anderlecht, winning the Belgian Pro League on three occasions, and helped New York to the Suppoters' Shield in 2015. But the Open Cup Final presents him with the chance to add a domestic cup to his trophy case.
