Words: Cody Aceveda // @CodyAceveda
Of all the things that make American soccer different from football in the rest of the world, rivalry cups are one of the best. Imagine if every time Barcelona and Real Madrid played, there was a trophy on the line. That’s exactly what happens when Major League Soccer’s biggest rivals face off against each other.
In Texas, Austin FC, FC Dallas, and Houston Dynamo clash for the El Capitán Texas Derby Trophy; Real Salt Lake and Colorado Rapids compete for the Rocky Mountain Cup; NYCFC fight the New York Red Bulls for the Hudson River Derby Trophy.
These are just some of the rivalry cups awarded every year to MLS clubs who win their head-to-head series against their rivals.
The Rocky Mountain Cup, another MLS Rivalry trophy contested between Real Salt Lake and the Colorado Rapids.
Photo Credit: Real Salt Lake
The tradition of awarding a trophy for defeating a rival started outside of soccer. It goes back to the 1890s, when some University of Cincinnati students stole a bell that University of Miami fans would ring after wins. The Miami Redhawks and Cincinnati Bearcats American football teams have fought for the “Victory Bell” rivalry trophy ever since.
Today, over 100 college football rivalry trophies are contested annually. Almost every major American sports league has at one point or another had a rivalry trophy for marquee rivalry games.
To give you even more context for just how important rivalry trophies are in American sports, MLS executives have created several cups to manufacture rivalries between non-rival clubs. The Trillium Cup between the Columbus Crew and Toronto FC is the most blatant example of this.
The trillium is the official flower of Ohio and Ontario, so of course the two biggest clubs from Ohio and Ontario had to be rivals. That’s what MLS said at least. In reality, Columbus and Toronto weren’t rivals. Nor did they particularly care about whether Ohio or Ontario were the real home of the trillium flower. The Crew and Toronto were just two clubs without rivals who needed something to fight for to rile up their fans.
Not all MLS rivalry cups are as contrived as the Trillium Cup though.
The oldest rivalry cup in MLS is the Brimstone Cup between FC Dallas and Chicago Fire. It was founded by fans in 2001 when FC Dallas were called the Dallas Burn. The name of the trophy made a lot more sense before the rebrand. The Fire and FC Dallas haven’t played since 2022, so the rivalry itself has fizzled out a bit too. It no longer has the prestige it once did, but it is a real rivalry.
Chicago Fire celebrating a Brimstone Cup win.
Photo Credit: Chicago Fire
On the other extreme from the Trillium and Brimstone Cups, you have the Cascadia Cup. The Portland Timbers, Seattle Sounders, and Vancouver Whitecaps battle for this trophy every season. It’s named after the region where three teams play, and it is the most passionately fought rivalry cup in MLS. While it’s not the oldest, it’s the one that has the most history.
The Timbers, Sounders, and Whitecaps can all trace their histories back to the mid-1970s in the NASL. That’s not a long time in global soccer history. In the US, though, the 1970s may as well be the 1870s. Only four MLS teams can trace their history back to this era. Three of them play in Cascadia.
America’s lack of soccer history is partly due to the glorious collapse of the NASL in 1984. This event killed professional soccer in many of North America’s biggest markets. It didn’t in Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver.
The Timbers, Sounders, and Whitecaps survived through various hardships and iterations in the 80s, 90s, and into the 2000s. This allowed Cascadia to develop a type of grassroots soccer culture that many other MLS markets are still struggling to build today.
To celebrate the proud history of soccer in Cascadia, early iterations of the Timbers Army, Emerald City Supporters, and Vancouver Southsiders founded the Cascadia Cup in 2004. The trophy would be awarded to the team with the most points in head-to-head matchups between the three rivals. Most importantly, the Cascadia Cup was to always belong to the fans.
When a team wins the Cascadia Cup, a representative from the supporters’ groups comes onto the pitch to personally deliver the trophy to the players. Not the club owner, the league commissioner, or to anyone else. It’s a direct connection between the fans and the players who proudly represent their clubs.
This fan-centric ethos is at the heart of what makes the Cascadia Cup so special. Yes, there are other fan-owned rivalry trophies in American soccer, even in MLS, but the Cascadia Cup is the gold standard.
The long-forgotten Brimstone Cup and Atlantic Cup trophies are the only fan-owned rivalry cups in MLS that are older than the Cascadia Cup. Neither ever had the passion behind them that the Cascadia Cup has. Newer rivalry cups–such as the Copa Tejas and Hudson River Derby Trophy–view the Cascadia Cup as the model to follow.
If you need more proof that the Cascadia Cup is the best rivalry cup in MLS, you just have to look at what happened shortly after the three teams joined the league.
Portland Timbers with the Cascadia Cup.
Photo Credit: Portland Timbers
The Timbers Army are renowned for being some of the best fans in the MLS.
Photo Credit: Major League Soccer
In 2004, the Timbers, Sounders, and Whitecaps were all playing lower league soccer in the A-League, an early predecessor of the USL Championship. Unlike the first time these three clubs played in the same division, this story has a happy ending.
The Sounders became an MLS franchise in 2009. The Timbers and Whitecaps joined them in 2011. Just two years after the three teams were reunited in America’s top flight, MLS attempted to trademark the Cascadia Cup name.
This led to enormous fan outrage and the creation of the Cascadia Cup Council, a new legal entity established with the sole purpose of securing the Cascadia Cup trademark before MLS could.
While this was happening, MLS took control of the Rocky Mountain Cup and licensed the name Subaru. The supporter-owned Rocky Mountain Cup became the “Subaru Rocky Mountain Cup.” In other words, it became just another MLS corporate entity.
Quick and direct action from the Timbers Army, Emerald City Supporters, and Vancouver Southsiders ensured that the Cascadia Cup would not suffer the same fate as the Rocky Mountain Cup.
MLS and the Timbers Army, Emerald City Supporters, and Vancouver Southsiders reached a landmark agreement to keep the Cascadia Cup trademark with the supporters' groups. THe deal made it so that sponsorship or licensing deals couldn’t happen without approval from all three groups. To this day, the Cascadia Cup is fan-owned and has never been soiled by corporate sponsorship.
This win for the Timbers, Sounders, and Whitecaps' supporters' groups was arguably the first major victory by fans against MLS’s corporate office in league history. It also set the tone for the organized fan culture and protests against the league, shaping much of MLS fandom in the late 2010s and into the 2020s.
The three representative Supporters’ Groups who comprise the Cascadia Cup Council.
Photo Credit: Vancouver Southsiders
Beyond its impact off the pitch and in the stands with supporters’ groups across MLS, the Cascadia Cup has produced some of the most iconic moments in recent league history.
In 2013, the Timbers won their first ever MLS playoff game against the Sounders in front of nearly 40,000 fans in Seattle. A few months later, Clint Dempsey scored a hat trick in a 4-4 draw against the Timbers at Providence Park. Dempsey’s infamous meltdown in the US Open Cup, where he tore up the referee’s notebook, also happened in a match against the Timbers.
There also was the time in 2015 when Timbers striker Fanendo Adi scored two goals in three minutes to give Portland a 3-1 lead over the Sounders. In the 76th minute, to celebrate his second goal of the match, the Nigerian leaped over the advertising boards, grabbed Portland’s mascot’s chainsaw, and celebrated with it in front of the Timbers Army.
Ironically, the most iconic Cascadia Cup moment came in a game that didn’t count toward the Cup standings.
In 2018, the Sounders and the Timbers met in the Western Conference semi-finals of the MLS Cup Playoffs. The Sounders had won the Cascadia Cup and were favorites to beat their rivals in this two-legged tie. Portland stunned Seattle 2-1 in game one of the tie in Portland. The second match, though, is what makes this playoff tie so iconic.
Raul Ruidiaz capitalized on a mistake by Portland’s goalkeeper, Jeff Attinella, to give Seattle a 1-0 lead and level the tie in the 68th minute. Portland equalized and regained their lead in the 78th minute with a goal from club legend Sebastian Blanco. Raul Ruidaz scored a dramatic volleyed goal in the 93rd minute to force extra time.
“Mr. October” Dairon Asprilla scored a header three minutes into extra time for the Timbers, putting them up 4-3 on aggregate over the Sounders. In the 96th minute, Seattle were awarded a penalty after a Blanco handball. Sounders captain Nicolás Lodeiro slotted in the spot kick to bring things level once again. Believe it or not, things got even crazier from here.
At the final whistle, the majority of Timbers players believed they won the tie. Players dropped to their knees, celebrating that they were advancing to the next round. What they didn’t realize was that the away goals rule didn’t apply in the MLS Cup Playoffs. The game was not over. It was going to penalties.
The cameras captured Timbers fullback Zarek Valentin frantically attempting to explain the situation to his celebrating teammates. Faces of joy quickly turned to confused looks, then frustration as reality set in.
As a Timbers fan, I couldn’t imagine us winning this tie. I couldn’t see our players recovering for an intense shootout against our biggest rivals in their stadium after celebrating like that. Yet, the Timbers locked in and got the job done. Portland scored four of their five penalties, beating the Sounders 4-2 in the shootout.
After knocking out Seattle, Portland advanced all the way to the MLS Cup Final. We lost to Atlanta United, which hurt, but not as much as it would have if we hadn’t knocked out the Sounders along the way.
Fanendo Adi celebrates putting Portland Timbers 3-1 up in a Cascadia Cup match v Seattle Sounders on June 28, 2015.
Photo Credit: Portland Timbers
Those bragging rights and iconic moments define the Cascadia Cup. No matter the league we’re in, how tough our season is, or how heartbreaking a loss to a non-Cascadia team may be, we always have our rivalries and the Cascadia Cup to look back on.
In the end, the tradition and soccer heritage that the Cup embodies in Cascadia will always matter more than anything else our three clubs could ever win.
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