Messi, Inter Miami to skip U.S. Open Cup; just eight MLS teams entered

CHICAGO » Lionel Messi and Inter Miami won’t compete in this year’s U.S. Open Cup and just eight of Major League Soccer’s 26 American teams will enter the competition.

Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles FC, Salt Lake, San Jose and Seattle will enter the 96-team competition, the U.S. Soccer Federation said Friday.

Houston is the defending tournament champion and the others were among the top seven teams from last year’s regular-season Supporters’ Shield standings who are not in this year’s CONCACAF Champions Cup.

MLS teams will enter in the fourth round and face only lower tier squads until a head-to-head MLS matchup is unavoidable. Last year, 18 MLS teams entered in the third round and eight in the fourth.

Since the start of MLS in 1996, the only team not from the first tier to win the competition was the 1999 Rochester Raging Rhinos of the USL’s secondtier A-League, which beat the Colorado Rapids 2-0 in the final.

MLS announced Dec. 15 it was pulling all its teams from the nation’s oldest soccer competition, which started in 1914, and was replacing them with third-tier developmental sides from MLS Next Pro.

The USSF said five days later it was treating MLS’s decision as a request that it was turning down.

Messi’s Argentina picks four teens for friendlies in U.S.

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA » Argentina will feature four players aged under 20 in two friendlies in the United States in March with the Copa America and Paris Olympics in mind.

One of the biggest surprises of coach Lionel Scaloni’s squad on Friday was left back and midfielder Valentín Barco, 19. He joined Brighton less than two months ago and has had an impact at the English Premier League club.

The other three teenagers in the world champion squad were forwards; Manchester United’s Alejandro Garnacho, Brighton’s Facundo Buonanotte and Monza’s Valentín Carboni.

Argentina faces El Salvador on March 22 in Philadelphia.