North Carolina will play host to a new, winner-take-all soccer tournament featuring a $1 million prize and some big-name backers.
U.S. men’s national team legend Clint Dempsey and NBA star Chris Paul are among the group behind what will be called The Soccer Tournament. The event — set to take place in June 2023 at WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary, NC — will be run by TBT Enterprises, the founders of a very similar concept called The Basketball Tournament.
“TST is an opportunity for players to show what they’ve got,” said Dempsey, who will coach a team, in a press release. “I came from the pickup culture, and we’ll be on the search for unproven talent that may have been overlooked by the American soccer system. Don’t sleep on Team Dempsey, we’re coming to win.”
Don’t expect a traditional game
Dempsey’s team will be one of 32 entrants, with a familiar group-stage format coming first. 16 teams will advance to a knockout round. Games will be played on a seven-on-seven format with field dimensions no larger than 65 yards by 45 yards, and with slightly smaller (18.5′ x 6.5′) goals.
“They wanted something that was going to be exciting, something that was going to be a lot of action that was going to be a lot of goals, exciting for people to watch,” said Dempsey on the tight confines. “By being closer to goal, it allows for more opportunities to get a shot. I like that aspect of it. You still have to defend, and you’ve still got to work on being tight with your touches.”
One innovation from The Basketball Tournament that will be ported over for soccer is what on the hoops side is called the Elam Ending. In that format, the traditional fourth quarter is played without a clock, and seven points are added to the leading team’s score. Whichever side gets to that point total wins the game, with no possibility of overtime.
In The Soccer Tournament, games will be played in two 20-minute halves, and at the end of regulation the clock will turn off, and what is being called “Target Score Time” will begin.
For the team in the lead, it’s effectively a next goal wins scenario, while the trailing team has a chance to mount a comeback by scoring enough goals to make up their deficit, plus one more to get to the target score. If no one scores in the first five minutes of “Target Score Time,” the game will become six-on-six, and so on until someone bags the goal that gets their team to the, you guessed it, target score.
Dempsey’s team — which will hold tryouts in multiple states, and could even include Dempsey as a player-coach — will be joined by Hashtag United, a semi-professional club that plays traditional soccer in the eighth tier of the English pyramid. Entry fees will range from $10,000 to $20,000, depending on when a team applies, and will also be subject to a tournament selection committee process.
“Ultimately, we want to pick the field that people most want to see,” TBT founder Jon Mugar said. “As we look at all the teams that will apply for a 32-team, million-dollar tournament, we’re definitely going to prioritize those that represent a wide cross-section of the soccer world. And I think that with basketball, we’ve seen that it’s mainly a product for USA players, but with soccer we anticipate a worldwide player pool.”
The Basketball Tournament eventually worked its way to ESPN broadcasts, and included a range of teams including NCAA alumni teams from top programs, groups coached by Paul and fellow NBA star DeMarcus Cousins, as well as an appearance from the Pistol Shrimps, a women’s rec league team made up of actresses (including Aubrey Plaza for a spell), models, and other Hollywood-oriented professions. What began as a 32-team competition for a $500,000 prize has become an annual 64-team tournament with, like the soccer version, a $1 million award for the champions.
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