U.S. Open Cup: Cal F.C. and Wynalda Stalk Another Upset The Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup throws out a surprise or two every year. This year Cinderella's got nothing on a upstart - Cal F.C. This amateur club team from Thousand Oaks, Calif., that plays in the wilderness of the U.S. soccer pyramid's fifth tier (the United States Adult Soccer Association), and is made up of professional castoffs and Sunday-league rough gems who all have day jobs, shocked the American soccer world by knocking off the Portland Timbers of Major League Soccer last Wednesday night. It was only their seventh time playing together. The extra twist? This pirate ship is being steered by the maverick U.S. soccer star Eric Wynalda, who makes no secret of his disappointment at being denied several M.L.S. coaching opportunities in recent years. Their next opponent? Three-time defending cup champions Seattle Sounders in the fourth round, Wednesday, in Tukwila, Wash. Not even Hollywood would find this story remotely believable. But the soccer-watching nation can see it with its own eyes, as Fox Soccer, where Wynalda is a studio analyst, will televise the game beginning at 10 p.m. Eastern. The only person who remains unfazed by Cal F.C."s run so far is Wynalda. "To everyone else, it's nothing short of amazing," he said. To us, this was always within the realm of possibility. We didn't enter this competition just to be here and have fun and take a stab at this thing. We handpicked these guys because of their abilities, and we always thought this was possible. Wynalda's squad is not the only surprise this year. Eight M.L.S. teams lost to weaker competition in the third round last week, the first stage in which the top-division clubs enter the competition. The only one other amateur team still alive is the Michigan Bucks, a fourth-tier United Soccer Leagues Premier Development League team, who take on the Dayton Dutch Lions of the U.S.L. Pro league Wednesday. Wynalda, who works part-time as a scout for third-division Mexican club Murciélagos searching for Mexican-American talent in California, completed the Cal F.C. roster in late April with some of the talent he sees in his scouting travels. Much of the team has past professional experience in U.S.L. or M.L.S. "The scouting process took me a little bit of everywhere," Wynalda said. A lot of Sunday leagues. To be fair, some of these leagues are beer bellies and ponytails. But there's a couple of guys out there that, if you're paying attention, can really play. The premise of [Cal F.C.] was to bring those guys out of that group and put them in with some other guys who may have been overlooked, and who I felt could play, and see how they play together. They immediately clicked. Shortly after completing the roster in April, Wynalda arranged their first game: a weekend match on May 5 against a college team he preferred not to name (it was Cal Poly San Luis Obispo). At halftime, his team was up, 5-0. Since the squad all has other jobs, the hardest part has been getting everyone together to train. In fact, they have no place to train. Since late April, they have only practiced four times and played seven matches - the last of which, of course, was the shock win over a full-strength Timbers side in Portland, Ore. Cal F.C. were physically overmatched by the tall, powerful Timbers, made worse because Cal F.C. is still not fully fit - and almost uniformly short. Still, they dug in and held on despite being outshot, 43-11, and won in extra time on a breakaway goal by former Real Salt Lake squad player Artur Aghasyan. He was put through on goal by Colombian-born Danny Berrera, who played in Serbia and now plays alongside his brother, Diego, formerly of the Wilmington Hammerheads. And there are also guys like the former Los Angeles Galaxy defender Mike Randolph. Wynalda sees all this sudden exposure as vindication for players who he thinks have been overlooked by what he believes is a narrow-minded American soccer establishment. Some of them may have another chance right around the corner: Wynalda has already been contacted about several of his players by interested clubs. And Wednesday's televised game is a huge opportunity to put themselves in the shop window. Regardless of the outcome, they will at least look better; in Portland, they were not playing in their own uniforms. The team got uniforms only last week after M.L.S. forbade it at the last minute to wear the old Chicago Fire uniforms they had been playing in. Nike stepped in, but Cal F.C. could not obtain names and numbers for the new shirts in time, so, in an emergency, they played Portland in blue Cal South-league training gear. Wynalda does not even play his team in any sort of rigid formation. "The bottom line is, these guys know what they're doing," Wynalda said. They were handpicked for each role. When you build a team, a lot of people will say, here's my system: 4-4-2. Let me go find a right back, let me go find a center back ... we didn't do that. We just found players and then put the puzzle together - and we were surprised at how well it fit. He keeps his coaching philosophy simple, too. "When you're managing one guy, you're telling the guy next to him how he needs to cover for deficiencies, that's all," Wynalda said. I never talk to anybody about their weak points. I just put them on the field for their strengths. But I'm gonna say to the guy next to him, "Hey look, he's not very good at this and this, so be careful." But I'll never put that negative energy into a player's head. Wynalda may get a little extra positive energy from going up against Sounders coach Sigi Schmid, whom Wynalda credits with giving him his breakout chance when Schmid was the national B team coach. Schmid's Sounders have a cup to defend and little more than pride on the line. Cal F.C., on the other hand, had to search this weekend for a practice field that was not already reserved for a graduation ceremony. So how far can Wynalda's rebel alliance go? How long can he stretch this storyline? "You keep saying it, everybody else keeps saying it - that this is amazing," Wynalda said. And it seems so normal to me. We have a rule: We set goals. Then we achieve them, and we reset. That's how we do things. We anticipate Seattle will be a different style of play. They've got some really good soccer players on their team, and I think for all intents and purposes it'll be a better game. It won't just be one-way traffic. In other words: Seattle, you have been warned. Follow Adam Elder on Twitter.