NASHVILLE, TN – On October 1, Nashville SC will take the field in Austin with the US Open Cup trophy on the line.
It's a pivotal moment for the club, who moved on from long-term head coach Gary Smith last season, turning to young, exciting, first-time manager BJ Callaghan to usher in their self-branded "Nashville 2.0" era. The results on the field have shown significant improvement. Lifting a trophy would signal that the new era is fully here.
"From day one when I arrived, the talk is that this club wants to pursue trophies," Callaghan said on Tuesday night after an emphatic 3-1 win over Philadelphia Union in the semifinals. "The ambition starts with the owner of Mr. Ingram and it permeates all the way down through. Our job, wherever we fall in the organization, is to make that happen."
History on the line
The US Open Cup was started in 1914. It's the oldest soccer tournament in the United States, and among the oldest in the global game. In a way, it's fitting that lifting the most historic trophy in the nation would make history for Nashville.
No major professional team from the state of Tennessee has ever won a major championship trophy. The Tennessee Titans have come close, falling short in Super Bowl XXXIV. So have the Nashville Predators, losing in the 2017 Stanley Cup Final after one of the most magical playoff runs the city has ever seen. The Memphis Grizzlies have never made it past a Conference Final.
Even Nashville SC have come close, losing a heartbreaking penalty shootout to Inter Miami in the 2023 Leagues Cup final, getting all the way through their outfield players before the goalkeepers took the deciding kicks. In two weeks, the Boys In Gold will get another shot.
"The message is that each and every day we come in, we try to play and we try to perform on and off the field in a way that Nashville can be proud of, in a way that the city can see themselves," said Callaghan. "We have to go on the road for the final, and hopefully we're taking the whole city with us. Whether they're with us or watching on TV, we're going to go and represent them in the final the best way we can."
Goodnight, Nashville 🙃 pic.twitter.com/hWP0kb8Vh1
— Nashville SC (@NashvilleSC) September 17, 2025
"Success is doing what we say we're going to do"
Since Callaghan took over, he's popularized several mantras. "Success is doing what we say we're going to do" is one, applying to everything from giving young players a chance to creating and scoring more goals. Competing for and winning trophies is another.
Ben Wright
More than any year in the past, Nashville feel capable of actually competing for trophies. In the past they would head into the playoffs as a plucky underdog, or come out of nowhere to make a Cinderella run to the Leagues Cup. In 2025, they've been consistently one of the best teams in MLS. They'll go into the playoffs as one of the favorites, and find themselves one win away from lifting the US Open Cup. In a lot of ways, winning a trophy would validate the progress that's been made this year.
"You can do so much work behind the scenes, but none of it is obviously validated and none of it is justified without results," midfielder Patrick Yazbek said before the semifinal win over Philadelphia. "You need to get three points, you need to be winning, and you get winning silverware."
There's another element to it, too. Seven players on Nashville's current roster have been here since their 2020 MLS expansion season. Those guys are hungry for silverware after six years.
"This group that we have here deserves the respect that we are about winning this trophy for the first team and for the club," said Callaghan. "We talk about writing chapter six. This is another piece of that story that this group, the 2025 team's contribution to the club is."
"We feel as players, super lucky," said club captain Walker Zimmerman at the start of the season. "We have an amazing job. We have an amazing fan base. We're in an amazing city. It's now our turn to try and deliver something to the city, to the state. And that's been the goal of year six."
