Dax McCarty is a household name to most fans of MLS, having played for a half-dozen teams during a distinguished, 18-year career before his retirement in 2024. This past weekend, he was part of the team of analysts who handled MLS’s Sunday night broadcast on Apple TV.

On Tuesday, his assignment was a little less glamorous: travel to Des Moines, Iowa.

McCarty is one of many MLS greats recruited by the lower-league Des Moines Menace ahead of their U.S. Open Cup debut on Wednesday night. The roster for the club’s match against MLS Next Pro side Sporting Kansas City II contains a who’s who of mid-aughts U.S.-based talent: Bradley Wright-Phillips, among the most prolific goalscorers in league history; Benny Feilhaber, a World Cup veteran; Sacha Kljestan, a key contributor to the USMNT and among the most consistent midfielders MLS has seen.

There are others, like former standout defender Matt Hedges, forward Justin Meram and three-time MLS Cup winner and former defender A.J. DeLaGarza. There’s also Seattle Sounders legend Ozzie Alonso, among the hardest-nosed players to ever lace them up in MLS and a four-time Open Cup winner. In all, 11 former MLS players are slated to don the Des Moines kit.

On Tuesday, McCarty called from the back of an Uber, en route to the airport. A few hours later, he was set to have his first training session with the group.

“I guess we’re gonna try and condense an entire preseason into a few hours,” McCarty said. “Fitness, tactics, set pieces, all of it. I’m sure it’ll be fine, right?”

The Menace, who play in USL League Two — the fourth tier in the American soccer pyramid — are an amateur team whose season doesn’t kick off until May. In a soccer landscape that continues to align itself more and more with the European game, the Menace are the rarest of things: an American soccer club that feels distinctly … American. Their logo, a humanoid soccer ball bearing its teeth, does a good enough job of conveying that. In the early 2000s, the club was an integral part of one of American soccer’s most ridiculous experiments, Socker Slam.

Des Moines has a long and storied history of beating professional sides in the Open Cup, having done it seven times since their founding in 1994. Those wins were truly David vs. Goliath affairs, a crew of rag-tag amateurs besting a squad of pros. Last year, the club decided to take a different approach.

It began with a chance encounter at the gym between Charlie Bales, the club’s now-former general manager, and Kljestan. Bales was looking to get a little publicity for the Menace and he approached the recently-retired Kljestan, pitching him on a comeback. The two exchanged messages on social media, and eventually, Bales had his first pro. Others joined in when the Menace advanced to round two: DeLaGarza, along with former Sporting Kansas City midfielder Roger Espinoza and ex-FC Dallas and Orlando City forward Tesho Akindele were part of the lineup that got eliminated by USL side Union Omaha.

Like McCarty, Kljestan is also a part of MLS’s Apple coverage. A few weeks back, he pitched McCarty on joining the squad. McCarty, who’d intended to take a year off from playing entirely, said he’d do it under one condition — BWP had to join too. Wright-Phillips, who happened to be in the same studio — yes, he works on the MLS broadcast crew also — said yes.

BWP, McCarty and others had to sign on to the squad as amateurs — none of the players are being paid, though the tournament itself carries a $600,000 prize for the winning team. The response to the Menace’s all-star approach has been largely positive, but there’s been some minor heartburn amongst fans on social media, some of who wondered whether these grizzled MLS vets were taking opportunities from some of the Menace’s younger players. Here’s the thing: as of now, the Menace — who play in the summer — have very few players to speak of. Only a handful of players have signed on.

“People can say what they want about (our approach to) the Open Cup,” said Charlie Latshaw III, the Menace’s current coach. “But if MLS says they don’t want to fully participate, it’s hard for anybody else to dictate how we participate. At the end of the day, it’s bringing positive attention to the tournament, which I think is valuable in the American soccer ecosystem. It’s important that there’s media attention brought to the opening rounds.”

Former pros have played in the tournament from time to time, but never on this scale. And those pros have never risen to the level of talent present on the Menace. Despite all of this, McCarty can’t help but laugh at the idea that the Menace could even be considered an all-star team.

“A team of ringers? That seems like an oxymoron,” McCarty said. “A team of ringers who are all into their late 30s and even early 40s. That feels a little contradictory if I can say so myself.

“This isn’t making a mockery of the Open Cup. This is the opposite — it’s for the love of the game. The Menace, too, are a pretty legendary team in terms of name, in terms of brand. It’s a team with a rich history and we as players are happy to represent them. Making a mockery of the Open Cup would be if we weren’t taking this seriously. And we are.”

There’s nothing in the tournament’s rules that forbid amateur sides from signing former professional players. Any former professional player whose last paid match was over 31 days ago can pay a $50 reinstatement fee and declare himself an amateur, according to U.S. Soccer statutes.

“Somebody should do the math,” McCarty said. “This match tomorrow, it’s gotta be the biggest difference in average age between two teams in Open Cup history.”

A victory against what’s essentially an MLS feeder side – one that Feilhaber used to coach, as if this game needed another layer – on Wednesday would by all accounts qualify as an upset, but maybe not a historic one. If the Menace manage to beat Sporting, they’ll likely get a rematch against Union Omaha or another regional club. Should they advance out of that round, they might find themselves squaring up against an MLS club, giving them a chance to do something truly historic.

Kansas City’s first team may have four titles in its history, but it has actually been on the wrong side of several historic Open Cup upsets, too. In 1997, it was bested by the USL-3 San Francisco Bay Seals, and three years later the club was taken down by the amateur Chicago Sockers. In 2005, the Wizards were the last of three MLS sides dispatched by the USL’s Minnesota Thunder.

None of those underdogs, though, contained the assemblage of talented former pros that the Menace does. To some fans, that may take some of the luster off of a potential Des Moines run. Latshaw III, though, doesn’t really care. He’s hoping for a win on Wednesday, which would earn the Menace a home match in the next round and a sizable gate to boot. And there’s something else he feels is even more important.

“This is fun,” he said. “And people forget sometimes — football is supposed to be fun, maybe even a little goofy sometimes. That’s being forgotten, especially at the highest levels of the game. Regardless of whether some other people like it, I think here in Des Moines, we certainly do.”