The Swope Park Rangers (#7) went on the road to Papa Murphy’s Park in the first round of the USL Cup Playoffs to challenge the second seeded Sacramento Republic. In 2017 Sacramento traveled to Kansas City where they would fall to SPR. This time, Swope found the way to win their first ever road game in the playoffs.
The game got off to a pretty rough start for the Rangers. In the 16th minute the entirety of the back line failed to deal with a ball in the box and Sporting Kansas City loanee Amer Didic ended up trying to clear the ball under zero pressure and sent an awkward ball up into the air where Villyan Bijev received it and drove it home for the opening goal.