Birmingham Legion FC’s first competitive game against an MLS opponent is potentially two wins away.

Over the past year, I’ve joked about how Birmingham is the minor-league sports capital of Planet Earth, but a unique opportunity is now here for the city’s soccer club to play its way onto the field against a top-level team from Major League Soccer.

The city’s new pro team plays its first-ever match in the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup at 7 p.m. on Wednesday at UAB’s BBVA Compass Field against West Chester United (Pa.). In American sports, there is nothing else like the Open Cup, which is soccer’s national championship tournament and brings together teams from all professional divisions of the sport, and also qualifying amateur clubs.

Imagine a national football tournament where players from Alabama and Auburn could win their way into a bracket with NFL teams. The popular question about how Auburn or Alabama would fair against a pro football team could finally be answered.

That’s the idea of soccer’s U.S. Open Cup, which has crowned a champion since 1914 and last year featured 97 teams. Houston Dynamo defeated Philadelphia Union 3-0 in the championship game. The last non-MLS team to win the Open Cup was the Rochester Rhinos in 1999.

Birmingham’s window to join the ranks of American cities with a major-league-level professional sports franchise might be closed, but Legion FC and soccer are now here and they give the city a fighting chance to show it still belongs. The U.S. Open Cup is the stage to prove it.

Be there, Birmingham, and be loud.

To reach this year’s U.S. Open Cup championship game in September, Birmingham Legion FC would have to survive six rounds of the tournament while concurrently navigating its inaugural regular season in the United Soccer League. That’s not likely to happen, but Birmingham Legion FC doesn’t have to win the Open Cup to make history. The first-year expansion USL club is doing that just by competing in the field.

There has never been an opportunity like this for a Birmingham pro team to make a splash on the national stage.

“It’s huge for us as players, and for the club to make a mark,” Legion FC forward Chandler Hoffman said.

In the past two years, USL teams like Birmingham have used the Open Cup to rapidly grow their fan bases and, in the case of FC Cincinnati, use the national tournament to help propel the club into the MLS as an expansion team. Playing at the University of Cincinnati’s Nippert Stadium, FC Cincinnati defeated the Chicago Fire in the quarterfinals of the 2017 U.S. Open Cup in front of a crowd of over 32,000 fans.

It was FC Cincinnati’s second year as a club. Now, the team plays in MLS.

Legion FC would like to copy FC Cincinnati’s blueprint for success, but first Birmingham’s expansion USL team has to figure out a way to score some goals. With just one in Legion FC’s first five home games, they’ve been hard to come by.

Because here’s the thing about the Open Cup. While a second-division team like Legion FC can win its way into a match-up against a first-division MLS club like Atlanta United, it can also lose to an amateur squad like the one Birmingham hosts on Wednesday. West Chester United (Pa.) is an elite amateur team made up of former college and pro players.

To reach this point in the Open Cup, West Chester United has already survived four qualifying rounds for amateur teams, and also the tournament’s official first round. USL Championship teams like Birmingham Legion FC receive first-round byes, and enter the competition in the second round. MLS clubs enter the Open Cup in the tournament’s fourth round.

In total, 52 pro teams are competing in this year’s Open Cup, which are the most in the tournament’s modern era (1995 to present).

“I think the whole process of that tournament, when amateur teams come and compete, there’s just not too many tournaments like that in the world when an amateur team can go up against a pro team,” said Legion FC coach Tom Soehn, who won the Open Cup as the head coach of D.C. United in 2008, “and then the lower leagues go up against the higher teams. It’s a pretty unique feel.”

More importantly, it’s a unique moment for Birmingham to begin learning how to be a major-league worthy town. It doesn’t start on the field. It starts in the stands.

Joseph Goodman is a columnist for the Alabama Media Group. He’s on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr.