Lionel Messi and Inter Miami won’t compete in this year’s US Open Cup and just eight of Major League Soccer’s 26 American teams will enter the competition.

Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles FC, Salt Lake, San Jose and Seattle will enter the 96-team competition, the US Soccer Federation said on Friday.

Houston are the defending champions and the others were among the top seven teams from last year’s regular-season Supporters’ Shield standings who are not in this year’s Concacaf Champions Cup.

MLS teams will enter in the fourth round and face only lower tier squads until a head-to-head MLS matchup is unavoidable. Last year, 18 MLS teams entered in the third round and eight in the fourth.

Houston beat Miami 2-1 in last year’s final. Messi missed the game because of an injury.

Since the start of MLS in 1996, the only team not from the first tier to win the competition was the 1999 Rochester Raging Rhinos of the USL’s second-tier A-League.