Phil Baki tries to make sense of the USL Championship weekend that was. Let’s get our bearings and clean ourselves up, this is the Championship Hangover.

I know the title of this weekly wrap up is a bit of a joke but the USL was absolutely drunk this weekend, and not just because it was the inaugural weekend of the USLLeague One Jägermeister Cup. Let’s try to unpack a weekend that included no less than 35 goals with a couple shocks to boot.

Rhode Island 1-3 Phoenix Rising

The question on everyone’s minds that went through their thumbs to Twitter on Friday night was “Is Phoenix back?” Certainly a 3-1 win on the road against good opposition feels like evidence that they are, though I’m not sure I’m buying quite yet. Remi Cabral is firing, which is absolutely huge. His brace brought him to five goals on the year and if he continues finishing in the manner he did on Friday then Phoenix may well be back. Emil Cuello, ever the enigma, showed up in his good form in this one along with Panos Armenakas and the duo was incisive. They had precious little time on the ball but they made the most of it. Midfield’s interactions with the defense still leave me with questions though. Rhode Island had a lot of success getting in and around Phoenix’s penalty area, they had 42 touches there as opposed to only 12 Phoenix touches in the box at the other end. Phoenix’s central defenders did well to limit the danger by throwing themselves in front of seven of Rhode Island’s 16 shots. Efficiency in front of goal was the name of the game for Phoenix but they won’t be able to rely on their opposition missing all three of their big chances on the night, including another missed pen from Albert Dikwa of all people.

Clay Holstad finds the top corner after a perfectly worked free kick! 🚀#WickedGoodGoal pic.twitter.com/adptGzsF2t
— Rhode Island FC (@RhodeIslandFC) April 27, 2024

For Rhode Island, while the finishing is a concern for sure, they will rue how easy they made it for Phoenix at times, particularly on the opening goal. Frank Nodarse gets caught out wide on the ball and Cuello does well twice to knock him off the ball before squaring to Cabral. Phoenix’s second is a lesson in “Why Panicking Doesn’t Help Anything.” RI defenders dive into big slide tackles to try to stop a Phoenix counter and essentially end up making it easier. Again, Phoenix is sharp on the ball but the overcommitment from Rhode Island turned a relatively innocuous move into a quite simple goal, again finished by Cabral. The bright spots are certainly just how good they were moving the ball between the lines and getting their scorers the ball in good positions. On a side note, watching Clay Holstad strike a football is one of the purest joys in the League. Denied 2 bangers on opening day by the woodwork, nothing could stop him putting the indirect free kick (given for GK time wasting) top bins. There are areas to work on for RI for sure. Between the couple defensive moments and not finishing some good opportunities, the bulk of play still held plenty of good signs for Khano Smith and Rhode Island.

Charleston Battery 6-0 Las Vegas Lights

A match that almost defies analysis. Nick Markanich hit a 37 minute hat trick (he’d end with four), Raiko Arozarena had one of the most insane goalkeeping performances I’ve ever seen and Ben Pirmann didn’t even think they played that well in the 6-0 win. On Markanich, while this four-goal, one assist performance is great on paper, he barely had to break a sweat with how Vegas self-sabotaged. The match was essentially over as a contest after Markanich’s opener in the fourth minute. So what can we take away from this, especially on the Battery side of things?

USL Academy product Mike Dean made his home debut in the match. *Image courtesy of Charleston Battery*

The first is that their attack is just in a wild vein of form. The quartet of Markanich, MD Myers, Emilio Ycaza and Juan Torres, with Aaron Molloy pulling the strings in midfield, is just on another planet compared to the rest of the USLC. Will it last forever? Finishing can be a fickle thing that way, but the amount of difference-makers up top suggests to me that it would be highly unlikely they all go cold at the same time. While this game did inflate Markanich’s total, he’s already on 14 goal involvements through nine appearances. He had 16 all last year. This system is emphasizing everything that makes him so good and he is absolutely seizing his opportunity to be the main man for Ben Pirmann. The Battery are laying down some serious markers as to just how high the ceiling in the East could go.

For Lights, they just have to chalk this one up as a bad day at the office but there is an underlying trouble beyond the absolutely bizarre goalkeeping performance from Arozarena. This was Charlie Adams’ second start of the season and in the games where they’ve tried to get him, JC Ngando, Valentin Noel and Coleman Gannon all on the field at once, they’ve looked poor. Two weeks ago Monterey Bay took advantage and this week the unit just didn’t function in the way it had before. Far be it from me to suggest dropping your marquee summer signing but the midfield balance looked a lot more solid before his introduction to the team. Charleston picked them apart for fun and on paper this should have been a pretty difficult midfield to play against. Dennis Sanchez’s job coming out of this will certainly be damage limitation but that makes three League losses in a row and this has the feel of a result that could undo what had been a promising start.

Indy Eleven 2-1 North Carolina

What a week for Indy Eleven. My thoughts on the Stadium situation with the City of Indianapolis are well documented on my twitter so please find them there. To sum up, Joe Hogsett and Don Garber can get in the bin.

Ok now that we’re past that, certain wins are more necessary than they are deserved. Much of this game was like watching siblings play-fight but one of them accidentally actually lands a substantial hit. There were 14 total shots in this game between both sides. Set pieces were predictably central to what went on and it was two Jack Blake free kicks (from nearly identical positions) that produced the two decisive goals for Indy. In open play, this team just isn’t doing anything particularly interesting. Seb Guenzatti is good, Cam Lindley is good, Douglas Martinez is good and yet at the end of these matches I’m just left feeling uninspired. Blake ends the game having had the most shots of anyone. That’s all well and good but with Martinez and Guenzatti in the side, surely they should be getting the bulk of service? They seem to end up either deep or wide and Blake ends up making the runs into the channels rather than them. Happy for Indy to get the win, happy for their fans to have some actual soccer to talk about, and Sean McAuley’s system just isn’t doing it for me.

Ditto almost all of that for North Carolina. Rather than retype all of it, I’ll just call attention to their creation and scoring issue. Julian Placias is still there but he comes off after 87 minutes without taking a shot. Louis Perez’s goal is a good one, and what a ball as well from Rafa Mentzingen. I’m going to make a bold statement and say this: Is Rodrigo Da Costa bringing enough to this North Carolina side to keep Oalex Anderson (involved in 25 USL1 goals last year) or Garrett McLaughlin (involved in 17 USL1 goals last year) on the bench? He’s managed two shots on target in eight appearances so far this year and just generally isn’t doing what I think we all imagined he would on arriving at NCFC. He is a brilliant footballer, and perhaps he will come into his own in blue and red but I’m personally ready to see an unleashed NCFC attack with Anderson back in it with more regularity. They simply aren’t creating enough chances and I think they have the answers already at the club.

Miami 2-1 San Antonio

There is something about Alen Marcina suffering a defeat at the hands of an opponent who was content without the ball, sat deep, defended well and broke on the counter that just feels poetic. Whichever match this was karma for, San Antonio will certainly come away from it frustrated. They created a handful of presentable chances but could not make any of them count apart from Luke Haakenson’s absolute banger of a flying volley. Machop Chol and Juan Agudelo were largely starved of service up top although Agudelo and Kevon Lambert had decent chances to get things back even at different points. San Antonio dropping points like this is not the end of the world but it does feel like an issue that they were frustrated relatively easily by Miami. Jorge Hernandez and Haakenson still ran much of the game in midfield but it was Miami’s chances when they went long and bypassed that area where SAFC does outclass them that caused the issue and will be surely talked about in review this week.

Luke with the one timer 👏#MIAvSA | 1 - 0 pic.twitter.com/eqAnVSCkU6
— San Antonio FC (@SanAntonioFC) April 27, 2024

Miami will be thrilled. They were seemingly in freefall given recent form and it looked like things were just going to be rough from here on out. This result will give the team back some much needed belief. This was first and foremost a match about Miami’s defense and they acquitted themselves well with the work they did without the ball. The incision up top, first by Frank Lopez and Luisinho, then by Luisinho’s replacement Mikey Lawrence, proved to be the ultimate difference between the sides. Antonio Nocerino won’t be getting any style points for this one but ultimately it is job done and a much-needed one at that.We won’t be going too far, though, down the line of questioning that begins with “Why was Nocerino wearing a training pinnie?”

Pittsburgh Riverhounds 2-0 Detroit City

Is it really happening again? Is Bob Lilley really turning a team that was seemingly lost in the opening five matches into another genuine contender? These are fine margins in professional sports and while I think Pittsburgh still have question marks up top, they are seemingly coming together well as a unit. Getting out to a lead against this Detroit side was always likely to give them an advantage and they grabbed it with both hands once they had it. Lilley went to the drawing board to cook up a new front two to account for Edward Kizza’s absence. Kazaiah Sterling and Kenardo Forbes formed the partnership that is still working on finding their rhythm. Robbie Mertz ultimately put a cross on an absolute plate for Patrick Hogan to head home after a sort of head tennis sequence in Detroit’s penalty area. Then the penalty is…soft I’ll say. Etou does superbly well to get into the box and I do think there is contact on him by Devon Amoo-Mensah’s trailing foot but he also leaves his leg in so your guess is as good as mine. But that aside Pittsburgh did enough to hand Detroit their first loss. Bradley Sample did well in midfield next to Danny Griffin and Mertz as Lilley seems to have found a bit more balance in the side as he continues to work to find that winning formula.

For Detroit, this is a tough one to take as your first loss of the season. Detroit fans won’t have a kind view of the penalty award and can feel even more aggrieved, in this humble author’s opinion, about Stephen Carroll’s red card. He goes into the challenge with force but the contact is essentially nothing like what the referee assumed he saw. There is enough mitigating evidence here to suggest that Detroit will likely be ok. They struggled to move Pittsburgh around over the course of the night as Lilley almost never loses hold of a lead like this. Ali Coote and Ben Morris didn’t have their recent success in disrupting on the edges against a disciplined side. James Murphy also looked human for the first time this season as he was managed well by pressure from Mertz and Griffin who put on a bit of a clinic in control and managing pressure. Danny Dichio’s Detroit City definitely won’t be hitting any panic buttons after one loss but they were not immune to the Lilleying.

Birmingham Legion 0-3 Memphis 901

They call this Derby “Southern Harm” but on the night it was Memphis who inflicted all of the pain onto Birmingham Legion. I said last week that this Memphis team had a finishing problem and they did their level best to make that look ridiculous. I’m not sure if Bruno Lapa tried out a new pair of boots or if it was pure spite for his former team that propelled him but he was clinical, taking both of the big opportunities presented to him. Memphis’ attack was primarily driven in quick transitions as Birmingham had a bulk of the possession. 901 was able to find gaps on the counter and Marlon down the flank in particular caused loads of issues in between the lines. Tyler Deric also had his best game in a 901 shirt, making six saves, a couple of which are very good. My concern remains for Memphis. This return of three goals comes off of only seven shots and there is a good case to be made that Legion should have put away one of their big chances, of which they had a fair few.

From Birmingham’s perspective, once you get over Lapa’s wild celebrations at the home of his former team, it is a tough Derby loss to swallow as you weren’t actually that bad. Defensively there are questions to be asked as they got carved apart twice and conceded a banger that you can do little about but overall I thought the performance was ok and they did well in the buildup to create opportunities that unfortunately Deric was a match for. What you could take away as a concern without a doubt would be just how quiet Tyler Pasher was. Zero chances created and just one shot feels a fair way off what you would want to see from the Canadian playmaker. Prosper Kassim continues to be a handful for opposing defenses but his shots on the night just proved too tame. Tough result for Birmingham but they should take some credit that it was a bit of a smash and grab from Memphis.

Louisville City 6-0 Hartford Athletic

While the Vegas 6-0 loss was a comedy of errors, Hartford’s 6-0 loss in Louisville was an example of just how bad things can get when there is a tactical mismatch. Hartford without Jay Chapman next to Anderson Asiedu looked an absolute mess. We know that Brendan Burke is asking those holding midfielders to do a lot of defensive work on any given day and last week we saw how a team can exploit that by operating well in wide areas. Lou City are arguably one of the best teams at turning possession out wide into goalscoring opportunities and this outside-in approach worked a treat. Don’t get me wrong, there are some lovely goals here and it isn’t all down to Hartford not having answers, but the reality is that Hartford’s plan of playing four really good attackers all at once may be a luxury that he can’t afford against opposition like Louisville. This match could have been 6-0 by halftime and in all honesty, Hartford is lucky that this one wasn’t more ugly.

For Louisville, they go from strength to strength. Jake Morris looks absolutely unlocked in this wingback role. He ends the night having created the most chances of any player on the pitch (four) and two assists. He was exactly the weapon that was able to exploit Hartford’s lack of defensive cover in wide areas as they looked to cover so much ground. Taylor Davila and Elijah Wynder are very good as a two in midfield despite being so young as a pair. Plus, Louisville did all this without a Wilson Harris goal. The attack is absolutely flying for Louisville right now and they fire this salvo back at the Battery after their 6-0 earlier that day. The top of the East is very, very good right now.

Tampa Bay Rowdies 3-0 New Mexico United

Not dissimilar to Louisville, Tampa Bay got their 3-0 win over New Mexico by spreading the play out wide. That and they pressed like crazy. New Mexico struggled with the press early on and Cal Jennings’ second goal of the night was a direct result of the pressure. It isn’t shocking that Rowdies approached New Mexico similar to how Lou took on Hartford because so much of what New Mexico does well goes through Marco Micaletto and Zico Bailey. When they weren’t getting pressured in their own half, they were getting spaced out and then ended up running back toward their own goal as Rowdies played through the lines. Micaletto concedes the penalty in just such a situation. Blake Bodily and Eddie Munjoma were predictably very good here but the added threat of the wide center backs running forward into space occupied all of NMU’s attackers in having to track back as well. Jennings and Manuel Arteaga did what they do best which is put the ball in the net. They created chance after chance and probably should have ended this one closer to five or six goals rather than three. Jordan Farr deserves a shout too as he snuffed out the couple really great chances that NMU did seize. Comfortable wins for the presumed best 3 out East, is this the standard being set?

For New Mexico, this is a tough place to play and tactically Eric Quill just didn’t quite get it right. Adapting to how Rowdies would deploy offensively became difficult and NMU just never really got to grips with how to slow them down. They concede five big chances to Rowdies and they were lucky to not be punished more by such a good group of attackers. Dayonn Harris was active up top and was a bit unlucky not to score, but him, Jacobo Reyes and Nicky Hernandez were ultimately limited by a good back three for TB. Greg Hurst was starved for service most of the night as TB’s midfield engagement of NMU’s midfield duo made playing through the lines extremely difficult. In the end, Arturo Astorga and Chris Gloster were just a bit overmatched by Rowdies’ approach out wide and they couldn’t cope as they had too many runners to deal with. NMU still create a handful of quality chances and if not for Farr this could have been more interesting. This ends a run of three straight League wins for NMU but they have a great chance to bounce back next week against the reeling Las Vegas Lights.

El Paso Locomotive 0-1 Tulsa

Sigh………………………Ok, fine.

Tulsa seized hold of a valuable and desperately needed three points in El Paso by simply having a clean game. They weren’t spectacular but they limited El Paso’s attack significantly, especially before they ultimately took the lead. They were content to let El Paso have the ball and stayed in their shape until they triggered the press. Edwin Laszo and Justin Portillo managed this extremely well and dictated play against an El Paso midfield that is still struggling for balance. On the goal, the simplicity of the approach was on full display and Tulsa sensing an opportunity to get forward turned into the moment that won them the game. Alex Dalou lays off a ball that was played up to him by Bradley Bourgeois from deep. Blaine Ferri receives it and sees Patrick Seagrist in loads of space as Javier Nevarez is up field for Locomotive. From there it is simple as Seagrist crosses for Boubacar Diallo who scuffs home the finish. Start central, get wide, goal is a formula a lot of teams have exploited against El Paso this year and Mario Sanchez had his Tulsa team on it from the first whistle. A disciplined performance from a team that was still trying to grasp at its identity in the early season.

There are three big things to talk about at El Paso. One, the midfield balance, using an attacker as a “False 10” in a midfield. It makes sense on paper, right? Liam Rose as a DM, Eric Calvillo box-to-box and then either Tumi Moshobane or in this case Joaquin Rivas as the most attacking of the three. Unfortunately the way it has transpired it actually robs that attacker of doing the things they are best at because they have to do the work of an actual central midfielder. Second is the full backs. Once again you can probably say that Lucas Stauffer and Javier Nevarez are the best players for Locomotive on the night and yet all that good play led to precious little in terms of goalscoring opportunities. Third is the attacking pair of Justin Dhillon and Amando Moreno. Dhillon knows exactly his role, win long balls and knock them down to bring other people into the game. The problem is that him and Moreno are often not close enough to each other to interact this way or, if they are, it becomes Moreno v. the whole defense as he tries to sprint in behind by himself. Eight matches in, two points and only six goals while conceding 12. Something has to give at El Paso. The names on the teamsheet are great, but it seems clear that they aren’t operating at the top of their potential in this system or at this moment.

Oakland Roots 0-2 Colorado Springs Switchbacks

Well I had a whole thing written up and now I’m rewriting because it was just announced that Oakland Roots have sacked Noah Delgado following this loss at home to Colorado Springs. It’s funny because I would have said Delgado won’t be comfortable at 7th in the table but surely there are hotter seats than this one? That said, Oakland has pretty significant pull with the prominence of their brand and they might be talking to someone that they think can make a significant instant impact.

For Delgado’s legacy, he ends his time at Oakland always feeling just on the cusp of something really significant. His average points per match of 1.22 just highlights the inconsistency that the team suffered from. What I will say is that I never felt like Delgado was holding back the team but rather that the team needed more quality pieces to gain consistency. The counterpoint here may be that Roots were looking for someone that could overperform with the squad they were given and I have to think that they have a candidate in mind if they pulled the trigger on this so early in the year. With so many new coaches in the League this year, it will be interesting how this move shakes things up. There’s no way we see Neill Collins in the Bay Area…is there?

Switchbacks getting overshadowed here but the match itself was another step in the right direction for CS. I said last week that it looked like Maalique Foster was enjoying himself for the first time all year. It’s safe to say he enjoyed this one too, grabbing both assists and he probably should have had a third when Yosuke Hanya shot straight at Paul Blanchette at the end of the first half. The danger signs were there but the linkups that started to form between Foster, Ronaldo Damus and Koa Santos really started to stretch Oakland’s defending in wide areas. It was Foster that found a pocket between Niall Logue and Memo Diaz in the buildup to Juan Tejada’s opener. It was rinse and repeat on the second, with Foster charging into the space vacated on Oakland’s left before cutting back for Aiden Rocha to finish. Overall CS defended relatively well, conceding zero Opta-defined “big chances” and they controlled the flow of the game well in midfield. Things are truly looking up in Colorado.

Orange County 2-0 Monterey Bay

Orange County won a match they outshot an opponent in! I’m thrilled for them because now the Breaking Bad memes can go on a temporary hiatus. They did such a good job of moving around a Monterey Bay team that had three wins from their last three League matches. Thomas Amang will be happy he got two presentable chances in the first six minutes because he made an absolute mess of the first and arguably scored the more difficult of the two. Amang channeling his inner Darwin Nunez apparently. Despite the clean sheet, this was not a masterclass from Orange County defensively. If I walk away with a concern here, it is the defense on crosses, either from open play or set pieces. Monterey Bay won 63% of the aerial duels across the whole match at either end and while they logged just two big chances on the stat sheet, I could point to four or five chances in the first half alone that were dangerous or nearly moments for Monterey. So OC getting better from a creative standpoint did apparently lead to some defensive frailty and they will need to shore that up if they want to continue getting points from these matches.

Monterey Bay shouldn’t take this loss overly hard. They were a bit all over the place in the opening minutes which is just atypical for them in the extreme. Up front, they had their chances and Tristan Trager and Jesus Enriquez will be wondering what might have been on a different day as they could have put MB out of sight by halftime. Kai Greene will also be wondering how his shot at an open net somehow halted at the base of the post. That said, I do think MB were a bit overreliant on crossing as a way to get into the penalty area. In their defense it worked 150 times (ok maybe not that many) but things got a bit lax as they pushed for an equalizer and tired later on and OC made them pay with fresher legs and calm efficiency. Tough to take for MB but again I don’t think alarm bells should be ringing after that.

Sacramento Republic 3-1 Loudoun United

I’m convinced that Sacramento Republic’s tendency to let opponents hang around despite dominating could be the subject of clinical study. They put together one of the best team moves I’ve seen from any team in the League all season in the buildup to Russell Cicerone’s opener and then contrive to concede a literal farce of a goal at the other end. I’m convinced they are just trying to entertain because the highs this team is capable of are off the charts. They get the job done eventually, even if they do make it exciting in the process. They create six big chances and miss four of them, presumably because Trevor Amann wasn’t on the end of them. He does assist Kieran Phillips, Huddersfield native and former Everton and Huddersfield product, on his first goal of the night where he came off the bench to show everyone how to stop joking around and put the ball in the back of the net. On the night, Nick Ross and Rodrigo Lopez is the linkup between midfield and attack that teams dream of. Both classy on the ball and so tidy that it is damn near impossible to press them. The only weakness in this team is that they have a tendency to not be ruthless as they need to be. They get over the line this time but the fact they have three draws is strictly down to them not putting teams away, which is a very scary thought that there is a further gear or two to come from this team.

For Loudoun, they get absolutely smashed and did enough to hang in there to the end. The first half was actually a great contest and Florian Valot continues to look like an absolutely genius piece of business from the club. He’s the ultimate #8 in that he wins 75% of his tackles and makes 14 entry passes into the final third. Just a lovely player who is a joy to watch. Pressure from Abdellatif Aboukoura, Riley Bidois and ultimately Wesley Leggett make the difference in the buildup to the goal but the adjustments that Mark Briggs made late ultimately proved decisive and Loudoun just never felt likely to get anything from this in the second half. Simply ran out of gas. But make no mistake Loudoun will still be a force in the middle of the pack out East, they just so happened to run up against two of the best teams in the League two weeks running. Hopefully Ryan Martin is in a different fit for the match against Detroit on Saturday though.

- Phil Baki