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Some teams I've been talking about have been ones I've been talking about since the season started. Louisville City is still a compelling team who won last season's eastern conference, and a star youth player of theirs, Josh Wynder (Center-back), just recently got called up for the US men's national team. They've been getting a lot of attention even outside of this blog and usual USL Championship punditry holes on account of that -- clearly he's a player to watch, and thus on a team to watch.

OK, but the league has 24 teams between the two conferences and I'm mostly spending my time talking about the top 4 or so teams in each of them. That's only about a third of the league. Sure, it's not much of a soccer match if we don't have at least one other team to talk about in the process, but then at most that's 2/3 of the league? What about the 8-or-so teams I've mostly ignored discussing? What is it about them that isn't all that interesting, or is hard to write about, or what?

Detroit City FC

Detroit City is a recent introduction to the USL, though they're not a new team, having spent previous years in other leagues and finally moving to USLC last year, after 2 seasons with NISA (seasons before that were played with the NPSL, starting in 2012). Detroit City's fan groups have a reputation as particularly intense -- the Northern Guard describes themselves as "America's most hated supporters' group", though to be clear they seem to be people of decent moral character despite what some of the skull iconography might suggest. Mostly just rude and loud, and coming out in enough numbers to be in the top half of attendance their USLC debut year.

The problem is that their team isn't quite performing the way the supporters are. The only reason they're not at the bottom of the east conference is that they have a point from last weekend's draw against FC Tulsa (despite being short-handed) and having an extra game played over the current last place team, Hartford Athletic.

Their games simply aren't that inspiring to look at in a numbers game either. These games don't produce a lot of chances either way. They get only 1-2 chances on target in most games, and almost all of their games end with a score of 0-1 against them, with a couple 0-0 and 1-1 draws breaking up the monotony. The one exception to all of this was a strong 3-1 defeat away at El Paso against a floundering Locomotive, whose defensive performance had been, over a series of games, questionable at best. That's been their only win this season.

If you went to a game, I think you'd have a good time, but it's hard to look at them and think they're accomplishing much of what they set out to do. But let's look at their last couple games.

Despite a shaky start to their season, Tampa Bay Rowdies have been doing a good job of getting back on track and are currently in 4th place with 9 games played. A competitive Loudoun United are only below them by 1 point with a game in hand, so they could find themselves pegged back another place as we get a few more games played, but they're still in a very confident position in the season right now. However, you can see them put forward a good, if basic effort against Detroit City here, and it's there that you can start to see some of the issues.

Detroit City really aren't doing much in that video to actually try to shut down Rowdies' offensive plays. Not very tight positioning or marking, and not a lot of interest in regaining possession. Basic work that, thanks to a confident goalkeeper, are stopping the chances when they do get there. Well, most of them. The goal in this game was the result of a player out of position -- or more precisely, his hand. Giving a way a penalty, they concede the goal, and aren't able to do anything to get the ball well on target in future chances.

OK, and this week?

Well, they get off to an early goal. It's a confident low strike at the edge of the box. Well-placed and, go figure, the goalkeeper can do nothing to stop it. Given that they've been struggling to find the net in most of their chances, it's a sign things might be starting to go better for them, possibly.

But that's about all that can be said in their favor. Guess how they conceded a goal. If you guessed "Just like the week before, a defensive player badly positioned in the box gave away a penalty due to a handball violation" you'd be completely correct. It happened earlier in the game so they arguably had plenty of chances to get back ahead, but they never managed. The last 10 minutes (15 with stoppage time included) had them playing down a man, as one of their attacking players, already on a yellow, got a second for a nasty challenge against Tulsa's goalkeeper. For a team that already has been having trouble finding the back of the net, this was the kiss of death for a chance at a win.

So that's Detroit City in a nutshell -- a team that still feels lacking in discipline and organization, and needing a lot of work to get back into a competitive state.

Indy XI

Indy XI have played one fewer game than Detroit City but remain ahead of them in the table. Their reputation in previous seasons is being a team that is also there, and this season hasn't been terribly different with their 2-3-3 record (WDL), the sort of record you'd associate with a team being throughly middling.

To be fair, their fans have a sense of humor about this and their rivalry against Louisville City -- who, again, are certainly a strong team in their own right -- is honored with one of the funnier websites you're likely to see any time soon. And, to be fair, Indy XI had beaten Louisville in their most recent encounter.

This run of form is pretty consistent with their last year as well, where finishing 9th of 14 with one point less than 8th place (Tulsa FC) put them firmly into the "just under mediocre, losing half the games they played" category, and being well out of playoff contention at the season's end. This consistent middlingness means talking about Indy XI is like talking about the length of a yardstick -- you know how long it is already, it's only there to make comparisons with other objects. So Loudoun, Pittsburgh Riverhounds, Louisville, and Tampa Bay Rowdies are all examples of good teams because they're better than Indy XI, and Detroit City is a bad team because they're worse than Indy XI.

Speaking of Pittsburgh Riverhounds, they're the team that Indy XI played two weekends ago. To be clear, Riverhounds are a strong team. As of writing (late night on Wednesday for this section) they're the first USL team to perform an Open Cup upset in the round of 32, specifically against New England Revolution -- this might change as games happen over Thursday. But right now we're talking about Indy XI, and how did they fare against them?

You can tell pretty quickly that Indy are a much more confident team defensively -- especially given that Pittsburgh have one of the stronger offenses in the league. The goal that they do get has to come from a breakaway counterattack. Still, given the number of good shots that Pittsburgh takes that don't go in, you can tell they're much more capable and prepared for defensive positioning, making it much harder for balls into the box to actually find a target. When the ball does get through, they provide enough coverage that the goalkeeper can get into a good position so that the ball is sent almost directly to him.

Meanwhile their equalizing goal comes on a bit of happenstance, as the Pittsburgh keeper tries to punch the ball out, fails to keep his balance while knocking it to an attacker, who is thus able to chip it into the goal with little resistance. If moments like these are the ones that decide the fate of a game, there's a fair argument that your team isn't being creative enough offensively to be consistently competitive. And with 7 goals scored, they're tied for second-lowest in the conference (Detroit City is, unsurprisingly, the lowest) -- but the other team they're tied with is Louisville City, who, again, has a defender with the USMNT, and thus remain competitive despite that issue.

And what about last weekend, where they played against Loudoun?

We're going to talk about this game again in my next post about this weekend's games because it really shouldn't have ended the way it did -- at around 1:50 in the video that is unmistakably a goal for Loudoun. If we ignore that goal we get into the other reason that such a middling team like Indy is hard to write about: they're inconsistent.

Note that Indy gets their winning goal in almost the exact same way that Pittsburgh got their goal the previous week's game, a breakaway and a shot that is chipped up enough to clear the keeper. They're one hell of a weird, bendy meterstick, because directly compared against these two now very strong teams, they're holding their own in each encounter, drawing one and winning the other (even if the means by which they outscored their opponent is suspect). It's hard to come up with any other narrative than "they're in the middle and they might be good enough to win this game but probably not the next one". For some people not tied to any other teams in the league, that could make them a really interesting team, but it makes them damn near impossible to try to draw a narrative line around them other than that.

As a fun fact, Indy XI aren't named as such for the number of men on the field or the number of laps they run (unlike the Indy 500) but apparently named for a specific union regiment from that region that fought in the Civil War. Always worth props in my book.

RGV Toros

The Rio Grande Valley Toros are another team that's difficult to write about for almost the exact same reason as the other two teams. Played 8 games, scored 6 goals, and that's the lowest in the western conference with the caveat that most other teams in the league have played 9. They're currently in 10th position with 1 win, 5 draws, and 2 losses. They're arguably more consistent than Indy XI are, but it's consistency that produces slightly worse football.

But once again they're just not a terribly inspiring team due to their lack of wins and lack of scoring. Their game two weeks ago against Monterey Bay is a key example of that, where nobody scored but 6 cards were given.

And to be clear, especialy for a bottom-side team, that's quite an accomplishment. Monterey Bay has an incredibly strong counterattack that has won them the highest (for the whole league, not just the western conference) number of goals scored. Being able to shut them out is no mean feat. But the lack of much of any meaningful opportunity -- 1 shot on target each for both teams -- suggests a game whose non-highlight sections were either boring or outright frustrating. Hard to watch and surely even harder to write about.

Like even now I'm like "I just mentioned two teams who are historically bland and currently failing to score, and these guys are the same. What more is there to say?" If you're not familiar with the league, and want to see the interesting parts of it, you're usually not going to find it looking at RGV. This result is only interesting with the context of knowing who Monterey Bay is and how they play, so of course I'd have to talk about them first.

As with Indy one looks at this team and comes to the conclusion that their bigger issue is one with offensive consistency more than defensive. They're simply not scoring enough for their defensive skill to matter -- they're losing games anyway.

What about the game from the previous weekend? That one was up against New Mexico United and was one of several games played in and around the southwest that didn't happen on Saturday or Sunday but on Cinco de Mayo. They hosted the game. (Not that it's particularly relevant, but we missed most of this game past like the first 30 minutes of radio broadcast coverage, because we were attending the Isotopes home game, hoping in vain to get the special jerseys for the first 3000 fans -- little did we expect people would spend all day, as in starting around 9:30 in the morning for a game at 7, lining up waiting to get in for them.)

And once again we get a team that's just inconsistent enough to really screw up the narrative.

"The scoreless streak is over!" yells the announcer in the seventh minute. New Mexico have been playing some atypically successful attacking soccer this year (previous seasons have seen their technique focus on getting early goals and then holding back in defense to maintain a lead) but have had a pretty poor defense this year, letting in a lot of goals. Some of this has been the result of an aging starting backline that aren't as fast as they used to be, and some of it has been unfortunate field conditions against turf-field playing teams like Oakland Roots and Monterey Bay Unioin causing literal defensive slip-ups. They've had much better success at their home field, and their recent win against the formerly mighty Orange County had their main defensive ding being an attempt at a clearance that ended up being an own goal; after that game, a 3-1 victory for United, Orange County replaced their head coach.

So this atypical form for RGV is maybe not that surprising in context. What is surprising though is how quickly a solidly-established 2-goal lead goes from an obvious win to a very late draw. A deep failure to maintain control of the game, probably the result of some late-game subs by New Mexico that brought on fresher, younger legs. Toros made defensive subs around that time as well, so I think this comes down to a matter of squad depth and preparedness from possibly less-experienced players. The ones the Toros brought on just don't seem as well-organized or prepared.

My brother had his headphones so was able to listen to the radio broadcast of the game on his phone as it happened. The ~16K people all at the baseball field choked out most wireless signal so it was nearly impossible to follow the game online. While a part of me believed the late-game 2-hit equalizer was likely even as the first half presented a languid United failing to get on the ball and try for challenges, on the car radio driving to baseball, it sounded too ridiculous to assert.

The sad thing about the Toros is that they were at least a decent team the previous two years, making the playoffs and winning a playoff game each time. This falling-off is a very recent struggle, though it's not quite as shocking as Orange County's descent from league winners.

Before we move on, I'll note that this is another game I want to look at for my next USLC post, for the same reason as the Loudoun game.

Las Vegas Lights

The Lights have had a run of form since their first season in 2018 that echoes a lot of what I've said about Detroit City, though they don't share the playstyle. The Lights can be interesting, because they favor a more aggressive counter-attacking approach, but with this season it's not translating into great results, because they're still yet to win a game. They're certainly scoring -- with 8 goals over 8 games they're certainly pulling off a better attack than Detroit City -- but they're also letting in a ton of goals as well, leading to a result of 5 draws and 3 losses, with those losses being done in their last 4 recent fixtures (a draw against San Antonio 3 games ago being their lone respite from this losing streak).

So both of their last 2 games have been pretty lousy. Is there anything we can gather from their performance? We'll start from the less-recent game, which was on the 5th against Charleston Battery, at home. Given that's when a lot of other teams played their most recent games, you might guess that squad rotation and fatigue are playing at least a little part of their issues (indeed, their next game came only two days later, also at home, in the return fixture against San Antonio).

Look, say what you will about Lights, compared to these other teams they have some real chutzpah. Look at that attempted shot from half-field. That's so incredibly close considering -- just the right amount of power, but at the wrong angle. This is something I've come to expect out of them, and it gets results more often than you might otherwise expect given how rarely teams make these kinds of plays. Ultimately one comes to the conclusion -- the Lights are crazy enough to do just about anything, they will, and they often worked...before this season. I think teams might be starting to get wise to their zanier anticsbased on their results. Remember, they still haven't won a game this season, and they're the only team with this ignominious distinction.

What's most tragic about this result is that they had a great opportunity to still grab a point from it with the late-game penalty call they received. Decent power, but no real direction on the shot, and it was pretty easily stopped. "Tragic" remains a good word for this performance, a sad ending that the team had the power to keep from happening, but couldn't.

And a couple days later on San Antonio, how did they look? If you've been paying attention to these posts you're probably guessing "not well", given that San Antonio has been a consistent powerhouse this season.

Given that San Antonio scored in the first five minutes of play, that would be the right answer. An unfortunate giveaway and still more of the same defensive unreadiness we've seen from these lower-tier teams, but what a lovely curve San Antonio's Adeniran gets on that shot.

Preston Tabort-Etaka does get one back for the Lights, at least. I'm pretty familiar with his style of play and it's a perfect fit for the wacky hijinks team that is the Lights -- he's a little greedy with the ball but he likes taking wild chances with it and here a low shot from the corner of the goal box gets Lights back in the game, for a while at least. At the end of the first half he nearly got a second, but SA's keeper, Jordan Farr was prepared for it.

I tend to think of Lights as a real glass-cannon team and the utter defensive failure, where the defense has Oluwaseyi extremely tightly marked but the defender trues to get a hold of the ball while marking and winds up failing to keep marking or make contact with the ball and thus gives an obvious scoring opportunity which SAFC capitalize on. This doesn't look like a failure of basic athleticism -- again, he was being very tightly marked, nowhere near on a breakaway -- but still a very significant breakdown of what I would consider basic, fundamental soccer skills, a very egregious mental lapse.

That to me is the kind of team that Lights is -- the perfect subject for a Dorktown-style retrospective one of these days The right kind of crazy and flawed that makes for good commentary. So they're not exactly hard to write about in general, but with the record they have right now, they're not doing a lot that makes them a team to write about right now. But if you want to see what the soccer equivalent of shitposting looks like, they might be worth a look.

And for now I think that's enough writeup for a USLC roundup post. Expect another one within the next couple days (it will be easier to make progress on since all that remains of this week's open cup festivities after tonight is the next round draw). Speaking of which, as I'm finishing up this post, New Mexico United is failing to get the cupset against Austin FC, down 2 with 15 minutes to play. As we've seen in this post they have come back from a game like this, but Austin FC (MLS) and RGV are still two very different teams.


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