WHO: Charleston Battery, 4W-5D-2L, 17 points, 9th place Eastern Conference
WHAT: A regular season USL Championship match
WHEN: Saturday, June 1, 2019, 7:00 p.m.
WHERE: Louisville Slugger Field, 401 E. Main Street, Louisville, KY 40202
WATCH: AT THE GAME! The weather will be good again! They sell beer there! It’s Pride Night! So you should go. But if you can’t because your son has a golf tournament in town at the exact same damn time, you can still watch on TV on WBKI-58, stream it on ESPN+, or listen on (probably) 790 AM WKRD.
MARCH:
PRE-MATCH MARCH
About 30-40 minutes prior to kickoff we’ll start the March to the Match. Join us as we march around the tailgate lot, up Preston St, and into the east entrance. Flags will be waving, smoke will be popping, and we’ll be chanting and singing the whole way!
POST-MATCH CELEBRATION
After the match concludes, we have beers at Against the Grain which is conveniently located right outside the Slugger Field gate. Make sure you ask for a pint of the Coopers rotating charity tap! $0.50 from every pour (on home match days) goes to Shirley’s Way, a most excellent local charity helping families of those afflicted with cancer.
WHO, AGAIN? It’s Charleston, the most consistently and yet inexplicably underrated USL East team ever. They’re quietly just floating around the playoff positions with no one paying them any mind, until they pop up out of nowhere and beat Nashville 3-1 back in April and then just quietly pick up points again for a few weeks.
They’re not on a great run of form at the moment, having only won just once in their last five matches, and have been held scoreless in their last two affairs against St. Louis and Indy XI. The Battery are giving up about a goal per game on the season (11) but are scoring at a better clip with 14 in the bag so far. As usual, they’re a bit regressive in their style of play, focusing on defending their own net and doing what they can with what the opposition defense gives them. It’s a fairly effective tactic, as they’ve converted 12.8% of their shots into goals, a good number.
Charleston average 45% possession so far. They hit 27% of their crosses and win 61% of their dribbles. That tells you that they’re fairly clinical when they do have the ball, even if it’s not a lot. This is exactly the kind of team that gave Louisville City fits earlier in the season, so Morados will have to really focus on their assignments the entire match.
For City, enough guys got rotated over the week for the Open Cup that something close to a first-choice roster should be available. Expect to see Spencer up top, Speedy in the middle, Oscar on the left, and Speedy and Magnus in the middle. I don’t think Ownby and DelPiccolo are ready for starting minutes just yet, but don’t be surprised to see them come on around the hour mark. I don’t know if Lucky is available for selection or not, but let’s hope he is because Cuatro and Jane put in long shifts on Wednesday and starting them again on Saturday wouldn’t be ideal. The same question arises at fullback, as Pat McMahon and Shaun Francis both put in full 90s. Napo’s red card suspension also brings up the question of who else starts in midfield. We’ll just have to see, I guess.
In any event, it’s going to be a tough game, and one Morados really need to win to keep the pace in the East. Let’s get it done.
VAMOS MORADOS, VAMOS A GANAR
