WHO: Real Monarchs, 4th seed, USL Championship Western Conference
WHAT: The USL Championship Final, where the teams battle it out to see who will win the USL Championship Final Trophy, and definitely not the USL Cup anymore.
WHEN: Sunday, November 17, 2019, 7:30 p.m.
WHERE: Dr. Mark & Cindy Lynn Stadium, 339 Byrne Avenue, Louisville, KY 40209
WATCH: I don’t know if you heard, but tickets are sold out. If you’re willing to pay wayyyy more money on the secondary market to get one, more power to you. Otherwise, you’ll be able to watch it on TV on ESPN2, you can (I think) still stream it on ESPN+ but more likely WatchESPN, and you can listen to the radio broadcast on 840 WHAS AM.
MARCH: The Tailgaters are going to be out there when you get there. It doesn’t even matter what time that is. They’ll be there. Apparently UofL says we can start invading their various parking lots at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, so let’s try and stick to that.
Traditionally, the Coopers tailgate over on the Floyd Street side of Cardinal Stadium, so that’s probably where the March will start, at around 7 if I had to guess. We can’t shut down Floyd Street so it’ll have to be on the sidewalks going toward Little Lynn Stadium, but they’re pretty wide so that should be fine.
Wear purple, be loud, dress warmly in something that’s purple and also loud, and be there for nuestros Morados!
WHO, AGAIN? Real Monarchs kind of flew under the radar in the Western Conference this season, as did just about anyone else who wasn’t named Phoenix Rising. But the Lil’ Butterflies, who had a pretty rocky start to 2019, kind of hung around the better side of the table out west for most of the second half of the season and only lost four times after June 1.
The West, as kind of usual, seems to have a lot more parity in the middle of the table. Monarchs finished the season with 56 points, a whopping 20 points out of first, and just eleven points away from 11th. But they ended the season strong, winning four of their last five matches, one of which was a 1-2 away win at Phoenix Rising.
In the playoffs, they beat a good Orange County team 6-2 in the conference quarters, knocked off Phoenix away 1-2 again in the semis, and then hosted upstart El Paso Locomotive in a 2-1 extra time win in the conference final last week.
This is a good team. The Real Salt Lake organization is one of the more structurally sound in the US, though not quite as productive talent-wise as say FC Dallas or New York Red Bulls. They’re nonetheless effective, and the Monarchs have been a playoff team all five years of their USL existence. You may recall they won the regular season points title in 2017. However, this is their best ever playoff run, even if it wasn’t their best ever team.
They’ve got offense in spades. They’ve scored the second-most goals in the league this season with 81 (10 in the playoffs). They’re efficient, with a 19% conversion rate on the shots they took in the season. That’s exploded to 43.5% in the playoffs. Even for a small sample size, that’s really, really good. They’re fast. Konrad Plewa, Noah Powder and Kalen Ryden generally start in their back three, and are all burners. UofL alumnus Tate Schmidt has really come on as a wingback with pace to spare. Douglas Martinez would have been my player to watch, as he came on about halfway through the season to become the team’s leading scorer, but he slapped a guy at the end of the conference finals last week so he’s suspended for Sunday’s match.
Louisville City will have to be mindful of the counter-attack. This is a team that gets its goals in the box more often than not, and their team speed will be a problem. More than that, though, Louisville City will have to continue its trend of patient and opportunistic play that’s been on display over the course of these playoffs.
I think they’re up for it. It might have taken longer for me than for others, but I’m a believer in this team. They’ve demonstrated so much resolve, steel, and guts over the course of a difficult season that it’s hard to think they’d spit it out now. Hackworth and the players have managed to hit their stride at the optimal time in 2019. Not the spring, almost definitely not midsummer, but playoff time.
Perhaps that was the plan all along, to build toward a hot streak in November. Whatever it was, City is playing some of its best soccer of 2019 now. So long as they keep up what’s been going since August, we should be partying again at around 9:30 or so Sunday night and on into Monday morning.
We’re used to this by now. Let’s go do what we do. Win the USL Championship Final Trophy. VAMOS MORADOS.
