Louisville City traveled to Charleston on Saturday and picked up their second away win in a row after going nearly four months without one. It was a hard-fought three points, too, as Morados left it late to score the game winner on the spongiest pitch we’ve seen since Cincinnati came to Slugger about this time last year.
City started a pretty similar eleven to last week, the only change being Sunny Jane starting in place for Brian Ownby who was injured against Atlantwo. Paco Craig also started in place of Alexis Souahy. No, he didn’t pick up a yellow card in this match.
The Battery were coming off a more-difficult-than-expected midweek fixture against Loudoun United, and rotated out five players against City. The match was delayed after some thundershowers hit Daniel Island before the game, and almost as soon as it kicked off you could tell conditions were going to be a factor in the match. Puddles were clearly visible between the circles on both sides of the field. Just about every pass or shot was accompanied by a rooster-tail behind either the ball, the player making the play, or both.
Charleston tried to take home-field advantage early, with Arthur Bosua nearly netting a header off a Dante Marini Cross in the 2nd minute, but it was just high. Not a great start. About four minutes later, a blocked LouCity free kick turned into a Battery counter-attack that resulted in an early deficit for the visitors. Jay Bolt caught the rebound off the free kick on the left side and delivered a really good ball over the top that hit a puddle and died right in front of the onrushing Atulla Guerra. He couldn’t have glued it to Guerra’s foot and made better service. Sunny Jane nearly caught up with the Battery No. 10 but missed his tackle, and Guerra made no mistake with a quality finish past Hubbard to make it 1-0.
Charleston was exactly where it wanted to be in the match, and it was only seven minutes old. City still asked questions, though, and put together some good attacking play resulting in three decent looking shots in the next five minutes before the game bogged down again. Just before the half hour mark, LouCity began some nice interplay between the right side of Charleston’s box and the right touch line, one pass offending the Battery enough to knock Antoine Hoppenot out of his cleats and earn a penalty. Magnus Rasmussen coolly converted the spot kick to even things up.
The second half seemingly featured more fouls, yellow cards and substitutions than shots, but in the end some real quality work from LouCity subs Napo Matsoso, Luke Spencer and George Davis IV resulted in a great pass from Luke to Cuatro, whose left-footed finish over Joe Kuzminsky is one of the more difficult scores you’ll see this season. Time was called not long after, and City emerged the victors for the third game in a row.
Morados had 63% possession and completed nearly 83% of their passes, an impressive number given the playing conditions. They attempted 557 passes, approaching double Charleston’s 320. City outshot the Battery 15-6, and put three on target to Charleston’s one, their lone goal in the match. Three shots on target isn’t great, but again, it was hard to do much against a compact low block in a swamp.
Individually, two players stood out (outside of the goalscorers). Antoine Hoppenot led the team with three chances created, won five of seven duels, and easily won the penalty leading to MagRam’s equalizer in the first half. Speedy Williams was my MOTM, though. He led the team in passing with 87 attempts, completed 88.5% of them, won five of twelve duels, created two chances, had five tackles, four clearances, and blocked two shots. Charleston wasn’t particularly interested in keeping the ball or building up play through the middle of the park, but Speedy was basically an eraser there and took away whatever offense the Battery might have wanted to create. He had a good partner with Niall and later Napo, but the Jamaican international was immense in this game.
City’s table position remained unchanged following the match, but things are getting a little tighter in the top half of the Eastern Conference these days. Let’s keep this win streak up and see where things take us. VAMOS MORADOS.
