LouCity came out on top in one of the tighter games we’ve seen at Slugger this season against North Carolina FC. The former RailHawks came into the contest on Saturday afternoon having won four straight, including big wins over Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay. However, Magnus Rasmussen’s header off a corner in the 55th minute was enough to send them home with a new tally in the loss column.
Hackworth sent out a similar eleven to what we saw against Charleston last week, but with some different tactical moves. The USL stats page called it a 4-2-3-1, while LouCity’s lineup tweet called it a 4-3-3 with Napo on the left side of the midfield band and Maggie on the right. In practice, Speedy played the six and Niall McCabe kind of played as a double-pivot central midfielder with him, while Magnus played more box-to-box. Napo played as a wide midfielder on the left tasked with keeping the North Carolina attack hemmed in on that side, Abdou on the right, and Antoine Hoppenot played as striker.
Louisville City’s game plan was pretty pragmatic: try and keep the play in front of them as much as possible, play compact defensively, and don’t let North Carolina through the middle of the park. It worked pretty well. Neither team passed the ball all that great, with LouCity completing 78% of its 454 passes, 64% in NCFC’s half, and NCFC completing 74% of its 371 passes. The good thing about that number, though, is that City kept North Carolina about 70 passes below its usual number, which reduced their opportunities to try and create offense.
Case in point: City had eighteen interceptions, a very good number. Clogging up passing lanes and playing compact in the middle of the field forced NCFC wide, and they sent in 23 crosses but only completed 8.7% of them. The visitors only took six shots all game, and none were on target (though Rennicks’s shot off the far post in the second half was very scary). They only created three scoring chances the entire match. This is a team that’s scored 47 goals this season, and had scored nine in the past ten days.
City didn’t do much better with the ball, taking only eight shots and putting just two on target, but one made it across the line, and that’s what matters.
Individually, both of the center backs played very well. Paco passed the ball efficiently, while Sean Totsch, the USL broadcast team’s Man of the Match, had five interceptions and won twelve of eighteen duels. Sean is not the biggest central defender you’ll ever see, and Carolina had some big bodies out there, but Totsch kept them in check the entire game.
Pat McMahon put in another solid performance, winning ten of his fifteen duels and adding five clearances. Oscar had four interceptions and six tackles, while getting an assist on the goal and creating a couple chances.
Speedy and Niall both were smooth in the center of the park and were pretty efficient with their distribution. Abdou Mbacke Thiam had one of his best games on the left wing, creating a couple scoring chances and completing 88.5% of his passes. Napo created a couple of chances as well. While Antoine didn’t touch the ball as much as we might like, he certainly kept the opposing center backs busy with his movement and completed all but one of his passes on the day. He’ll be aching over that miss in the second half after Luke Spencer fed him a great pass up the left, but still a good day’s work.
Luke did a nice job loosening things up when he subbed on, too.
All in all, it was a complete performance. City executed their game plan, didn’t let Carolina get out on counters, and got a tough goal on a set play. We’ll take the points. VAMOS MORADOS.
