Louisville City dropped this on everyone’s Twitter timeline this morning:
We’re scoring some big news at 3 p.m. today – keep your eyes peeled ???? pic.twitter.com/XizhOHcahO
— Louisville City FC (@loucityfc) December 28, 2015
What could it be? An announcement about the stadium? That the Mayor would be making another announcement? The next Star Wars trailer?
Turns out, it was for a player announcement: striker Chandler Hoffman will be joining Louisville City for 2016. Hoffman’s name may sound familiar to you if you’ve followed MLS for a while, as he was drafted 13th in the 2012 MLS SuperDraft by Philadelphia Union in 2012, played for LA Galaxy in 2013-14 and Houston Dynamo last year, with some USL experience sprinkled in with Harrisburg City Islanders, Los Dos and Colorado Springs Switchbacks last season. The 25 year old striker played college ball at UCLA and was a Hermann Award finalist during his time there. He’s also proven to be a scorer in USL with 13 goals in 17 appearances for Los Dos in 2014 and four in seven for Colorado Springs last year.
In terms of what this means for Elsie, it means we’ve got a proven goalscorer to help shoulder Matt Fondy’s workload in 2016. That, to be frank, is more than what we already had on the roster, and competition for attacking spots should be pretty stiff this spring. Fondy played a ton of minutes in 2015, so any way to ease that a bit is good.
What’s next? Hopefully some more defensive players, maybe another creative and/or defensive mid? Those would be nice. Meanwhile, let’s all welcome Chandler to Louisville City, and look forward to chanting his name repeatedly in 2016.