After writing yesterday’s edition of the Purple Press I started to wonder about John Hackworth’s roster-building philosophy. What kind of squad does he want? One that wins, obviously, but there are lots of different ways that can look.

You can take the Madrid or Chelsea approach and just buy the best players out there (relative to the rest of the league, in our case) and go dominate. Or you can have a less-expensive roster but one that is extremely dedicated to each other and a style or system of play that the competition just can’t beat. You can have a team addicted to pace and speed attacking the goal. You can have a team designed to be a wall in front of the net. You can play direct; you can play tiki-taka. You can build a team full of veterans or you can be a player development factory.

Of course, there are ways to combine approaches and lots of middle ground between philosophies. Veteran teams have experience and savvy, but not always the legs to keep pace with younger speed merchants. Speed merchants can take advantage of their athleticism to beat vets, but lots of times that comes with inconsistency and immaturity.

Since becoming City’s manager in August 2018, John Hackworth has added the following outfield players either on loan or on contract:

  • James Sands, loan, age 18 at the time, defensive midfielder
  • Jonathan Lewis, age 20 at the time, winger/forward
  • Napo Matsoso, age 24 at the time, midfielder
  • Taylor Peay, age 28, defender
  • Sunny Jane, age 28, midfielder
  • Lucky Mkosana, age 32, forward
  • Antoine Hoppenot, age 29, midfielder/forward
  • Abdou Mbacke Thiam, age 27, forward
  • Geoffrey Dee, age 24, midfielder
  • Akil Watts, age 19, defender

Of that group, only Hoppenot, Napo and Thiam are still with the team. Obviously, this list excludes the recently added Jimmy Ockford (27) and Corben Bone (31). Of the players actually signed, most are closer to 30 than 20. That tells me that Hackworth, at least so far, is trending more on experience than youth. It probably also says that this is a team designed to win and win now, rather than one that will develop younger players with the aim to sell them on to MLS or elsewhere later.

That leads me to a different conversation about whether an independent USL team like ours can be a talent factory in the first place. City has been pretty fortunate to be able to send four players on to MLS to some degree of success: Mark-Anthony Kaye, Cameron Lancaster, Kyle Smith and Greg Ranjitsingh. Of that list, only Kaye had been given much of a sniff at MLS before coming to Louisville City and then becoming a star at LAFC. Not many other USL teams in City’s position can say that they sent so many players on to the next level.

But is that sustainable? It’s difficult to say. MLS has proven to be skeptical of USL talent thus far, save New York Red Bulls and maybe Philadelphia Union, and those are clubs with their own direct “II” teams to pick from and control their players’ development. I’m not sure any of the guys on City’s existing roster are going to raise eyebrows in MLS offices unless they suddenly explode from a talent standpoint. Akil Watts could be an exception to that, but we’ll have to see a lot more of him in 2020 to know for sure.

There aren’t many players on City’s roster that wouldn’t walk into a starting role on just about any other club in the Championship. MLS, however, has rules about how many international players can be on their rosters. They may also not want to really create a domestic player market that they don’t directly control, or they may feel that their dollars are better spent on young or foreign players that they can turn into stars and sell for a profit, a la Miguel Almiron or Tyler Adams.

Is it possible in today’s USL Championship to build a roster at that can win titles but also develop talent? Real Monarchs and Red Bulls II have managed it, but they’ve got more in the way of resources, scouting and coaching than an independent side like ours does. I like watching players like Kaye or Smith go from unmentioned to star status. Kaye might be an outlier, but City’s track record for winning and player development is pretty good.

I have no problem putting together a team that’s designed to win, of course. Maybe that’s what’s more important to Louisville City going into the first season at Lynn. But I certainly wouldn’t hate for City to be able to do two things at once. VAMOS MORADOS!