It’s a news-splosion! After about a month of the never-ending ellipses from your crush who isn’t actually gonna text you back, Louisville City has some confirmed (by other clubs) preseason dates, we know what conference Morados are in for 2021, and Racing Louisville crushed their first preseason friendly! LET’S GO!

Louisville City is playing preseason games in Texas!

Mask order or no mask order, Morados are vamoosing to Texas to play a couple of friendlies against Houston Dynamo and Austin FC. City will first visit Austin, probably my favorite city in Texas but also my least-favorite club in MLS thanks to Anthony Precourt’s ownership shenanigans, on March 25 in a closed-door friendly St. Edward’s University. Austin doesn’t have a completed stadium yet.

Then, on March 28, they’ll play Houston Dynamo at Houston Sports Park instead of BBVA Compass Stadium for some reason. That friendly will also be closed, and will not be streamed live (at least not by Houston).

All these Geisterspiele (ghost games in German – it’s a new word thanks to COVID-19!) or closed-door friendlies are just teases, but I’m sure we’ll get to hear something about them. City and Racing have both been pretty good at at least feeding us some catnip after these things to keep us from getting tooo angry.

CeCe Kizer nets a hat-trick in Racing’s first friendly against UofL

We don’t have video of it but apparently CeCe was rampaging against our friends from Floyd Street last Saturday afternoon. Midfielder Lauren Milliet scored the only other goal of the contest, which was also the opener. Racing posted the goals on the link up there but didn’t offer up much else about how the game went or individual performances. I did see a nice Insta post with Emina Ekic hugging her former Cardinal teammates which gave us the feels.

Morados are in the Central Division of the USL Championship for 2021

City headlines a group of eight teams for the 2021 USL Championship season that includes:

  • Indy Eleven
  • Birmingham Legion
  • Memphis 901
  • Oklahoma City Energy
  • Tulsa FC
  • Sporting Kansas City II
  • Atlanta United II

Of the two Eastern Conference divisions, this is the weaker one. The Atlantic Division, which is actually geographically accurate (cough ACC wtf cough), includes the better teams, if we’re being honest: Pittsburgh, Miami, New York Red Bulls II, Tampa Bay, and Charleston, plus the Charlotte Train Wreck, better-than-you-think Hartford, and Loudoun. That division is going to be a bloodbath.

City are the automatic favorites to win this group, but that may be a blessing in disguise. Indy is retooling  and somehow kept Martin Rennie as their coach. XI do return to their old stadium on IUPUI’s campus, however. Birmingham are probably going to be good, having done a lot to overhaul their roster in the offseason. Memphis has, like, two players signed, which is not good. I have no idea what to think about OKC or Tulsa other than it’ll be fun to see some new blood for the first time in a while. Finally, the 2 teams are the 2 teams.

We still don’t know what a schedule is going to look like, but this divisional arrangement seems ripe for a setup where there are three games against every divisional opponent, plus games against Atlantic Division teams, making for something close to a 32 game schedule. More on that as we creep closer to mid-April.

***UPDATE***UPDATE***UPDATE***

Sometimes it actually helps to read the press release. Turns out we’ll be playing intra-divisional opponents FOUR times instead of THREE, which I AM NOT IN FAVOR OF, but it’s COVID so SHRUG EMOJI I GUESS.

Per the effervescent Jonathan Lintner:

“During the regular season, each team will play its division opponents four times – twice home and twice away. In the Central Division, the four remaining games will be played against regional or cross-conference opponents.”