LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – It is, everybody acknowledges, an unusual way to start a season. Louisville City Football Club has packed for a two-week California excursion to open the 2023 campaign, with Saturday’s opener at Orange County SC followed by a trip to Monterey Bay FC a week later.
It's part of the first-ever balanced schedule in USL, which has every team in the league playing every other team at least once.
Now, let’s be honest, there are worse places to spend a couple of weeks in March. But the challenge of two road matches for a team that has put an increased emphasis on early-season performance isn’t insignificant.
It will be difficult to improve on the 2022 start, in which LouCity went unbeaten for 10 games and was the last major professional franchise in the U.S. without a loss. The team won 7 matches in that span, which ended with a loss to LA Galaxy II in, yep, California. A second straight loss came at home to Monterey Bay.
With all of that in mind, manager Danny Cruz set up a travel-heavy preseason which included two games in the Desert Showcase in Tucson and a trip to face the Seattle Sounders of MLS.
“The league is a little bit different this year,” winger Brian Ownby said. “We play everybody. These are trips we probably wouldn't have made in the past, so it's putting us in a little different situation than we're used to. But the main thing for us, with Danny, he challenged us in preseason. We had a lot of west coast games, with the time change and travel and taking care of our bodies. So, if we do that, and have the right mentality, we'll have a shot.”
There is a rhythm to establish. The 10 p.m. Eastern time start can be a challenge to body clocks. It would be easy to let a game like that slip away. Cruz, and his 22 returning players from last season, don’t want anything to slip away.
“I think starting out on the road the way that we are, with regard to traveling cross-country, certainly presents challenges but they're challenges we would have seen at any point during the season, so part of the reason we had preseason the way that we did, part of the reason we went to Seattle, changing time zones on a similar schedule to what we'll have against Orange County, was to prepare for it,” Cruz said. “The idea going into last year was to travel a ton in preseason and hope to affect our away game record, and we did that. So, the hope is this year that we take these games in preseason and the travel and we look to implement a game plan on the road and try to get as used to it as we can over a short period of time.”
The actual game-planning is a bit more of a challenge. Orange County has a revamped roster from the group that finished last season 7-14-13, last in the Western Conference, after winning the USL championship in 2021. Striker Milan Iloski is a holdover whose 22 goals last season won him the Golden Boot. They added help in the back with veteran Norwegian center back Marcus Nakkim.
“It's a good opponent,” Cruz said. “They brought in some really, really good pieces. Obviously you look at Iloski up top scored a lot of goals for them last year, a dangerous player. You're looking at a team that's going to be organized. They're at home, looking to come out on the front foot. But we have had a really, really good week of training. I'm feeling really good about the group and where we are at the moment. Looking forward to getting out there and dealing with the travel and the time change. At the end of the day, we always say there are no excuses. And there won't be come Saturday night.”
LouCity will not begin the season without injury. Wes Charpie, Danny Faundez, Ray Serrano and Jorge Gonzalez have all been ruled out for the opener with injuries. Wilson Harris, the club’s leading scorer from 2022, is listed as questionable.
But the depth of the team is evident. The franchise’s leading scorer, Cam Lancaster, is back at full strength, a position he didn’t enjoy all of last season.
While it’s tough to know exactly what Orange County will do, Cruz said his emphasis has been on his own team executing its game plan.
“Orange County is a very different team from when we saw them last year,” he said. “We've done our research, right? We've scouted to the best that we can up to this point, it being so early in the season. We actually feel very comfortable and confident in what we're going to see on the weekend. So, it's been about making sure that we prepare the guys the right way, go through what the game plan is going to be, and then we execute it. Up to this point, it can be difficult early in the season when you don't have a ton of video to go look at, but we do feel confident in what we're going to see.”
Saturday’s game will be televised by MyTv (cable channel 58 in Louisville) and broadcast by ESPN 680 AM and 105.7 FM in Louisville. It can be streamed live by downloading the WDRB Now app.
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