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Morning everyone, I hope you and yours are staying sane and healthy. It feels like the incredible sh*tshow we’ve all been living in is finally returning to some sort of slightly less sh*tshow-y equilibrium. Vaccines are being administered, daylight savings is here and we're all still basking in the glorious sunshine of yet another embarrassing outing for the orange and blue at the hands of Louisville City Football Club (aka FC c*ncinnati aka Philadelphia Union aka Harrisburg City Islanders) in an enjoyable, albeit ultimately unimportant preseason friendly.
This week, City face yet another rival-since departed to the MLS in Nashville SC, who will play host for Saturday’s tune-up match. There’s little word so far on the details other than it's once again behind closed doors, but I’d imagine it will be similar to last Saturday’s game with unlimited substitutions over 90 minutes. It’s hard to know what to expect out of Nashville in this one, but they look to be a substantially stronger side than FCC and one that’s added depth to a team that finished a respectable 7th in the Eastern Conference in their debut MLS campaign last year. Really this edition of El Cámlancasterico is about giving our guys a solid opportunity to test themselves and build fitness, but it would still be nice to start the year off going two-for-two against MLS opponents. Hack summed it up perfectly last week when he said, “the results don’t matter, but we still want to win everything.”
Tangentially, this very same training ground interview with Hackworth was also strategically framed to give us an out of focus view of a lovely rondo nutmeg at about 34 seconds. It’s hard to tell exactly who was involved, but it looks like Alexis got the better of Brian. If you or anyone you associate with has experience in forensic video analysis (or at least better eyesight than me) your services would be greatly appreciated.
In other visually-pleasing-things-to-occur-on-a-football-pitch news, Metro Louisville FC joined in on the beatdown of all things Hamilton County, OH in a 7-2 victory over Cincinnati Swerve. In doing so, they qualified for PASL Nationals and scored this rainbow-over-the-keeper Puskás candidate. Good luck to them in Houston, and I’m sure THE Miami FC will be offering the goalscorer a contract as soon as Riccardo Silva sees the video and finds out he's from Louisville.
Elijah Wynder was back at the club last week after the difficult leg injury he sustained during a January academy match in Orlando. While I’m of the strong opinion that it’s best not to over-hype young players (regardless of whether they’re on academy or pro contracts) as things don’t always pan out and ultimately they're just like any other kids, but I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that pretty much every City fan thinks highly of Elijah as a homegrown talent and is excited about his potential. He deserves a lot of credit for being the first to buy-in to the academy project, and I'm sure everyone at the club is working with his best interest in mind as he recovers.
Finally, the good folks over at Scouse’s House released a great interview with Hack, Christy Holly and JOC. I know there’s been a lot of worried speculation about the behind the scenes dynamic between Hackworth and O’Connor since the latter's appointment as Executive VP of Development, but in this interview it really came across that they make for a solid partnership, and to the benefit of the club. I know it must’ve been a little awkward for an incumbent manager to have a former manager and club favorite brought in to the front office, but it really does seem like there’s a lot of truth to the praise that’s been coming out of the club about instilling a “badge-first” culture from the ownership through to the academy. That's something we can all be proud of.
Two quick pieces of team news from the interview:
1) Our recently signed goalkeeper Simon Lefebvre is not yet training with the squad as he’s being held up in France while he awaits a work visa, and
2) Hackworth said he expects one or two new additions to the squad, which would bolster an already strong roster.
Taking these together, I’d venture to guess that one of these signings will be a goalkeeper. Obviously visa issues are something you’d expect to be sorted out before the start of the season, but the possibility of opening the league campaign with just one rostered goalkeeper would be an incredibly precarious position to be in and a risk I don't see Hack taking. Plus, having a third-choice keeper to compete with the other two or be there in the event of an apocalyptic-hellscape injury scenario never hurts.
As for the other possible signing, that’s up for a greater degree of speculation. My hope would be a return for Magnus Rasmussen, as the club has publicly stated they’d like to see him back in 2021 after reaching a mutual agreement to terminate his contract last July. Personally, I’d love to see him in purple again and think he would be arguably the biggest move of the offseason, especially considering he led the team with 17 goals in 2019 and averaged a goal a game in the playoffs.
Alright, I’ll leave it there for now. Hopefully I’ll have some sort of post-match analysis following the Nashville friendly, and if anything noteworthy happens between now and then it'll be up on our Twitter. Regular season football is nigh.