Louisville City USL Schedule
The 2016 Louisville City schedule
was released a few weeks ago; here are my thoughts regarding the schedule and
upcoming season, better late than never, right?
This season sees the USL grow by 5 teams to a
grand total of 29 clubs, with divisions being split East (14) and West (15).
Unfortunately, almost all of this growth is in the form of pseudo-clubs,
terrible twos or corporate satellites; pick your insult of choice for the
always exciting and extremely well supported MLS reserve squads. In reality the
only “real” expansion side is FC Cincinnati. This is especially exciting for
Louisville City fans due to their close proximity and laughable roll out. Case
in point below
Despite their pathetic attempts at marketing, hopefully this
will develop into a real rivalry. One that we as fans can call our own, instead of
the woefully forced attempt by the two clubs to dub the yet to be named rivalry
the, “River Cities Rivalry.” As we all
know, it is a national fact that Louisville and Cincinnati are recognized as
the only River Cities and the name is clearly unique to this region and
rivalry. We the Tubbies will be calling it the “Scrum on 71” until a better
name catches on #ScrumOn71.
Now onto
the schedule itself. This season, much like last year, places Louisville in the
Eastern conference. Each team will play 30 games and will play a Home and Away
against every team in our conference. This leaves 4 games to either play
against regional rivals or for inter-conference play. I for one am in favor of completely
balanced schedules where each team in a conference would only play a Home and Away with every other team in their conference
(I realize this is not possible if you want 30 games in a 14 team league). This type of scheduling leaves no ambiguity
as to who the better team is over a season. Last year Rochester were probably
the best team over the season, but not by the 13 point margin that won them the
league. If you were wondering, last year
two of Rochester’s regional rivals were bottom of the barrel Toronto II (4X)
and FC Montreal (4X, before their mid season surge) while we faced much tougher
competition regionally in St. Louis FC
(4X), the playoff team Pittsburgh(3X), western conference finalists OKC (1X)and
playoff contenders Tulsa (2x).
My Highlights and Lowlights of the Schedule:
The first game of the season is March 26 away
to Charlotte. I don’t have much to say about this other than that I think they
were the first team to beat us last year so let’s avoid that this year. Plus as
we all know, Charlotte is not a real city so that shouldn’t be too hard.
Home Opener April 2. This is what
we have all been waiting for since October 3rd last year! I cannot
wait to be back at Slugger cheering on our team against the New York Red Bulls
II. However, I couldn’t help but be a bit disappointed at the opponent. Playing
an MLS reserve squad first just takes a little luster off opening day. A dream opener would have been St. Louis
(renew the King’s Cup), FC Cincinnati (Teach them what it’s all about), or
Rochester(avenge last year’s Eastern Conference final loss). Even one of the
other independent teams would have been more palatable than the Sugar Free Red
Bulls.
April 16 is our first date against
FC Cincinnati at Nippert Stadium for the inaugural match of the “Scrum on 71”.
This will be an excellent opportunity for our fans to travel to an away game
and show Cincinnati how to be a football or futbol (if they prefer that) club,
not a corporate entity masquerading as one. I highly recommend anyone that is
on the fence about traveling to do so. Unfortunately, I was only able to travel
to the US Open Cup game against Indy Eleven last year. That being said, it was
one of my best memories of the season. I can only imagine what it will be like
if we can get hundreds of Louisville City fans to invade Cincinnati and fill
their canyon of a stadium with our purple reign and revelry. I wonder who will be sponsoring the away
support section?
The other “Scrum on 71” dates are
June 25th at Slugger and July 23rd in Cincinnati. I guess
the league knew they’d need a handicap in the rivalry by giving them two home
dates. Regardless of reasoning, more mocking and revelry will most definitely
ensue at these future dates. Plus, when they visit us FC Cincinnati fans will
be able to see what a full stadium looks like.
One of the new Terrible Twos is
Orlando City B; we get the pleasure of playing them three times, twice as hosts
(4/9 and 7/30) and once as visitors (6/5). To me this is the strangest part of
the schedule and the one I would most readily change for multiple reasons.
Firstly, they are an MLS 2 team and given the choice I would not play corporate
satellites anymore than necessary. (Hey USL, how about a league for
independents and a league for pseudo-clubs?) Secondly, after the
fiasco/disaster of a map (if you can call it that) the USL released designating
the conference alignment we knew the USL wasn’t great with geography. (see
below)
However, we would have thought they would realize Orlando
and Louisville are almost 1,000 miles apart. This begs the question why are we
playing them 3 times as if they are some regional rival? I get that Louisville
is technically the former Orlando City USL Franchise, but that doesn’t make
this a rivalry. Please stop trying to
make it one. Thirdly, there was a much
better option that would have solved two issues with the schedule. Replace the
second home date against Orlando B with a second home tilt against FC
Cincinnati. This equalizes a real regional rivalry and stops fabricating one
that isn’t there. Fourth, we already beat the real Orlando City last year so
why would we need to play the B squad at all?
We get to renew the King’s Cup
Rivalry with St. Louis FC on 5/14 at Slugger and 9/17 in that dirty city on the
Mississippi. I for one am glad the USL allowed us to beat up on St. Louis
again. We should probably count ourselves lucky to do so as this fixture is one
of only two between teams from the Eastern Conference and the Western
Conference (where St. Louis fled because they couldn’t make the playoffs in the
East). The other inter-conference fixture is FC Cincinnati vs. St. Louis
FC. Our match at Slugger on 5/14 should make
for an awesome atmosphere and hopefully be very well attended, as it is the
only home fixture during the month of May. I for one will try my hardest to make it to
St. Louis to watch our boys hoist the King’s Cup this year as I missed out last
year.
The only other point of the
schedule that stands out to me is Louisville was able to once again wrangle a
July 4th home date. This year it is against FC Montreal. As was the
case last year, I would expect this to be a very well attended game due to the
holiday festivities. I think it is fitting, though I doubt intentional, that we
get to play against a foreign (Canadian) team on July 4th. America > everyone else. I expect everyone to be chugging beer and singing
the Star Spangled Banner extra loud to let those French Canadians know what
they are up against.
-Signed Your Favorite Purple Teletubby-
